Software Ontology for Resource Description

We invite you or a nominee to a meeting about developing an ontology for software description that is part of the JISC Digital Preservation Tools strand. The main goal of the meeting is to find out what people wish to record about software as part of the digital preservation process. At the end of the meeting we aim to have exemplars of software descriptions and the questions that people wish to ask of data curated with information about the software used in production, storage and analysis of data -- including the preservation process itself.

Meeting summary

• Title: Software Ontology for Resource Description
• Time: Wednesday and Thursday 30 and 31 March 2011
• Place: Kilburn building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester.
• Expenses: The SWORD project has funds to pay reasonable expenses.
• Aim: To start developing a vocabulary/ontology to describe software that has been used to produce, managae or analyse software used in research.

The Software Ontology for Resource Description (SWORD) seeks to develop a resource for preserving how data are produced, analysed and shared to the community. This resource will take the form of the Software Ontology (SWO) and the workflow for developing and applying the SWO to data. We wish to engage across a range of disciplines and communities, and thus we want to hold this two-day workshop to bootstrap our ontology building process.

The meeting will start mid-morning on Wed 30 March and Finish mid-afternoon on thr 31 March. the meeting wil have a minimum of "death by PowerPoint" and will instead be discussion led, with attendees actually characterising their software as part of the meeting, and this will directly feed into the ontology building process. Attendees will be asked to describe their software and the questions they'd like to ask of archived data as to how it was produced, managed and analysed. Our aim is to know what people want to know about software as part of the digital preservation process.

Please confirm attendance with robert [dot] stevens [at] manchester [dot] ac [dot] uk ( Robert Stevens) or malone [at] ebi [dot] ac [dot] uk (James Malone) giving accommodation and dietary needs.