[tei-council] summary of Council taking on a role in maintenance of Best Practices for TEI in Libraries

[Sebastian Rahtz]

My fundamental problem with this is:

>  I hosted two SIG meetings this fall (in Wuerzburg 
> and at the Digital Library Federation Forum in Baltimore) and informally 
> fished for successors to Michelle Dalmau and me, who led development of 
> the BP, but wasn't finding any.  So Michelle and I would like to 
> institutionalize support for the BP's development for fear that will 
> fall into neglect.


because if the community of users does not interested in maintaining the BP,
doesn't that suggest that it is not needed? If we have a BP which
the library community has lost interested in, then just let it die; if
the library community is all behind it, then why would they not look after it?

This seems like the very essence of a SIG, that it develops
and maintains the specialist knowledge and experience that
the general purpose Council, changing every few years, cannot
reliably have.  if the Council maintained the BP, it would presumably
expect to make the decisions about it, but on what basis?

One of the strengths of the BP is that it is NOT dictated by the TEI-C
from above, but reflects real practice (well, I assume thats what it does...).

I think the mess with Tite, whereby we have the tension between
TEI-C and Apex about ownership and changes, shows we should
_not_ take on BP. 

But others may have the opposite opinions :-}

--
Sebastian Rahtz    
Head of Information and Support Group, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente