Greetings,

The METS Editorial Board is considering holding a 1-2 day training event
on implementing METS.  We would like to request some feedback from
the digital library community to determine whether we should go ahead with
this event, and to shape it to people's needs .  We have tentatively scheduled
it for October 27-28 of this year, to be held in Washington, DC, and we
are assuming that the event would either be free or have a minimal (<$100)
registration cost.  Attendees would have to fund their own travel and
hotel costs.  Some presentations we are considering including in this event are:

* an in-depth introduction to METS, including hands-on production of a METS example
* case studies of implementation of METS at various institutions
* using METS with existing software systems such as DSpace & Fedora
* developing software tools to work with METS, including RDBM systems and XSLT tools

The questions we have for the METS community are:

1. Would you be interested in attending such an event?  Do you believe
your institution would be interested in sending people to such an event?
Can you estimate how many people your institution might wish to send?

2. Do any of the named topics have particular interest for you/your institution?
Are there other topics you would like to see presented at a training event on METS?

3. Would you be more likely to attend such an event at a different time?  A different
location?  Are there other factors which might make you more likely to attend?

Please send your responses directly to [log in to unmask] and I will
compile your answers for the board.  We should have a decision on whether to
go ahead with this event shortly.   Thanks for your help!

Jerome McDonough
METS Editorial Board
[log in to unmask]