Mets Mods Nate Ala07

How to Build, Display and Find METS Objects

Nate Trail Digital Project Coordinator Network Development and MARC Standards Office Library of Congress ALA - June 25, 2007

Outline of Topics » A little about the technology » How we build and display digital objects » Searching » Other Tools » Future Directions » Conclusions

Technologies Used »

XML documents

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»

XSLT processes

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» »

METS Files MODS Files Transformation Display

MySQL Database Cocoon framework

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And a little Java

XSLT Transformation

Stylesheet “transforms” it into a simpler structure of elements, labels and values.

MODS XML for Beaux Arts Trio recording

XSLT for Display

XSLT “transforms” it into an HTML or XHTML display for the screen

METS XML for Beaux Arts Trio recording

Web Framework Concepts » User input via URL » Create small programs for easy-to-modify parts » Separate Data from Action and Design

Key Elements in Describing an Object »Bibliographic data »Files »Object type »(sheetMusic,printMaterial audio,video, compactDisc recordedEvent, bibRecord, photo, Article, Score…)

Bibliographic data (1) » Harvested from Voyager ILS (SRU/z3950) » Inserted into MySQL database

Bibliographic Data(2) » Direct Data entry for items not previously cataloged

METS Maker Pipeline – Step 1 »

Bibliographic Data is extracted from the database and converted to MODS

METS Maker Pipeline – Step 2 »

Combine queries of:

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»

Object type (SheetMusic, RecordedEvent etc.) Files on the server MODS data Rights metadata

Creates a virtual file called “pre-mets”

Files on Server

Object Type MODS MD

Web Pipeline Rights MD

premets

METS Maker Pipeline – Step 3 »

METS Maker XSLT processes the file using the object’s profile and builds a METS File

METS file for Beaux Arts Trio concert recording

Display – Step 1 »

Within-object Navigation

Display – Step 2 »

Descriptive information about the object

Display – Step 3 »

Page-turning or Playlists

(pre-display virtual file )

Display – Step 4 »

Add page framing and breadcrumbs LC Presents header and high-level navigation Breadcrumb navigation LC Presents footer (not in view)

Veterans History Project Displays Veterans History Project Experiencing War Header

Standard Veterans History Project Header

Searching » Lucene is open source and scalable to large

indexes: Australia has 16 million items indexed

» Lucene indexes are easy to configure using XSLT: METS 

n

x

t m

Searching in LC Presents » Single box search offered on home page » Collection-level search offered for subcollections » Searches may also be limited to certain fields or object types

Searching in LC Presents » Canned search to create “virtual collections”

Searching in LC Presents » New browsing capability

Browse by Subject, Name or Title

Searching in Veterans History

Limit by conflict, branch, gender, POW status, etc.

Browsing in Veterans History

Browse by last name, state, race/ ethnicity and war/branch

Searching in Minerva (across collections) Choose among collections harvested.

MODS terms to search.

Other Web Tools » SQL – query any Oracle or MySQL tables from the browser

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Holdings queries (beyond z3950/SRU)

» Site administration • • •

Convert from MARC to MODS or MODS to MARC Convert HTML to XML Link checking

Future Directions » New Behaviors, Profiles • • •

Article OCR Multivolume Monograph Generating RSS data on the fly

» Integrate JHOVE file inspection tool (and MIX metadata) into our METS objects

» Move to JPEG2000 file format for images

Conclusions » The METS standard is flexible enough to

describe multiple kinds of complex objects.

» Profiles in METS help define an object and it’s range of behaviors

» METS and MODS play well together

Conclusions, cont. » MODS is extremely powerful as a structural tool, not just a bibliographic tool

» Consistent, authoritative, structured metadata makes search and display for an object persistent into future software and hardware systems

Conclusions, cont. »

Standards matter. Without standardized structures, we can’t program a site to retrive or display items with any reliability.

»Open Source software is a major step forward for

the ability of libraries and other lower budget institutions to enhance the availability and use of their digital assets.

Questions? www.loc.gov/lcp (LC Presents Music, Theater, and Dance) www.loc.gov/vets (Veterans History Project)

Nate Trail [email protected] Library of Congress