News from 2014

In this webinar, Eric Miller, President of Zepheira, will talk about the transition libraries must make to achieve Web visibility, explain recent trends that support these efforts, and introduce the Libhub Initiative -- an active exploration of what can happen when libraries begin to speak the language of the Web. As a founding sponsor, Zepheira's introduction of the Libhub Initiative creates an industry-wide focus on the collective visibility of libraries and their resources on the Web. Libraries and memory organizations have rich content and resources that the Web can not see or use. The Libhub Initiative aims to find common ground for libraries, providers, and partners to publish and use data with non-proprietary, web standards. Libraries can then communicate in a way Web applications understand and Web users can see through the use of enabling technology like Linked Data and shared vocabularies such as schema.org and BIBFRAME. The Libhub Initiative uniquely prioritizes the linking of these newly exposed library resources to each other and to other resources across the Web, a critical requirement of increased Web visibility. Additional information about the webinar and and registration can be found at http://dublincore.org/resources/#2014miller.

DCMI, along with IMS Global) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), announce the formation of the Digital Learning Metadata Alliance (DLMA). The DLMA will focus on coordination of adoption and development of existing metadata standards in support of digital learning and education. For more information about DLMA, visit http://dlma.org and read the IMS Global press release at http://www.imsglobal.org/pressreleases/IMSPR20141024.pdf.

DCMI invites public comment on a draft RDF specification for LRMI version 1.1. The draft RDF specification can be found at http://dublincore.org/dcx/lrmi-terms/drafts/2014-11-30/. The one month public comment period is from 1 December 2014 through 31 December 2014. The RDF specification is intended to embody the current Learning Resource Metadata Initiative version 1.1 term declarations at http://dublincore.org/dcx/lrmi-terms/.

Over 236 people from 17 countries attended DC-2014 in Austin, Texas from 8 through 11 October 2014. Pre- and post-Conference tutorials and workshops were presented in the AT Executive Education and Conference Center and at the Harry Ransom Center with 90 people attending in each of the two venues on the University of Texas at Austin campus. Over 190 people attended the 2-day conference. Presentation slides of the keynote by Eric Miller of Zepheira LLC as well as presentations from the special sessions and the tutorials/workshops are available online at the conference website at http://bit.ly/dc2014-presentations. The full text of the peer reviewed papers, project reports, extended poster abstracts and poster images are also available. Additional assets from the conference will be added to the online proceedings as they become available over the next few weeks.

After lengthy deliberations, the leadership of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) has determined that the stewardship of the LRMI 1.1 specification, as well management of future LRMI development, will be passed to DCMI and its long-standing Education Community. The LRMI specification on which schema.org educational properties and classes are based was created by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and _blank">Creative Commons (CC) with support from the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. The three-phased development cycle of the LRMI 1.1 specification included closing processes for the orderly passing of stewardship to a recognized organization in the metadata sector with commitments to transparency and community involvement. Stewardship of the LRMI specification within DCMI will be a function of a DCMI/LRMI Task Group. The LRMI specification as well as links to the Task Group and community communications channels can be found on the DCMI website at http://dublincore.org/dcx/lrmi-terms/. For the full announcement of the transfer, see the AEP press release.

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is a collaborative initiative that aims to make it easier for teachers and learners to find educational materials through major search engines and specialized resource discovery services. The approach taken by LRMI is to extend the schema.org ontology so that educationally significant characteristics and relationships can be expressed. In this webinar, Phil Barker and Lorna M. Campbell of Cetis will introduce schema.org and present the background to LRMI, its aims and objectives, and who is involved in achieving them. The webinar will outline the technical aspects of the LRMI specification, describe some example implementations and demonstrate how the discoverability of learning resources may be enhanced. Phil and Lorna will present the latest developments in LRMI implementation, drawing on an analysis of its use by a range of open educational resource repositories and aggregators, and will report on the potential of LRMI to enhance education search and discovery services. Whereas the development of LRMI has been inspired by schema.org, the webinar will also include discussion of whether LRMI has applications beyond those of schema.org. Registration at http://bit.ly/dcmiWebinar-LRMI. The webinar is free to DCMI Individual Organizational Members, to ASIST Members, and at modest fee to non-members.

In the closing ceremony of DC-2014, DCMI exercised the first Governing Board officer transition under the Initiative's new governance structure. Michael Crandall stepped into the role of Immediate Past Chair as Eric Childress assumed the roles of Chair of DCMI and the Governing Board. Joseph Tennis became the new Chair Elect of the Board and will succeed as Chair at DC-2015 in São Paulo, Brazil. Information about the new DCMI governance structure can be found in the DCMI Handbook at http://wiki.dublincore.org/index.php/DCMI_Handbook/orgStructure

DCMI is very pleased to announce the renewal of two of its organizational members for the coming year. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, USA, has renewed as an Institutional Member and Infocom Corporation of Japan has renewed as a Supporting Member. The DCMI Supporting Member Program is open to all private sector companies that want to support DCMI financially in continuing its work to the benefit of a healthy metadata ecosystem. The Institutional Member Program is open to all public sector organizations interested in supporting DCMI while participating actively in DCMI governance. Please see the membership page at http://dublincore.org/support/ for more details about DCMI's membership programs.

The Texas Digital Library and the Conference Committee of DC-2014 in Austin, Texas on 8-11 October have published the final program of the DCMI International Conference at http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/index/pages/view/program14. Join us in Austin for an exciting agenda including 46 papers, project reports and best practice posters and presentations. Parallel with the peer reviewed program is an array of special sessions of panels and discussions on key metadata issues, challenges and new opportunities. Pre- and post-conference workshops and tutorials round out the program by providing 1/2 day to full day instruction. Every year the DCMI community gathers for both its Annual Meeting and its International Conference on Dublin Core™ & Metadata Applications. The work agenda of the DCMI community is broad and inclusive of all aspects of innovation in metadata design, implementation and best practices. While the work of the Initiative progresses throughout the year, the Annual Meeting and Conference provide the opportunity for DCMI "citizens" as well as students and early career professionals studying and practicing the dark arts of metadata to gather face-to-face to share experiences. In addition, the gathering provides public- and private-sector initiatives beyond DCMI engaged in significant metadata work to come together to compare notes and cast a broader light into their particular metadata domain silos. Through such a gathering of the metadata "clans", DCMI advances its "first goal" of promoting metadata interoperability and harmonization. Visit the DC-2014 conference website at http://purl.org/dcevents/dc-2014 for additional information and to register. It is a meeting you will not want to miss.

The Texas Digital Library and the Conference Committee of DC-2014 in Austin, Texas has published the preliminary program of the DCMI International Conference at http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/index/pages/view/program14. The conference on Thursday and Friday, 9-10 October, features keynote speaker, Eric Miller, paper sessions, project reports, posters (including best practice posters and demonstrations), and an array of special sessions. Wednesday and Saturday pre- and post-conference events include tutorials and workshops: Training the Trainers for Linked Data, RDF Validation in the Cultural Heritage Community, Fonds & Bonds: Archival Metadata, Tools, and Identity Management, and Positioning DCMI & Dublin Core™ in the Metadata Ecosystem. Special Session sponsors include the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA),OCLC & Yandex, Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Center and the DCMI Technical Board. Registration is now open at http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/index/pages/view/registration-2014. Day registrations are available.