On Mar 4, 2005, at 9:26 AM, Ben Soares wrote:

> From here in UK Higher/Further Education land, you might find some of
> the
> work done by the IESR (Information Environment Service Registry)
> relevant:
>
>   <http://iesr.ac.uk/>

Ironically, I, and a few others were visiting the IESR folks when this
thread appeared.

As an FYI, the folks of IESR are creating a *registry* of digital
library services, collections, and "agents". This registry is a whole
lot like a directory including names, addresses, access instructions,
descriptions, subject control, etc describing services, collections,
and people responsible for them. An important component of the registry
is a machine-to-machine architecture allowing the content of registry
dissemination through non-human means. A good descriptive article
includes:

   http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/papers/appsdc2004_full.html

Ockham, an NSF project lead my Jeremy Frumkin, Martin Halbert, Ed Fox,
and myself, includes a component very very similar to IESR. Project
Ockham is using the IESR metadata model for describing services and
collections. The primary difference is an architectural difference
where Project Ockham's dissemination process uses peer-to-peer. See
information about the Ockham registry:

   http://ockham.org/registry.php

--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
University Libraries of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604