Extracting, repurposing and combining information is a core activity for info pros so it's good to know that we are being helped with this on the Web, even if we are not aware of it. Ben Ward describes how microformats - vocabularies which enable recurring information to be described and then reused - are making content available in a richer form and facilitating the combining of data.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Intro to Microformats
Microformats: Digging Deeper into the Web by Ben Ward is a short introduction to the topic. It would have been nice to see some mention of COinS, since this is a publication for information workers.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Dept. Stays
Here is a Christmas present from LOC. Lots of useless work avoided.
The Library of Congress will not undertake changing headings with the abbreviation “Dept.” to the fuller form at this time. Between August 20-October 1, 2010, the Library requested comments from the library community on changing “Dept.” to “Department” to follow the longstanding AACR2 provision (which is also incorporated into RDA: Resource Description and Access) of not abbreviating "department" in headings unless it is abbreviated by the body on the resource from which the name has been taken.
The few comments received by the Policy and Standards Division, Library of Congress, via email showed a clear preference for making this change but the limited response did not constitute a mandate. In addition those opposed to the change had solid reasons for not undertaking the change at this time. Consequently, the Library’s Policy and Standards Division will NOT proceed with implementing the change now. The issue will be reviewed again, following a decision regarding implementation of RDA.
Monday, December 20, 2010
ePub Metadata
Image via WikipediaIt seems those ePub books I've been downloading form Project Gutenberg have metadata. It is based on Dublin Core but does provide more specific terms for the creator. Talat Chaudhri at UKOLN writes about why ePub is of interest from the point of view of metadata and application profiles, in What is ePub?Is anyone harvesting ePub metadata? It seems it would be trivial to provide OAI-PMH interface to ePubs.
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