Dear Denny,

thanks for your feedback:

indeed you have to pay for the MLR standards (as it is the business model of ISO what I also do not like).

But there are several unique advantages of the ISO standards:

First, transparent and open process of their development (according the openly available ISO directives).

Second, voting by national delegations from the United Nations' and ISO member states.

Third, balanced voting (one country, one vote!).

Fourth, ISO standards can be used without any costs, without any licensing and without any patent problems (if not clearly stated differently on the first page).

That means, only one person has to contribute the standard and then you can use it for any project including your Wikimedia projects.

Therefore I would not call the fact that the standard is sold by ISO as a big obstacle for its use.

Hope that it helps and clarifies.

Best

Christian

With best regards

Christian Stracke

---

Christian M. Stracke

Convener ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36/WG5
Chair CEN TC 353
HR, E-Learning, Quality and Competence Development
University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Essen
Information Systems for Production and Operations Management
Universitaetsstr. 9 (FB WIWI: ICB)
D-45141 Essen (Germany)

Tel.: +49-(0)201-183-4410
Fax: +49-(0)201-183-4067
E-mail: Christian.Stracke@icb.uni-due.de
WWW: http://www.wip.uni-due.de

eCOTOOL harmonizes competence models for European policies
http://www.ecompetence.eu

WACOM for Water Competences in Europe
http://www.wacom-project.eu

Q.E.D. supports quality and standards in e-learning
http://www.qed-info.de

CEN/TC 353 "ICT for Learning, Education and Training"
http://www.cen.eu/isss/TC_353

ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 "IT for Learning, Education and Training"
http://www.sc36.org

Von: Denny Vrandečić [mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 3. April 2012 11:30
An: Discussion list for the Wikidata project.
Cc: Stracke, Christian
Betreff: Re: [Wikidata-l] Wikidata: New ISO Metadata standard MLR published last year

Dear Christian,

thanks for your pointers!

I clicked on the first part of the three parts you have listed. It tells me to pay 162 Swiss Franks to even read the standard. Wikimedia is devoted to free knowledge, which includes the software and standards we use. Therefore I am afraid that such a standard is not very high on our priorities for things to be considered for our mission.

Cheers,

Denny

2012/4/3 Stracke, Christian <Christian.Stracke@icb.uni-due.de>

Dear all,

I would like to draw your attention to the latest international metadata standard from ISO (International Standardization Committee established by the United Nations in 1949):

ISO/IEC 19788, called MLR (= Metadata for Learning Resource, named for historical reasons but applicable for any resources).

MLR was developed and approved by the national delegations from all five continents after eight years of development and discussion in ISO committee SC36 (http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/open/jtc1sc36).

It is completely compliant with Dublin Core (also adopted as ISO standard).

And only ISO (www.iso.org) can approve and publish official and de-jure standards at the international level.

The first three parts are published:

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50772

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=46157

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=52774

MLR is already adopted in many countries as national standards and used in implementations (mainly in Asia).

Currently the voting has been started in the European Standardization Committee CEN TC 353 (http://www.cen.eu/CEN/sectors/sectors/isss/Pages/CEN TC 353.aspx) that MLR is adopted as European Norm (EN) by CEN, too.

Then MLR as EN will automatically withdraw all national metadata standards in Europe that are in conflict with MLR for harmonization across Europe.

I assume that after approval as European Norm the implementation of MLR will increase immediately in Europe, too.

Therefore I recommend to consider the usage and implementation of MLR as metadata standard for the metadata description of the data.

I hope that it helps for setting up Wikidata.

Thank you very much for your consideration and feedback!

Best wishes

Christian

With best regards

Christian Stracke

---

Christian M. Stracke

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