Interoperability and service provision Working group

Coordinator

Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries (UK)

Objectives

The objectives of this working group (corresponding to Minerva's work package WP4) consist of supporting interoperability and the delivery of shared services, by analysing, identifying and evaluating activities on metadata, registries and schemes. As a result of this work, progress can be made towards identifying a common framework for an information environment that could be adopted across the Member States.
The issue of ensuring interoperability and specifying common services will require discussion on mandatory standards, conformance testing centres, agreed terminologies, common metadata schema, middleware specifications etc.
The need to ensure service delivery will also require the examination of related issues, such as authentication, user profiles and IPR. IPR is a particularly difficult issue and WP4 will examine factors such as how rights can be assigned to or shared with funding bodies, negotiated with licensing agencies, special provision be made for free access for educational use or by the visually impaired, exploitation/commercial rights for reuse, as well as other legal and regulatory issues, such as privacy, data protection, freedom of information, security.

Description of work

This workpackage will analyse and compare national and international approaches, activities, research and best practice concerning technical and metadata standards, including linking with metadata requirements for national inventories, collecting and proposing guidelines on technical strategies and on implementation test-beds.

Comparing practices

• May / June - analysis of benchmarking tp identify projects / programmes aiming to be interoperable.
• June - rapid survey to identify technical approaches being developed.
• June - meeting of UK partners of relevant EU projects to identify technical approaches.

Research best practice

• July - meeting of expert group to review present situation.

Guidelines on testbeds

• May - links established with EMII-DCF project
  (several partners in common, DD invited to be national expert).
• June - begin Resource-funded IPR research project to identify potential framework agreement with a UK Rights Collecting Society
  (linked to EMII-DCF partner with specific responsibility for IPR).

Milestones and expected result

• Recommendations (starting from month 6)
• Website and communication tools for the working group
• Observatory of existing work within member states
• Guidelines
• Organisation of five meetings of the working group

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