Hi, Jerry, et al:
Seems like a very reasonable plan (although that shouldn't stop you from
having more coffee if you'd like, heavens!) I think it's a great idea to
reconnoiter offline to figure out what those of us who've spoken up about
needing guides are really thinking we need. At this stage, it may well be a
more advanced tutorial & "first" practices as opposed to "best" practices,
or a registry of planned uses for contact purposes, for instance. We could
bring the results of those discussions back to the list when we've got
something to suggest. I understand that Stanford has some facilities for
visual networking that I will explore to see whether the appointed
anointed? self destructive?) group could use that for an offline meeting.
I'll report back to the small group members unless they let me know they're
not interested or have a better idea, of course. Make sense?
Nancy Hoebelheinrich
****************************************************
Metadata Unit Coordinator, Cat Dept
3rd Floor, Meyer Libr
Stanford Univ Librs/Acad Info Rsrcs
Stanford CA 94305-6004
phone: 650.725.6843 fax: 650.725.1120
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-----Original Message-----
From: Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jerome McDonough
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 11:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [METS] fledgling METS Best Practise?
At 09:14 AM 3/26/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>I think we're working on parallel courses. At MATRIX, we've been
>investigating and implementing OAIS for about a year now. We're certainly
>planning on using METS in various Information Package roles, so we'd be
very
>interested in participating in the development of a METS Best Practices.
Our
>projects tend to be distributed across several countries, with partners of
>various backgrounds and training, and we would be both eager and pleased to
>share practices as they develop. We have a pressing need for such a guide
as
>well as an interest in helping to develop it.
>
>So I find myself echoing Nancy - I'll volunteer us to work with the
>community on developing a guide, but how do we go about coordinating a
>working group?
I'm somewhat concerned that we don't get too far ahead of ourselves here.
I definitely agree that it would be a good thing for people in the community
to start exchanging information on local practices with regards to
implementing
METS, but we are still in a phase which I can only characterize as
experimentation
and R&D with regards to using METS for practical work. I think we don't
really
have enough experience with METS at this point to define what 'Best'
practices with
a capital 'B' might be.
This is not to say that I think such a document is a bad idea; I just don't
see
us as quite ready to declare definitively what best practices are. As a
step
towards getting there, I think it would be an excellent idea for
institutions which
are using METS in their local systems and who are willing to provide some
documentation regarding local METS practices to write up a document
describing
their local practices and send it to Morgan for including on the METS
website.
When those documents are available for the community to review, I think
we can start looking at what people are doing similarly/differently and
start
making more informed recommendations about best practices.
It might help if we're all documenting the same thing, however, so at the
risk of shamelessly abusing whatever miniscule amount of authority I
possess, I volunteer Guenter, Nancy, Scott, Bartek and Morgan to confer
together off-list on the question of 'What do you really want to know about
what other people are doing with METS?' and come back to the listserv
with suggestions for people drafting local practice guidelines for posting
on
the METS website.
Does this sound like a reasonable plan? Or should I have had that
second cup of coffee this morning?
Jerome McDonough
Digital Library Development Team Leader
Elmer Bobst Library, New York University
70 Washington Square South, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10012
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(212) 998-2425
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