Ok, this is a bit future -- the dev folks have their plates filled for some time I'm sure...but something came up recently that I thought I should ask...
I'm wondering what the future holds for supporting other types of bibliographic metadata in Evergreen? This Q&A from the dSpace FAQ is basically similar to the kind of feedback I'd like to have, but in the context of Evergreen of course: http://dspace.org/faqs/index.html#standards. I like the reference to "investigating how to support arbitrary metadata schemas.." since this has long been one of my beefs with all the investment in the ILS: why not exploit all the great tools built around managing bibliographic data for data that's not in MARC/AACR2, etc.? So could we see Evergreen supporting additional metadata standards eventually? What would it take to create metadata in Evergreen using some alternate standard [e.g. as the FAQ above references, like "SCORM or VRA or FGDC or or myOwnSchema.."]? In the short to medium term, presumably any additional metadata support would have to be MARC crosswalkable, but a lot of bibliographic data out there is. In the long term, I want to see support for "myOwnSchema" in the ILS ecosystem, where the traditional ILS becomes kind of just one "out of the box" application-implementations of a powerful underylying platform. The context for me here is that like many large institutions, there are lots of non-library players who manage bibliographic data - we find out about them all the time. But the ILS has been a bit of a Berlin wall for them since we in libraryland have traditionally only wanted it our way (AACR2, ISO, MARC standards, etc.) and in any event, our toolbox has been rigged for MARC etc. I would love to be able to offer up a Staff Client version with, say a customized Dublin Core editor so that our Bookstore can share some of the backend that Evergreen has to offer. Maybe we would fill in / sharpen up some of the metadata (some of it is already in our ILS), but they could run their E-commerce site out of an OPAC skin, etc.. Right now, though, I know for sure the MARC editor environment would be a barrier for them compared to the GUI they have now since it's honed for their metadata standard, etc.. Thx, George Duimovich NRCan Library / Bibliothèque de RNCan
