XML

World Wide Web Consortium Issues Exclusive Canonical XML as a W3C Recommendation.

This specification augments the previous Canonical XML Recommendation to better enable a portion of an XML document (i.e., a fragment) to be as portable as possible while preserving the digital signature. It works in combination with XML Signatures, the W3C Recommendation produced jointly by W3C and the IETF in February, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for digital signatures.

Exclusive XML Canonicalization meets this need by providing a method of serializing an XML fragment into a portable and canonical form. This functionality, when combined with XML Signature, is critical for electronic commerce because it ensures the integrity of documents and protocol messages that travel between multiple XML processors.

Ensuring the document is authentic is also important in academic research. This is an important piece of structure.

OCLC

OCLC-Cat is a discussion forum for library staff using or considering any OCLC cataloging and metadata services, such as WebDewey, Passport, CatME, Connexion, and MARS.

TEI

"The Text Encoding Initiative invites proposals for the development and delivery of training courses and materials to be recognized by the TEI. We invite interested parties to contact us or submit proposals in writing that will meet the training needs of the community. We are committed to working with one or more parties to help develop the proposals so that they can be certified by the Text Encoding Initiative."

Electronic Records Research

FOS News broght this to my attention. The 25 questions will help the NHPRC set priorities.

The State Archives Department of the Minnesota Historical Society is managing an effort to revisit and analyze the electronic records research agenda currently guiding the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

XML

A List Apart has the paper "Using XML by J David Eisenberg.

More than a rulebook for generating your own markup, XML is part of a family of technologies that work together in powerful ways. Eisenberg demonstrates some of that power by creating an XML-based markup language from scratch and transforming it for a variety of formats, using nothing but his noggin and some off-the-shelf tools.

Cataloging & Search Engines

Here is an interesting article comparing search engines and OPACs. Before the comparison, there is much discussion of the purpose of the catalog and how it is achieved. "On the Theory of Library Catalogs and Search Engines" by B. Eversberg.

CONSER

The latest issue of CONSERline, No. 21, Summer 2002, is available.

• From the editor
• Jean Hirons awarded Margaret Mann citation
• Chapter 12 is almost here!
• SCCTP update
• CONSER publication pattern initiative sets future directions
• Highlights from the CONSER Operations Committee meeting
• CONSER people

Distance Learning

Next week I'll be attending the Summer Workshop for Distance Learning Librarians. I'd love to hear any suggestions on how distance affects cataloging. My initial assumption is that good complete cataloging is more important in a distance environment. The user cannot easily scan the shelves in an area. Nor can they pick up an item and flip through to see if it what they need. TOC's, abstracts, references to reviews and links become more important. Any other thoughts?

Since I'll be in class all day and I expect readings in the evening, postings here may be made less often.

Open Source

A very interesting looking book is now available from LITA, Open Source Software for Libraries

This guide introduces the reader to OSS and how it could benefit libraries, and illustrates this with a variety of library projects that have both used and developed Open Source Software. Includes practical information on installation of the software and links to additional resources.

One of the chapters is "Managing MARC with Open Source Software" by Kevin Clarke.

IFLA

IFLAThe latest issue of SCATNews: Newsletter of the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing is available in PDF format. News of the section and news from Australia.

ISBD(M)

The IFLA Section on Cataloguing's ISBD Review Group is pleased to announce publication of the 2002 Version of the International Standard Bibliographic Description for Monographic Publications (ISBD(M)). The document is available in PDF format on IFLANET. This version incorporates changes necessary to make the provisions of this ISBD consistent with the "optionality" features described in IFLA's Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), published in 1998.

In general FRBR produced recommendations to make "optional" certain data elements hitherto considered "mandatory". In the new version of ISBD(M), inclusion of a data element is considered "mandatory" in all cases for certain data elements, and in other cases is considered "mandatory" when necessary for identification of the publication being described or otherwise considered important to users of a bibliography or a catalogue. To facilitate the application of the practices stipulated, ISBD(M) designates particular data elements as optional, i.e. a cataloguing agency is free to choose to include or exclude these elements. The policy is further explained within the document at 0.1.3, and a review of the Outline provided at paragraph 0.3.2 will reveal which data elements are optional.

The 2002 revision of the ISBD(M) will be published only on the Internet because the ISBD Review Group views it as an interim document subject to further review and revision in the near term. This continued attention to its provisions will be undertaken in an effort to take into consideration changes to national and multi-national cataloguing codes resulting from the need to adjust practices to fit the evolution of publications that has occurred in recent years -- in particular, the emergence of electronic resources. The Review Group is hopeful that the investigations and rule changes resulting from these code revision activities will facilitate its efforts to maintain the currency of the ISBDs as well.

jbyr@loc.gov

John Byrum, Jr., Chair, ISBD Review Group
Chief, Regional & Cooperative Cataloging
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C. 20540-4380
USA
Tel: +(202) 707-6511
Fax: +(202) 707-2824

LC Cataloging

With the approval of the Board of ALA's Reference User Services Association (RUSA), the Library of Congress has begun adding to its catalog records the annotations for the sites selected annually by the RUSA Machine Assisted Reference Section (MARS), Best Free Web Sites Committee. The lists, which have been compiled since 1999, appear in the fall issue of the RUSA Quarterly and on the ALA RUSA MARS website. Usually, 25-30 sites are selected each year. The Library of Congress project to add the annotations has been undertaken under the auspices of the Library's Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), a cross-departmental R & D group whose mission includes enriching the content of Library of Congress bibliographic records. The project follows a similar on-going undertaking to add annotations to the catalog records for the titles included in the annual list of print Outstanding Reference Sources produced by the ALA RUSA Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES). Additional information about BEAT projects is available from the BEAT web site.

jbyr@loc.gov

John D. Byrum, Jr.
Chief, Regional & Cooperative Cataloging
Library of Congress
Washington, D. C. 20540-4380
USA
Tel: +(202) 707-6511
Fax: +(202) 707-2824

UNIMARC

MARC21 and AARC are both not as clear as they could be on some topics. That is why there are the large binders with the LCRIs in cataloging departments. On a couple of these topics IFLA has provided guidance, it might be useful to review their guidelines as well as the Library of Congress Rule Interpertations.

Guidelines for Using UNIMARC for Component Parts The following guideline indicates how the UNIMARC format is to be used when creating records for two types of component parts: journal articles and articles in books. The focus here is on articles, although the treatment of other components that are one part of a larger physical piece would follow the same model.

Guidelines for Using UNIMARC for Microforms The following Guidelines indicate how the UNIMARC format is to be used when creating records for items which appear in the original hard copy publication and microreproduction forms. The focus here is on microforms, although the treatment of different kinds of reproduction would follow the same model.

Persistent URL

There is another PURL service available U-ID. This is a for profit organization. Seems to me the OCLC PURL system would be a better option for libraries. There is the need for these services. I just wonder why the OCLC service has not caught on more widely. The service there is free and so is the software to start your own service. When it first appeared I thought state libraries would establish PURL servers for their library systems and scholarly organizations would do the same for their fields. Hasn't happened.

A good introduction to persistent URL's is "URLs, PURLs & TRULs : Link Maintenance in the Web-accessible OPAC" by Tom Tyler. Or see my "Persistent Links, One Solution to a Common Problem"

MARC21

The updated proposals and discussion paper from the ALA Annual 2002 meetings of the MARC Advisory Committee are now available from the MARC Web site. They include a brief review of the discussion and status of the paper.

The updated papers are located at:

Proposal No. 2002-13

Discussion Paper No. 2002-DP08

Proposal No. 2002-11

Proposal No. 2002-06R

Proposal No. 2002-12

Proposal No. 2002-15

Proposal No. 2002-14

Proposal No. 2002-10

Proposal No. 2001-10R

Sincerely,

Jackie Radebaugh

Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress
Washington, DC
USA
Phone: +1-202-707-1153
Fax: +1-202-707-0115
E-Mail: jrad@loc.gov

Open Source Library System

Exciting news from the Koha project:

To the Koha community;

Bonjour,
Our first French translation did in fact come out last week, which sets the stage nicely for this weeks news. We've also seen continued growth of our developer and user bases (including an installation of FreeBSD -- Hooray!!)

The entire message is available. This project continues to go from one accomplishment to the next.

Library Open Source

The Callimachus Group exists to promote interaction between Open Source Library software projects. The page only lists tasks and members. The membership list does include the name of the open source project so it is a good place to begin a search on what is available.

MARC Transformations

Some notes on open source projects this morning. MARC4J is currently at beta version 6.

The goal of MARC4J is to provide an easy to use Application Programming Interface (API) for working with MARC records in Java.

Using MARC4J it is easy to write any kind of Java application or servlet that involves MARC or MARCXML data. MARC4J provides SAX2 consumers and producers for conversions between MARC and MARCXML, including support for character conversions between MARC-8 and UCS/Unicode environments. Together with the SAX2 interface it is possible to write robust MARC to XML conversion programs simply by implementing the methods in the MarcHandler interface. The MARC record object model can be used to convert XML back to MARC tape format. The record object model is also suitable for in-memory editing of MARC records, just as DOM is used for XML editing purposes. The MARC4J library can also be used for reporting purposes, to import MARC records into databases, or to provide transformations between different MARC formats.

Bibliography Tool

zNote is an open source bibliography management tool.

Here is zNote, a web-based bibliography-management tool built with Zope and XML.

zNote is intended to ultimately be a replacement for tools like EndNote, ProCite, and to a certain extent, bibTeX. It uses a hierarchical XML data format which is more flexible than flat data, and it works using a set of pretty simple DOM calls to format, edit, etc.

zNote is currently at version 0.6. It is now a complete, functioning Python-classed product. It is totally usable (I have a couple of hundred entries in the one I'm using), but it has some rough edges that could be sanded off.

Like all open source projects, the more folks who contribute the fewer rough edges it will have.

E-Serials Cataloging

I just received this note from Gerry McKiernan. Be aware this is one large PDF file, not one for each paper. So it does take a while to load.

I am pleased to announce that free full-text (PDF) access to the entire contents of "E-Serials Cataloging: Access to Continuing and Integrating Resources via the Catalog and the Web," (The Serials Librarian 41 (3-4) 2002) edited by Jim Cole and Wayne Jones is now available from this site and here

This special issue contains my latest article "E is for Everything: The Extra-Ordinary, Evoluntionay [e-]Journal" which is a review of key features of The Eclectic Journal.

Here's a partial Table of Contents for the issue.

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 Resources by Sten Hedberg

The Integration of Electronic Resources into Cataloging Instruction 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 Continuing Resources: An Annotated Bibliography by John Blosser, Tim Hagan, and Yvonne W. Zhang

Internet Resources Cataloging in ARL Libraries: Staffing and Access Issues by Jeanne M.K. Boydston and Joan M. Leysen

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

On Pins and Needles: Using Structured Metadata for Collocation and Browsing Capability by Gregory Wool

NESLI MARC Records: An Experiment in Creating MARC Records for E-Journals by Ross MacIntyre

Improving Access to E-Journals and Databases at the MIT Libraries: Building a Database-Backed Web Site Called 'Vera' by Nicole Hennig

The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek: A Successful Library Service for Electronic Journals in Germany by Evelinde Hutzler and GeraldSchupfner

E is for Everything: The Extra-Ordinary, Evolutionary [e-]Journal
Gerry McKiernan

Don't forget to visit EJI(sm) for The Eclectic Experience

I am most thankful to Bill Cohen, Publisher of Haworth Press, for providing the PDF copy and for his permission to offer free access to the issue.

Gerry McKiernan
Extra-Ordinary Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu