New and Emerging Specs and Standards (February 2021)

What You'll Want to Know!

ISO/IEC 29121:2021 Information technology — Digitally recorded media for information interchange and storage — Data migration method for optical disks for long-term data storage
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 23 Digitally recorded media for information interchange and storage
"This document specifies the data migration method for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, +R, +RW, CD-R, CD-RW, BD Recordable and BD Rewritable disks for long-term data storage. By applying this document for information storage, digital data can be migrated to a next new disk without loss from the present disk if data errors are completely corrected before and during the migration and provided copying of the data is allowed. This document specifies: a data migration method for long-term data storage; test methods for measuring maximum data error, including ambient condition, test area, test drive, disk preparation and test execution; an initial performance test and a periodic performance test that check an error rate of data recorded on the disks with categorized maximum data error tables;  precautions to reduce the possibility of deterioration in order to assure the integrity of the disks during their use, storage, handling or transportation; and the estimated lifetime of Bmig (B0,000 1) life to determine the test interval for the periodic performance test."

Sam Oh announced as new DCMI Director [dublincore.org]
"After three and a half years, Paul Walk is stepping down as DCMI Managing Director. In his stead, the DCMI Governing Board has appointed Dr. Sam Oh as DCMI's new Executive Director. Tom Baker will continue in the DCMI Executive, working alongside Sam as DCMI's Technology Director. Paul would like to thank the many volunteers and participants who have displayed great enthusiasm and generosity with their time and effort to continue the proud traditions of innovation and careful curation that have characterised the Dublin Core community since the very beginning. Sam Oh is a professor at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul Korea and a special ambassador for iSchools, chairs the ISO TC46/SC4 (Technical Interoperability), and chairs the DCMI Governing Board. He chaired the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 (Document Description & Processing Languages), ISO TC46/SC9 (Identification & Description) committees, and chaired iSchools for two years. He received his Ph.D. in Information Transfer from Syracuse University, NY, USA in 1995 and worked for the Information School at the University of Washington for 4 years prior to taking his current post at SKKU. His teaching and research interests include metadata design and ontology modeling."

Examples for using Thema v1.4 and ONIX to improve discoverability in Diversity, equity and inclusion (EDItEUR)
"At the end of 2020, to supplement an existing paper Diversity and inclusion – using Thema v1.4 and ONIX to improve discoverability, EDItEUR published an annex of worked examples containing about 40 example titles, of different genres and age groups, that illustrate various options for publishers or retailers using Thema and ONIX to improve the discoverability of titles with diverse content. The illustrated use cases are meant to inspire thought and reflection, rather than being definitive for each title, and of course the worked examples can only cover a small sample of topics. But the ideas shown in the worked examples should allow organisations which have adopted Thema to use the same principles in other areas as well. The new annex, as well as the existing documentation, can be found on the EDItEUR website."

First Public Working Draft: W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0 [W3C]
Comments Requested by February 26

"The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) has published a First Public Working Draft of W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0. WCAG and supporting materials explain how to make web content, apps, and tools more accessible to people with disabilities. W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3 has several differences from Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2. WCAG 3 is intended to be easier to understand and more flexible than WCAG 2. The flexibility is to address different types of web content, apps, and tools — as well as organizations and people with disabilities. The goals for WCAG 3 are introduced in the Requirements for WCAG 3.0 First Public Working Draft, which was also published today. WCAG 3 proposes a different name, scope, structure, and conformance model. We encourage you to start by reading the WCAG 3 Introduction first to get important background on WCAG 3 development, review guidance, and timeline. We are seeking input from evaluators, developers, designers, project managers, policy makers, people with disabilities, and others — particularly on the structure and the draft conformance model. Additional review guidance is in the blog post WCAG 3 FPWD Published. Please submit comments by 26 February 2021."

First Public Working Drafts: EPUB 3.3 [W3C]
"The EPUB 3 Working Group has published four First Public Working Drafts for EPUB 3.3. This technology defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced Web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG, and other resources — for distribution in a single-file container. The specification represents the third major revision and, in particular, a revision of the EPUB 3.2 document published by the EPUB 3 Community Group. This new version of the specification is now on a W3C Recommendation Track. The four documents published by the Working Group are: the EPUB 3.3 specification defines the authoring requirements for EPUB Publications and represents the third major revision of the standard; the EPUB 3.3 Reading Systems specification defines the conformance requirements for EPUB 3 Reading Systems — the user agents that render EPUB Publications; the EPUB Multiple-Rendition Publications 1.1 specification defines the creation and rendering of EPUB Publications consisting of more than one Rendition; the EPUB 3 Overview gives a high level overview of the EPUB 3.3 specification aimed primarily at non-technical readers. The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues."