Resource Sharing Initiatives in Atlantic Canada: The Standards Dilemma

1. Resource Sharing Initiatives in Atlantic Canada: The Standards Dilemma Slavko ManojlovichAssistant to the University Librarian for Systems and Planning Memorial University Of NewfoundlandEmail: slavko@mun.ca

2. Outline • Standards – a formal view • Standards – the view from the trenches • Standards – “gotchas” over the past 6 months

3. What is a standard? A NISO standard developed through consensus, identifies model methods, materials, or practices for libraries, bibliographic and information services, and publishers.

4. Library Related Standards • Standard Identifiers (ISBN, DOI) • Z39.50 • NCIP • OpenURL • MetaSearch (in progress)……

5. ΘPИЦRҐ ZXXXIX.L ∑ИSIP ISBИ

6. Atlantic Scholarly Information Network • Resource Discovery and Management Service: • Federated searching (Sirsi SingleSearch) • OpenURL Resolver (Sirsi Resolver) • Document delivery (Relais) • Context management system (Sirsi Rooms) 80,000+ users from 17 institutions will have access to 1,000s of licensed/public resources within an infrastructure modeled on the library pathfinder. Official launch planned for 2005 APLA conference.

7. ASIN and Standards • Atlantic Scholarly Information NetworkResource Discovery and Management Service Search (Z39.50; OAI-PMH; MetaSearch; Authentication) Retrieve (MARC21; XML – MARC, Holdings Dublin Core schemas) Request (OpenURL; Standard Identifiers; ILL; Z39.50) Receive(NCIP; ILL)

8. Standards on their own do not ensure interoperability Threats to interoperability include: • Interpretation • Cultural/historical practice • Technological change • Localization • Undocumented practices and procedures

9. Threats to Interoperability • InterpretationStandards are often defined using terminology with imprecise semantics(e.g. index, keyword, phrase, exact match, user address, etc.). Standards and associated profiles require a reality check. • Cultural/Historical PracticeDifferent cataloguing rules and associated formats underlie MARC21, UNIMARC, danMARC2, etc.See:http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/articles/000066/index.html

10. Threats to Interoperability • Technological ChangeMemorial’s ILS history includes:UTLAS/CLSI SPIRES/CLSI  SIRSIRetrofitting ILS to conform to new standards. Some standards die (e.g. Z39.58) • Localization“Though cataloging rules are intended to be objective and formats are inflexible, catalogers are human, and much of what they enter is a personal decision, often subjective rather than objective.”Henry L. Snyder UC - Riverside

11. Threats to Interoperability • Undocumented practices and procedures • Vendor and version of Z39.50 server • Supported Z39.50 attribute combinations and record syntaxes • Extent of available holdings and holdings data elements including the Resolver’s knowledgebase • Limitations of the server: truncation, stopwords, etc. • Indexing policies, character set encoding(This also applies to web-based search services)

12. ASIN and Known Item Searching • Focus on known item searching through the use of: • Standard Identifiers • Precision searches (exact, first in field) • Scan (browse) • Reduce reliance on keyword and phrase searches • Low precision • Extra work for staff • Adds unnecessary processing for patrons (similar to Google results) • Extra processing for client and server software

13. Standard Identifiers In Catalogues

14. ISBN • The International Standard Book Number System • Always consists of 10 digits divided into four parts of variable length which must be clearly separated by hyphens or spaces.

15. ISBN (continued) • For the purposes of data processing the 10-digit string is used without hyphens or spaces. • Examples:0 571 08989 5 = 057108909590-70002-04-3 = 9070002043 • Note: you cannot reconstruct a hyphenated number.

16. Library of Congress ISBN

17. AMICUS ISBN

18. Université du Québec ISBN

19. Biblioteca Nacional Espana ISBN

20. ISBN Search (no hyphens)

21. ISBN Search (with hyphens)

22. Gotcha!!ISBN search and hyphens

23. Library of Congress Control Number • LCCN Structure A (1898-2000)Alphabetic prefix(3), Year(2), Serial Number(6), Supplement Number (1), Suffix (variable), Rev Date (variable) • LCCN Structure B (2001-)Alpha prefix (2), Year(4), Serial Number(6)Serial numbers less than 6 digits are right justified and unused positions contain zeros.The hyphen which separates the year and serial number… is not carried in the MARC record. For example, the number 85-2 is carried as 85000002 in a record.

24. Université du Québec LCCN

25. WorldCat LCCN Z39.50 Search • Use attribute 9 (LCCN)Search for: 95002537 returns 11 records 95002537 (Silicon Snake oil)95025377 (The Industrial Revolution…)95025378 (Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy…)..sn 95002537 (My little bedtime stories) • Use attribute 1007 (Standard Identifier)Search for: 95002537 returns 2 records95002537 (Silicon Snake oil)950025372 (Apercu de genealogie et d'histoire des familles Beaulieu du Grand Madawaska)

26. Gotcha!!WorldCat LCCN Search

27. RPN Query • Reverse Polish NotationUsed to express boolean queries in Z39.50 without using brackets. Process from right to left. RPN query:Orwell:NOT:Down:AND:Paris:London:AND     Means:(Paris AND London AND Down) NOT Orwell

28. RPN Query: Silicon Snake

29. RPN Query: Silicon Snake Oil

30. RPN Query: Explanation Compare: Case 1: (term3) and (term2 and term1) with Case 2: (term3 and term2) and (term1) Should return the same result but one vendor’s server drops term1 in Case #1.

31. Gotcha!!RPN Queries

32. Character Sets • Question: How do I search the Taiwan National Library Z server in Chinese? • Character set negotiationUNICODE, MARC-8, CCCII, EACC and other character sets. • MARC-8 to Unicode conversion rules for double width diacriticsUse rules set by the MARC 21 community or the Unicode Consortium? • JACKPHY (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese…) records from LC are improperly coded. • Without character set negotiation how do you encode foreign language characters in a Z39.50 search?

33. Taiwan National Library Catalogue

34. Gotcha!!Non-roman language search

35. Stopwords • Some servers do not index high posting and/or reserved terms including articles, boolean operators, etc. • Use of stopwords in a search may generate an “error message” and/or return “0” results. • Stopwords are not documented.

36. Université du Quebéc • If you include a stopword in a Z39.50 keyword search you will receive the following error message: Gone with the wind BIB 4 stopword error Gone with wind BIB 4 stopword error Gone wind  returns 22 records

37. Nova Scotia Provincial Library

38. Nova Scotia Provincial Library

39. Gotcha!!Stopwords in searches

40. “Any” Search • According to the Bath Profile:Uses: Searches for complete word in data elements that are commonly used as access points (as defined by the server). Any searches comprising more than one keyword are interpreted in such a way that the terms may exist in the same or different attributes. Example: a search on "Dickens AND Twist" might conceivably find "Dickens" in the Author Use Attribute (1003) and "Twist" in the Title Use Attribute (4).

41. Melvyl Author/Title Search

42. Melvyl “Any” Search

43. Melvyl “Any” Search Explanation • Melvyl supports searching for authors, titles, subjects, etc. using the “Any” search but the terms must all be from the same heading (e.g. author, title, etc.)

44. Gotcha!!Melvyl “Any” Search

45. Scan (browse) • Browse is an essential component of a library catalogue interface, especially for known item searching. • View a list of author/title/subject headings and retrieve records associated with the desired heading. • There are wide-spread problems with the follow-up Z39.50 search associated with a browse list.

46. MUN Keyword Title Search(American History)

47. MUN Browse Title(American History)

48. MUN Follow-Up Browse Title Search (American History)

49. WorlCat Browse(use attribute alone returns keywords)

50. WorlCat Browse (use and structure phrase attributesreturn headings – just subfield “a”)