Call for Implementation, OLAC Version 1.1

[Gary Simons]

Dear implementers,

As you know, version 1.0 of OLAC metadata has been around since 2002
and there has been an extended period of stability during which you
have been able to develop and operate your interfaces to OLAC.  Now
that ISO 639-3 has been formally adopted and the set of language codes
has been revised, we would like to reflect this in OLAC metadata.
After all, accurate language identification is the cornerstone of our
whole enterprise.  With your input we have now completed the
development of OLAC Version 1.1 metadata schemas.

As part of this change we have taken the opportunity to improve the
top-level description of OLAC repositories, to permit an archive's
submission policy to be documented, and to permit more flexible
identification of archive administrators, again with your input.
Thus, we now have version 1.1 of the OLAC archive description schema.

Additionally, we have developed new services for assessing the quality
of OLAC metadata, and automatically scoring the quality of OLAC
records relative to OLAC's new usage guidelines.  In time, we hope to
be able to get greater consistency of metadata usage across all
participating archives.

With a solid foundation based on quality metadata, OLAC will be able
to move to the next phase of building improved search services and
expanding coverage by attracting more participating archives and by
implementing gateways to other aggregators.  This will feed into our
shared goal of helping end-users find the language resources they are
looking for.


CALL FOR IMPLEMENTATION

A set of new documents is now ready for testing by participating
archives.  In accordance with the OLAC Process, these documents have
gone through community review and have now been promoted to Candidate
status by the OLAC Council.  For a complete list of the candidate
documents, see the OLAC document index at:

  http://www.language-archives.org/documents_by_status.html#Candidate

These involve changes to the OLAC standards that define the new
version 1.1 of the OLAC metadata and repository schemas. A call for
implementation is now issued during which all participating archives
are asked to implement the changes.

The implementation period will close on 1 OCTOBER 2008. Please post
all feedback to the OLAC-IMPLEMENTERS list, or if you want to
communicate privately, to olac_project at gial.edu.

The updates to the OLAC schemas and infrastructure being tested in
this candidate release involve three main areas:

  * Updating to version 1.1 of the metadata and repository schemas
  * Updating the OLAC-Language vocabulary
  * Improving metadata quality

See the following web page for more details on how to implement the
needed changes:

  http://olac.wiki.sourceforge.net/Call_for_1.1

The focus of recent OLAC development work has been improving metadata
quality and we have implemented infrastructure (explained in the above
web page) for improving quality. As part of the current research
project we are also able to offer metadata consulting; a professional
archivist is available to review your current metadata records and
give advice about what should be done to improve their quality. If you
are interested in taking advantage of this opportunity, please send a
request to olac_project at gial.edu.

At the close of the implementation period on 1 OCTOBER 2008, all
feedback concerning the documents and current implementation will be
processed by the Coordinators and Council to arrive at final adopted
versions, or if necessary, new Candidate versions will be prepared for
further review. The new version of the Participating Archives page and
the metrics pages will be released to the public site when all of
these documents achieve Adopted status.

Thanks for your participation in OLAC and in this task of updating the
XML format and improving metadata quality.

Best wishes,
Gary & Steven

_______
Steven Bird, University of Melbourne and University of Pennsylvania
Gary Simons, SIL International and GIAL
 OLAC Coordinators (www.language-archives.org)