Towards consensus on collection-level description Collection Description Focus Briefing Day 1 British Library, St Pancras, London 22 October 2001 Bridget Robinson & Pete Johnston UKOLN, University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY UKOLN is supported by: URL

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Towards consensus Collection Description Focus Collections & collection description Collection description & RSLP Collection description & the DNER Towards consensus?

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection Description Focus Funded by –RSLP –JISC/DNER –British Library UKOLN proposal supported by: –HE Archives Hub, mda Improve consistency, compatibility of approaches Benefit from collaboration with –Interoperability Focus, CIMI (museums), Dublin Core Collection Description WG

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection Description Focus (2) Point of contact, advice Gather information on existing practice –survey questionnaire –visits Consensus-building Disseminate good practice –workshops, briefings –recommendations, guidelines Support implementation –tools

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collections & collection-level description Collection –“an aggregation of physical and/or digital items” Collection-level description might –Disclose information about collections –Provide overview of otherwise uncatalogued items –Enable user to select collections to search on basis of summary description –Enable software agents to select collections to search on behalf of user

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collections & collection-level description (2) But…. –(Slightly) different ideas of “collections” –Different ways of defining “collections” –Different ways of describing “collections”

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection description in RSLP Support for researchers –discovery of/access to collections –collaborative management of collections Collections in RSLP –projects describing primarily (but not exclusively) collections of physical items –projects also describing digital & digital catalogues (which describe physical items) –projects creating new digital collections of collection descriptions

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection description in RSLP (2) RSLP CD Model & Schema –Michael Heaney (Oxford), Andy Powell (UKOLN) –means of consistent collection description in RSLP –simple, generic Adopted by some RSLP projects –use RSLP CD schema as base descriptive schema –or use other schema and map to RSLP CD schema

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection description in DNER Collections in DNER –collections of resources –text, images, data... –collections of metadata about resources –subject gateways, library catalogues… –digital items, physical items –distributed –local institutions –JISC/DNER content providers –external collections Collections available through services –network services, “real” services

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Collection description in DNER (2)

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Towards consensus Create forum of stakeholders, practitioners Experience of Metadata for Education Group (Interoperability Focus) Open forum Broad representation Agreed objectives

Collection Description Focus Briefing Day, 22 Oct Acknowledgements UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher and further education funding councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.