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Liz Lyon , of UKOLN and DCC, has produced an excellent report titled " Dealing with Data ". It is a very applied look at the issues around data curation and preservation and examines at " the roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships of institutions, data centres and other key stakeholders who work with data ." While it is UK-oriented, most of its recommendations can be applied to other regions. It includes 35 recommendations in eight categories: Co-ordination and Strategy Policy and Planning Practice Technical Integration and Interoperability Legal and Ethical Issues Sustainability Advocacy Training and Skills Many of the recommendations resonate with many of the recommendations of the National Consultation on Access to Research Data (NCASRD) here in Canada that I and others helped organize in 2005. Some recommendations of particular interest: REC 2. Research funding organisations should jointly develop a co-ordinated Data Curation and Preservation Strat

Microsoft Open XML efforts good ? - British Library . For more problems with the OOXML "open" standard: see Slashdot's Microsoft's OOXML Formulas Could Be Dangerous and the original article by Rob Weir, The Formula for Failure . And perhaps of more significance, some real questions from FSF Europe to national standards bodies, perhaps lessons learned (or those which should be learned) from the OOXML standardization fiasco: Six Questions to national standardization bodies: Application Independence? Supporting pre-existing Open Standards? Backward compatibility for all vendors? Proprietary extensions? Dual Standards? Legally safe?

It seems that - in a BBC article (" Warning of Data Ticking Time Bomb ", discovered at the ACM TechNews for this week)- Adam Farquhar , head of e-architecture at the British Library, has made a rather disappointing comment on Microsoft and the Open XML format: Microsoft has taken tremendous strides forward in addressing this problem. There has been a sea change in attitude. Sigh. This is very sad. The original press release from the U.K. National Archives is here: The National Archives and Microsoft join forces to preserve the UK´s digital heritage . The Wikipedia article on Open XML shows why this is such a disappointing comment. The Do you love Microsoft? blog has an excellent recent posting on this: OpenXML and the British Library - Part 4. And others also used "disappointing" for other MS related comments by Mr. Farquhar : Adam Farquhar's presentation on OOXML disappointing - CyberTech Rambler Having Your Digital Cake and Eating It - Open... And more