SCC/MLA

The South Centeral Chapter of MLA is having their annual meeting here in Houston, Oct. 22-26, 2004.

Text Encoding Initiative

The TEI Workgroup on SGML-XML Migration announces results.

The TEI Task Force on SGML to XML Migration was chartered in May 2002 by the TEI Council with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and charged with developing recommendations for migrating existing TEI resources from SGML (P3) to XML (P4). The Task Force was comprised of representatives from projects with significant TEI SGML, along with selected technical experts and the TEI editors, and has attempted to document the methods and tools necessary to migrate legacy TEI data to XML.

PDA Expansion Cards

A preprint of a paper due to be published on cataloging PDA expansion cards is available. Who ever thought cataloging was dull? New challenges appear all the time.Just Another Format: Integrating Resources for Users of Personal Digital Assistants by Denise Koufogiannakis, Pam Ryan and Susan Dahl

This article discusses the integration of library resources for users of personal digital assistants (PDAs), with a focus on collections issues within an academic environment. The University of Alberta Libraries' PDA services initiative is used as an example of integrating services and resources into a library collection. Licensing issues, loaning of PDA books on expansion cards, cataloguing and processing of PDA books, and making existing resources PDA-accessible are all discussed. Although PDA integration is still at the early stages within libraries, there is much that libraries can do to support users of personal digital assistants.

Composers' Cutters

The folks at Cornell have provided an extensive listing of composer names and the related cutters.

Semantic Web

Semantic Blogging : Spreading the Semantic Web Meme by Steve Cayzer is on the the symantic web applied to blogging.

This paper is about semantic blogging, an application of the semantic web to blogging. The semantic web promises to make the web more useful by endowing metadata with machine processable semantics. Blogging is a lightweight web publishing paradigm which provides a very low barrier to entry, useful syndication and aggregation behaviour, a simple to understand structure and decentralized construction of a rich information network. Semantic blogging builds upon the success and clear network value of blogging by adding additional semantic structure to items shared over the blog channels. In this way we add significant value allowing view, navigation and query along semantic rather than simply chronological or serendipitous connections.

Semantic Web

An no-nonsense guide to Semantic Web specs for XML people appears on Stefano Mazzocchi's 'blog.

The Semantic Web has a serious problem: the XML people don't understand it.

They think it's an utterly complex way to write metadata that you can do with simple namespaces. The two worlds (despite being both hosted inside W3C) don't talk very much. Many (if not all) W3C folks are all in the RDF camp (and have been there for a while) and they see XML as a half-baked attempt to solve issues that RDF already solves. Unfortunately, not having been in the XML camp at all, they have no way to communicate with the other side.

The XML camp, on the other hand, thinks that they know how to build things that work, while the RDF people are all sitting in their ivory towers telling them that what they are doing is wrong, but without understanding their real-world needs.

Frankfurt Principles

The Hungarian translation of the "Frankfurt Principles" has been posted on the IFLA website.

Dewey

A supplement to the original Graphic Novels in DDC: Discussion Paper has been posted to the Dewey web site. The supplement poses additional questions about two points raised in the original discussion paper.

• Is subarranging by country of original publication a useful strategy?
• Should fotonovelas and graphic novels be classed together in the same numbers, or should they be separated?

They are still hoping to receive advice by August 16, 2004.

Spelling Errors & Typos

Using OCLC Connexion to find typographical errors in authority records by Jeffrey Beall appears in OCLC Systems & Services (2004) v. 20, no. 2 pp71-75

Typographical errors exist in bibliographic and authority records and can hinder patron access to library materials. Until recently, a widely available systematic approach to finding typographical errors in authority records did not exist. OCLC Connexion provides a keyword search capability of the Library of Congress Authority File, allowing librarians to find and report typographical errors in authority records. With some modifications, a list of common typographical errors in bibliographic records can be used to create a similar list for authority records. This effort will contribute to reducing the number of typographical errors in authority records.

Here is another area for those contributing to Typographical Errors in Library Databases. Because of efforts like these our catalogs are cleaner and better for our users.

XML in the Library

The book XML Publishing with AxKit made me wonder if AxKit might be used with the XML library catalog work at UB, NetCatalog. I find the ideas of the folks at Bufallo facinating. A good introduction to the project is Breaking Through the Invisible Web by Mark Ludwig

Cataloging Photographs

SEPIADES Cataloguing photographic collections by Edwin Klijn and Yola de Lusenet for the European Commission on Preservation and Access describes a tool and data set for cataloging photographic images.

This report aims to provide background information on the sepiades (SEPIA Data Element Set) advisory report and sepiades software tool. Both were developed in the framework of the sepia (Safeguarding European Photographic Images for Access) project, an eu-funded project on preservation and digitisation of photographic collections that ran from 1999 until 2003.

SEPIADES is a multilevel data element set to catalogue photographic collections. Apart from 21 core elements, it contains many suggestions for use of specific, detailed elements. This report explains about the motives behind sepiades, providing an introduction to both the model and software tool. It is aimed at all those involved in cataloguing photographic collections, both cataloguers and decision makers.

The tool looks worth investigating. It has:

• Multilevel description
• Flexible and easy customizing
• Records stored in XML
• Export function to Dublin Core
• OAI-PMH compliant
• Flexible integration with other systems
• Full text search-and-retrieval

Seen on ResourceShelf