This practical guide will be essential reading for all those needing to come up to speed quickly on XML and how it is used by libraries today. XML and its ancillary technologies XSD, XSLT and XQuery enables librarians to take advantage of powerful, XML-aware applications, facilitates the interoperability and sharing of XML metadata, and makes it possible to realize the full promise of XML to support more powerful and more efficient library cataloguing and metadata workflows. While by no means the only technology arrow in a modern-day cataloguer’s or metadata librarian’s knowledge and skills quiver, a firm understanding of XML remains relevant and helpful for those working in modern bibliographic control or with information discovery services. Even experienced cataloguers who know their way around the tags and strings of a MARC record occasionally need help and advice when creating metadata for sharing bibliographic records or digital collections on the web. This handbook from the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) illustrates with examples how XML and associated technologies can be used to edit metadata at scale, streamline and scale up metadata and cataloguing workflows and to extract, manipulate, and construct MARC records and other formats and types of library metadata. Containing 58 sample coding examples throughout, the book covers: essential background information, with a quick review of XML basics transforming XML metadata in HTML schema languages and workflows for XML validation an introduction to XPath and XSLT cataloguing workflows using XSLT the basics of XQuery, including use cases and XQuery expressions and functions working with strings and sequences, including regular expressions. This handbook will be useful reading for cataloguers of all levels of experience how to code for efficiencies. It will also be important reading for students taking Library and Information Science courses, particularly in cataloguing and information organization and retrieval.

This book provides a foundation of knowledge for catalogers, metadata librarians, and library school students on the Extensible Markup Language (XML)-one of the most commonly listed qualifications in today's cataloger and metadata librarian job postings. How are today's librarians to manage and describe the ever-expanding volumes of resources, in both digital and print formats? The use of XML in cataloging and metadata workflows can improve metadata quality, the consistency of cataloging workflows, and adherence to standards. This book is intended to enable current and future catalogers and metadata librarians to progress beyond a bare surface-level acquaintance with XML, thereby enabling them to integrate XML technologies more fully into their cataloging workflows. Building on the wealth of work on library descriptive practices, cataloging, and metadata, XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians explores the use of XML to serialize, process, share, and manage library catalog and metadata records. The authors' expert treatment of the topic is written to be accessible to those with little or no prior practical knowledge of or experience with how XML is used. Readers will gain an educated appreciation of the nuances of XML and grasp the benefit of more advanced and complex XML techniques as applied to applications relevant to catalogers and metadata librarians. Covers XML from basic concepts, such as core syntax and grammar, to advanced topics, such as transformation and schema design Provides an in-depth look at metadata standards used in the library domain, including MARC, Dublin Core, MODS, and others Introduces available XML tools, utilities, and XML related technologies Includes case studies that draw from real-world applications that show how XML is used in library cataloging and metadata workflows

Online scholarly publishing is revolutionizing scholarly communication, and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is among those protocols leading the way in the transformation process. OAI enables access to Web-accessible material by harvesting (or collecting) the metadata descriptions of the records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. Through a series of case studies, Cole and Foulonneau guide the reader through the process of conceiving, implementing and maintaining an OAI-compliant repository. Its applicability to both institutional archives and discipline based aggregators are covered, with equal attention paid to the technical and organizational aspects of creating and maintaining such repositories.