Meeting : MODS Draft Version 3.0 available for review. Hot off the MODS listserv:

A proposed new version of the MODS XML schema (version 3.0) has been drafted by the MODS Team and is now available at the MODS web site at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-0-draft-aug-22.xsd. To assist in the review, the outline of elements and attributes for this version is available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-0-draft-outline.html.

The Library of Congress would like to invite those using MODS to review the new version of the schema and send any comments they may have to the MODS Team at LC. Please send comments by Sept. 5, 2003, after which we will evaluate them and make the new version available as soon as possible thereafter. The new version of MODS makes the following changes (MARC equivalents given where applicable):

1. Adds a version attribute to indicate the current major and minor version of the document (in this case 3.0). In addition uses the namespace and filename to indicate the schema version and in the filename (e.g.namespace: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/3 with filename: mods3.xsd
2. Declares all first-level MODS elements (those immediately subordinate to ) as global, so they can be root elements of instance documents, or imported into other schemas.
3. Takes out mandatory requirement for title; instead, requires at least one element (but not necessarily title).
4. Adds type "termsOfAddress" to (for titles, Jr., etc.) under . (MARC X00 $b and$c)

etc., etc., etc. [edited for length -- there are 10+ updates in all] [inSilico - A Princeton University Library metadata and digital library blog]

  6:20:21 PM   [Feedback ]  

Metadata : XML : Bibliography creation and XML. If any of you follow the bleeding-edge research and development of standards within the library world, you might have seen Bruce D'Arcus' name out there. He's a social scientist at Miami of Ohio who is interested in improving existing systems (or creating new ones) to handle bibliographic metadata for use in bibliographies. Why not just use something like Endnote? Well, such packages are not equipped to handle the multitude of different information sources out there. Furthermore, they're not necessarily automated to interoperate with data sources.

Bruce has started a blog about his research. Not surprisingly, he's finding that the biggest problem with the existing proprietary systems is that their metadata models are insufficient. For that reason, Bruce has become very active in the MODS community. He's an active poster on the MODS listserv, and is really showing how library standards are being utilized by non-librarians in a major way. The library community benefits from this type of interaction as well, as we instantly get to see how users want to use our bibliographic metadata.

Bruce has shown a strong interest in keeping such systems open by nature -- open standards, open source, etc. He's been heavily focused on OpenOffice.org (which if you aren't using by now, shame on you!), and XML database systems like Sleepycat DB XML and eXist.

Some of his findings thus far:

• Conclusion 5: XML document standards are poor for scholarly writing
• Conclusion 4: XML is ideal for scholars
• Conclusion 3: LaTeX and BibTeX is no solution
• Conclusion 2: Endnote is every bit the monopoly product Word is
• Conclusion 1: Word is not well-suited to academic work

I think he's spot on in everyone of those conclusions. His blog is well worth visiting. [inSilico - A Princeton University Library metadata and digital library blog]

  7:47:40 AM   [Feedback ]  

Metadata : OAI : OAI-rights. From the OAI-general listserv:

"The Open Archives Initiative and Project RoMEO announce the formation of OAI-rights. The goal of this effort is to investigate and develop means of expressing rights about metadata and resources in the OAI framework. The result will be an addition to the OAI implementation guidelines that specifies mechanisms for rights expressions within the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

The area of rights expressions is wide-open with many organizations proposing languages and mechanisms. Therefore, the OAI-rights effort will aim to be extensible, providing a general framework for expressing rights statements within OAI-PMH. These statements will target both the metadata itself and the resources described by that metadata. In the context of this broader framework, OAI-rights will use Creative Commons licenses as a motivating and deployable example.

A white paper describing the scope and issues in OAI-rights is available at http://www.openarchives.org/documents/OAIRightsWhitePaper.html." [inSilico - A Princeton University Library metadata and digital library blog]

  7:46:12 AM   [Feedback ]