DCMI Agents Working Group

Agents Working Group Notes -- DC 2003, Seattle

Chair: John Kunze

At the DC 2003 conference in Seattle, October 2003, the Agents working group met for 1.5 hours on 2 October. What follows are notes from that meeting.

Agent Description Core
* History
* Motivation
* Assumptions
* Requirements
* Strategy

History
* Discussion of Agents as a generalization of the CCP elements dates
        back to DC:dc 
* A single element, with assigned roles 
* The current activity is agnostic on this issue; the goal is to
        elaborate core elements for describing people and organizations,
        not to replace existing attributes of resources
* The Agent Proposal of Old
* The Current Agent Proposal

Agent Description Core Objectives
* Core elements appropriate to identification of people and organizations
        Promote convergence among new schemes
* A property set that existing schemes can map into for purposes of
        after-the-fact interoperability
* Extend the principles of modularity and extensibility into the
        identification of people and organizations 
* A core, not exhaustive... should include the ability to reference a
        more complete, structured description held in a formal repository.

Assumptions
* Many extant name authority schemas 
* Agent Description Core will not displace these schemas, though
        widespread adoption may reduce the development of new ones
* Architecture and characteristics embedded in any standard must
        flexibly accommodate the management and protection of privacy

What is in Scope?
* Three subclasses of agents are likely to be important in metadata:
        persons, organizations, and instruments.    
* Instruments are judged to be out of scope in this effort
* Architectural considerations of Dublin Core™ in no way precludes
        further elaboration at a future time

Agents and Rights
* A successful Agent metadata architecture will support assertions of
        IP rights 
* Link easily to formally managed authority systems such as library
        authority files or Interested Party file used to manage music rights
 
Agent Core and Related Authority Activities
* What is the Relationship of the Agent Core to other authority
        activities 
* VIAF (http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/viaf/)
* Interparty (http://www.interparty.org/)
* EduPerson (http://www.educause.edu/eduperson/)
* Vcard (http://www.imc.org/pdi/)
* FOAF (http://www.foaf-project.org/)
* Others?

Strategy
* Identify functional requirements of DC Agent Description Core
* Identify and characterize representative agent systems
* Propose elements that support the functional requirements and
        provide good interoperability prospects with other critical systems. 

Working Group Discussion
* May involve reinventing wheels, but a clear explication of the
        functional requirements may make evident the need to do so
* Linking conventions and exchange formats (rather than a full set of
        elements) may suffice
* Andy Powell's abstract model is an essential component of solving this
        problem (esp. the linking aspects)
* If we have the linking convention, are there some default elements
        that might be appropriate for explicit, internal terms within DCMI
        namespaces?

Discussion (cont)
* Andy P. can provide some examples of what the linking would look like
        in RDF
* Minimum set of elements to define agents might be necessary because
        of the diversity of terms across the many existing authority files
        - look at Interparty set as a candidate (Robina can post these
        to the list)
* INFO URI scheme may provide a means for ID linking from URI space to
        un-webulated authority files - its future is not clear at this time
* The variety of candidate related metadata to link to is probably
        broad

Discussion (cont)
* Andrew Wilson has volunteered to start a functional requirements
        document (Robina indicated the Interparty work has one she can
        contribute to the discussion)
* Rights discussion: Rights proposal is under development by Weibel
        and Eric Miller, with advice from Andy P.
* Agents group is a good place to identify additional functional
        requirements for specifying rights holders

Revisions to Agent Charter
* Develop a funtional requirements for an Agent Description Core
* Identify and evaluate existing agent descriptions against the
        functional requirements
* Develop a recommendation for an agent element set
* Provide input to the DCMI Architecture working group concerning the
        linking specification to related (agent) metadata within the
        abstract model