Canadian <Metadata> Forum

Speaker Biographies

The Canadian <Metadata>Forum will take place in Ottawa on Friday, September 19, 2003 and Saturday, September 20, 2003 at Library and Archives Canada.

Nancy Brodie
Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat
At Treasury Board Secretariat Nancy Brodie has played a key leadership role in developing and applying information management approaches, standards and tools to enhance public access to Government of Canada programs, services and information sources. In addition, the results of her work assists departments and agencies in meeting the objectives of Government On-Line (GOL). She chairs the GOL Metadata Working Group and the Gateways and Clusters Content Management Committee. In her previous position at the National Library of Canada, Nancy worked on a number of interdepartmental initiatives to improve access and dissemination of government information: the GILS Pilot Project, the Internet Guide, Common Look and Feel and development of the E-Cluster Blueprint. She also played a leading role as the National Library addressed issues relating to the collection, organization and preservation of networked electronic publications. She held a number of management positions at the National Library. Nancy Brodie was the winner of the 2002 Agatha Bystram Award for Leadership in Information Management from the Council of Federal Libraries and was awarded a Queen's Jubilee Medal.

Andrea Buffam
Natural Resources Canada
Andrea Buffam graduated from Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto. After working in Ontario and Saskatchewan, she returned to the Ottawa area and began work with the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), Natural Resources Canada in 1991. Currently, she is the Senior Geomatics Information Officer within the GeoAccess Division in CCRS, coordinating content on the GeoConnections Discovery Portal. Her work includes: exporting metadata describing Canadian geospatial data collections through NASA and the International Directory Network (IDN); contribution to metadata interface software development on CEONet (now GeoConnections); implementation of the FGDC CSDGM (U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata), development of the Discovery Portal; contributing to a North American amendment proposed for ISO TC211 19115 (currently under review with U.S. associates); and working with all clients to improve the distribution and visualization of geospatial data.

Sheila Carey
Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN)
Sheila Carey is a Heritage Information Analyst with the Canadian Heritage Information Network, (CHIN) where she has worked since 1998. Sheila is manager of Learning with Museums, a metadata-based project, including a cataloguing tool that allows museums to easily create metadata for their online learning resources, which are then made accessible from the Virtual Museum of Canada. In this role, she follows e-learning metadata standards, and is a member of the GOL Metadata Working Group E-learning Subgroup, as well as other metadata committees. Sheila is also researching digital preservation issues. Prior to coming to CHIN, Sheila worked at the Getty Information Institute, in both the Vocabulary Program and Special Projects. Sheila began her career in the office of the Assistant Vice President of Planning and Budget and University Registrar at the University of Toronto.

Diana Dale
Department of Canadian Heritage
Diana Dale works in Web and Applications Development Services at the Department of Canadian Heritage. She did her undergraduate work at McGill University and completed her MLS at the University of Western Ontario. She moved to Ottawa to take up librarian jobs with the Federal Government, starting with the National Library, then the Federal Court of Canada, and then going on to Environment Canada. Since 1994, she has been working for Canadian Heritage, where her interests have kept pace with the digitization of information management. She was deeply involved with the development of the departmental intranet and has become interested in metadata as a way of improving access to and enhancing interoperability of web based resources of all sorts. In recent years, she has been working on a national and international level to update metadata standards and increase the usability of these standards.

Tom Delsey
Consultant, Ottawa
Tom Delsey is a consultant, based in Ottawa, Canada, specializing in information modelling. His recent projects include a functional analysis of the MARC 21 bibliographic and holdings formats for the Library of Congress, the development of a conceptual model for the IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records (FRANAR), and an information model for content delivery and rights management developed for a group of ISO registration agencies. Prior to beginning his consulting career, Tom was Director General, Corporate Policy and Communications, at the National Library of Canada.

Stephen Downes
National Research Council of Canada
Stephen Downes is senior research officer with the National Research Council of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick where he works with the E-Learning Research Group, an affiliate of the Council's Institute for Information Technology. His principle work involves research and development in e-learning, working with institutions and companies to improve their competitive position in the industry, and outreach through articles, seminars and workshops. Previous to this position he was an Information Architect employed by the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is employed on a contract position to design and build a major internet resource called MuniMall, a one-stop site for all components of the municipal affairs sector and municipalities in Alberta. Before working at the University of Alberta, he worked as a Distance Education and New Instructional Media Design Specialist with Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada and previous to that, he taught philosophy by distance for Athabasca University. Stephen has a BA and MA, both in philosophy, from the University of Calgary.

Wendy Duff
Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto
Wendy Duff is an associate professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. While doing her doctoral work she was the project co-ordinator for the University of Pittsburgh Electronic Recordkeeping Project. Her primary research interests are user studies, archival description, and electronic records. She has served as a member of the ICA Adhoc Commission on Descriptive Standards, the Encoded Archival Description Working Group, chair of the Canadian Committee on Descriptive Standards, and a member of the Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards. She is presently a member of the Canadian-US Task Force on Archival Description and the Encoded Archival Context Working Group. Her current research interest focus on the use of archival descriptive systems.

Alexander Eykelhof
The Bibliocentre, Centennial College
Alexander Eykelhof is the Director for Information Technology and the Ontario Colleges Digital Library at the Bibliocentre, a consortium service for the community colleges of Ontario. He has established a Video on Demand delivery system which is now being piloted in five colleges. Alex has been involved in metadata and multimedia projects for a number of years including the award-winning Bibscan project and most recently a virtual reference project for the colleges and a metadata content initiative for Canarie.

Norm Friesen
Athabasca University / CanCore
Norm Friesen has been working in the area of instructional Web development and information management at the University of Alberta and Athabasca University since 1997. Since the winter of 2000, he has been held a position with the CAREO Project (Campus of Alberta Repository of Educational Objects). As a part of this work, Norm has been participating in a number of international e-learning standardization forums, and has been leading the development of CanCore, a generic application profile for the Learning Object Metadata standard. Previously, Norm has worked as a librarian, teacher, and instructional assistant. His academic credentials include a Master's degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Alberta, a Masters in German Literature from the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in Education from the University of Alberta.

Lorraine Gadoury
Library and Archives Canada
Lorraine Gadoury, New France historian, has been an archivist at Library and Archives of Canada since 1991. She specializes in textual records related to the Colonial period of Canada until Confederation.

Paul Johanis
Statistics Canada
Paul Johanis has been in Statistics Canada for 15 years, working in a variety of assignments in the Census of Population, the Business and Trade Statistics program and in Standards Division. He holds a Masters degree in Public Administration and a Doctorate in Public Policy. He is currently Director of the Standards Division.

Sarah Klotz
Library and Archives Canada
Sarah Klotz is a Project Coordinator for the National Archives of Canada website, where she coordinates the creation and display of online research tools, virtual exhibitions, and special web-based projects. She previously worked as a Standards Officer in the Canadian Archives Branch before joining the website team in 2002.

Walter Lewis
Halton Hills Public Library
Walter Lewis has spent his professional career in the public libraries of Ontario. Before graduating from the University of Toronto, he spent his summers working for the Lake Ontario Regional Library System. Since then he has been employed in a variety of positions by the Halton Hills Public Library. For much of the last ten years he has been the chief software architect of the software developed for HALINET (the Halton Information Network) including Community Information and Volunteer software used in many communities in southern Ontario, Newspaper and Image management software and tools for indexing and searching a wide range of local historical materials. Walter holds a degree in History from Queen's University and is the author of a range of articles on the maritime history of the Great Lakes. He has served on the editorial boards of FreshWater and The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord, and since 1994 has been co-moderator of MARHST-L, an international discussion list for maritime history.

David McKnight
McGill University
David McKnight is the Director of the Digital Collections Program, McGill University Libraries. Since 1997, he has produced more than thirty scholarly digital collections. He frequently presents papers at conferences on the subject of digital libraries. In the course of designing McGill's digital collections, he has included multimedia elements (for example, 3-D architectural models and flash objects). He is the metadata consultant for the Molson Informatics Online Medical Learning Object Project and in 2002 he supervised an independent study on metadata and multimedia art installations.

Doug Minett
The Bookshelf, Guelph / Canadian Book Industry Systems Advisory Committee (CBISAC)
Doug Minett entered the book industry in 1973 when he co-founded The Bookshelf in Guelph, Ontario Canada, perhaps the world's only combined bookstore, restaurant, bar, & cinema. He has been involved in book trade system design, development and consulting since 1980. In the late 1990's, The Bookshelf launched Canada's first full service book website (subsequently sold to Indigo Books & Music) in conjunction with Bell Sympatico. His has served on the board of directors of the Canadian Booksellers Association, the Canadian Telebook Agency, and is currently a director of Booknet Canada, English Canada's supply chain organization. He has been a participant in international book trade standards development since becoming active with CBISAC (Canadian Book Industry Advisory Committee) in the 1980's. He is currently a member of the ISO working group revising the ISBN standard.

Robert Oates
Communication Canada
During his 14 years with the Government of Canada (GoC) Robert has worked in the multi-channel communication of GoC programs and services information to Canadians. Application of his information management expertise within the Government Enquiry Centre (1 800 O-Canada ) and the administration of the Canada Site Portal (Canada Site) led Robert to identify service improvement opportunities for the GoC Newsroom Web site and to propose a redesign of the site's communications capabilities. As Project Manager for the implementation of the redesign, his focus is on the potential of emerging metadata concepts and the power of the extensible Mark-up Language (XML) technologies.

Chris Oliver
McGill University Library / Canadian Cataloguing Committee
Chris Oliver is the Specialist Cataloguing Services Librarian at the McGill University Libraries, supervising the section that catalogues special materials including serials, electronic resources, audio-visual, non-roman alphabets, rare books and music. She has been involved with the revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules since 1997 when she became one of the two CLA representatives on the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, and is currently serving as chair of the Committee. In 2001, she was appointed to the Format Variation Working Group, an international committee appointed by the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. This Group was been using the model described in the IFLA report called Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) to analyze problems linked to format variation, and as the theoretical framework for proposing revisions to the cataloguing rules.

René Paquet
Library and Archives Canada
For more than twenty years, René Paquet has worked in fields involved with broadcast, video, multimedia systems and their related metadata. At present, he is developing the infrastructure for Digitization on Demand (DOD). This will provide digitized copies on request of audiovisual records from LAC's collections. These include digital reproductions from master prints that are needed to create broadcast quality audiovisual products in formats such as DVD, CD-R, AVI and FTP. He is also working on Digital Content Management for video and multimedia intended for an integration of preservation technologies. More recently, René has assumed the role of Manager of Electronic Archives Preservation and has developed the Electronic Archives Preservation System (EAPS). This system has three main functions: Storage, maintenance (including migration) and accessibility of digital material over the long-term. He is a member of an interdepartmental working group to develop a common search capability for multiple databases using different metadata through XML-based technologies. The work focuses on determining how to best tag new media formats for searching and accessing the data made available using (MPEG-7).

Gilbert Paquette
Téluq, Université de Québec
Director of the Center for interuniversity research on telelearning applications and researcher at Télé-université's LICEF research centre he has founded in 1992, Gilbert Paquette holds a Canada research chair in knowledge-based instructional engineering. Having pioneered strategic projects in the field of knowledge-based systems, instructional engineering and telelearning, he is the author of three books and many scientific articles in this field. He has also founded a company, Micro-Intel (1987-1991), and has acted as Minister for Science and Technology in the Quebec Government (1982-1984).

Jutta Treviranus
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
Jutta Treviranus directs the Resource Centre for Academic Technology at the University of Toronto. She also established and directs the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, an internationally recognized centre of expertise on barrier-free access to information technology. Jutta's particular areas of interest include: technology-assisted inclusive teaching and learning; skilled use of the computer as a tool by people with disabilities; accommodating individual skills, needs and preferences by transforming the way information is displayed and controlled; authoring tools that are accessible and create accessible content; and accessible rich media. She is actively involved in the work of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WAI Authoring Tool Guidelines Working Group which she chairs, and the IMS Global Learning Consortium Accessibility Working Group.

James Turner
School of Library and Information Science, University of Montréal
James M Turner is a professor at the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1994. His research activities are focussed on storage and retrieval of still and moving images, indexing images, metadata for digital images in a networked environment, and preservation of digital images. He teaches in the areas of managing visual and sound information, moving image archives, managing digital information, and multimedia information systems. More information about his professional activities is available from his Web site at http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/turner

Ron Wakkary
Chair, Standards, Research and Development Sub-committee of the National Advisory Board for Canadian Culture Online
Department of Canadian Heritage
Ron Wakkary is associate professor in Information Technology and Interactive Arts at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Previously, he has been faculty in Interactive Arts and the academic dean at the Technical University of British Columbia, and the Digital Design Department at Parsons School of Design, in New York. He was cofounder of Stadium@Dia in New York where he collaborated and co-developed pioneering projects in art and the Internet. He has lead digital arts technology projects for the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Dia Center for the Arts, and Electronic Arts Intermix. Also while in New York, he was principal in OO-Design, a Web development firm. Ron has presented and published widely, including Computer Human Interaction ACM, Siggraph, Interact and Consciousness Reframed. He graduated with a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and an MFA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His current research projects include a recently completed project with Nokia Research Centre at Tampere, Finland, on gossip, games and mobile communities, and new projects on audio-based interaction and pattern language.

Grace Welch
University of Ottawa
Grace Welch is currently the Assistant Chief Librarian, Systems and E-Resources in the Library Network of the University of Ottawa. Prior to this recent appointment, she was head of the Map Library, a position she held from 1990. Before joining the University of Ottawa, she held several positions at the National Library of Canada, primarily in the information technology areas and management of public services. She is the Chair of the Advisory Committee of Canadian Digital Toponymic Services of the Geographic Names Board of Canada and is one of two Canadian representatives on the Anglo-American Committee on Cataloguing Cartographic Materials (AACCCM) where she focused on devising new rules for library cataloguing of geo-spatial data. Grace has published articles on cataloguing geospatial data and been involved in several workshops on this topic. She has been actively involved in negotiating improved access to geospatial data for the educational sector at the federal and provincial levels and promoting GIS services in libraries. She represents the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives on the Policy Node of GeoConnections, a national program to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure.

Ian Wilson
National Archivist, Library and Archives Canada
Dr. Ian E. Wilson was appointed National Archivist of Canada in July 1999. Born in Montreal, Quebec, in April 1943, Ian Wilson attended the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean and obtained his Master's in History from Queen's University in 1974. In 2001, he was awarded an Honourary Doctorate of Letters (DLitt) from York University in recognition of his contribution to Canadian archives. In May 2002, he was appointed to the Order of Canada. Dr. Wilson has had a distinguished career in several areas including archival and information management, university teaching and government service. He began his career at Queen's University Archives, later becoming Saskatchewan's Provincial Archivist (1976-86) and Chairman of the Saskatchewan Heritage Advisory Board. He was Archivist of Ontario from 1986 to 1999. More information about Dr. Wilson's career is available on the National Archives of Canada site (www.collectionscanada.ca/01/010301_e.html).

Catherine Zongora
Library and Archives Canada
Catherine Zongora is a Senior Project Officer in the Government Information Management Division (GIMD), Library and Archives Canada. Her sections provides strategic information management support, through advice and guidance, on the strategies, concepts, issues, initiatives, theories and principles of managing information and technology as an asset, to senior officials of federal government central agencies, institutions, commissions, administrative/regulatory bodies and other government bodies, including Ministers' offices, as well as public and private sector client organizations at the national and international levels. Catherine is the chair of the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) to the ISO Technical Committee on Information and Documentation, Sub Committee on Archives/Records Management and has written and delivered information management training to a wide variety of participants across Canada through the National Archives of Canada and the RMI. In addition, she has presented sessions at Seminars and Conferences, and regularly makes presentations at interdepartmental forums and committees on the subject of records and information life cycle management.