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Resource Sharing InitiativesResource Sharing Initiatives in Atlantic Canada: in Atlantic Canada:

The Standards DilemmaThe Standards Dilemma

Resource Sharing InitiativesResource Sharing Initiatives in Atlantic Canada: in Atlantic Canada:

The Standards DilemmaThe Standards Dilemma

Slavko ManojlovichSlavko ManojlovichAssistant to the University Librarian for Systems and Assistant to the University Librarian for Systems and

PlanningPlanningMemorial University Of NewfoundlandMemorial University Of Newfoundland

Email: slavko@mun.caEmail: slavko@mun.ca

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Outline• Standards – a formal view• Standards – the view from the

trenches• Standards – “gotchas” over the past 6

months

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What is a standard?

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

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Library Related Standards

• Standard Identifiers (ISBN, DOI)• Z39.50• NCIP• OpenURL• MetaSearch (in progress)

……

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ISBИ ∑ИSIPΘPИЦRҐ

ZXXXIX.L

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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.

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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)

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Standards on their own do not ensure interoperability

Threats to interoperability include:• Interpretation• Cultural/historical practice• Technological change• Localization• Undocumented practices and

procedures

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Threats to Interoperability• Interpretation

Standards 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

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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. SnyderUC - Riverside

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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)

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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

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Standard Identifiers In Catalogues

Memorial Acadia

Total No. of titles 1,417,683 365,847

LCCN OR ISBN OR ISSN 69% (983,415) 69% (253,676)

LCCN and ISBN/ISSN 39% (550,439) 27% (98,280)

Only ISBN/ISSN 16% (226,345) 24% (87,931)

Only LCCNs 14% (206,631) 18% (67,465)

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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.

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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.

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Library of Congress ISBN

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AMICUS ISBN

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Université du Québec ISBN

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Biblioteca Nacional Espana ISBN

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ISBN Search (no hyphens)

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ISBN Search (with hyphens)

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!ISBN search and hyphensISBN search and hyphens

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!ISBN search and hyphensISBN search and hyphens

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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.

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Université du Québec LCCN

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WorldCat LCCN Z39.50 Search

• Use attribute 9 (LCCN)Search for: 95002537 returns 11 records95002537 (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)

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!WorldCat LCCN SearchWorldCat LCCN Search

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!WorldCat LCCN SearchWorldCat LCCN Search

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RPN Query • Reverse Polish Notation

Used 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

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RPN Query: Silicon Snake

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RPN Query: Silicon Snake Oil

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RPN Query: Explanation

Compare:Case 1: (term3) and (term2 and term1)withCase 2: (term3 and term2) and (term1)

Should return the same result but one vendor’s server drops term1 in Case #1.

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!RPN QueriesRPN Queries

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!RPN QueriesRPN Queries

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Character Sets• Question: How do I search the Taiwan

National Library Z server in Chinese?• Character set negotiation

UNICODE, 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?

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Taiwan National Library Catalogue

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Non-roman language search Non-roman language search

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Non-roman language search Non-roman language search

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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.

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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

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Nova Scotia Provincial Library

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Nova Scotia Provincial Library

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Stopwords in searchesStopwords in searches

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Stopwords in searchesStopwords in searches

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“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).

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Melvyl Author/Title Search

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Melvyl “Any” Search

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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.)

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Melvyl “Any” SearchMelvyl “Any” Search

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Melvyl “Any” SearchMelvyl “Any” Search

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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.

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MUN Keyword Title Search(American History)

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MUN Browse Title (American History)

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MUN Follow-Up Browse Title Search (American History)

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WorlCat Browse (use attribute alone returns keywords)

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WorlCat Browse (use and structure phrase

attributesreturn headings – just subfield “a”)

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WorlCat Browse (use/structure/completeness attributes return complete

headings)

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Follow-up Search From a Browse List

• Not well defined by the profiles. Implementor agreement is confusing.

• Ideally, a follow-up search should be an “exact match” just like it is in the catalogue, however, “exact match” is not supported by all servers.

• Heading punctuation must be included for some servers and removed for others.

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Follow-up Browse searchFollow-up Browse search

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!Follow-up Browse searchFollow-up Browse search

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NCIP• Mapping of data elements to/from

circulation/ILL to NCIP is not a trivial process.

• Circulation systems have a long history and reflect “local” policies.

• One example: Sirsi’s Unicorn system supports two logins for a user: bar code and altid both tied to the same pin. NCIP and the Relais ILL system support a single loginid per user.

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Gotcha!!Gotcha!!NCIP/Circulation/ILL Cross-walkNCIP/Circulation/ILL Cross-walk

Gotcha!!Gotcha!!NCIP/Circulation/ILL Cross-walkNCIP/Circulation/ILL Cross-walk

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Dealing With The Gotchas

• ISBN Search– Identify servers which require

hyphens in searches and lobby vendors and Bath/NISO Profile committees to support ISBN search without hyphens

– Strip out hyphens from a search when required

– Reconstruct hyphenated ISBN when required (?)

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Dealing With The Gotchas

• WorldCat LCCN Search– Contact OCLC regarding the problem.

• RPN Queries– Given that the problem is associated

with the largest installed base of Z39.50 servers lobby the Z client developers to send RPN queries based on the OCLC way which appears to work with all Z servers.

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Dealing With The Gotchas

• Non-roman language search– Strive for an end-to-end Unicode solution

which includes the metasearching client, XML record display and ILL document request service.

• Stopwords– Identify servers with stopword limitations and

configure client to strip out common stopwords from keyword searches and/or lobby Bath/NISO US profile committees for a solution. For Université du Quebéc, use “phrase” search.

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Dealing With The Gotchas

• Melvyl “Any” Search– Contact Melvyl

• Follow-up Browse Search– Lobby Bath/NISO US profile committees

for a solution. Ask OCLC to update documentation on Browse.

• NCIP/CIRC/ILL cross-walk– Communicate problems to NCIP

committee committee. Will need to register additional schemas to accommodate local needs.

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Final Words Of Advice• Test, test, and test some more.• Don’t take standards for granted.• Listen to your users concerns.• Communicate/share problems with

others.• Test, test, and test some more.