[open-bibliography] Getting started with the Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data

Thu Feb 25 17:52:34 UTC 2010

Thanks for your email, Jim!

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 6:17 PM, Jim Pitman <pitman at stat.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Good for me.  What kind of virtual meeting did you have in mind?

Having tried different options in the past, I would suggest IRC as
main point of contact. From this can use, e.g. Skype, Etherpad and
suchlike to the extent to which these are useful/appropriate.

> How many participants can you handle with various media?

If we use IRC my guess is that size won't be such an issue. If
necessary we can always break out into different focus groups.

> From my experience, conference call gets out of hand with more than
> about 5 participants.  Some basic questions are:
>
> How are you planning to control the size and membership of this group?

The way I see it we should be open to new members and in the first
instance should keep administrative overhead (in terms of process,
membership, etc.) to a minimum.

> Do you plan to restrict membership to those with a real commitment
> to increasing the quality and quantity of open biblio data?

I think either commitment to actively promoting open bibliographic
metadata, or working on projects publishing or using such data.

> If so, how are you going to make this determination?

My feeling is to say that there is an expectation to contribute to the
Working Group and to participate in meetings, etc., but no formal
requirements?

> What exactly qualifies as "open biblio data"? (Public domain? CC0, CC BY? with or without NC or SA clauses, ...?

At a minimum, compliance with the Open Knowledge Definition:

  http://www.opendefinition.org/
  http://www.opendefinition.org/okd
  http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/

> However you respond to the above, here is a list of potential participants
> I would encourage you to invite, all of them associated with the BKN Project:

[snip]

Excellent - many thanks for the suggestions! I wonder, if you know
them already - would you be willing to invite them on behalf of the
working group?

> I could also suggest various industrial contacts (Google, Msoft, Freebase, Couchio, BePress, ... ) but I am not sure how the group feels about having industrial contacts on the list. My own view is that engaging industrial support is essential for success of open biblio data efforts. How this could or should be done

I'm happy with inviting anyone with an commitment to open
bibliographic data. Personally those who *publish*, work with and
share back such data are a priority. Not so interested in those who
use data, but aren't interested in either promoting open data or
sharing back.

> is very much open to discussion.  Serious consideration of the licensing issues seems essential to resolve this.
>
> There are also many more people loosely associated with the BKN project, but
> affiliated with publishers or sholarly socs which have mixed, apprehensive or
> hostile feelings about open biblio data for various reasons. Which
> brings back the issue of criteria for membership of the group, and to what
> extent and how you want to control its size.

Would be interested to hear what you and other WG members think about above!

All the best,

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
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