XML: The Strategic Opportunity

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XML The Strategic Opportunity

• Roy Tennant

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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
  particular 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 wide variety of metadata
  systems to do our jobs

Not a complete list by any means!
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Turning Challenges Into Opportunities

• All of these challenges are either solved or
  helped byyou guessed itXML!
• How?

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Key Challenge

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

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Key Challenge

• Our users want more information about books

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Web Services SOAP REST

• SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
• A lightweight way to exchange encoded information
  between applications
• REST (Representational State Transfer) is a URL
  (HTTP Get) based way of sending a SOAP request
  and receiving an XML-encoded response
• Both Google and Amazon can be searched via Web
  Services

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SOAP Request
POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host www.stock.org Content
-Type application/soapxml charsetutf-8 Content
-Length nnn lt?xml version"1.0"?gt ltsoapEnvelope
xmlnssoap"http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelo
pe" soapencodingStyle"http//www.w3.org/2001/12/
soap-encoding"gt ltsoapBody xmlnsm"http//www.
stock.org/stock"gt ltmGetStockPricegt
ltmStockNamegtIBMlt/mStockNamegt
lt/mGetStockPricegt lt/soapBodygt lt/soapEnvelope
gt
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SOAP Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type application/soap
charsetutf-8 Content-Length nnn lt?xml
version"1.0"?gt ltsoapEnvelope xmlnssoap"http//
www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" soapencodingSty
le"http//www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding"gt
ltsoapBody xmlnsm"http//www.stock.org/stock"gt
ltmGetStockPriceResponsegt
ltmPricegt34.5lt/mPricegt lt/mGetStockPriceRespo
nsegt lt/soapBodygt lt/soapEnvelopegt
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Key Challenge

• We must do more with less

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RSS

• Pick your acronym definition Really Simple
  Syndication (my fave), Rich Site Summary (from
  Netscape), or RDF __ (for those into the RDF
  version of RSS)
• Useful for current awareness
• Web logs (blogs) and blog readers
• Automatic web site updates

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Key Challenge

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

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Our Bibliographic Foundation

• Consists of
• MARC record syntax
• MARC bibliographic elements
• AACR2 application rules
• Although updated on a continuing basis, still
  based on 30-year-old, pre-web technology

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Fundamental Questions

• Does it Get the Job Done?
• Can We Do Better?
• Is Changing Worth It?

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Does it Get the Job Done?

• The problem is the job has changed
• Inventory control vs. resource discovery
• Multiple, diverse metadata streams
• Online delivery
• Multiple file formats
• Major mission creep with a relatively static
  infrastructure

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Non-ILS Metadata Systems
Electronicresearchdatabases
Institutional Repositories
Silos Everywhere!
Archival Systems
DigitalLibraryCollections
Pathfinders
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Can We Do Better?

• Very likely, due to
• Major changes in computer systems (fast
  processing, cheap disk, etc.),
• New technologies (the web, XML, etc.)
• Dramatically different needs
• Dramatically different opportunities

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A New Bibliographic Infrastructure

• Multiple bibliographic schemata
• A transfer schema
• Application rules
• Best practices
• Crosswalks
• Enrichment Services
• Tools

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A Transfer Schema

• An XML schema for ingesting, storing, and
  transferring multiple bibliographic metadata
  packages intact

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MARC
ONIX
DublinCore
VRACore
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METS
MARC
ONIX
DublinCore
VRACore
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Metadata Encoding and Transmission Schema (METS)

• Developed by the Library of Congress and the
  Digital Library Federation
• An XML wrapper for various metadata packages,
  as well as component files or the internal
  structure of a file
• An all-purpose metadata wrapper for digital
  objects and the metadata that describes them

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Is Changing Worth It?

• We will be able to encompass more information
  from more sources
• We will be able to do more things for more people
  and purposes
• We will grow to meet our opportunities rather
  than allow our challenges to defeat us
• Only by recreating our foundational
  infrastructure can we overcome our challenges and
  exploit our opportunities with vision and
  effectiveness

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Key Challenge

• We must deal with a wide variety of bibliographic
  systems to do our jobs

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• http//repositories.cdlib.org/

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http//dspace.mit.edu/
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OAI-PMH

• A protocol for harvesting (as opposed to
  searching) metadata from content repositories
• A digital library interoperability home run
• Simple, easy to implement and understand other
  uses are being layered on top (e.g., dynamic
  searching)

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http//errol.oclc.org
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Key Challenge

• Our users want services tailored to their
  particular needs and desires

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XML The Strategic Opportunity

• We are in the business of information
• XML provides a widely implemented means to
  encapsulate, transfer, and process information
• By remaking our infrastructure to take advantage
  of XML, we can be more efficient while being more
  effective
• XML is to librarianship what the Internet was a
  decade ago the essential strategic opportunity