DC-2001: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications
October 22-26, 2001

The Dublin Core workshop series has provided a forum for international, cross-disciplinary metadata development since 1995. DC-2001, ninth in this series, included an international conference for the broader metadata community with three principal missions:

• to provide a forum to discuss further development of the Dublin Core and related metadata standards
• to provide a forum to present and exchange new ideas about metadata and applications, not limited to Dublin Core, and
• to provide tutorials on the creation, management, and use of metadata applications.

Structure of the Workshop:

• Presentation [30-40 minutes]:
  "Introducing the Agricultural Ontology Server (AOS)"
• Discussion [60-70 minutes]:
  centering on issues surrounding planning and development of the project, participant selection, choices of technologies and standards, and understanding of user types.It will be preceded by a handout listing overarching questions, such as:

• What kind of need do you see for a meta-ontology paralleling what the UMLS   has done? For what would you use such a system?



• Is it conceivable to run this project as a series of pilot projects with subject domains (e.g., forestry, fisheries, sustainable development, crop wild relatives); and building the complete AOS later?



• What issues do you see regarding the building of ontological associations?



• Who should participate in the project as full partners and who as peripheral partners?



• What are their respective responsibilities?



• Who are the primary and secondary user types for the AOS?


• What toolkit will be needed to create and maintain the AOS? What are the components of this toolkit?



• What encoding standards should be used (e.g., RDF, DAML+OIL)?

• Wrap-up [20 minutes]: Sharing of project timeline and contact information, and invitation to participants of the workshop to become partners with FAO.
  
  References:

  Concept paper for the Agricultural Ontology Server.
  
  Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Knowledge Source Server at: UMLS Registration required.
  
  Please contact Johannes Keizer for access information.