Hello all,
IMS have been developing a specification for vocabulary definition exchange
(VDEX) which (quoting http://www.imsglobal.org/workinprogress.cfm):

defines a specification that will allow for the exchange of vocabularies
that are an integral type of information in many of the elearning
specifications in use today.

Specifically, the IMS Vocabulary Definition Exchange (VDEX) specification
effort defines a grammar for the exchange of simple machine-readable lists
of values, or terms, together with information that may aid a human being
in understanding the meaning or applicability of the various terms. One
type of collections of terms is a thesaurus; the terms are human language
terms. VDEX enables thesauri to be exchanged using arbitrary relationship
types, inclusive of those specified in ISO 2788 and ISO 5964 standards.
VDEX may be also used to express valid data for use in instances of IEEE
LOM, IMS Metadata, IMS Learner Information Package and ADL SCORM, etc, for
example. In these cases, the terms are often not human language words or
phrases but more abstract tokens. VDEX can also express strictly
hierarchical schemes in a compact manner while allowing for more loose
networks of relationship to be expressed if required.

(end quote)

At the moment IMS members are voting on whether the current private draft
should become a public draft. If anyone (from UK HE/FE) is interested in
seeing this private draft I can send you a copy on the condition that you
send back any comments which would inform which way CETIS votes. The
deadline for casting votes is Aug 20th, so we would want your comments,
preferably by the end of next week (Fri Aug 15), to give us time to digest
and collate comments from different audiences.

[This is the sort discussion about material which is private to IMS members
which I mentioned in my mailling a couple of weeks ago aking for advice on
  list management. The advice I received was to play it by ear, but keep
discussions as open as possible. If there are more than two or three people
interested I may well set up a private Jiscmail list for comments, .ac.uk
people and IMS memebers will be able join this if they wish.]


All the best, Phil.

--
Phil Barker                            Learning Technology Adviser
      ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
      Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University,
      Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
      Tel: 0131 451 3278    Fax: 0131 451 3327
      Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/