eXtensible Catalog Drupal Toolkit

News from the eXtensible Catalog project.

I happily announce, that after several months of development the eXtensible Catalog Drupal Toolkit 1.3 is just released.

The eXtensible Catalog Drupal Toolkit is the front end of eXtensible Catalog (XC) built on Drupal content management system. It contains a set of 25 Drupal modules, a custom theme, and installation profile, and a customized Apache Solr search engine. XC is a discovery interface built on FRBR and RDA-like metadata structure.

The release has a primary focus on data integrity, namely being able to successfully process record updates on a schedule basis. This includes new additions, updates and deletions of records. This release includes some Solr integrity fixes submitted by Kyushu University. The installation process for release 1.3 has also been reworked to include an implementation option using Drush that makes the installation substantially easier. If you have drush, the whole installation is only 4 steps.

We also created a custom Solr package which is pre-configured to the needs of the Drupal Toolkit.

You can find the installation instructions and release notes here:
http://drupal.org/project/xc_installation.

I hope you will find it useful. Now we are working hard on creating the first stable release of the Drupal 7 version. Any comments, suggestion and feedback are more than useful. You can find all the project's issue tracker here:
http://extensiblecatalog.lib.rochester.edu:8080/browse/DRUPAL.

The eXtensible Catalog project's website is available at http://eXtensibleCatalog.org

Problems with Library Catalogs

Catalog Matters Podcast no. 18: Problems with Library Catalogs by James Weinheimer is available.

In the last episode, I provided some examples of how people want to manipulate data instead of plowing their way through masses of printed text but I went on to express my doubts that the information in catalog records is actually the type of information that most people want to manipulate. I would like to continue that discussion.

SRU Approved as OASIS Standard

News from OASIS via OCLC, that SRU has been approved as OASIS Standard.

SRU (Search and Retrieve via URL) 2.0 has been approved as a standard by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). SRU is the web-based successor to Z39.50.

Functionality supported by SRU includes defining a standard query grammar for complex interoperable searching, the ability to specify the format of the documents returned and the mime-type of the response. SRU includes a capability to allow client software to query the server for functionality, include a complex description of the databases being searched.

Does SRW (Search and Retrieve via the Web) still have any life left? Once they were most often written together as SRU/SRW.

Proposal for Revision of the Urdu, Pushto, and Sindhi (in Arabic script) Romanization Tables

News from LC.

The Policy and Standards Division of the Library of Congress has received a revision proposal for the Urdu (in Arabic Script), Pushto, and Sindhi (in Arabic script) ALA-LC romanization tables. The proposal recommends a change in the romanization of the letters Svad, Zvad, Toe, and Zoe, as well as several minor corrections to the Urdu table.

The revision proposal http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman_urdu_proposal.pdf[PDF, 251 KB] highlights all additions and changes. A separate document < http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman_urdu_proposal_explanation.doc[DOC, 33 KB] enumerates changes in the revision proposal.

MODS in RDF

News from LC about MODS in RDF.

As a result of requests from the MODS community and for its own explorations into Linked Data, the Library of Congress has developed MODS/RDF, an ontology for MODS. This work has been informed by the previous work of developing a MADS/RDF ontology, which is in use now in id.loc.gov, LC's Linked Data Service, and by discussions in the MODS Editorial Committee. MODS/RDF may be used to create born-RDF MODS, or it may be used to create an RDF description corresponding to an existing MODS XML record. (An XSLT is available to help create MODS/RDF from MODS XML.)

Although it is still a draft and work in progress, LC would like to share its work on the ontology to encourage experimentation with MODS modeled as RDF. As the Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative and its BIBFRAME data model is emerging, it is clear that much work is going into expressing bibliographic data as RDF. We will be working on a mapping of MODS to BIBFRAME as the BIBFRAME model stabilizes, and this initial work on MODS/RDF may inform that task.

The ontology may be found at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/modsrdf/

Open-source Automated Library System Article

OPALS, the Open-source Automated Library System, is another option when considering Koha and Evergreen. A newspaper wrote OPALS expands research possibilities for John Abbott College students.

It’s quick, efficient and cheap. The system, which received tops honours from Perceptions 2012: An International Survey of Library Automation, was developed by the Pointe-Claire-based company Bibliofiche 11 years ago and has been reinvented three times since then in response to changing technology and client requests.

Music Cataloging using RDA

Comments are invited on Best Practices for Music Cataloging using RDA and MARC21

The MLA-BCC RDA Music Implementation Task Force is happy to announce the release of the first complete draft of "Best Practices for Music Cataloging using RDA and MARC21." This document represents over sixteen months of effort by the task force to determine and articulate best practices for the description of music resources (chiefly scores and audio recordings). In the increasingly decentralized environment of library metadata standards, this document addresses the need for specific guidance for catalogers describing music resources that is authoritative, yet flexible to the needs of individual institutions. It is intended to supplement the text of RDA itself, and accounts for (though does not presume full adherence to) the Library of Congress-Program for Cooperative Cataloging Policy Statements (LC-PCC PS).

MARC Tag Usage

OCLC will examine MARC tag usage in the WorldCat database.The goal of this new MARC Usage in WorldCat activity is to provide an evidence base for testing assertions about the value of capturing various attributes by demonstrating whether the cataloging community has made the effort to populate specific tags, not just to define them in anticipation of use.

OCLC Research seeks to use evidence of usage, as depicted in WorldCat, the largest aggregation of library data in the world, to inform decisions about where we go from here with the data that has been encoded using the MARC standard.

Security Issue

Ruby and Ruby on Rails have been widely used by the library coding community. In the past few weeks major security flaws have exposed in the tools. A List Apart (the other ALA) has an informative article on the topic, De-Railing Security Bugs.

I'm not sure what the Code4Lib folks have done about this issue.

VIAFbot Video

A video showing OCLC Research Wikipedian in Residence Max Klein and Senior Program Officer Merrilee Proffitt discussing the results of having Max's "VIAFbot" link Virtual International Authority File records to Wikipedia references.

OPAC Design

Catalog by Design | The User Experience by Aaron Schmidt appeared in the latest Library Journal. It has created quite a heated exchange on AUTOCAT.

Aside from paying very little attention to visual design and not caring about the impact of horrible typography, the big problem with library catalogs is that they are not designed to help people accomplish library tasks. Instead, they’re designed to expose catalog records. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is totally backward—prioritizing the collection, not people, results in a user-hostile interaction design and a poor user experience. Imagine the reverse: a tool that prioritizes helping people accomplish their tasks, whereby bibliographic data exists quietly in the background and is exposed only when useful.

NISO Newsletter

The latest issue of the NISO Newsline is available. Some of the topics include:

• NISO and NFAIS Publish Recommended Practices for Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials
• NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata and Indicators
• NISO and OAI Release Draft for Comments of ResourceSync Framework Specification
• ISO 22274:2013, Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content Concept-related aspects for developing and internationalizing classification systems
• ISO/IEC 20944:2013, Information technology Metadata Registries Interoperability and Bindings (MDR-IB)
• W3C Working Draft, RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax
• W3C Proposed Recommendation, SPARQL 1.1 Protocol
• W3C Working Draft, Linked Data Platform Use Cases and Requirements

Additions to MARC Code List for Relators

News from LC.

The following relator codes have been recently approved and will be added to the MARC Code List for Relators for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Additions:

prv

provider Use for a person or organization who produces, publishes, manufactures, or distributes a resource if specific codes are not desired (e.g. [mfr], [pbl]).

rcd

recordist Use for a person or organization who uses a recording device to capture sounds and/or video during a recording session, including field recordings of natural sounds, folkloric events, music, etc.

stg

setting Use for an entity in which the activity or plot of a work takes place, e.g. a geographic place, a time period, a building, an event.

Synchronizing Metadata and Resources Standards

NISO and Open Archives Initiative (OAI) project are working together on standards for synchronizing both metadata and Resources, ResourceSync.

ResourceSync will research, develop, prototype, test, and deploy mechanisms for the large-scale synchronization of web resources. ResourceSync is a joint cooperation between NISO and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) team, with work funded by the Sloan Foundation2. Building on the OAI-PMH strategies for synchronizing metadata, this project will enhance that specification using modern web technologies, but will allow for the synchronization of the objects themselves, not just their metadata.

Much of the discussion is taking place on Google+.

VuFind News

News from VuFind.

The latest version of the VuFind Open Source discovery software has just been released. This will be the final release in the 1.x series, with a 2.0 release planned for later in the year.

The new release includes several significant enhancements:

• Support for hierarchical collections of records, allowing better integration of archival materials and digital repositories.
• Built-in support for running without an Integrated Library System, making VuFind more convenient for non-library uses and offering smarter behavior during temporary ILS outages.
• The ability to provide custom recommendations to the user when no search results are found.
• An improved and expanded mobile interface.
• New index fields allowing VuFind to be used as an article index.
• Optional Clickatell support for text messaging.
• Several new interface translations: Basque, Catalan, Czech and Russian.

Additionally, several bug fixes and minor improvements have been incorporated.

MODS and MADS Implementation Registries

The Network Development and MARC Standards Office is in the process of updating the MODS and MADS Implementation Registries and the Tools for MODS pages and would like to add any new projects/tools that are currently available to the community.

If you would like your projects/tools to be included, please supply information for each category in the MODS Implementation Registry and/or Tools for MODS page, and your projects/tools will be added to the registry. For MADS projects, please supply information for each category in the MADS Implementation registry.

Cataloging Matters Podcast

James Weinheimer has made available another Cataloging Matters Podcast, Cataloging Matters No. 17: Catalog Records as Data.

Hello everyone and welcome to Cataloging Matters, a series of podcasts about the future of libraries and cataloging, coming to you from the most beautiful, and the most romantic city in the world, Rome, Italy. My name is Jim Weinheimer.

We hear that the problem with catalog records is that they are not data. This means that the records are meant primarily for display and consequently, are of very limited use in the new information environments. What does this mean and, I question, is it correct?

Open Discovery Initiative Survey Report

National Information Standards Organization's Open Discovery Initiative Working Group has released the results of a survey they conducted recently, ODI Survey Report: Reflections and Perspectives on Discovery Services.

The Open Discovery Initiative (ODI), a volunteer work group within the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), was formed to develop a recommended practice related to the index-based discovery services for libraries. The ODI aims to investigate and improve the ecosystem surrounding these discovery services, with a goal of broader participation of content providers and increased transparency to libraries....

This fall, the ODI dispatched a survey of librarians, content providers, and discovery service providers to learn more about the current state of satisfaction with these new research tools and to measure the value of various requirements in cross-sector practice. The survey addressed current levels of scholarly metadata delivery / indexing, technical successes / opportunities in these data exchanges, and potential benefits of greater development / distribution of discovery tool usage data.

MARBI Meeting Minutes

The MARBI Meeting Minutes from Anaheim, June, 2012 are now online.

Code4Lib Journal

The new issue of the Code4Lib Journal is now available. Plenty of informative articles. For instance:

• Indexing Linked Bibliographic Data with JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch by Thomas Johnson
• Metadata Analysis at the Command-Line by Mark Phillips
• Building a Library App Portfolio with Redis and Django by Jeremy Nelson