A cataloging and metadata handbook from ALCTS for coding with XML

For Immediate Release
Tue, 04/17/2018

Contact:

Rob Christopher

Marketing Coordinator

ALA Publishing

American Library Association

(312) 280-5052

rchristopher@ala.org

CHICAGO — Even experienced catalogers and copy catalogers who know their way around the tags and strings of a MARC record need guidance when creating metadata for sharing bibliographic records or digital collections on the web. Likewise, coders or new librarians coming from iSchool or software backgrounds need examples of how to use XLML or XSLT scripting with library records.  That’s where “Coding with XML for Efficiencies in Cataloging and Metadata: Practical Applications of XSD, XSLT, and XQuery,” published by ALA Editions, comes in. Librarians working in their code editors will want this resource, with its 58 sample coding examples, at their side. Backed by the authority of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) and editors Timothy W. Cole, Myung-Ja (MJ) K. Han, and Christine Schwartz, it covers:

  • essential background information, with a quick review of XML basics;
  • transforming XML metadata in HTML;  
  • schema languages and workflows for XML validation;  
  • an introduction to XPath and XSLT;  
  • cataloging workflows using XSLT;
  • the basics of XQuery, including use cases and XQuery expressions and functions; and  
  • working with strings and sequences, including regular expressions.

Cole is mathematics librarian and coordinator for library applications in the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the coauthor of “XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians” and “Using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting” and has published widely on metadata, linked open data, and the use of XML in libraries. A past cochair of the W3C Web Annotation Working Group, he was awarded the 2017 LITA/OCLC Kilgour Award. Han is a metadata librarian and associate professor of library administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has published papers in Library Trends, Library Resources and Technical Services, and the Journal of Library Metadata. Schwartz is metadata librarian and XML database administrator at the Princeton Theological Seminary. She has researched and written about cataloging trends and issues on her blog, Cataloging Futures, and contributed an essay to the book “Conversations with Catalogers in the 21st Century.” She served on the Code4Lib Journal Editorial Committee in 2008–2009.

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