New draft of OLAC Metadata Set document

[Gary Simons]

Dear community,

We have just posted a new draft of the document describing the
proposed metadata set for the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC).
This is the foundational document that lays out the standards that
participating archives would follow when generating XML descriptions
of their language resources.  The URL is:

   http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/olacms-20011022.html

This replaces the previous version which was issued on June 16. This
release of the metadata document coincides with the release of version
0.4 of the XML schema for OLAC metadata. All known inconsistencies
between the prior versions of both have been rectified.  Steven is
posting the details of what has changed in the schema to the
OLAC-Implementers list.

This is a summary of the changes as listed in the document header:

   1. Adds scheme attribute (see sections 1 and 2).
   2. The lang attribute on <olac> is renamed to langs.
   3. Adds alternative as a possible refinement for Title so
 that the
      original title can be distinguished from translations.
   4. Type.data is renamed as Type.linguistic.
   5. Significant addition to discussion of Coverage.
   6. Numerous minor editorial revisions.




If the definitions in the document are not adequate to help you
determine how to use a particular element, if you don't agree with a
definition, if you think of a case that should be addressed in an
example, or another kind of reaction that will help to improve the
document,  then please give us feedback! Also, take special note of
the "To do" comments in red; if you could give some help in any of
those matters we'd be happy for volunteers!

We hope to hear from some of you. Your participation and feedback is
essential for building a metadata standard that will truly meet the
needs of our community.

Best wishes,

Gary

________
Steven Bird, University of Pennsylvania (sb at ldc.upenn.edu)
Gary Simons, SIL International (gary_simons at sil.org)
OLAC Coordinators (www.language-archives.org)