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By Leif Andresen & Ian Campbell-Grant - July 2000
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With the vast amount of information on the Internet metadata (that is data describing information) became an increasingly important subject over the last few years. The drive to exploit the World-Wide Web has created an urgent need for people and applications to collaborate together using the Web – and this needs standard methods and vocabularies for describing the Webs contents in a consistent and orderly manner in order to facilitate discovery.
Recognising the importance of metadata agreements for the European content industry, the European standards agency CEN decided to undertake an initial Workshop on Metadata in February 1998. This was to set a context for and make decisions on further work within CEN on metadata. In October 1999 a second Workshop was initiated recognizing that a particular highly relevant recent global activity is the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
Dublin Core is developed in an open consensus building environment and has been successfully applied in many countries and in many domains. The primary role of Dublin Core is to establish a de facto standard for metadata for discovery.
There is a natural development from de facto standards to formal standards. A very important detail of formal standardisation is the stability and the credibility of an official standard.
In September 1998 RFC 2413 Dublin Core Metadata for Resource Discovery was published. The Category of the RFC is Informational and it does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
It was however an important step because it was the first formal acknowledgement from the world outside Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has a platform for standardisation in information technology: ISSS (Information Society Standardization System). The mission of CEN/ISSS is to provide market players with a comprehensive and integrated range of standardisation-oriented services and products, in order to contribute to the success of the Information Society in Europe.
CEN/ISSS Workshops are open working groups aimed at producing specifications on a consensus basis, as pre-Standards, guidance or other material. The Workshops are open to all, the commitment to collaborate being the only criterion for participation. Workshops make intensive use of electronic working methods, enabling companies, organisations and academia to also participate without the need for attending the Workshops' meetings in person. CEN/ISSS Workshops produce CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs), which are consensus-based specifications, drawn up in an open Workshop environment.
They are developed along straightforward lines, with a minimum of bureaucratic rules. CWAs may be the first attempt to prepare a European Standard; they may even contain competing solutions, in order to "test the market" for a technology or interface. They may also contain instructive material of a purely informative nature, such as Guidelines or Codes of Practice, or they may address the implementation of existing Standards.
A CWA reflects the consensus of identified companies and organisations responsible for its content. The CWA therefore does not represent as high a level of consensus as a European Standard (EN) and is not designed to support legislative requirements. Instead, its purpose is to offer market players a flexible and timely tool for achieving a technical agreement.
CEN Members (the National Standards Bodies) publish approved CWAs.
The CEN/ISSS Workshop on MMI (Metadata for Multimedia Information) started in February 1998 and completed its work in June 1999, having focused on developing a model for metadata, understanding the business requirements and the activities being undertaken in Europe and globally.
Deliverables from the Workshop are the two CWA’s Model for Metadata for Multimedia Information and Requirements for Metadata for Multimedia Information. In addition, a comprehensive framework giving brief explanations of key concepts and links to further resources was developed.
The work of the MMI group led to recognition that Dublin Core was a practicable and rapid route to a standard for Metadata discovery. The work of MMI therefore led to in a proposal for a new workshop with focus on Dublin Core. As part of these discussions it was decided to base the work on Dublin Core version 1.1. This version was published in July 1999. This was one of the reasons for not starting the next stage of work before summer 1999.
In October 1999 the MMI-work progressed with a new workshop focused on Dublin Core. The kick-off meeting of CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata in Multimedia Information - Dublin Core was held in Brussels in October 1999. The objectives of MMI Dublin Core stated in the business plan are:
As a first step, the Workshop have endorsed the Dublin Core specification (Version 1.1) as a CEN Workshop Agreement. That is CWA 13874 and more information is available in the press release [1].
Following this, the Workshop will in a second CEN Workshop Agreement provide instructive material on the adoption of Dublin Core metadata description within Europe. This involve the collection of information on state of the art in national implementations and deriving recommendations on co-ordination and other guidance information for European industry.
Finally, the Workshop will maintain and promote a knowledge base for metadata for multimedia information to continually assess relationships between Dublin Core and other initiatives in order to assist evolution of standardised metadata schemes. This knowledge base will identify the key activities currently being undertaken in Europe and across the world, the scope of these activities and related work in European projects and programmes.
The Workshop is open to, and seeks involvement from, all interested parties dealing with metadata standardisation. More than 150 IST-project have been invited to participate in the workshop.
If you would like to participate on behalf of your company or university in the activities of the MMI-DC Workshop, you should register as a Workshop participant via the on-line registration form on the MMI-DC Web-page [2].
The next meeting of the MMI-DC Workshop takes place on 27 + 28 June 2000. Chairman of the MMI-DC Workshop is Ian Campbell-Grant, ICL. Leif Andresen, Danish National Library Authority, is in charge of the MMI-DC Workshop Secretariat.
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Ian Campbell-Grant
ICL Fellow
ICL
Lovelace Road, Bracknell
Berkshire
RG12 8SN
UK
ian.campbell-grant@icl.com
Phone: +44 1344 472382
Telefax: +44 1344
Ian Campbell-Grant is the chairman of CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata for Multimedia Information - Dublin Core (MMI-DC)
Leif Andresen
Library Advisory Officer
Danish National Library Authority
Nyhavn 31 E, DK-1051 Copenhagen K
Denmark
lea@bs.dk
Phone direct: +45 3373 3354
Phone: +45 3373 3373
Telefax: +45 3373 3372
Leif Andresen manages the MMI-DC Workshop Secretariat (CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata for Multimedia Information - Dublin Core).
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For citation purposes:
Andresen, L & Campbell-Grant, I "Standardisation of Dublin Core in Europe",
Cultivate Interactive, issue 1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/mmidc/>
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