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| Keywords: |
Standards (General) (Standards (Guidelines)) |
| Author: | Priscilla Caplan |
| Abstract: | The author focuses on some of the challenges and opportunities for standards development in the digital library arena and offers some approaches that can be taken in response to these challenges. One of the major difficulties for standards development in digital libraries is that the digital library community is not really a community in the sense of "the library community". There are more heterogeneous players in the digital arena including publishers, hardware and software companies, computer scientists and others who are interested in digital audio and video. Other challenges working against collaborative standards development are competition, the need to allow for innovation and experimentation, an inherently international network which increases the diversity of the players, and the need for speed. The author points out several useful reactions to the challenges including the move towards undertaking smaller, more focused topics; encouraging use before a specification or practice is made a standard; adopting the most "lightweight" standardization that will serve the purpose. She suggests that identifying practices in a certain area may be the first step towards collaborative standardization. The next step may be to identify best practices which can be developed into local or global guidelines or standards as the circumstance warrants. After the standard is established, it may need further refinement. As for the international arena, we should include international input from the start and participate and learn from similar international organizations. The last challenge mentioned is the fact that “we may not be able to control all of the technology we depend on, but we can develop appropriate responses to it. The author concludes by stating that although standards cost significant amounts of time and effort to develop, document, publicize, and implement, they also encourage stability and promote interoperability. |
| Publisher: | First Monday |
| Contributors: | |
| Date Published: | 2000-06 |
| Source: | Vol. 5 No.6 |
| Resource Type: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Format: | HTML |
| Relation: | |
| Coverage: | |
| Rights Management: | Copyright 2000, First Monday |
| Indexer's Notes: |
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