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NEWS FROM THE FIELD Gerry McKiernan, Editor PROGRAMS Conferences “DC2002: Metadata for e-Communities: Supporting Diversity and Convergence” October 13-17, 2002 Convitto della Calza, Oltramo Meeting Center Florence, Italy http://www.bncf.net/dc2002/ The convergence of resource description standards and development of an ‘enabling infrastructure’ promises to improve the discovery and management of information across and within disciplines. For DC-2002, the program committee invites papers in the following categories: E-Government Search engines and metadata Educational metadata Knowledge management Use of Dublin Core metadata for commerce and intranets Gerry McKiernan is Coordinator, Science and Technology Department, 152 Parks Li- brary, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 (E-mail: [email protected]) (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/). Journal of Internet Cataloging, Vol. 6(1) 2003 http://www.haworthpressinc.com/store/product.asp?sku=J141 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 55

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Transcript of Ji cv6n1

NEWS FROM THE FIELD

Gerry McKiernan, Editor

PROGRAMS

Conferences

“DC2002:Metadata for e-Communities: Supporting Diversity and Convergence”

October 13-17, 2002Convitto della Calza, Oltramo Meeting Center

Florence, Italyhttp://www.bncf.net/dc2002/

The convergence of resource description standards and developmentof an ‘enabling infrastructure’ promises to improve the discovery andmanagement of information across and within disciplines.

For DC-2002, the program committee invites papers in the followingcategories:

• E-Government• Search engines and metadata• Educational metadata• Knowledge management• Use of Dublin Core metadata for commerce and intranets

Gerry McKiernan is Coordinator, Science and Technology Department, 152 Parks Li-brary, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 (E-mail: [email protected])(http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/).

Journal of Internet Cataloging, Vol. 6(1) 2003http://www.haworthpressinc.com/store/product.asp?sku=J141

2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 55

• Roles of standard cataloging, indexing, metadata, and ontologiesin the Semantic Web

• Tools and protocols for metadata interoperability• Cultural heritage metadata

Papers should be submitted using a Web form in PDF or MS Word(www.bncf.net/dc2002/papers). All submissions will be peer-reviewedby the program committee and published online and in print.

DC 2002 will include the tenth Dublin Core workshop in the series,and will be the second international program to include a conferencetrack and a tutorial track, as well as the workshop event.

Training

“ISDL 2002:DELOS International Summer School on Digital Library Technologies”

July 8-12, 2002Santa Croce in Fossabanda Conference Centre

Pisa, Italyhttp://delos-noe.iei.pi.cnr.it/activities/trainingforum/SummerSchool/

school2002.html

The second International Summer School on Digital Library Tech-nologies was held July 8-12, 2002 in Pisa, Italy. The general purpose ofthe School is “to foster research and understanding in the fundamentaltechnologies underlying the Digital Libraries field.”

This year’s program focused on digital library applications in a varietyof subject domains, with sessions taught by leading researchers and prac-titioners from the United States and Europe. The one-week intensive pro-gram included presentations and discussions on the following topics:

• Introduction to Digital Libraries (Gary Marchionini, University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill)

• Metadata (Thomas Baker, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Germany)• Geospatial Digital Libraries (Terry Smith, University of Califor-

nia at Santa Barbara)• Digital Libraries with Health Applications (Judith Klavans, Co-

lumbia University)• Digital Music Libraries (Jon Dunn, Indiana University)• Digital Libraries in the Humanities (Gregory Crane, Tuft University)

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• Digital Libraries of Spoken Documents (Dean Rehberger, Michi-gan State University)

• Preservation (Seamus Ross, University of Glasgow)• Video Digital Libraries (Scott Stevens, Carnegie Mellon University)

The International Summer School on Digital Library Technologiespresented under the auspices of the DELOS Network of Excellence onDigital Libraries, an initiative funded by the Fifth FrameworkProgramme of the European Commission, within the Key Action onMultimedia Contents and Tools of the Information Society Technol-ogies Programme.

Copies of the lectures from ISDL 2001, the first DELOS Interna-tional Summer School on Digital Library Technologies, are available(www.ercim.org/publication/workshop_reports.html).

Videoconferences

“Steering by Standards”Spring 2002

OCLC Institutehttp://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm

This past spring, the OCLC Institute offered three satellitevideoconferences devoted to established and emerging metadata stan-dards, and related projects:

• A New Harvest: Revealing Hidden Resources with the Open Ar-chives Metadata Harvesting Protocol (March 26, 2002)

• The OAIS Imperative: Enduring Record or Digital Dust? (April 19,2002)

• Paper Past, Digital Future: Managing Metadata Standards inTransition (May 29, 2002)

A New Harvest: Revealing Hidden Resources with the Open Ar-chives Metadata Harvesting Protocol was hosted by Lorcan Dempsey(Director, OCLC Office of Research) and featured a keynote presenta-tion by Herbert Van de Sompel (formerly Director, e-Strategy &Programmes, The British Library). The Open Archives InitiativeMetadata Harvesting Protocol is a mechanism that facilitates the collec-

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tion or ‘harvest’ of metadata from different servers, which in turn can beaggregated and reconfigured to provide general and distributed accessto the collective content of compliant servers. Joann Kaczmarek, Proj-ect Coordinator, Illinois Open Archives Initiative Metadata ProtocolHarvesting Project, and Visiting Assistant Professor, Library Adminis-tration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and StephenPinfield, Academic Services Librarian, University of Nottingham,United Kingdom, participated as ‘expert practitioners.’

The OAIS Imperative: Enduring Record or Digital Dust? was hostedby Meg Bellinger (Vice President, OCLC Digital and Preservation Re-sources) and featured a keynote presentation by Donald M. Sawyer(Lead, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Sci-ence Office of Standards and Technology).

An Open Archival Information System (OAIS) “is an archive, consist-ing of an organization of people and systems, that has accepted the re-sponsibility to preserve information and make it available for adesignated community” [www.ccsds.org/documents/word.bin/CCSDS-650.0-R-2.doc]. Bruce Ambacher, (then Special Assistant to the Director,Electronic and Special Media Records Services Division, U.S. NationalArchives and Records Administration) and MacKenzie Smith (AssociateDirector for Technology, MIT Libraries) participated as practitioners.

Paper Past, Digital Future: Managing Metadata Standards in Tran-sition was hosted by Gary Houk (Vice President, OCLC Cataloging andMetadata Services) and featured a keynote presentation by BarbaraTillett (Director, Integrated Library System Program Office, Library ofCongress).

As they seek to integrate electronic resources into their collectionsand deliver these resources to users, librarians and libraries are facingnew challenges. In an effort to control and manage digital resources,new information standards such as Dublin Core, ONline Informationexchange (ONIX), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Text En-coding Initiative (TEI) have emerged. Some complement established li-brary standards, while others have received consideration as alternativesor substitutes. In this presentation, the value and benefit of traditionaland emerging standards for facilitating access and use of print and digi-tal resources were reviewed.

Liz Bishoff (Project Director, Colorado Digitization Project) andSam Dempsey (Director, Data Development, Informata.com (Baker &Taylor)) were practitioner participants.

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Workshop

“NISSAT-NCSI Workshopon Developing Digital Libraries Using Open Source Software

(E-Prints Archive Softwareand Greenstone Digital Library Software)”

April 15-20, 2002National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science

Bangalore, Indiahttp://144.16.72.189/opendl/

In mid-April 2002, twenty-seven individuals affiliated with a varietyof organizations and institutions across India participated in a series ofworkshop sessions focused on developing practical skills in using twomajor Open Source software packages–Eprints Archive Software(EAS) and Greenstone Digital Library software (GSDL)–to create andmanage digital collections.

The workshop was divided into three parts:

• Part 1. Concepts and technologies (Day 1 and 2)• Part 2. Eprints Archive Software (EAS) (Day 3 and 4)• Part 3. Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) (Day 5 and 6)

The workshop culminated with a demonstration of the proceedingsof the International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL2001), which was published using GSDL. The publication offers inte-grated CD-based multi-media access to all papers (Word, PDF, PPT,MP3 audio clips) and provides browse and search features.

The materials and associated documentation developed for the work-shop are available from the workshop Web site, and cover the followinggeneral and specific topics and issues:

• Digital Libraries: Workflows, processes and software• Document formats and their characteristics• Scanning and OCR• Acrobat and PDF• Metadata and digital libraries• XML–concept, applications, case studies• Digitization: workflows, costing and management• E-Print Archives Software (EAS): Overview

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• EAS: Installation and configuration• EAS: Collection building and searching• EAS: Interoperability and cross searching• GSDL: Overview• GSDL: Installation• GSDL: Collection Building• GSDL: Search and browse• GSDL: Collection Configuration• GSDL: Collection Organizer• ICADL: 2001 CD demonstration

In addition, the presentation slides for the associated labs for most of thesessions are included, as are links to the EAS (eprints.org) and the GSDLsoftware (greenstone.org), as well as test collections. The workshop site in-cludes a list of participants and their addresses, as well as workshop photo-graphs. A directory of free or Open Source software is also provided.

The workshop was organized and conducted by The National Centrefor Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,and sponsored by National Information System for Science and Tech-nology (NISSAT), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research(DSIR), India. Dr. T. B. Rajashekar, Principal Research Scientist andAssociate Chairman, NCSI, served as the workshop coordinator.

PROJECTS

MARC XML: MARC 21 XML Schemahttp://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/

The Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Stan-dards Office recently announced the completion of a schema for MARC21 records in an XML structure for use in communicating MARC 21 rec-ords. This framework is intended to be flexible and extensible as to allowusers to utilize MARC data in ways specific to their needs. The frame-work will contain many components such as schemas, stylesheets, andsoftware tools.

The core of the MARC XML framework is a simple XML schema thatcontains MARC data. In the framework, all control fields, including theleader, are treated as a data string; fields are treated as elements with thetag as an attribute and indicators also treated as attributes. Subfields aretreated as sub-elements with the subfield code as an attribute. This baseschema can be used for the creation of full MARC records or permit

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MARC data records to be converted into other metadata formats, suchas the Dublin Core (DC) or the Metadata Object Description Schema(MODS), a new schema for a bibliographic element set expressed inXML with language-based rather than numeric tags. The MARC XMLschema retains the semantics of MARC and will not need to be edited toreflect minor changes to MARC21. A single schema serves the fiveMARC 21 formats (bibliographic data, holdings data, authority data,classification data, and community information).

In addition to access to the MARC XML schema, the project site in-cludes a detailed graphic illustration of the schema, as well as sampleMARC XML documents. Various tools and utilities are also available,notably a MARC 21 to MARC XML conversion tool for reading andwriting MARC 21 records, and various conversion stylesheets (e.g.,MARC XML to Dublin Core Stylesheet; Dublin Core to MARC XMLStylesheet). Three brief overviews of the architecture, design consider-ations, and uses and features are also provided.

The MARC XML schema will be maintained by the Library of Con-gress as will software that enables ‘lossless’ conversion to and fromMARC21 records in the ISO 2709 structure (Format for InformationExchange). The METS schema was developed in collaboration withOCLC and the Research Libraries Group (RLG), and was reviewed bythe National Library of Canada and the National Library of Medicine(NLM).

METS: Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standardhttp://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/

The METS (Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard) schema is astandard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadatafor textual and image-based works within a digital library, expressed usingXML schema. The standard is maintained by the Network Developmentand MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, and is being de-veloped as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation (DLF).

The METS schema attempts to build upon the Making of the AmericaII project (moa.umdl.umich.edu) (cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/) and seeksto provide an XML document format for encoding metadata necessaryfor both the management of digital library objects within a repositoryand exchange of such objects between repositories or between reposi-tories and their users. Depending on the application, a METS docu-ment could be used in the role of Submission Information Package

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(SIP), Archival Information (AIP), or Dissemination Information Pack-age (DIP) within the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Refer-ence Model (see above).

A METS document consists of four major sections:

• Descriptive metadata. The descriptive metadata section may linkto descriptive metadata external to the METS document (e.g., aMARC record in an online catalog (OPAC) or an Encoded Archi-val Description (EAD) finding aid maintained on a server or con-tain internally embedded descriptive metadata, or both).

• Administrative metadata. The administrative metadata sectionprovides information on the manner in which files were createdand stored, intellectual property rights, metadata regarding theoriginal source object from which the digital library objects de-rives, and information regarding the provenance of the files com-prising the digital library object.

• File groups. The file groups section lists all files comprising allelectronic versions of the digital objects. File group elements maybe nested to provide for subdividing the files by object version.

• Structural map. The structural map is the heart of a METS document.It outlines a hierarchical structure for the digital library object, andlinks the elements of that structure to content files and metadata thatpertain to each element.

A more detailed explanation of each section and their interrelationshipsis available from the METS overview and tutorial page (www.loc.gov/standards/mets/METSOverview.html).

Access is provided to the METS Schema 1.0 (zeta) as well as to rele-vant documentation and the associated Xlink Schema. In addition, accessis provided to a proposed revision of the METS Schema (METS Schema1.1). Two METS example documents are available, notably a METSXML document set for a serial publication prepared by MacKenzieSmith of the Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems.

The METS site also provides access to various METS ‘extenders,’and include ‘extension schema’ for descriptive metadata and adminis-trative metadata. The administrative metadata category provides entriesand links to schemas proposed for use in the Library of Congress Au-dio-Visual Prototyping Project and the NISO Technical Metadata forDigital Still Images Standards Committee (NISO MIX), while the de-scriptive metadata category includes access to the Generic DescriptiveMetadata (GDM) scheme and the Metadata Object Description Schema(MODS).

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A METS Java Toolkit (Draft Version 1.0 (alpha)) (hul.harvard.edu/mets/)for the procedural construction, validation, and “marshalling and unmarsha-lling” for METS has been developed and is linked from the METS page.

In late May 2002, the METS editorial board was formed. Membersinclude Jerome McDonough (New York University (Chair)), RickBeubien (University of California), Morgan Cundiff (Library of Con-gress), Nancy Hoebelheirich (Stanford University), Mark Kornbluh(Michigan State University), Cecilia Preston (Preston & Lynch),Merrilee Proffitt (Research Libraries Group), Richard Rinehart (Berke-ley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive), Mackenzie Smith (Massachu-setts Institute of Technology), Taylor Surface (OCLC), and RobinWendler (Harvard University).

An unmoderated electronic discussion list, the METS forum([email protected]), is open to members of the METS development com-munity and to interested individuals. A subscription may be placed bysending an e-mail message to the Library of Congress listserv ([email protected]) with the message ‘subscribe METS.’

NESSTAR: Networked Social Science Tools and Resourceshttp://www.nesstar.org

NESSTAR (Networked European Social Science Tools and Re-sources) is an integrated suite of software that facilitates the identifica-tion and use of socio-economic and similarly structured, data. It enablesusers to:

• browse distributed data catalogs over the Web,• examine associated metadata,• execute simple data analysis (e.g., cross tabulations, regressions,

and graphical displays), and• download entire datasets or data subsets in one of a number of

common formats.

The system contains registration and authentication facilities to filteraccess to certain datasets as well as a suite of data publishing and servermanagement tools. NESSTAR exists as four discrete products: theNESSTAR Explorer, NESSTAR Light, NESSTAR Server, and NESSTARPublisher.

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NESSTAR Explorer is a Java application client that permits interactionwith server-stored data from the user’s desktop. It has three main stagesof operation: a search feature; a results screen in which datasets can belisted and sorted by select metadata; and a retrieval function that allowsthe user to explore and manipulate dataset metadata and the associateddataset itself. In the latter, the user has the option to display data in tabularor graphical form. NESSTAR Light (nesstar.nsd.uib.no/nesstarlight/index.jsp) enables the user to perform most of the functions of the NESSTARExplorer with a Web browser. NESSTAR Publisher consists of a set oftools that enable the user to convert, append and manage data. It allowsthe user to specify the manner in which data are described and provides afacility to add catalog descriptions.

NESSTAR was funded by DGXIII of the European Commission un-der the Fourth Framework Telematics Applications Programme.

OAIsterhttp://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/

OAIster is a project of the University of Michigan Digital LibraryProduction Services that seeks to “create a wide-ranging collection offree, useful, previously difficult-to-access digital resources that are eas-ily searchable by anyone.” It is intended to be global in scope, providingcross-repository searching of metadata describing publicly-available dig-ital objects, such as electronic books, online journals, audio files (e.g.,wav, mp3), images (e.g., tiff, gif), video (e.g., mpeg, QuickTime™), andreference texts (e.g., dictionaries, directories). Its focus is to provideready access to digital resources that reside in the ‘hidden Web,’ the re-gion of the Web that is typically not indexed by most search engines (e.g.,Google and Alta Vista), and hence is inaccessible for most users.

The project will use of the Open Archives Initiative Metadata Har-vesting Protocol (OAI-MHP) (www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm) as the framework for retrieving digital resources. The Uni-versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has been contracted todevelop and provide the ‘harvester’ mechanism that will collect, aggre-gate, and update the metadata from cooperating compliant repositories,while the University of Michigan will construct the indexing and presen-tation tools for organizing the harvested data, and develop and provide anassociated search engine service (oai.grainger.uiuc.edu/michigan.htm).

The search interface formally became available in late June 2002 with acollection of nearly 275,000 records harvested from more than 50 institu-

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tional sites. Users may search all record fields concurrently, or limit asearch to keyword, title, author, and/or subject. Search request may be lim-ited by resource type (i.e., text, image, audio, video). An annotated list ofharvested collections is available (oaister.umdl.umich.edu/viewcolls.html).Planned system enhancements include the ability to search using Booleanand proximity operators, fine tuning of title, author, and date sorting, singledate and date range searching, downloading and e-mailing of records, andcollection selection and specification.

Kat Hagedorn is the Metadata Harvesting Librarian and project man-ager and Michael Burek serves as the OAIster programmer. Institutionsinterested in participating in OAIster are welcome to contact the projectdirector ([email protected]).

The OAIster project is one of seven OAI Metadata Harvesting Proto-col projects granted funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation insummer 2001. The Research Libraries Group (RLG), Emory Univer-sity, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholar in Washing-ton, D.C., the University of Virginia, and the Southeastern LibraryNetwork, Inc. (SOLINET), were the other institutions that receivedsupport from the foundation (www.arl.org/newsltr/217/waters.html).

PUBLICATIONS

Action Plan

“ Bibliographic Control of Web Resources:A Library of Congress Action Plan”

Library of Congress Cataloging Directoratehttp://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/actionplan.html

From November 12-15, 2000, the Cataloging Directorate of the Li-brary of Congress convened the Bicentennial Conference on Biblio-graphic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenge ofNetworked Resources and the Web (lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/)as a working meeting of experts to generate recommendations for theLibrary of Congress to improve bibliographic control of Web resources.Six major overarching objectives and themes emerged:

• increased availability of standard records for Web resources• enhanced record display and access across multiple systems• collaboration among metadata standards communities for better

bibliographic control of Web resources

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• development of automated tools for harvesting and maintainingmetadata

• provision of appropriate training for the Web environment• support of research and development to enhance bibliographic

control of Web resources.

Specific recommendations and their associated priorities were re-cently announced in the directorate’s Bibliographic Control of Web Re-sources: A Library of Congress Action Plan. Among the noteworthyrecommendations within these objectives are the following:

Increase the availability of standard records for selected Web resources

• Develop a plan to increase the creation and availability of standardrecords for electronic resources to include authority control andsubject analysis

• Explore ways to re-purpose/reuse metadata received under pro-grams for registration, acquisitions, cataloging, copyright, and re-lated activities

• Compile/review/disseminate selection criteria for electronic re-sources to supplement traditional selection criteria

Enhance the access to and display of records for selected Web re-sources across multiple systems

• Define requirements for a common interface for searching, retrieving,and sorting across a range of discovery tools, such as: abstracting andindexing services; other content databases; and other catalogs

• Explore ways to enrich metadata records by focusing on providingadditional subject and other access mechanisms and increasinggranularity of access and display

• Investigate making Library of Congress Classification and SubjectHeadings available at no cost on the Internet

Work collaboratively with metadata standards communities to im-prove bibliographic control of selected Web resources

• Identify and publicize existing registries of metadata schemes toestablish points of convergence among them, to promote the con-sistent labeling of fields, and to facilitate mapping of fields

• Enhance MARC21 to support display of hierarchical relationshipsamong records for a work, its expressions and its manifestations

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(based on the IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Rec-ords (FRBR))

• Convey and reiterate the need for the continuing development ofAACR2 to provide principles and practices for bibliographic accessto and control of the full array of electronic resources on a timely ba-sis and in harmony with other descriptive cataloging standards

Develop automated tools for extracting, creating, harvesting and main-taining metadata to improve bibliographic control of selected Web

• Develop specifications for a tool that will enable libraries to ex-tract metadata from Web-based resources in order to create catalogrecords, and that will detect and report changes in resource contentand bibliographic data in order to maintain those records

• Develop specifications for embedded metadata that can be used bysoftware developers to incorporate usable metadata into the outputof their products. Target industries include developers of word pro-cessors, HTML editing tools, Website development tools, imagecreation and manipulation tools, and multimedia production tools

• Promote convergence of standards for harvesting metadata

Provide appropriate training/continuing education to improve bib-liographic control of selected Web resources

• Address educational needs through improved curricula in libraryand information science schools and through continuing educationfor cataloging practitioners by: promoting consensus on determi-nation of core competencies

• Sponsor a series of open forums on metadata needs to support ref-erence service in conjunction with various professional associa-tion meetings to include catalogers, reference librarians, vendors,systems developers, publishers, and administrators

• Promote the use and understanding of standards for describingWeb resources through education, targeted outreach, etc.

Support research and development on emerging metadata standardsand address the challenges of interoperability to improved biblio-graphic control of selected Web resources

• Research user needs and approaches in accessing the catalog andother discovery tools in a networked environment to develop usertools for customization

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• Support research and development to improve controlled vocabu-lary mediating tools, including a simplified LCSH

• Support research and development on the changing nature of thecatalog to include consideration of a framework for its integrationwith other discovery tools

Framework

“A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections”Institute of Museum and Library Services

November 2001http://www.imls.gov/pubs/forumframework.htm

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently re-leased a report intended to serve as a ‘framework’ for “identifying, or-ganizing, and applying existing knowledge and resources that can beused as an aid in the development of local guidelines and procedures.”The framework has been developed in the context of ‘indicators ofgoodness’ for four types of entities, notably collections, objects,metadata, and projects. ‘Indicators of goodness’ include factors thatcontribute to interoperability, reusability, persistence, verification, anddocumentation, as well as usability, accessibility, and fitness for use ap-propriate to the anticipated user group. The framework is intended fortwo audiences: individuals and organizations that seek to develop gooddigital collections, and funding agencies and organizations that wish toencourage the creation of quality collections.

For each category with the framework, general principles relating toquality are defined and discussed. In addition, supporting resourcessuch as standards, guidelines, best practices, explanations, discussions,clearinghouses, case studies, or examples, are provided.

The report was prepared by members of the Digital Library Forum, agroup convened by the IMLS to discuss issues relating to the implemen-tation and management of networked digital libraries. Members of theforum who contributed to the report include Liz Bishoff, ColoradoDigitization Alliance; Priscilla Caplan (chair), Florida Center for Li-brary Automation; Tim Cole, University of Illinois Urbana-Cham-paign; Anne Craig, Illinois State Library; Daniel Greenstein, DigitalLibrary Federation; Doug Holland, Missouri Botanical Garden; EllenKabat-Lensch, Eastern Iowa Community College; Tom Moritz, Ameri-can Museum of Natural History; and John Saylor, Cornell University.

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Journal Issue

“E-Serials Cataloging: Access to Continuing and IntegratingResources via the Catalog and the Web”

The Serials Librarian 41 (nos. 3 and 4) 2002Edited by Jim E. Cole and Wayne Jones

http://www.ameshomeschool.org/serialslibrarian/sl_41n3-4.htm

Access to continuing and integrating resources via the catalog and theWeb is the theme of the recently published issue of The Serials Librarian,the international journal for the management of serials and other continu-ing resources published by The Haworth Press, Inc. Contributions for thisspecial volume are organized into several broad categories: General,Standards, Education and Training, Policies and Procedures, Nationalprojects and Local Applications, and Books, Serials and the Future.

Among the representative articles in this double issue are:

• “E-Serials Cataloging in the 1990’s: A Review of the Literature”by Ann Copeland

• “ISBD(ER) and Its Role in the Management of Electronic Re-sources” by Sten Hedberg

• “The Integration of Electronic Resources into Cataloging Instruc-tion in the LIS Curriculum” by Taemin Kim Park

• “Teaching Seriality: A Major Education Challenge” by Arlene G.Taylor

• “Web Resources for Cataloging Electronic Serials and ContinuingResources: An Annotated Bibliography” by John Blosser, TimHagan, and Yvonne W. Zhang

• “Internet Resources Cataloging in ARL Libraries: Staffing andAccess Issues” by Jeanne M. K. Boydston and Joan M. Leysen

• “Notes for Remote Access Computer File Serials” by Beatrice L.Caraway

• “NESLI MARC Records: An Experiment in Creating MARC Rec-ords for E-Journals” by Ross MacIntyre

• “Improving Access to E-Journals and Databases at the MIT Li-braries: Building a Database-Backed Web Site Called ‘Vera’ ” byNicole Hennig

• “The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek: A Successful LibraryService for Electronic Journals in Germany” by Evelinde Hutzlerand Gerald Schupfner

• “E Is for Everything: The Extra-Ordinary, Evolutionary [e-]Journal”by Gerry McKiernan

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Syllabus

“Metadata: Organizing Online Information”University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies

540-691: Special Topics in Information ScienceSteven J. Miller, Instructor

http://www.uwm.edu/~mll/691.html

Course Description

Principles and current applications of descriptive metadata for orga-nizing online information. Explores methods for enabling users to find,identify, select, obtain, and use digital networked resources by means ofa variety of metadata content standards and encoding schemes. Includesissues of interoperability and mapping among diverse standards andschemes and issues of navigation, collocation, bibliographic relation-ships, and linkages within online information retrieval systems.

Course Objectives

• Be able to define the following terms and to discuss the major is-sues relating to them in the context of organizing online informa-tion resources:

• metadata, semantics/content standard, syntax/encoding stan-dard, digitization project, SGML, HTML, XML, DTD, parser,Web directory, search engine, HTML meta tag, attribute/valuepair, spamming, TEI, EAD, FGDC, IMS, VRA, CIMI, GILS,ONIX, Dublin Core, DCMI, DCMES, DC qualifiers, elementrefinement, encoding scheme, controlled vocabulary, formalnotation, ISO, NISO, IFLA, FRBR, work/expression/manifes-tation/item, finite and continuing resources, content and carrier,resource type and format, multiple versions, granularity, biblio-graphic relationships, bibliographic linkages, AACR, MARC,cataloging, OPAC, e-book, e-journal, interoperability, elementmapping, crosswalk, RDF, XML namespace, metadata registry

• Be aware of and able to discuss how different kinds of metadataschemes and standards are currently being used to organize differ-ent kinds of online resources within different information commu-nities and contexts.

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• Appreciate and be able to discuss and provide concrete examplesof the complex characteristics of online resources and the major is-sues involved in organizing, describing, and providing access tothem, including fixity and fluidity, finite and continuing resources,content and carrier, resource type and format, multiple versions,granularity, bibliographic relationships, linkages, controlled vo-cabularies and formal notations.

• Gain experience in doing actual resource description using DublinCore metadata elements and use this hands-on experience to en-hance achievement of the objectives stated above.

Select Course Topics

• Introduction to metadata• Metadata and the Web• Markup languages• Diverse metadata schemes• Metadata and specialized resources• Dublin Core• Functions and descriptive metadata• Users and searching needs• Controlled vocabularies, standardized notations, and ontologies• Metadata and library resources• AACR and MARC for remote-access electronic resources• Issues in cataloging and managing Internet resources• OCLC CORC Metadata interoperability and cross-domain searching• Metadata mapping and crosswalks• Semantic Web

This syllabus and its associated required and supplemental readingsare an excellent resource for the novice or veteran seeking to learn or re-inforce knowledge of various metadata initiatives and applications. Theselected readings are written by leaders in the field and include the keyand core literature.

The author is grateful to Steven J. Miller for permission to excerptand cite this syllabus. Mr. Miller notes that the syllabus is a fluid docu-ment which he periodically updates.

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