metadata watch
standards framework
workshops
registry
information services
publicity materials


Search this site:

intranet
vertical line  
Home vertical line
 Project vertical line
 Partners vertical line
 Related vertical line
 Archives vertical line
 Search vertical line
 Glossary vertical line
  

Metadata Watch Report #2

[ contents | section 1 | section 3 ]

Section 2 - Overall review

Little seems to have happened since the first Metadata Watch Report, a few months ago. Some new activities have been identified but no major changes in the domains have occurred.

The top-level synthesis that has been made in the First Metadata Watch Report is still up-to-date. The information provided here is only a small addition to this analysis.

The audio-visual sector is an update of D22. No real changes and innovation occurred in that sector. Three new initiatives have been identified:

  • The ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number ISO 46/sc 9 N252) and the UMID (Unique Material Identifier), on digital identifiers.

  • The AAF (Advanced Authoring Format) which facilitates the exchange of images, sound and metadata across platforms and applications.

In the educational sector, no new initiatives have been identified. The main standards-related activities are still the same: IEEE LTSC LOM, DC-Education, CEN/CENELEC ISSS LTWS and ISO/IECJTC1 SC36.

In all these activities, some substantial progress and developments have been made on the scope of the work. Around the four main standardisation activities, a large number of projects, consortia and other initiatives are actively developing specifications, tools and infrastructures.

In the academic sector, the correspondent updated on topics such as World Wide Web Consortium metadata developments, Internet information gateway initiatives and the specification of metadata for recordkeeping and digital preservation. A more detailed description is given on metadata standards developed for electronic literacy and linguistic texts (the Text Encoding Initiative header), e-print services (the Open Archives initiative) and the biological diversity information.

In this domain, the main trends are:

  • The need towards developing standardised metadata schemes is based on a need to share metadata and interoperate.

  • The successful academic sector metadata initiatives will need to be collaborative ventures between academic institutions and other organisations.

  • It is becoming clear that short-term research and development projects will often need to evolve into something more sustainable.

For the geographical information sector, 3 main initiatives have been identified:

  • The GI and GIS Interoperability project

  • The Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI)

  • Building a 4D Geodynamic Model of Australia

In this report, the Australian initiatives have been identified. They did a lot of work in metadata related to geographical information. This report is mainly an update of the work regarding the geographical areas covered. In the first one, it was mainly focused on Europe and America. Here it is mainly focused on Australian activities.

Finally, in the publishing sector, no new initiatives have been identified but an update on the progress of the existing ones have been done. In this report, the correspondent detailed the advancement of some initiatives. He dealt with the digital domain, the identifier watch and the rights protection. Under each area he developed the advancement of the work: like the MPEG calling for proposals for Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) solutions for multimedia applications, the EBX Working Group which have released their latest draft technical specification, the development of the EPICS e-book metadata set which continues or the release by the INDECS project of the version 1.1 of the ONIX standard for the exchange of bibliographic metadata.

Development in the rights arena continues to focus on protection, ownership and intellectual property rather than rights transactions.

[ contents | section 1 | section 3 ]

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 12 June 2001