Howdy,

Let me add my welcome to Morgan's.  I have also have a few things to
bring people up to speed on:

*       The name METS.  Based on everyone's advice that we
        needed a new name, the DL group here at NYU came up
        with a provisional name until such time as we can auction off
        naming rights to the highest bidder.  The new name, METS, is
        short for Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard, which
        seemed fairly descriptive of the new schema's purpose, and
        has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that one of our group
        is a Mets fan.  Really.  Trust us.

*       With Sandy's and Rick's help, we've done enough investigation
        of the state of XML schema to have decided that this is definitely
        the direction we want to go.  There are tools available for validation,
        so documents can be checked for accuracy against a schema.
        And schema's do give us the ability to mix and match tags from
        different namespaces.  So, I'm proceeding with developing a draft
        schema.  We can generate a DTD based on this schema if
        people want to have that available as well.

*       The draft schema is coming along.  I have worked out a solution
        for dealing with incorporating descriptive and administrative metadata
        in XML format from other namespaces in a METS document.  I'm currently
        working on finishing off the structural metadata sections, which are a bit
        more complicated.  I'm hoping to have this finished off inside of two weeks,
        so that I can distribute the draft on this list before the DLF Forum meeting
        in San Francisco.

*       There will be a presentation on METS at a breakout session at the DLF
        Forum.  We also have a room reserved for a working group meeting
        (that would be all of you who can attend) for the morning of Monday, May 7
        at the hotel where the Forum is being held.  More details will be available
        on this shortly, but I thought you should know the date as soon as possible
        if you're making travel plans for DLF Forum.

I think that's all the updates I have for now.  Mackenzie, Merrilee or I
will be posting
more details about the San Francisco meeting shortly.  Thanks!


Jerome McDonough
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Digital Library Development Team Leader
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
(212) 998-2425