Standards
Larry Mills-Gahl, founder of Webfarm, has been involved in a number of different
standards efforts and has long been a proponent of the Free Software movement
and Open Source. It is readily apparent from the types of technology that we
use that we find open, extensible, standard technology incredibly effective
when it comes to making sure that the technology supports the business need
and not the other way around. Too often a technology is decided upon (or sold)
with little regard for the effectiveness or appropriateness of the product.
In the interest of furthering the maturity and strength of open standard technology
(and also in our own interest because it is key to our business) we participate
in a variety of online communities that work to develop these standards.
In addition to our informal participation in mailing lists and Open Source community
sites, Larry has been a member of working groups in a couple of areas and contines
to participate in those communities.
Larry was a participant in the Z39.50 working group developing the profile
for the CIMI group. This profile extends the BIB-1 attribute set and addresses
the complexity and special needs of cultural heritage institutions. For more
information on Z39.50 and the available profiles visit the Library of Congress
Z39.50 Maintenance Agency web resources.
Larry was also involved with the CIMI group in developing the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative stnadards for use in cultural heritage institutions. The result of
the work was a best practices guide for applying the simple yet thorough metadata
set to the complex data cataloged in the context of art, history, science, national
and natural museums.
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