This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.
On September 4, 2007, a summer morning in Adelphi, Maryland, the workgroup, breakfast in hand, slowly assembled into in a large conference room at the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC). The tables were assembled in a U-shape with twelve places on each of the three sides. A digital projector on a stand in the center became the symbolic altar of digital technology. A large screen at the open side of the U illuminated knowledge with multicolored four-line outlines, charts, graphs, “screen captures” and illustrations.
Heads down behind black or sliver laptop screens, eleven representatives of publishers, software suppliers, higher education organizations, and colleges and universities sat scattered among the conference tables. As part of the IMS Global Learning Consortium Common Cartridge Test Fest, they had been considering how this technology could be used to transfer digital content from publishers and authors to learning management systems for use by faculty and students.