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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 50| April 2001


Library Active in Standards Work

The library and information communities depend on a range of standards that facilitate the interchange of library data and promote the inter-operability of library and information systems. The National Library of Australia is an active participant in the development and adoption of many of these standards, both national and international. The Library publishes further information about its standards activities on its web site www.nla.gov.au/services/standards.html

General library and information standards
The National Library is represented on the Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand Technical Committee IT/19 (Computer Applications in Information and Documentation). This committee addresses standardisation practices relating to libraries, information services and related bodies. Its work is driven primarily by the activities of the International Organisation for Standardisation’s Technical Committee 46, Subcommittee 4 (ISO TC/46 SC4)

Catalogue description standards
The library community in Australia, as in most English-speaking countries, bases its description of library materials and its catalogues on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). These rules continue to undergo change and development under the control of the Joint Steering Committee for AACR. Through its membership of the Australian Committee on Cataloguing and the Anglo-American Cataloguing Committee for Cartographic Materials, the National Library is contributing to the revision process.

The most widely used subject-cataloguing standard in Australia is the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The National Library endeavours to extend or adapt LCSH to suit the needs of Australian users of library catalogues. The Library routinely proposes additions and changes to LCSH. The Library has developed and maintained a general thesaurus for journal article indexing, the Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS) thesaurus, and plans to make this service available on the Web.

The discovery of special collection resources, such as manuscript items, often relies on combining collection-level catalogue descriptions with finding lists or captions for item-level descriptions. The Library is implementing the Encoded Archival Description (EAD), which is a standard for encoding archival finding aids, and aims to convert its existing manuscript finding aids to the EAD standard.

The need to improve the effectiveness of searching for information resources on the World Wide Web has prompted the development of simplified metadata standards that could be used by authors or others at relatively low cost. Prominent among these is the ‘Dublin Core’ metadata set. As a government agency, the National Library is committed to the use of the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard, which is based closely on the Dublin Core standard, for the resources that it creates and publishes on the World Wide Web. The Library intends to continue its participation in the appropriate Dublin Core working parties to support the development of the standard and its practical implementation. It will also play an active role in the advisory processes supporting the administration of the standard.

The Library is also represented on the ANZLIC Metadata Working Group www.anzlic.org.au/asdi/metaelem.htm that is developing metadata standards for a national land and geographic data directory system for Australia and New Zealand

Data used in library systems
Other standards that are important in ensuring the interchange of library data and in which the National Library plays a role include character sets, data elements, item identifiers and full text mark-up standards.

Based on the international standard ISO 2146 (Directories of libraries, archives, information and documentation centres, and their data bases), the Library has developed a draft data dictionary to support the future development of its directory services, and is leading a review of ISO 2146.

Additional areas in which the Library has a strong interest in standards adoption are preservation metadata, item identifiers such as international standard book, serial and music numbers, the Serial Item Contribution Identifier (SICI), the Book Item and Component Identifier (BICI), and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and persistent identifiers.

Persistent identifiers are important for ensuring that access to web resources is maintained over time. Because the name or identifier commonly used for web resources, the URL is location based, links to the resource can be broken if the resource is relocated. The Library is an active member of an international working group (the Persistent Identifiers Task Force) and has engaged a consultant to examine and report on existing standards and processes for persistent identifiers.

System interconnection
The development of library networks over the next decade will be based on the interconnection of distributed library systems, and the use of client/server technology. Two key standards in this area are Z39.50 and the International Interlibrary Loan Protocol.

The Z39.50 standard specifies the structures and rules that allow a client machine (such as a personal computer or workstation) to search a database on server machine (such as a library catalogue) and retrieve records that are identified as part of a search. The National Library was active in monitoring the development of the Z39.50 standard and in ensuring that it became an official Australian standard. Z39.50 has since been implemented in the Library’s key bibliographic services: Kinetica, the National CJK Service and the library catalogue.

Directory services provide a critical underpinning to the library and information infrastructure allowing the discovery of relevant information suppliers and providing access to information about the methods and conditions of supply. The Library has created and published a number of directories of Australian library collections and services. The Australian Libraries Gateway and the Directory of Australia’s Oral History Collections provide a single web interface to these directory services.

Directory services play a significant role in supporting interlibrary loan services. The Library has developed the Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory, which includes a national register of library symbols.

Digital formats and preservation standards
The Library is engaged in a number of projects converting physical collection items to digital form in order to enhance access or support preservation programs. As well as being an active participant in the Research Libraries Group’s (RLG) PRESERV Program, the Library has been active in developing standard procedures for digital sound archiving through the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA). The Library is currently trialling the use of Ebind, a method for bringing together digital page images using an SGML document type definition.

Metadata standards for recording preservation data for electronic resources is an area of interest, and the Library has developed a draft set of preservation metadata elements www.nla.gov.au/preserve/pmeta.html

The Library would like to see the development of an Australian National Collection of Electronic Publications encompassing both online and physical format digital resources. To facilitate this development, the Library is involved in developing digital archiving and preservation procedures that would support such an initiative, including an information-sharing collaboration with a number of other national libraries and the RLG.

Despite the growth in digital collections, the National Library remains committed to the preservation of very large non-digital collections. Preservation reformatting, especially in microform, and standards for ‘permanent paper’ are two of the areas in which the Library takes an active role.

The Library’s web pages on standards are regularly updated and provide a wealth of information about many library and information standards with useful links to other sites and sources of relevant information.

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au

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