[openbiblio-dev] The Genero project

[Rufus Pollock]

Welcome Oystein!

2011/3/29 Øystein Jakobsen <oystein.jakobsen at fribit.no>:
> Hi folks, let me introduce myself.
>
> I am Øystein Jakobsen, a free culture enthusiast from Norway. I am working
> on the Genero project, the purpose of which is to create an ecosystem for
> free culture. In short, a federated registry will hold the description and a
> downloadable link to all works with a free license. Any service provider
> (site) can then make available on their page any work in any form they
> choose to, with minimum effort. It won't matter if you publish a picture
> through Flickr, Europeana or Wikimedia Commons, it will be available through
> all connected sites.

This sounds great.

> The project has the support of a number of free culture organisations, and
> the board consists of characters such as David Levine, Robin Gross, Lawrence
> Liang and more.
>
> As a part of this project, we need to define a metadata standard which can
> describe any creative work. The standard needs to hold a number of
> characteristics, including not limiting new modes of production (eg.
> collaborative) or distribution (eg. torrents).

We've already done quite a bit of work looking at (RDF) vocabs for
describing cultural works. You also raise the interesting point that
we should a) pay attention to recording attributes of licenses
(something close to my heart) b) give information about 'format /
modes of distribution'. Of course these are attributes that most
relative to the 'concrete' instance of a work (what one would term
"Item" in FRBR parlance I think).

So far what we've been most focused on is recording the sort of
catalogue information one would find in a library (which is more about
the general info about the book / recording / film ...).

> A slideset describing the project is here:
> http://www.slideshare.net/FriBit/genero-presentation-at-ifla
> A detailed description is found here: www.inweave.org
>
> I was recommended to connect this initiative to the OKFN OpenBiblio
> initiative by Primavera de Filippi. I hope to join the two initiatives and
> to rely on your knowledge on metadata standards, as mine is limited.

It would be great to work with you here to hammer out a proposal.

Rufus