8,779 research outputs found
EAD - enabling armchair delivery : approaches to encoding finding aids at the University of Liverpool
EAD is increasingly being selected as the primary data format for constructing archival finding aids in the British Archive Community as the new technologies and know-how required to encode lists are being embraced in many repositories. One major problem facing archivists, though, is how to convert finding aids held in a variety of formats (including databases, word processed documents and paper lists with no machine readable form) into EAD. This article will discuss the methods used in Special Collections and Archives at the University of Liverpool Library in converting finding aids into EAD. Two main examples will be discussed: firstly, designing database output styles which automatically generate EAD tags to wrap around database fields using the ProCite bibliographic database and secondly, offshore keying of paper lists with the addition of basic EAD tags following a rigorous template designed by Special Collections and Archives staff. Both methods have proved effective and have facilitated the generation of EAD encoded lists for a number of our largest collections. Finally, there will be a brief discussion of our use of native EAD generation using AdeptEdit software and our continuing use of conversion methods
XQuery for Archivists: Understanding EAD Finding Aids as Data
[Excerpt] XQuery is a simple, yet powerful, scripting language designed to enable users without formal programming training to extract, transform, and manipulate XML data. Moreover, the language is an accepted standard and a W3C recommendation much like its sister standards, XML and XSLT. In other words, XQueryâs raison dâetre coincides perfectly with the needs of todayâs archivists. What follows is a brief, pragmatic, overview of XQuery for archivists that will enable archivists with a keen understanding of XML, XPath, and EAD to begin experimenting with manipulating EAD data using XQuery
Libraries and Information Systems Need XML/RDF... but Do They Know It?
This article presents an approach to the uses of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and Semantic Web technologies in
the field of information services, focusing mainly on the creation and management of digital libraries compared to traditional
libraries, while paying special attention to the concept and application of metadata, and RDF based integration
Revisiting the archival finding aid
Archivists have been creating finding aids for generations, and in the last three decades they have done this work via a succession of standardized formats. However, like many other disciplines, they have carried out such work in violation of systems analysis. Although purporting to have the users of finding aids systems first and foremost in their mind, archivists have carried out their descriptive work apart from and with little knowledge of how researchers find and use archival sources. In this article, questions are raised about the utility of archival finding aids and how they will stand the test of time. Indeed, archivists, purportedly concerned with considering how records function and will be used over time, ought to apply the same kind of analysis and thinking to their finding aids. In this article, we explore three ways archival finding aids might be examined by outsiders, namely, those concerned with museum exhibitions, design experts, and accountability advocates. Doing this should assist archivists to reevaluate their next wave of experimentation with descriptive standards and the construction of finding aids. Archivists should expand the notion of what we are representing in archival representation. © 2007 by The Haworth Press
File-based storage of Digital Objects and constituent datastreams: XMLtapes and Internet Archive ARC files
This paper introduces the write-once/read-many XMLtape/ARC storage approach
for Digital Objects and their constituent datastreams. The approach combines
two interconnected file-based storage mechanisms that are made accessible in a
protocol-based manner. First, XML-based representations of multiple Digital
Objects are concatenated into a single file named an XMLtape. An XMLtape is a
valid XML file; its format definition is independent of the choice of the
XML-based complex object format by which Digital Objects are represented. The
creation of indexes for both the identifier and the creation datetime of the
XML-based representation of the Digital Objects facilitates OAI-PMH-based
access to Digital Objects stored in an XMLtape. Second, ARC files, as
introduced by the Internet Archive, are used to contain the constituent
datastreams of the Digital Objects in a concatenated manner. An index for the
identifier of the datastream facilitates OpenURL-based access to an ARC file.
The interconnection between XMLtapes and ARC files is provided by conveying the
identifiers of ARC files associated with an XMLtape as administrative
information in the XMLtape, and by including OpenURL references to constituent
datastreams of a Digital Object in the XML-based representation of that Digital
Object.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figures (camera-ready copy for ECDL 2005
BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects
This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented
IVOA Recommendation: Simple Spectral Access Protocol Version 1.1
The Simple Spectral Access (SSA) Protocol (SSAP) defines a uniform interface
to remotely discover and access one dimensional spectra. SSA is a member of an
integrated family of data access interfaces altogether comprising the Data
Access Layer (DAL) of the IVOA. SSA is based on a more general data model
capable of describing most tabular spectrophotometric data, including time
series and spectral energy distributions (SEDs) as well as 1-D spectra; however
the scope of the SSA interface as specified in this document is limited to
simple 1-D spectra, including simple aggregations of 1-D spectra. The form of
the SSA interface is simple: clients first query the global resource registry
to find services of interest and then issue a data discovery query to selected
services to determine what relevant data is available from each service; the
candidate datasets available are described uniformly in a VOTable format
document which is returned in response to the query. Finally, the client may
retrieve selected datasets for analysis. Spectrum datasets returned by an SSA
spectrum service may be either precomputed, archival datasets, or they may be
virtual data which is computed on the fly to respond to a client request.
Spectrum datasets may conform to a standard data model defined by SSA, or may
be native spectra with custom project-defined content. Spectra may be returned
in any of a number of standard data formats. Spectral data is generally stored
externally to the VO in a format specific to each spectral data collection;
currently there is no standard way to represent astronomical spectra, and
virtually every project does it differently. Hence spectra may be actively
mediated to the standard SSA-defined data model at access time by the service,
so that client analysis programs do not have to be familiar with the
idiosyncratic details of each data collection to be accessed
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