DAISY Consortium

Annual Report for 2000

By Ingar Beckman Hirschfeldt, President

During 2000 the DAISY Consortium, the Board and the work teams were working hard on the testing of the final release of LpStudio/Pro in April 2000. Edmar Schut left his half-time position with the DC in the spring and was replaced by Markus Gylling during the autumn, and Lynn Leith from CNIB put in considerable amount of work into the Consortium. Miki Azuma from JSRPD was also engaged in training, especially Sigtuna. The DC Manager, George Kerscher, changed his position to half-time with the Consortium at the request of RFB&D. The situation opened up for a discussion on the organisation of the work within the Consortium. Peter Osborne and Susanne Seidelin took on the role of managing the Consortium together with George in a management team. The Board planned for a new organisation to present to the General Meeting in Kyoto in November.

·  Members

The Association of the Japanese libraries for the Blind left the Consortium and JSRPD is holding the Full membership. A Canadian DAISY Consortium became a Full Member as of July 1.

·  Associated Members

New Associated Members are American Foundation for the Blind, Ratchasuda College, Mahidol University (Thailand), Institute of DAISY Editing (Japan), Japan Braille Library, Nippon Lighthouse, Sight Savers International, Clearinghouse for Specialized Media & Technology (California), Public Service Commission (Canada) Korea Braille Library, Communication Center of State Services for the Blind (St. Paul, USA).

·  Friends

Bibliotekstjänst AB, Graff Electronic Machines,Ltd, isSound Co, Labyrinten Data AB, Microsoft Co, Plextor Co, Telex, VisuAide Inc.

·  Board of Management

The Board of Management had the following members: Kjell Hansson, Hiroshi Kawamura, Peter Osborne, Susanne Seidelin, and Bernhard Heinser (Treasurer) and Ingar Beckman Hirschfeldt (President). Koen Krikhaar was elected to the Board but had to leave the Board during the spring. The Board met seven times: in New York, February 16 & 17, Stockholm, April 13 & 14, Oslo, June 20 & 21, Amsterdam, September 7-10, Kyoto, November 14. The Board had several telephone conferences, January 14, March 2 & 10 October 17 & 25, and November 8.

·  Technical Development

Teamleader Edmar Schut/Markus Gylling
Business agreement. Letter of understanding with ISAT

Training and Technical Support

·  Communication and Public relations

PR-team Peter Osborne and Kjell Hansson

CSUN

At the March 2000 Conference, the DAISY Consortium had a full day of presentations and a booth in at the CSUN exhibit.

Sigtuna-meeting

May

IFLA

DC was not in Jerusalem at the yearly IFLA conference

WBU, World Blind Union Fifth General Assembly November 20-24


W3C
The W3C is a consortium that sets the standards for the WWW. It has four divisions of which the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) is one. The WAI works for an Internet that is accessible for visually disabled persons. As Project Manager of the DAISY Consortium GK is a member of the WAI and this way the work of the WAI and that of the DAISY Consortium are co-ordinated. .
The W3C has created a standard for synchronising text with pictures, sound and video, thus enabling multimedia presentations on the Web. This so-called SMIL 1.0 is implemented in the DAISY Software.
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
The OEB became a formal consortium with George Kerscher as elected Chairman. OEBF is pushing for standards/specifications for digital text.

NISO
The NISO group works on developing a standard for digital talking books.
The initiative has been taken by NLS at the Library of Congress as NLS is focusing on online distribution and wants to skip the CD-ROM and DVD phase. Thomas Kjellberg (DBB) is representing the DAISY Consortium at the NISO group. The aim is that the DAISY and the NISO standards should be compatible.

·  Developing countries

Hiroshi Kawamura and Chris Day.

·  General meeting in Kyoto

The General Meeting was generously hosted by JSPRD.

The General meeting welcomed the Canadian DAISY Consortium and the Korean DAISY Consortium as new Full Members.

The General Meeting ratified the admission of Associate Members.

A new organization was decided where the main difference was that the new Board will consist of all Full Members and the management of the Consortium will be done by paid staff: a full-time Secretary General and half-time Project Manager and two half-time team leaders.