International Cataloging Conference comes to Battle Creek, Michigan

Bethlehem, Pa. -- The Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) will hold its annual International Cataloging Conference from October 26 to 27 at the McCamly Plaza Hotel in Battle Creek, Mich. The city is also the site of the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center, home of the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS).

Bethlehem, PA (PRWEB) July 29, 2004 -- The Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) will hold its annual International Cataloging Conference from October 26 to 27 at the McCamly Plaza Hotel in Battle Creek, Mich. The city is also the site of the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center, home of the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS).

It is only fitting that the annual cataloging conference should be conducted at Battle Creek, Michigan, to take advantage of the incredible wealth of expertise that exists within DLIS. The conference intends to make good use of this expertise with Marine Col. Joseph D. Cassel Jr. providing the opening address followed by a panel of the DLIS directors led by Executive Director Rick Maison. This will be a unique opportunity to get an insight into this amazing organization that leads the world in cataloging," said Peter Benson, the executive director of ECCMA.

Just as the roots of the Internet can be traced back to the Defense Departments ARPANET project, it is probably not a coincidence that the next generation of the Internet may also be based on another defense project designed to create an open standard global descriptive language that makes it easier for manufacturers and suppliers to create standardized descriptions of their goods and services," said Professor Donald Hillman of Lehigh University.

During World War II the United States military experienced potentially damaging shortages of parts simply because the same items were given different names and part numbers by the different services; the Armys spacers became the Navys washers and the Marines shims. As a result, the 82nd Congress passed the Defense Cataloging and Standardization Act. This act set the scene for what was to become the worlds largest international cataloging and standardization effort.

What started 50 years ago as the Federal Cataloging System has been augmented by the NATO Codification System, and the two systems today bring together over 1 million suppliers in 20 countries into a single standardized catalog.
At the heart of the NATO Codification system is a rigorous cataloging method constantly refined and improved by an international team of cataloging experts led by DLIS. With the expertise vested in the staffs of the national defense catalog centers around the world, DLIS and the other National Codification Bureaus (NCBs) are working with ECCMA toward establishing a NCS-compatible open technical dictionary for cataloging.

Referred to as the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD), this amazing work allows any manufacturer or supplier to easily create standardized catalogs of goods and services that they can post on their own websites. It will also facilitate the exchange of catalog data to the government "buy-side" catalogs as well as between other business partners.

Exhibitors at the international cataloging conference will be demonstrating how these standardized descriptions can be used in advanced search engines to improve the efficiency and accuracy of Internet and catalog searches. There will also be a number of workshops for manufacturers and suppliers to answer any questions they may have on how best to catalog their goods and services using the eOTD.

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