2. XML: The Strategic Opportunity Roy Tennant

3. 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!

4. Turning Challenges Into Opportunities  All of these challenges are either solved or helped by…you guessed it…XML!  How?

5. Key Challenge  Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find

12. Key Challenge  Our users want more information about books

14. 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

15. SOAP Request POST /InStock HTTP/1.1 Host: www.stock.org Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding"> IBM

16. SOAP Response HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/soap; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: nnn <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" soap:encodingStyle="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding"> 34.5

17. Key Challenge  We must do more with less

21. 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

22. Key Challenge  Our bibliographic infrastructure is increasingly unable to get the job done

23. 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

25. Fundamental Questions  Does it Get the Job Done?  Can We Do Better?  Is Changing Worth It?

26. 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

27. Archival Systems Electronic research databases Institutional Repositories Pathfinders Digital Library Collections Non-ILS Metadata Systems Silos Everywhere!

28. 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

29. A New Bibliographic Infrastructure A New Bibliographic Infrastructure  Multiple bibliographic schemata  A transfer schema  Application rules  Best practices  Crosswalks  Enrichment Services  Tools

30. A Transfer Schema  An XML schema for ingesting, storing, and transferring multiple bibliographic metadata packages intact

31. ONIXONIX MARCMARC Dublin Core VRA Core

32. ONIXONIX MARCMARC Dublin Core VRA Core METSMETS

33. 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

37. 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

38. Key Challenge  We must deal with a wide variety of bibliographic systems to do our jobs

39. http://repositories.cdlib.org/

40. http://dspace.mit.edu/

42. 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)

43. http://errol.oclc.org

45. Key Challenge  Our users want services tailored to their particular needs and desires

52. 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