CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION INITIATIVE

 

Toronto meeting

 

Goals and products

 

The goal of the Toronto meeting is to further the development of an international standard for encoding and exchanging contextual information about the creators, subjects, and circumstances that contributed to the creation and use of archival materials.  To accomplish this, the group will articulate the theoretical and design principles that a standard model must conform to and identify the major elements and their inter-relationships in such a model.  This model will be sufficiently detailed to support the development of a draft XML-based encoding structure for this information within one month of the end of the meeting.  These principles and structure will also serve as a critique of the ISAAR (CPF) standard, currently under review by the ICA-CDS.  To accomplish these goals, the participants will produce the following:

 

1.         A working set of principles for what contextual information is, how it is used in archival description, and “the principles and criteria for designing, developing, and maintaining and XML-based encoding scheme” to record it in a standard fashion.

 

2.         Consensus on a structure and definitions for the high-to-mid range encoding structures and how they relate to each other sufficient to guide the first draft of an XML document type definition for contextual information.

 

3.         A clear sense of what the next steps should be to develop the dtd and have it thoroughly vetted, tested, and moved along the international and national standards processes as appropriate.

 

4.         Information and tools that can be used by participants and others to review and critique ISAAR during the comment period announced by ICA (by July 31, 2001).

Work plan

 

Day 1 (Saturday, March 3)

 

Discuss and reach consensus on goals of the meeting and desired products.

 

Discuss and approve work plan for meeting.

 

Discuss responsibilities and assignments that the group should establish for post-meeting work.  This discussion is predicated on the idea that the group will be successful in its goals and will need a structure to support the further advancement of this work.  While this discussion will necessarily be preliminary, it will provide participants with a possible framework into which the products of the meeting will need to fit.

 

Proposed areas in which follow-up will be needed
Technical	creation and dissemination of dtd; creation and management of testbed; management of data element database
Content	principles document; analysis of testbed data and data element database to assess structure and content of dtd
Communication	drafting and dissemination of report, call for and management of comments and submissions
Coordination	coordinate overall project plan and schedule; communicate with ICA-CDS; seek further funding

 

Develop and discuss principles.

 

      

Day 2 (Sunday, March 4)

 

Reach consensus on content of principles and assign responsibility for drafting, review, and dissemination of principles document.

 

Discuss proposal to treat bibliographic header as in EAD and leave details to technical group for post-meeting work.

 

Presentation of Wendy’s analysis of the element database to date.

 

Discuss how to proceed with element definition and construction of structure.

 

ISAAR(CPF) and the Library of Congress Name Authority have one structure that accommodates information about persons, organizations, and families (and subjects in LCNA).  Our assumption is that our structure will be similar, in that one structure will accommodate all three, but Is the information about these entities sufficiently similar or analogous so that we can fruitfully talk about them together or do they need to be analyzed and discussed as separate entities?

 

Proposal 1: Organize ourselves into three subgroups, one for each entity.  Each subgroup would identify and define the characteristics used or needed to identify and describe that entity. (My preference - RVS)

 

Proposal 2:  Organize ourselves into three subgroups, each of which would look at all three entities and develop a structure that accommodates them all.

 

 

Discuss common methodology for defining and articulating models (structures and elements).

 

Remainder of the day would be spent in subgroups.

 

 

Day 3 (Monday, March 5)

 

Presentation of models by subgroups.

 

Comparison of individual models.

 

Develop structure and content model for dtd using top-down approach, models from sub-groups, element database, and ISAAR(CPF).

 

 

Day 4 (Tuesday, March 6)

 

Complete structure and content model.

 

Discuss proposed project ownership, project plan, and needed resources.

 

Determine work that can proceed immediately and assign responsibility.

 

Determine work that needs to await further funding and decide on strategy.