--- Apologies for cross-posting ---
The following newsletter for those in libraries, museums and archives
interested in internet developments is now also mounted at
http://www.covax.org.
COVAX News
Issue 1 April 2001
1. CULTURAL CONTENT
COVAX (Contemporary Culture Virtual Archive in XML) is an international
two-year project which began January 2000 with the objectives:
To build a web service for search and retrieval of European Contemporary
Culture descriptions and documents from Memory Institutions.
To make accessible over the Internet existing document descriptions in
Libraries, Archives and Museums.
To satisfy needs of Memory Institutions, regardless of their size or
document types, to provide access to their collections.
To implement standards and achieve inter-operability between systems.
COVAX partners have large and small collections described by existing
museum, library and archive records, including some full text records.
The project is assessing the future provision of improved access to
these collections by converting samples of existing data into a small
number of common structured formats, each of which can be expressed as
XML (eXtensible Markup Language).
Although it is already possible to conduct searches across distributed
systems using the Z39.50 protocol, this protocol cannot be used directly
from web browsers. Results from searches must then be converted to HTML
or other formats for integration with web services. This restricts the
range of discovery and learning contexts from which the underlying
collections can be accessed.
COVAX is exploring the idea that future collection records in libraries,
museums and archives will be stored in a variety of XML formats instead
of proprietary formats, or formats such as MARC which have not been
widely adopted outside their developer sectors. Since much material is
described already in machine-readable form, we need to develop widely
applicable methods and approaches for converting it to XML and
integrating it with native XML data for building user-friendly websites
and data feeds.
2. PARTNER PROFILE: LASER
COVAX includes partners with academic library, public library, museum
and archive resources. Future newsletters will describe data from other
partners. Here we outline one of the main bibliographic data
contributions, from London and South Eastern Library Region (LASER) in
the UK. LASER is the networking agency for libraries and organisations
connected with information and document provision. Since the 1920s LASER
and its predecessors has offered an extensive range of resource sharing
services, consultancy, advice, research and development and training
opportunities.
V3.Online is a networked service for resource sharing and interlending
requesting that is the only totally integrated search, message and loan
management service in the United Kingdom. It offers access to over 4
million bibliographic records in UKMARC format to LASER members,
together with 17.5 million holding locations.
The V3 database covers mainly catalogue records for printed monographs
that are held in public libraries of all the local authorities in
LASER's areas, including London, the South East and West Midlands of
England and selected authorities in Wales. The geographic and subject
scope of LASER's collections is unlimited - they include anything that
appears in the British National Bibliography or has been purchased by at
least one member library.
V3.Online is used by interloans staff in public libraries to conduct
interlending transactions on behalf of library users. Use of the
transaction management system requires training and support. Access to
the V3 catalogue would also be useful to a wider range of people,
including other staff, library staff in institutions other than public
libraries, and the general public. For this purpose, a web interface is
being introduced and a Z39.50 target is being established.
Because of a period of major enhancements to V3 services during 2000,
and because of the need to limit content to the field of 'culture',
LASER is exporting a subset of its bibliographic data for use in COVAX.
This will allow it to be searched either separately or together with
data from other COVAX partners. Three levels of sample data have been
planned. A pilot sample has been used to test handling and conversion
software and to validate standards used. A sample of 5,000 records is
being prepared to test the COVAX middleware and user delivery systems in
a demonstrator. Finally, a larger sample will be prepared if required to
contribute to a second prototype, particularly to ensure that bulk
handling of records and updating are feasible.
COVAX's cross-domain agenda is very relevant to LASER, which is to
change its status in October 2001 reflecting new regional government
boundaries and structures being introduced to England for cultural
services. LASER's website is at http://www.viscount.org.uk/
3. MARC EVERYWHERE
Each partner for COVAX must create or have a database in native XML.
Data for this must be mapped from existing structures.
Led by the Residencia de Estudiantes (Spain), COVAX has surveyed in
depth the content systems and formats used by partners. Aspects included
software used, number of records, original formats, subject scope,
geographical scope, language scope and availability of electronic
records. A study of searchable fields used by partners has also been
completed, to assist in the identification of common practice and the
selection of COVAX searchable fields.
Interestingly, the conclusion of the studies is that there are 5
different MARC formats in use and 3 non standard formats. These formats
are used regardless of the format of the underlying resources. In
addition, ISO 8859-1 is a very widely used character set standard.
COVAX concluded that for bibliographic data we will agree to use
USMARC(MARC21) and use available tools where necessary to convert to
this format before finally converting the data to XML.
4. OTHER FORMATS
Partners are supplying poster collection data including images managed
in an MS Access database; multimedia XML data based on a proprietary
Document Type Definition (DTD); records from locally developed MS Access
, Lotus Notes and Filemaker databases. These will be converted to one of
the appropriate XML formats using existing DTDs for archives (EAD),
museums (AMICO) and electronic texts (TEILite). The DTDs have to be
interpreted by the technical team to produce XML schemas and schemas for
the particular local XML repository software used in each site, such as
Tamino and TeXtML. A large aggregate COVAX DTD is being used and
developed to standardise data for the project, containing the other DTDs
such as MARC. The wider community is developing most of these as the
project proceeds, and the COVAX team uses new versions as appropriate.
5. CONVERSIONS
We have explored a range of methods to convert existing data, depending
on whether existing databases are large and MARC based (typically
university or public library management systems) or smaller and
proprietary. Partners are also taking two approaches to providing data
for inclusion: Adaptation and Migration. Adaptation involves changing
existing systems to deliver suitable COVAX standard XML interfaces.
Migration involves exporting existing records, converting them and
storing them as COVAX compliant XML. A range of software components and
tools have been used to handle COVAX data, including XML Spy and
USEMARCON, as well as exporting software within library systems such as
V3 and Aleph. In Barcelona the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya is
testing a CATMARC-USMARC VTLS Conversion Program. A report on the State
of the Art of XML tools suitable for COVAX has been made public via the
COVAX website at www.covax.org.
6. XML AND MARC
Conversion of MARC data formats to MARC21 enables us to use freely
available tools from the Library of Congress and elsewhere to convert
records to XML (for example http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/marcsgml.html). In
particular Software AG in Spain has adapted the SGML MARC21 DTD to XML
for COVAX as well as testing the newer LoC MARC XML DTD. MARC-XML
conversion utilities have been successfully tested on COVAX sample data,
with a number of issues surrounding character encoding, use with Dublin
Core and batch transfers of multiple records.
7. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
COVAX is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of providing access to
distributed resources held in both XML and non-XML formats. It will
provide a public demonstrator website offering simple and advanced
search of e-collections and resource descriptions within them. Users
will be able to retrieve all types of resource as a result of a single
search. Results will be formatted by middleware using stylesheets once
they have retrieved from the distributed repositories via XML queries,
although exact standards for these are not yet fixed (see
http://www.w3.org/XML/ ). These queries will be modelled on the Z39.50
protocol, although the syntax encoding for transmissions will be
different, using XER (XML Encoding Rules) instead of BER (Basic Encoding
Rules, as used for Z39.50 implementations to date). This will enable the
current distinctions between searching for web documents and searching
databases less significant so that searching is more comprehensive and
browsing more effective. COVAX is also considering how data such as
holdings information can be maintained through updates from source
legacy systems.
8. REPOSITORIES
COVAX partners are currently implementing XML repositories using two
software packages, Tamino from Software AG, a COVAX technical partner
(http://www.softwareag.com/taminoplatform/) and TeXtML from IXIAsoft
(http://www.textmlserver.com/). Sites are being established in London,
Rome, Salzburg, Graz and Madrid.
9. MORE ABOUT COVAX
A website has been established in Catalan, English, German, Italian,
Spanish, and Swedish at http://www.covax.org. Carlos Wert, the project
Coordinator and Francisca Hernández have published an introductory
article on COVAX in Cultivate Interactive Issue 3 January 2001
(http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue3/covax/).
10. CONTACTS
Project coordinator
Carlos Wert, Residencia de Estudiantes, Pinar, 23, 28006 Madrid, Spain.
Email: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.covax.org
Dissemination
Robin Yeates, LASER, Robin Yeates, Assistant Director: Research &
Development, LASER, 4th Floor, Gun Court, 70 Wapping Lane, London E1W
2RS, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (020) 7702 2020
Fax: +44 (020) 7702 2019
email: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.viscount.org.uk/research/covax/
Rights and disclaimer
---------------------
COVAX is part funded by the European Commission.
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this newsletter.
The site does not represent the opinion of the Community and the
Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of data
appearing herein.
Reproduction of the newsletter is authorised, except for commercial
purposes, provided the source is acknowledged.
Some of the documents and multimedia sequences in this newsletter and on
the COVAX website might contain references, or pointers, to information
maintained by other organisations. Please note that we do not control
and cannot guarantee the relevance, timeliness or accuracy of these
outside materials.
--
Robin Yeates
Assistant Director: Research & Development
LASER
The Development & Networking Agency
4th Floor, Gun Court
70 Wapping Lane
London E1W 2RS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (020) 7702 2020
Fax: +44 (020) 7702 2019
email: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.viscount.org.uk/
'Serving the London, South East and Eastern Regions'
Company No. 1991362. VAT No. 233106019
A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered Charity No. 293864.
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