4 -- Standards

1. Are You Experienced?
Exploring User Experience
in Public Libraries
Do You Have “Standards” in
Your Library?

2. Whys know about standards?
De facto and de jure standards make any
technology usable. Without standards, well,
we would be in a poor situation…

3. What is a de facto standard?
De facto standards are formed when a product
has sufficient market share so that other vendors
are forced to use the same specifications for their
products.
example: MS Windows, Adobe Acrobat's .pdf, etc.
Products from de facto standards may be economically
successful but they are not necessarily the best from a
technological point of view.

4. What is wrong with this picture?

5. What is wrong with this picture?
This “fake” Windows image does not follow de facto
standards! Notice where the Close button is…
It would be a bad idea not to observe a de facto
standard such as this if you create Windows software.

6. What is a de jure standard?
De jure standards arise through common
agreement within an industry. Organizations and
interested parties (commercial companies,
research institutions, etc.) develop these
standards.
example: TCP/IP, IEEE1394, etc.
NOTE: Because it takes time to develop and agree upon
industry specifications, de jure standards often lag behind
technological developments and needs.

7. What are common
standards organizations?
• NISO (National Information Standards Organization - 1939):
Voting members include many libraries, publishers, information
producers, etc. (ex. Z39.50)
• ANSI (American National Standards Institute - 1918): The
umbrella group for standards organizations in the US. A major
publisher of standards, it lists more than 8,000 current standards.
• IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers - 1884):
World’s largest technical professional society. Has issued most of
the relevant standards for cabling and networking.
• W3C (World Wide Web Consortium - 1994): Created to develop
common protocols for the Web. It actually “recommends” standards
and has other bodies adopt them. (ex. HTML, XML)
etc….

8. Do we need to know the
difference between de facto and
de jure standards?
You use a mixture of these standards every
day, no matter what you do. For those
interested in library technology, you should
understand the difference.
And best yet, you can impress your friends with such knowledge.

9. What makes
successful standards?
• They meet a recognized need.
• They reflect a consensus.
• They protect both producer and consumer.
• They make economic sense.
• They reflect current technology.

10. Must we adhere to standards?
• The US does not require adherence to
standards. Adoption is voluntary except for the
federal government.
• The US does not rely on government agencies
to create standards. Volunteers funded by their
employers create standards. (This situation often
results in a vendor-dominated process where
the vendors with the most at stake and the
largest budgets control the process.)

11. Why, then, do we follow
to standards?
The value of standards in library technology
makes possible:
• interoperability among equipment, data, etc. for
making information exchange possible
• ease of use on the interface level of an
application
• recognized levels of quality
• competition among vendors, which leads to
better products and cheaper prices

12. So what should a librarian
know about standards?
Understand the value of standards and how
they work in your organization or else you
can’t maximize the customer experience.
MARC OAI-PMH
XML SIP/NCIP
Dublin Core Z39.50 etc…….
Now for a brief look at a few standards:

13. MARC
"…provides the mechanism by which computers
exchange, use, and interpret bibliographic
information, and its data elements make up the
foundation of most library catalogs used today."
http://www.loc.gov/marc/faq.html
Our oldest electronic standard (developed in the
early (1960s) is still essential to our data
exchange. Unfortunately.
See: www.loc.gov/marc/ for more info.

14. MARC as the computer sees it
MARC is nothing more than a text file that you can
view in a simple text editor such as Notepad:

15. MARC as displayed by a
computer for the librarian
An ILS will
display a MARC
for easy viewing
and for editing
in cataloguing
components.

16. MARC as displayed for
library users
And an ILS “displays” the MARC and related
information in the OPAC.

17. How do we get MARC records?
Use your ILS Cataloging component if you
want to perform original cataloguing (and
sometimes you want to!) will have
templates..

18. Or… Z39.50
Use your Cataloging component to get online and
download free or fee-based MARC records.
Your Cataloging component will employ the
Z39.50 standard to search other servers for MARC
records. Another old but still useful standard.
See www.niso.org/publications/press/Z3950_primer.pdf for
a “Primer on the Protocol”

19. Z39.50 allows us to search different systems on the
Internet through the use of a single user interface. For
example, you can use the Z39.50-enabled Polaris (iii)
OPAC to search the Library of Congress catalog (not a
Polaris ILS!) using the Polaris interface.

20. The Koha Cataloging component allows me
to find MARC records on any open Z39.50
server (and on closed ones if I have a
username/password).

21. How does Z39.50 work?
“Z39.50 operates in a client/server
environment, acting as a common
language that all Z39.50-enabled systems
can understand. It is an Esperanto-like
language that bridges the many
‘languages and dialects’ that different
information systems ‘speak.’”
www.niso.org/publications/press/Z3950_primer.pdf

22. For a diagram, see www.txmike.com/Presentations/Z3950/
Note: Different levels of Z30.50 exist (it has developed over
the years), and you need to be aware of yours.

23. Try it out…
Use the PTFS Koha ILS online demo:
ptfsdemo-staff.kohalibrary.com/cgi-
bin/koha/mainpage.pl
Log on as liblime/liblime
Choose Add MARC Record from Cataloging

24. Choose z39.50 Search … choose a target and
search for something!
Hint: You will be able to
find what you want
much more easily if
you use a unique
identifier such as ISBN.

25. You can view the MARC before you Import it.

26. If you import it into the MARC editor you can edit it and then
Save to get to the Item record screen. Give it some item
info (barcode, item type, etc.) or not, and click Add Item.

27. Go to your sample online OPAC
(ptfsdemo.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl) and
search for your item! You have just used two old but useful
library standards (among others)…

28. SIP/NCIP
The Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) was
created by 3M in the 1990s to allow their self-
check machines to exchange circulation messages
with library systems. It has been refined to allow
other devices to communicate with automated
systems. SIP2 (version 2 of SIP) appeared in 2006
and became the de facto standard for the use of
self checks with ILSs.
In 2012 3M donated SIP2 and SIP3 to NISO for
the formal standard process…

29. SIP
Basic self-service transactions between
disparate systems. Transactions include:
• authentication of a patron (e.g., to log onto a
computer)
• item checkout/checkin with a self-check machine
• communication between RFID vendor system
and ILS

30. SIP was originally created to enable 3M self-check
machines to work with other vendors' ILSs. But it does
much more. For example, you can use SIP if you need to
authenticate patrons using wireless devices.

31. So why NCIP if SIP works?
NCIP, the National Circulation Interchange
Protocol, is a standard published by NISO as
Z39.83 (in 2003). Library system vendors and the
developers of related software have been planning
its implementation in their products.
NCIP has three major application areas:
1. Self-Service Circulation (SSC): Based on the
SIP2 protocol, it is also used for patron lookup
and authentication based on the patron files.

32. 2. Direct Consortial Borrowing (DCB):
Different circulation systems talk directly to
each other without a patron having to register
directly with multiple libraries.

33. 3. Circulation/Interlibrary Loan (C/ILL): Many
libraries use different circulation and ILL
systems; the circulation system is not aware of
ILL transactions. Thus, circulation features (e.g.,
fines, overdue notification) can't be used. In
effect, two systems are trying to keep track of a
single patron's transactions. CILL allows the
exchange of information between circulation and
ILL systems.
So NCIP can do all that SIP can do, but better,
and with encryption.

34. XML
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) goes beyond
HTML because it describes the role of what it
“marks up” as well as the structure of the
information.
It is not concerned with the presentation of the
information.

35. XML
Like HTML, XML is text-based and machine-
independent to be accessible on any platform.
Because XML separates content from display
(unlike HTML) it is a great metadata carrier since it
can be extended with customized tags to describe
any resource. XML makes data more useable and
searchable than a markup language like HTML
that can’t really describe content.*
*HTML5 does include a series of sematic tags to aid website designers
“describe” what is in a certain part of a webpage, such as <header, <footer>,
etc.

36. In this simplified example, HTML and XML are both used to display a
recipe. You should see that the XML tags describe better the resource than
the HTML.

37. Where is XML in the library?
Many ILSs (e.g., Koha) are capable of
storing MARC records as MARCXML, and
many ILS products take advantage of XML
for data markup and transmission.
For all you want to know about MARCXML,
see: www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/

38. Koha (among others!) lets you export the
MARC records stored as MARCXML

39. Dublin Core
XML is used for more than just a superior
carrier for MARC metadata, however. XML is
the de facto standard for marking up
metadata on the web – making it findable and
accessible.
For example, if you want your digital
repository harvestable via OAI-PMH, it is best
to encode it in simple Dublin Core XML.

40. So what does Dublin Core do?
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative provides
simple standards to facilitate the finding,
sharing, and management of information -- a
proposed minimal set of data elements for
describing network-accessible materials
Dublin Core can be expressed in different
ways – including XML.

41. What are the Simple
Dublin Core elements?
Title
Creator
Subject
Description
Publisher
Contributor
Date
Type
Format
Identifier
Source
Language
Relation
Coverage
Rights
Dublin Core gives us standard ways to describe
a resource, and Dublin Core can be expressed
in the standard XML markup language.

42. Do I need to worry about
Dublin Core?
If you are interested in creating digital
repositories whose metadata can be
discovered and harvested via OAI-PMH…yes.
If you contribute to Indiana
Memory, for example, you use
Dublin Core with CONTENTdm,
which is going to represent your
Dublin Core in XML.

43. So what is this OAI-PMH?
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
OAI-PMH is a protocol designed to collect metadata from
various repositories.
• "Harvesters" (Service Providers) request information on
updated records from "repositories" (Data Providers). The
data providers must provide XML metadata in Simple
Dublin Core format. These harvesters issue OAI-PMH
requests to Data Providers in order to harvest and store
metadata for building value-added services.
• Data Providers (repositories) – possibly YOU! – provide
access to metadata and possibly access to full texts or
other resources.

44. There are no “live” search requests to the
Data Providers. Services are based on the
harvested metadata. But you allow this
harvesting of your metadata because you
follow several standards…

45. Gee, how many more standards
do I need to know about?
More than I want to make slides for.
But at least you know the ones you most
commonly encounter in day-to-day library
functioning. You need to understand the old
standards and be aware of upcoming
standards to serve your patrons and
yourself.

46. Remember those pesky RFPs…
If you ever have to create a Request for Proposal
for a new ILS, you will surely need to know about
standards. See the old but still good:
The RFP Writer's Guide to Standards for Library
Systems by Cynthia Hodgson, published by the
National Information Standards Organization
(2002):
http://www.niso.org/publications/press/RFP_Writers_Guide.pdf

47. Typical RFP inclusions…if you hang around libraries
long enough, you may be involved with one.
You help
yourself and
create a good
customer
experience by
knowing what is
going on here…