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About CENDI — Highlights from FY 2005

In FY 2005, CENDI continued to serve as a major forum for federal scientific and technical information managers.  The organization provided leadership on key issues, educational opportunities for federal and private sector staff and information managers, and worked with major partners to promote better management of scientific and technical information.

Major focus areas in FY 2005 were:

• Long-Lived Data Preservation
• Public (Open) Access
• Input to E-government and Discussions of Government Standards and Best Practices
• Science.gov
• Workshop and Publication Activities

Long-Lived Data Preservation

CENDI played a major role in discussions of data issues during FY 2005. Following the initial release of the National Science Board findings into long-lived data preservation in January 2005, CENDI provided input to the draft report. CENDI also sponsored a number of discussions of the findings, including sponsoring a joint meeting with CODATA and preparing a discussion session for the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting.

Public (Open) Access

Public (open) access emerged as an important point for discussion throughout this year. It was a major emphasis of a meeting with the agency attorneys who are members of CENDI’s Copyright Working Group. In February, CENDI joined with CODATA and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) to sponsor the AAAS Symposium on Public Access with.

Input to E-government and Discussions of Government Standards and Best Practices

During FY 2005, CENDI provided input to the Interagency Committee on Government Information (ICGI).  The persistent identifiers paper impacted the report to the Office of Management and Budget, and CENDI’s white paper on copyright and government websites was distributed to ICGI members, FirstGov, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
During FY 2005, the Digital Preservation Task Group actively provided input to other organizations, as follows:

• NARA’s Appraisal Guidance for Federal Research & Development Records
• OCLC’s draft report on metadata for preservation
• U.S. Government Printing Office's study of preservation metadata
• International Standards Organization (ISO) PDF-A draft standard
• National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Z39.18 standard for technical reports

Science.gov

CENDI continued to support the ongoing development of Science.gov 2.0, which was enhanced with a new Alerts service.  This service was the focus of a successful exhibit at the AAAS meeting in February 2005.  CENDI agencies disseminated fact sheets widely and developed a new fact sheet for government researchers.  

Science.gov’s reach was expanded internationally through a presentation at the International Federation of Library and Museum Associations meeting in Oslo, Norway. In addition, CENDI supported a meeting of national/regional science portals, including those from Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.  

Finally, CENDI agency staff worked to redesign the Science.gov homepage to add a Special Collections section.

Workshop and Publication Activities

CENDI’s Working Groups and Task Groups produced significant workshops and publications during the year.  These sessions provided educational opportunities for CENDI agency staff and other public and private section information managers.  More than 130 people attended the “PDF in the Government Environment: The Present and Future” workshop, that was held jointly with the CIO Council’s XML Community of Practice and the National Archives and Records Administration.  CENDI-only workshops addressed the following:

• XML and security
• Thesauri and taxonomies on the Web

CENDI publication activities continued with the release of “Don’t Keep the Public Guessing:  Best Practices in Notice of Copyright and Terms and Conditions of Use for Government Website Content” (CENDI/04-4).  The Terminology Resources Task Group, formed as a result of the successful CENDI-only workshop on thesauri and taxonomies, created a Terminology Resources web page with links and annotations to thesauri, subject category schemes, and other vocabularies from CENDI agencies.

Other Noteworthy Accomplishments

The first annual CENDI Meritorious Service Award was give to Bonnie Klein of the Defense Technical Information Center for her work on the publication “Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright ,” and to Simon Liu of the National Library Medicine for his work with the IT Security Working Group.

Visitors from the Japan Institute of Science and Technology visited with the CENDI Secretariat and other CENDI member agencies. They also attended a morning session of a regular CENDI meeting. They subsequently published an article on their findings in a Japanese information management journal.