4^th Workshop: 4-5^th September 2003 in Bath

In Practice, Good Practice: the Future of Open Archives

The Fourth Open Archives Forum Workshop will take place at UKOLN, University of Bath, UK, on the 4th and 5th September.

The event will focus on good practice in the implementation of open archives, with an eye to future development of the technology. A particular theme of the workshop will be the use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting [OAI-PMH] in the area of Cultural Heritage, where multimedia is an important issue. The workshop will also be looking at the use of the OAI protocol as a way of publishing information about university theses, and how that might contribute to developing useful content for institutional (as opposed to subject-based) eprint archives.

The workshop will build on issues discussed during the whole project, and facilitate exchange of information about good practice.

• European experience of open archives regarding technical issues, organisational issues and Intellectual Property Rights, will be reviewed.
• A report on organisational issues written by an OA Forum working group will be presented at the workshop.
• Breakout sessions will offer the opportunity to discuss issues of practice with others working at the sharp end of implementation.

There also will be an introduction to one of the project's key deliverables: an online tutorial which will give guidance to those wishing to implement a project using the OAI-PMH. This tutorial will be based on the experience of the successful pre-workshop tutorials held in Lisbon (2002) and Berlin (2003).

There will be a poster session allowing the opportunity to disseminate information about your project, and to allow time and space (and coffee) for that all-important networking.

There will be present a representative of the Open Archives Initiative as well as other important figures in the open archives world. A panel session closing the second day of the workshop will offer the opportunity to exchange views about the future direction of open archives, and about our experience of the open archives approach so far.

The discussions and results of the Workshop will be summarised in a Workshop report that will be published on the OA-Forum website ( http://www.oaforum.org/documents/).

Who should attend

• People from media service institutions, museums, digitization projects and librarians who are considering making their repositories of information available via the Internet;
• Technical, research and project managers who are interested in providing third party services for interoperable open archives and libraries;
• Decision makers in the area of libraries, media centres and museums looking for new strategic opportunities to promote their organizations and working areas.

The Open Archives Forum is a EU funded project, whose purpose is to explore the possibilities of the open archives idea in the European context, and to facilitate access to relevant information. Further information and a draft programme will appear in the near future on this website.

Bath is a World Heritage City, famous for its Georgian architecture and its Roman Baths, as well as its general beauty of aspect. The dinner on the first day of the workshop will be held in the world-famous Guildhall, close by the Abbey and the Baths.