OASIS added support for the XML Topics Maps (XTM) specification to its technical agenda and TopicMaps.Org, announced its decision to continue development within the OASIS Technical Process. XTM (ISO/IEC 13250:2000), which provides a model for organizing, retrieving and navigating information resources, will be advanced by a series of newly formed OASIS technical committees. Topic maps provide a ‘knowledge layer’–independent of the information resources themselves–to capture and manage corporate memory, improve indexing and enable the integration of information that spans multiple, disparate repositories. Applications include the semantic web, distributed ontologies, business processes, workflow, search and retrieval tools, knowledge management, diplomatic communication, cultural dialogue and various other disciplines and functions. Organizations contributing to the OASIS Topic Maps Technical Committees include Boeing, DataChannel, empolis, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and other OASIS Contributors and Individual members. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment on XTM. Completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees. www.oasis-open.org