Richard and Ed, Leonard

thank you for your comments that's very useful

hmm to clarify we are actually talking on a more basic level than this
effectively it will be a medium that will enable the terminology (its
meaning, scope etc) to be applied irrespective of what structure people are
using in their SMR etc.... there is alot of old systems out there.

Compliance guidance sounds sort of scary and a bit dictatorial - please
don't see it that way. It is hoped that it will help.

So where has this come from?
Throughout my normal role as SMR officer for The National Trust I meet many
SMR officers from the county SMRs, Wales, NMR and Northern Ireland the list
goes on.

In many circumstances SMR officers have clearly stated that they are locked
into old terminologies that they have "inherited".

I think that we must develop conformity to new terminologies by providing
compliance guidelines. This allows even the least technological systems to
conform to national standards without too many hassles.

In the development of these lists (the Source & Archive and the Protection
Grade/Status) we are have been trying to look to future needs. At present I
am not aware that any SMR is able to run a thesaurus for the source and
archive field. Or indeed has expanded the scope of the terms they use.

With this in mind we (Ed and I) have discussed the need to develop the
facility to conform to standards while being able to retain their own
terminology's but start to develop consistency and broaden the scope of the
lists (thus making it easier for all of us to exchange and communicate
data).

I think it is important that standards are not become set in stone, however
ways must be found for users to adopt a standard (or part of a standard).
Without losing too much work or any loss of functionality or data.

For instance the current Inscription standard was a loss of functionality
for The National Trust SMR which we later had to address. This meant to
dropped the current inscription standards for source & archive types.

With the above in mind we thought that in order to facilitate the use of any
new terminology we would provide a procedure to adopt the terminology
contained within even if the structure is not adopted. This seems to be a
minor point but I think it is fundamental.

So how will Compliance Guidance Work?
We are thinking on a more basic fundamental level than suggested by Leonard
and Richard have been discussing. Guidance will be applied through a
document that details the structure and terms with different structures
(flat lookup, hierarchical etc being applied to systems). This will provide
models and advice on how to apply the terms without necessary applying the
structure. Also as Ed noted in his recent email there are some fundamental
issues that we need to explore in the understanding of terminologies.

We must to enable people to apply such standards now to their systems with a
view of eventual whole adoption in the future.

If we don't development any guidance then we risk that this terminology will
be ignored as it just does not fit into current structures or practices.

It is early days for this and I am still thinking about how best to apply
this "new" concept to terminologies. I am keen that we discuss this... it
would be interesting to see what those users think that feel they are locked
into "inherited" terminologies.

Cheers
jason