OLAC Metadata Standard: Call for review

[Steven Bird]

Dear implementers of the OLAC Metadata standard,

At our last workshop in December 2002 we established version 1.0 of
the OLAC Metadata set.  This document defines the format used by the
OLAC repositories for the interchange of metadata within the framework
of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The metadata set is based on
Qualified Dublin Core, but the format allows for the use of
extensions to express community-specific qualifiers ("OLAC extensions").

At present there are five OLAC extensions in use, for Discourse Types,
Language Identification, Linguistic Field, Linguistic Data Types, and
Participant Roles.  Four of these are now documented as draft OLAC
Recommendations, thanks to Heidi Johnson, Helen Aristar Dry and
Michael Appleby [http://www.language-archives.org/REC/olac-extensions.html]

OLAC Metadata is currently in Candidate status, and we feel it is now
time to do the final processing to promote it to Adopted status.
According to the OLAC Process, we are now issuing a call for review
``in which the community members who have actually put the document to
use are invited to describe their experience and comment on whether it
is ready to advance to adoption, potentially with changes they might
recommend.''

Would you please read the OLAC Metadata document once more and direct
feedback to this list or directly to us?  Is it ready for adoption as
an OLAC Standard, i.e. as a set of specifications that archives must
follow when implementing an OLAC-compliant repository?  Please respond
by Friday 10 October at the latest.

After this deadline, the OLAC Council will review your feedback and
determine any final wording changes. If there is a consensus that the
document is ready, the Council will approve it for adoption as an OLAC
Standard.

The document can be found at:

  http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/metadata.html

Thanks,

Steven & Gary