Confessions of a Mad Librarian

The 5-cent tour of XML:
* XML is a way to make up our tags in an online metadata environment that have innate hierarchy -- the tags must be well-formed (opening and closing tags that nest, etc.)
* Valid XML is made up of specified tags with specified rules that match a schema (the set of rules for validation
* XML is stricter than HTML -- bad HTML can still display content in a web browser (the browser will ignore the bad code), while bad XML will prevent any display of content.
* XSLT: stylesheets for XML

XML Challenges

• Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find


• Our users want more information about books


• Our users want services tailored to their needs and desires


• We must do more with less


• Our bibliographic infrastructure is increasingly unable to get the job done


• We must deal with a variety of metadata systems now

Users want more information about books -- via web services
SOAP & REST (protocols/standards for web services)
SOAP -- Simple Object Access Protocol: a lightweight way to exchange encoded information between applications
REST -- REpresentational State Transfer: a URL-based (HTTP Get) way of sending a SOAP request and receiving an XML-encoded response
Amazon and Google can be searched via web services

We must do more with less
Automated content draws people to new content
RSS feeds - RSS (Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication): useful for current awareness

The current bibliographic infrastructure is not working
Foundation: MARC syntax, MARC elements and AACR2 application rules -- non-intuitive, not used outside of the library world
The fundamental question: Does it get the job done?
The answer: The job has changed --
* Former sole function -- inventory control; now -- resource discovery
* Multiple, diverse metadata streams
* Online delivery
* Multiple file formats
Major mission creep
Non-ILS metadata systems are spawning everywhere: electronic research databases, archival systems, insitutional repositories

Can we do better? YES
Technological advances, cheap storage and different needs are all on our side

A new bibliographic infrastructure is needed:

• Multiple bibliographic schemata: it won't all fit into MARC


• A transfer schema: an XML schema for ingesting, storing and transfering bibliographic data, such as METS


• Application rules


• A review of best practices


• Concentrating on enrichment services


• Tools


• Crosswalks

Is changing worth it?
We can encompass more information and do things for more people, but we need to recreate our bibliographic foundations to deal with different systems (ex.: D-Space, e-Scholarship, OAIster)