Call for Review on OLAC-Language and

[Gary Simons]

Dear implementers,

We are nearing completion of implementing the infrastructure changes that
were planned for the first year of our NSF grant project (see
http://olac.wiki.sourceforge.net/).  In addition to new services dealing
with metadata quality (which were described in documents reviewed on this
list last March), the changes that will go on-line soon deal with upgrading
from the x-sil-abc and x-ll-abc style language codes used in OLAC version
1.0 to the ISO 639-3 code set formally adopted by ISO last year. This
amounts to a major revision of the OLAC-Language extension described in:

http://www.language-archives.org/REC/language.html

Unlike the other recommended metadata extensions which were promoted to
Candidate status in 2006, this remained in Proposed status since it was
known that it would change substantially.  It is now in the form that we
want to recommend to the OLAC Council for promotion to Candidate status. 
However, first we want to give you a chance to give feedback.

The status of the language vocabulary also kept the overall document on
recommended data extensions from being advanced to Candidate status.  We
believe it is now ready:

http://www.language-archives.org/REC/olac-extensions.html

The change to a different language coding standard is significant enough to
warrant a version number change, so the new version of the OLAC schema will
be 1.1.  This means minor revisions to the OLAC Metadata standard and the
OLAC Repositories to account for the version number changes.  These changes
are not significant enough to require review.  However, while we are
changing OLAC Repositories, we also want to make a few substantive changes
that will affect your implementations. 

Thus we have labeled the new draft of OLAC Repositories as a proposal and
are soliciting your feedback. Since it is not yet ready to supersede the
adopted version, it is posted only as a dated version, not as the latest
official version of the document.  Thus you are able to access it only by
following this link:

http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/repositories-20080531.html

The major changes are three and all are in the <olac-archive> description of
the Identify response:

1. An attribute for "currentAsOf" is added so that data providers can supply
the date on which they last verified that the information is up-to-date.

2. The elements for <curator>, <curatorTitle>, and <curatorEmail> are
replaced by a single and repeatable <participant> element with attributes
for "name", "role", and "email". This enables as many people from a
participating archive as desire it to sign up for the quarterly report on
usage and quality metrics.

3. An optional <archivalSubmissionPolicy> element is added to allow
participants that are truly archives to advertise their policy on receiving
archival submissions.

Another change you will see in the document is revisions to the final
section which implement the results of our last round of review on this
list. The prinicple concerning granularity of records is redefined in terms
of provenance rather than signal-to-noise. 

The review period will end on JUNE 14, at which point we will respond to the
feedback and then submit the documents to the OLAC Council for their review
prior to promotion as candidates.

Thanks,
Gary & Steven

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