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

[Piotr Bański]

I think Sebastian's points are very strong.

An admittedly extreme reading of Kevin's post is: "no one in the SIG
cares, so let's push this onto the Council". I know you didn't mean it
that way, but that would be the net effect.

SIGs are the creatures of the Council and/or the Board, depending on
their nature (I'm not talking about the formal relationship but rather
the factual relationship). In this case, I would think, as an outsider
to the Libraries SIG, that part of its raison d'etre was/is the
maintenance of the BP doc, in sync with the Council (to be sure: the
syncing is the SIG's responsibility, I'd hope). If the SIG doesn't want
to do that, then what is the SIG for?

Another question is: maybe the SIG doesn't *need* to modify the BP for
now because it's acceptable as it is? So maybe it's not a general lack
of interest, but just a lack of interest in fixing what ain't broke? (I
realise that these may be naive questions, I stress that I'm asking them
as an outsider.)

Again, to follow Kevin's suggestion ad absurdum (again begging
forgiveness for the rhetorical device):

> If the Council takes a role in the maintenance of this and other 
> community-driven customizations, the Council can ensure coherence across 
> them and attempt to recruit assistance from specialists for complex 
> matters.

if the Council accepts this role, the Council may eventually choke on
that. Unless we're lucky to make this part of our jobs, we're all taking
time away from our jobs when we can (I'm an embarrassed example that
sometimes we just can't), to push the cart forward. Getting busy with
syncing all specialist customizations would saturate the time available
to the Council members for Council work, I'm afraid. I think
de-centralization (as Sebastian notes), i.e. making the SIG responsible
for syncing with the Council, is not just the right way, but possibly
the only way to handle this coherently across-the-board.

Once again, forgive the possible naivety in my direct questions about
the Libraries SIG, they are not meant as an attack of any sort, rather
as a way to shed some light at the possible end of the proposed path, so
to say.

Best,

  Piotr


On 25/03/12 16:19, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
>