DESIRE: Peer Review Report: D3.3b-DESIRE Toolkit Pre-release: Eric Miller

Project Number:

RE 4004 (RE)

Project Title:

DESIRE II - Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education II

Deliverable Number:

D3.3b (pre-release)

Deliverable Title:

DESIRE Software Toolkit

Deliverable Type:

PU

Deliverable Kind:

PR

Principal Reviewer:

Name

Eric Miller



Address

Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Office of Research and Special Projects 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, Ohio, USA>



E-Mail

emiller@oclc.org

Telephone

(usa) 614-764-6109



Fax

(usa) 614-764-2344



Credentials

Chair, W3C RDF Model and Syntax Working Group 1997-8; Member of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Directorate.


Other Reviewers:


(if relevant)


Summary:

Relevant

4 (1 = poor, 5 = excellent)



State-of-Art

4



Meets Objectives


4



Clarity

4



Value to Users


5


Specific Criticisms


1

It is hard to review this as anything other than a 'work in progress'; if the deliverable continues according the plans set out in the interim deliverable report, this toolset and the infrastructure being put in place to support it should be of very significant value to a number of sections of the metadata and resource discovery community.



2

The Microsoft Word version of the Toolkit overview will be more useful to many in the community when made available online in HTML (ideally with XML or other machine-readable descriptions of the component descriptions).


3

The scope and aims of the DESIRE tool-set (and project) should be made more explicit in the toolkit documentation.


4

Developer Response:


1

These are fair concerns and will need to be addressed in the final release of the toolkit.



2

3

4


General Comments

There is a demonstrable need for "Open Source", standards-based, interoperable tools for creating, processing and aggregating metadata across indexing, cataloguing and library-like Web applications. The DESIRE work in this area, as described in the toolkit pre-release and other DESIRE deliverables, goes some significant way towards showing the community the benefits of investing in open solutions in these areas. While it remains to be seen whether the final deliverable lives up to this early promise, the DESIRE Toolkit work as outlined in this document seems to be an excellent basis for a modular and extensible tool set. In particular, the emphasis on the supporting environment (ie. CVS for collaborative development, IRC for inter-developer communications, and the concern for post-project continuation of support/development) are to be commended. The software components created and refined within DESIRE appear to make a number of innovations, but will benefit from further work on packaging and "shrink wrapping" over the remaining months of the project.