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| Issue 7 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Paul Miller, David Dawson and John Perkins - July 2002
Paul Miller, David Dawson and John Perkins report on the second in a series of international meetings at which representatives of cultural content creation programmes from around the world work towards greater collaboration.
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As reported in issue 5 of Cultivate Interactive [1], there is increasing evidence of broadly similar approaches to the digitisation of cultural content being adopted in countries around the world. In an initiative to ensure interoperability of approach wherever possible, effort is being devoted to opening and maintaining communication between the various programmes, and to exploring scope for collaborative working and standard setting. Following an initial meeting in London during the summer of 2001, some 40 representatives of various cultural content creation programmes gathered in Washington, D.C., in March of 2002, as guests of the US Federal Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
A number of clear themes emerged from the meeting, building upon those already identified in London. Clearest of these was a recognition of the importance of gaining a far better understanding of our users, the uses they make of digitised cultural content, and their requirements around the creation of new content. There was also a high degree of interest in the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), and in the various testbeds already underway or shortly to commence amongst several of those represented. Work on these and other activities is now moving forward, both bilaterally between specific initiatives, and in concert under the umbrella of a new digital Cultural Content Forum.
There has been a great deal of effort expended in recent years in digitising a wealth of cultural content for display on the Web. The reasons for digitising this material range from preservation to education, but relatively little effort has been devoted to understanding what users actually want from content, or the uses to which they wish to put it. There are notable exceptions to this apparent lack of interest, but the broad trend is unfortunately one, to paraphrase, of building it, safe in the knowledge that 'they' will come (and, presumably, enjoy, tell their friends, and come again!) Although visitor numbers for many cultural sites on the Internet are certainly highly satisfactory, comparing them to the far larger community of potential users suggests that more users await awareness raising activity or some suitable enticement. There is also largely unquantified work to be done in improving the experience for those who actually do visit, and in delivering the content and services that the user seeks, rather than expecting them to be satisfied with that which the content provider has selected on their behalf.
The work to be done in this area is potentially costly and long-term, but those gathered in Washington were unanimous in agreeing that the sector requires far better understanding of the issues, and of information that is already available. As such, a brief is being developed for a focussed piece of work, in which existing studies of user experiences and requirements for digital cultural content - both commercially sensitive and already in the public domain - will be located and synthesised in order to identify broad trends and issues. This work will serve, we believe, to identify knowledge which already exists within memory institutions in isolated pockets. It will also serve to generate both hypotheses for testing and flag up questions in need of asking through further consultative work, whether conducted collaboratively or at a local level by individual institutions and agencies.
Since first announced, there has been significant interest in the work of the Open Archives Initiative [2]. This interest has arisen both for associations with potentially radical changes in the manner in which scholarly research is published and disseminated, but also for the technical work around a Protocol for Metadata Harvesting [3]. This protocol extends beyond the confines of scholarly publishing and e-Prints. It offers capabilities for software to 'harvest' basic Dublin Core [4] records describing content in a wide variety of forms and formats, and to create large repositories of metadata suitable for integration and manipulation in a range of ways. In the UK, for example, an evolving Architecture [5] for the JISC's Information Environment [6] recognises the key role of such harvesting in the distributed information landscape, alongside searching remote databases and alerting both human and machine users to changes in content.
Amongst memory institutions and related bodies, there has been a great deal of interest, and a number of programmes are currently getting underway to explore the realities of creating, maintaining and making use of these repositories of metadata, and the services likely to grow up around them. The JISC's FAIR Programme [7], a number of Mellon projects [8], and an RfP from IMLS are amongst a raft of funded explorations of the technology and the issues of integrating it with existing practice.
Participants expressed interest in learning more about the potential of OAI and other 'new' technologies to assist them in delivering on their missions, and it was agreed that it might be useful to explore in detail the known work on OAI within the community at the next meeting. Stronger bridges were also built between a number of the funded programmes exploring this technology, and there is the potential for some synergistic work to emerge, rather than a number of wholly separate programmes.
This meeting, possibly more than that in London, emphasised some of the very real differences in approach across the jurisdictions represented, whether in terms of the reasons for digitising content in the first place (lifelong learning, national identity, tourism, digital librarianship, etc.), or the roles expected of public, private, and quasi-public bodies within the process.
Despite these differences, there remain clear advantages in ensuring effective lines of communication across national and disciplinary borders, and the group was felt to play an important role in maintaining this dialogue due to its broad (and growing) international make-up, and its mix of funders, policy makers and strategists.
In order to form a focus for this work to progress, the group is to become the digital Cultural Content Forum, and work is currently underway on a Web site [9] and a series of associated documents for this group in order to raise its profile and create an environment in which issues of import may be progressed.
Notice of public deliverables from this group, including the launch of the
new digital Cultural Content Forum Web site, will be given via e-mail to various
community mailing lists. Those who are interested in receiving notification of
all such deliverables are invited to join the public mailing list,
interoperability, hosted by the UK JISCmail service.
To join this list, send a message to
with the body of the message reading
join interoperability Your_Firstname Your_Lastname
--
e.g.
join interoperability Paul Miller
--
The authors wish to thank all of those who travelled to Washington to participate in this meeting. Without their attendance and ongoing participation, this initiative would be much diminished. Thanks are also due to all of those at IMLS who worked so hard to ensure a comfortable and productive two days.
Participants at the meeting were: Helen Aguera (National Endowment for the Humanities, USA), David Dawson (Resource, UK), Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC, USA), Jose Luis Esteban (National Library of Spain, Spain), Eleanor Fink (World Bank, USA), Shelagh Fisher (CERLIM, UK), Kati Geber (Canadian Heritage Information Network, Canada), Tony Gill (Research Libraries Group, USA), David Green (National Initiative for Networked Cultural Heritage, USA), Dan Greenstein (Digital Library Federation, USA), Steve Griffin (National Science Foundation, USA), Catherine Grout (Distributed National Electronic Resource/ Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), Nancy Gwinn (Smithsonian Institution, USA), Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (State Museums of Berlin, Germany), Susan Haigh (National Library of Canada, Canada), Ken Hamma (J. Paul Getty Trust, USA), Jieh Hsiang (National Taiwan University, Taiwan), An Knaeps (Flanders Ministry of Culture, Belgium), Steve Knight (National Library of New Zealand, New Zealand), Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information, USA), Marianne McLean (National Archives of Canada, Canada), Gerald Maier (State Archive of Baden-Württemberg, Germany), Deanna Marcum (Commission on Library and Information Resources, USA), Bob Martin (Institute of Museum and Library Services, USA), James Michalko (Research Libraries Group, USA), Paul Miller (UKOLN, UK), Sarah Mitchell (New Opportunities Fund, UK), Michel Murray (Canadian Heritage, Canada), Frits Pannekoek (University of Calgary, Canada), John Perkins (CIMI, Canada), Joyce Ray (Institute of Museum and Library Services, USA), Jacob Schouenborg (Ministry of Culture, Denmark), James Shulman (Mellon Foundation, USA), Kevin Sumption (Powerhouse Museum, Australia), Jennifer Trant (Archives & Museum Informatics, USA), Sirkka Valanto (National Board of Antiquities, Finland).
The meeting was conceived and realised as a partnership between UKOLN, Resource and CIMI. Our hosts in Washington were the Federal Institute for Museum & Library Services (IMLS).
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Paul
Miller
Interoperability Focus
UKOLN
United Kingdom
p.miller@ukoln.ac.uk
<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/>
Phone: +44 1482 466890
Paul holds the post of Interoperability Focus at UKOLN. This post is jointly
funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC -
www.jisc.ac.uk/
) of the United Kingdom's Further and Higher Education Funding Councils, and by
Resource, the Government agency responsible for libraries, museums and archives
(www.resource.gov.uk/
).
Paul's background is in archaeology, where his PhD research examined the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in mapping deposits buried beneath modern cities, concentrating specifically upon the archaeologically rich and varied city of York.
In his current work, Paul is responsible for encouraging and facilitating the development of interoperable solutions across a range of domains, principally museums, libraries, archives, and government. Paul sits on a wide range of committees and working groups related to this area, both internationally (for example, the executive committee of CIMI) and within the UK.
Previously, Paul worked for the Archaeology Data Service (ADS -
ads.ahds.ac.uk/
), a service provider of the UK Arts & Humanities Data Service. Here, he was
responsible for designing and establishing the catalogue, which now contains
content from local and national archaeological agencies across the UK.
David
Dawson
Senior ICT Adviser
Resource: the Council for Museums Archives & Libraries
United Kingdom
david.dawson@resource.gov.uk
<http://www.resource.gov.uk/>
Phone: +44 20 72731415
David Dawson is one of the Senior Network Advisers within the Learning and Information Society Team (LIST) of Resource.
David studied Archaeology at Durham University, and completed the Museum
Studies Course at Leicester in 1985, before becoming an Associate of the Museums
Association in 1988. He worked in a range of museums before joining the Museum
Documentation Association (www.mda.org.uk/
) in 1992, as Business Manager of mda Services, before becoming Outreach Manager
(ICT), giving advice and training to museums in documenting their collections,
with a focus on helping small museums as well as working with a number of
museums in the UK and abroad. Whilst at mda, he was closely involved in the
development of the Aquarelle Project.
In 1998 David joined the Museums & Galleries Commission (www.museums.gov.uk/
) as New Technology Adviser, before becoming Senior ICT Adviser for Resource. He
works particularly on ICT in museums, managing the DCMS/Resource IT Challenge
Fund, acting as an expert adviser to the New Opportunities Fund, and working on
a range of other projects and strategic developments, such as Culture Online
(www.cultureonline.gov.uk/
). David is currently a member of the Office of the e-Envoy Broadband Research
group and is the nominated UK Representative on the EU activity to Coordinate
National Digitisation Policies.
John
Perkins
Executive Director
CIMI Consortium
Canada
jperkins@ca.inter.net
<http://www.cimi.org/>
Phone: +1 902 4295392
John Perkins is Executive Director of the Consortium for the Interchange of
Museum Information (CIMI - www.cimi.org/
). CIMI is a group of the world's most prestigious museums, technology
companies, and libraries working to advance museum digital intelligence through
standards, research, testbeds, advocacy, training and international
collaboration. Current interests are in the area of digital information object
management and interchange for museums, metadata harvesting, and distributed
searching, mobile computing, and content architecture for Semantic Web
applications.
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For citation purposes:
Miller,P., Dawson,D. and Perkins, J "Towards a Digital Cultural Content Forum", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/washington/>
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