OIW/SIG-LA meeting on Jan 11

                    NOTICE
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Proposed changes to the Stable Implementor's Agreement on the GILS Profile
are expected to be discussed at the next meeting of the Open Systems
Environment Implementor's Workshop (OIW), Special Interest Group on Library
Applications (SIG-LA). The idea of progressing the GILS Profile as an
International Standardized Profile will be discussed, as will the proposed
profile for spatial metadata. 

The OIW/SIG-LA meeting will occur on January 11 at the Holiday Inn, Palo
Alto, in conjunction with the meeting of the Z39.50 Implementor's Group
(ZIG). If you wish to attend, please contact the OIW/SIG-LA chairman, Ralph
LeVan <rrl@oclc.org>.

The following are among the changes to the GILS Profile that may be
considered at the meeting:

(1) The State of Texas recommends that a "Document Review Date" be added as
a non-mandatory GILS Core Element.

(2) The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) recommends that the GILS
Core Elements for Spatial Reference be renamed to be in accord with FIPS 173
as published. (The GILS Profile states for these elements that FIPS 173 does
take precedence over the description provided in the GILS Profile.) The
following are the specific changes: Spatial Reference to Spatial Domain;
Bounding Rectangle to Bounding Coordinates; Westernmost to West Bounding
Coordinate; Easternmost to East Bounding Coordinate; Northernmost to North
Bounding Coordinate; Southernmost to South Bounding Coordinate. 

(3) The FGDC further recommends that guidance be provided to encode the
values of the Bounding Coordinates as signed, real numbers, referring to
FIPS 70-1 "Representation of Geographic Point Locations for Information
Interchange."

(4) The FGDC recommends that the GILS Core Elements for Geographic Name,
Geographic Keyword Name, and Geographic Keyword Type be eliminated and that
a new element Place, with subelements Place Keyword Thesaurus and Place
Keyword, be introduced. The definitions for these elements would be as
provided by the FGDC.

(5) A typo on page 7 will be fixed regarding the OID for the GILS attribute
set from {ANSI-standard-Z39.50 3 3} to {ANSI-standard-Z39.50 3 5}.

(6) The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recommends that
"Scheduled Disposition" be added as a non-mandatory GILS Core Element. The
definition for this element would be as provided by NARA.

(7) A clarification will be made in paragraph 4.4.2.2 that although a server
needs to recognize all four element set names, the server may return full
records for each. In the current wording, 'B' is described as containing "at
least: title, control identifier,..."--because of the "at least" a full
record would qualify.  Similarly, 'G' contains "all B elements plus..."  so
a full record would qualify, and likewise for W.

(8) With the evolution of Uniform Resource Identifiers, it may be advisable
to clarify if the value "URL", "URN", and "URC" should be included in the
Type sublement when it may also be included as part of the Linkage subelement.

(9) Ron Daniel notes that for URC's, the Subject element is proposed to have
an optional attribute that could use a URN to identify a formally registered
thesaurus, e.g., <URL:http://www.acl.lanl.gov/URI/SGML/subject.html>

(10) It is suggested to have DTD's within the Explain facility in support of
servers that provide GILS locator records in the SGML record syntax. (The
GILS Profile is currently silent on support of SGML.)

If you know of other items that should be discussed, please send a note to
the OIW/SIG-LA chairman, Ralph LeVan <rrl@oclc.org>.

Please forward this notice to anyone or any list that may have an interest.

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Eliot Christian, US Geological Survey, 802 National Center, Reston VA 22092
echristi@usgs.gov Phone(703)648-7245 FAX(703)648-7069

Received on Tuesday, 13 December 1994 07:47:32 UTC