show of interest? -- ERC Interest Group

This is a call for a show of interest in an ERC (Electronic Resource
Citation) Interest Group within the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
If enough people respond, a DCMI discussion list will be formed and we'll
try to have an in-person meeting at the Dublin Core conference in
Florence next month.

What's an ERC?  (Electronic Resource Citation)  It's an ultra simple and
predictive metadata record based on a subset of Dublin Core elements --
a metadata "kernel" of four elements.  Any number of extra elements may
be present, but these four are required.  Here's a small ERC example.

        erc:
        who:   Kunze, John A.
        what:  A Metadata Kernel for Electronic Permanence
        when:  20011106
        where: http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/Kunze/

The paper cited above defined the ERC, and was well enough received at
the Tokyo DCMI conference to suggest formation of an interest group.

Everyone is welcome to participate.  Most participation would take place
via email and the mailing list (once it is set up).  Please reply to me
personally to express your interest or other feedback.  If a group is
formed, I'll send out one more message to say so.

A rough draft of an interest group charter follows.

-John


--- Draft Charter ---

Title:  DCMI Kernel Metadata Record Format (ERC) Interest Group

Chair:  John Kunze, jak@ckm.ucsf.edu

Charter:  [DRAFT]

To provide a forum

    +  to explore the ultra-simple ERC "kernel" approach to metadata

    +  to identify applications of the compact ERC record format

    +  to refine ERC value rules and minimum element requirements

    +  to develop an XML representation of kernel elements

Mailing List:  [ not yet set up ]

        http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/dc-erc.html

Background:

  erc:  Kunze, John A. | A Metadata Kernel for Electronic Permanence
        | 20011106 | http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/Kunze/

This paper presents a streamlined metadata record format designed to
support the permanence of network discoverable objects.  Permanence
aside, the format works well for more general resource description.

It starts with the Dublin Core consensus and distills out a subset of
four semantic buckets - a metadata kernel - that balances the needs for
adequate identification of persistent objects and for low cost metadata
generation.  To minimize the burden of creating, understanding, and
manipulating data in those buckets, a very simple record format has been
designed, called an Electronic Resource Citation (ERC).

The basic ERC can be parsed by two lines of Perl code. Beyond permanence
support, the ERC design suggests quite a new path for the ongoing
development of simple metadata; readers familiar with the current
evolutionary challenges may find the ERC to be simpler, and yet more
complete, compact, extensible, and international than the Dublin Core.

Received on Friday, 20 September 2002 15:19:42 UTC