Collections of three-dimensional materials may not be discoverable to library users if they lack adequate metadata. Discovery of these collections may be enhanced through the application of relevant cataloging standards and controlled vocabularies. This paper outlines how librarians at the University of North Texas Libraries used these strategies to increase access to a large collection of tabletop games.
Assessing interoperability in the networked information services and applications environment presents difficult challenges due in part to the multi-level and multi-faceted aspects of interoperability. Recent research to establish an interoperability testbed in the context of Z39.50 protocol clients and servers and online catalog applications identified threats to interoperability and defined a question space for interoperability testing. This paper reports on follow-up research to develop an alternative approach for interoperability testing in the context of networked information retrieval that uses specially designed diagnostic records. These records, referred to as radioactive records, enable interoperability assessment at the protocol and semantic levels. This approach appears to offer an extensible method for interoperability testing for other metadata and protocol application environments. The resulting interoperability testbed incorporates additional components to exploit automatic processes for interoperability testing and assessment, thus improving the efficiency of interoperability testing. IntroductionPursuit of interoperability in the networked information environment has been compared to the pursuit for the Holy Grail (Tennant, 1998). We believe it exists, and we believe we can find it (or achieve it). Testing for interoperability in basic networked services and applications such as information retrieval have often resembled the Keystone Kops in the simplicity of some approaches, or Rube Goldberg machines for conformance testing -far from the sublime pursuit of the Grail. Yet the challenges in achieving useful levels of interoperability are problematic in part because of the multi-faceted nature and types of interoperability (Miller, 2000).One networked information service area that has provided an opportunity to explore the multi-faceted nature of interoperability is the use of the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol to conduct information retrieval tasks on a variety of online databases, including bibliographic databases associated with online catalog applications. We have seen how optimal interoperability must occur not only at the syntactic or functional level provided by the protocol but also at the semantic level. This latter level addresses ability of two systems to present and process user information tasks in a way that meanings of those tasks are retained. Reliability, trustworthiness, and usability of networked resources and services are founded on assumptions about the levels of interoperability occurring when two or more systems interact in service to applications and users. This paper describes an on-going research project to explore issues related to interoperability in the context of metasearch applications across multiple online library catalogs or bibliographic databases. The immediate goal of this research is to improve interoperability when using the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol. The paper presents a new approach to interoperability testing through the use of specially...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.