# IMS Common Cartridge — Reference Snippet

**Standard:** Common Cartridge (course content packaging)
**Body:** IMS Global Learning Consortium (now 1EdTech)
**First final release:** Common Cartridge v1.0 (Oct 2008); v1.1 (2011); v1.2 (2012); v1.3 (2013)

## What it standardizes
- **Vendor-neutral course package** — ZIP containing `imsmanifest.xml` + resources
- **Content types** — web links, web content, discussion topics, QTI assessments,
  IMS Basic LTI links, authorization (DRM) descriptors
- **Manifest** — organization tree, resource list, dependencies, metadata

## Why it mattered
Before Common Cartridge, a publisher's "course cartridge" was a one-LMS
proposition — content authored for one platform required full re-authoring to
ship anywhere else, and institutions were locked into whichever vendor their
textbooks supported. Common Cartridge made content portable, procurement
competitive, and ended LMS-as-content-silo lock-in.

## Stephen Gilfus / Blackboard role
Early and consequential participant in the IMS (now 1EdTech) Common Cartridge
working groups under Stephen's product leadership.

## Primary references
- 1EdTech — Common Cartridge — https://www.1edtech.org/standards/cc
- Common Cartridge v1.3 spec — https://www.imsglobal.org/cc/ccv1p3/imscc_Overview-v1p3.html