The Bath Profile: An International Z39.50 Specification for Library
Applications and Resource Discovery
As has been reported on this list before, a meeting [1] was held in Bath
from 15-17 August in order to progress work on the evolving
international Z39.50 Profile to improve semantic
interoperability when searching across diverse systems. Discussion of
this Profile began on a listserv (ZIP-PIZ-L) and was continued through
teleconferences involving a small group of librarians, vendors and
others prior to this meeting.
The meeting proved highly successful, and resulted in significant
progress being made on the Profile, and in the adoption of a new name;
"The Bath Profile: An International Z39.50 Specification for Library
Applications and Resource Discovery". This new name replaces earlier
working titles such as ZILS, the International Interoperability Profile,
and others.
We anticipate releasing a draft of the Profile for wide-ranging review
and comment in the latter part of September, with the intention of
presenting it to the January 2000 meeting of the Z39.50 Implementor's
Group (ZIG) in Texas for endorsement, and then hopefully progressing it
through the ISO accreditation process early in 2000 for formal
recognition as an Internationally Registered Profile.
In the meantime, this message provides a summary of key aspects of the
Profile's architecture, which may be of interest to list members.
The intention in developing this Profile was to reduce the complexity
and uncertainty faced by many who wish to facilitate searches across
multiple Z39.50 Targets, especially those supplied by different vendors.
Implementation of the Profile will also facilitate searching when the
client software of the user is a different vendor product than the
target being searched. As such, we have taken efforts to tightly define
both the range of attributes associated with each Access Point, and the
behaviour to be expected from client and server.
The Profile is aimed at a fairly basic level, primarily concerned with
title/author/subject-type searches on diverse bibliographic databases.
It is hoped, though, that this Profile might be adopted as a common core
to other, more detailed, Profiles in particular regions, domains and
functional areas, and significant progress was made towards this amongst
the authors [2] of other Profiles (including ONE, vCuc, CENL, DanZIG,
the Finnish Z39.50 Profile, and the Texas Libraries Profile) present at
the Bath meeting. With the realisation of this aim, users will be
assured a basic level of cross-searching capability across a wide range
of domains and vendor solutions.
The current release of the Profile will address three key 'Functional
Areas', with the intention to add others in the future. The current
Functional Areas are Basic Bibliographic Search & Retrieval,
Cross-Domain & Extra-Domain Search & Retrieval, and Bibliographic
Holdings Information Search & Retrieval.
Within each of these Functional Areas, we have defined a limited number
of Levels of Conformance, with Level 0 intended to encompass as many
existing implementations as possible, Level 1 defining the functionality
we might wish to specify in systems currently under construction, and
Level 2 defining a number of functions which we feel it is currently
infeasible to require across the board, but which we feel effort should
be directed towards.
We look forward to the release of this draft during September, at which
point it will be made available from the meeting web site [1], and look
forward to receiving your comments upon it at that stage.
Paul
[1] -
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/
[2] -
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/i
nvite.html
-- dr. paul miller - interoperability focus - [log in to unmask] --
u. k. office for library and information networking (ukoln)
tel: +44 (0)1482 466890 mobile: +44 (0)410 481812
---------------------------- http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/ --
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