[Metadatalibrarians] xslt (and Static Repositories)
R John Robertson
rr at cis.strath.ac.uk
Mon Aug 25 02:36:55 PDT 2008
Hi Greta,
The small museum context you're describing might suit a static
repository really well and it is a low maintenance approach.
In a nutshell the process is:
You create the static repository file locally, stick it on a web
accessible location and then register it with a intermediating static
repository gateway.
As a result of this you get a (compound) url that you can query via
OAI-PMH verbs and register with harvesters etc.
The static repository is simply a xml file formatted according to the SR
spec. The gateway is a third party service but one that provides a
nearly completely invisible intermediation. The good (and bad news) is
that the gateway will not register the file unless it conforms to the
spec. The other thing I'd note is how many objects are dealing with? The
guideline limit is 5000 but the actual limit is the size of xml file/
repository you end up with - for some gateway software the limit is 2mb
so if you've particularly extensive metadata you may not get that many
objects.
There's a good overview in the spec and on the OAI best practices wiki
:http://webservices.itcs.umich.edu/mediawiki/oaibp/index.php/StaticRepositories
In the Stargate project we demonstrated the use of static repositories
for some journals - but produced tools, guidance, and commentary that
might inform your work. http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/stargate/ . In the
project documentation, we review the use and limitations of an SR
approach and in the project extension we incidentally examined existing
gateway services.
If you're looking for a SR gateway, my personal impression is that the
UIUC gateway has an active community of users including quite a few
small museum projects and (AFAIK) they're happy to mediate external users.
hope it goes well.
John R
Greta de Groat wrote:
> Hi Jenn,
>
> Thanks for the diagnosis. I'm actually planning to try to find a
> static repository to host the files, since there are not a lot of
> records and we don't have any expertise. So do i need to find a
> static repository and ask them the format that they want? Or is there
> a standard way of making the file for a static repository?
>
> I guess that's going to be another question--how do i find a static
> repository?
>
> Thanks
> Greta de Groat
>
>
>
> Quoting metadatalibrarians-request at lists.monarchos.com:
>
>> Send Metadatalibrarians mailing list submissions to
>> metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
>>
>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com
>>
>>
>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>> metadatalibrarians-request at lists.monarchos.com
>>
>> You can reach the person managing the list at
>> metadatalibrarians-owner at lists.monarchos.com
>>
>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>> than "Re: Contents of Metadatalibrarians digest..."
>>
>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. xslt question (Greta de Groat)
>> 2. Re: xslt question (Riley, Jenn)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:40:19 -0700
>> From: Greta de Groat <gdegroat at stanford.edu>
>> Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] xslt question
>> To: metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
>> Message-ID: <20080824094019.okb7yha70go0wocs at webmail.stanford.edu>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes";
>> format="flowed"
>>
>> Ok, i'll ask an XSLT question. Just to be clear, i'm not doing
>> this for my day job. I'm also volunteering at a small museum and i'm
>> trying to teach myself XML/XSLT/OAI by creating and exposing records
>> for some museum collections which i'm putting online. So there's
>> nobody there on staff who can help.
>>
>> I'm working with an XSLT 1.0 processor, that's what i have access to
>> at the moment. I am trying to work with XML data exported from a
>> museum program called PastPerfect (thus the "ppdata" in my files), and
>> i'm trying to turn that into MODS. (I'll work on DC when i get this
>> one straight). I do get a transformation to happen, but each element
>> has a blank namespace declaration in it. For example:
>> note xmlns=""
>> abstract xmlns=""
>> etc.
>> And when i try to validate the resulting file (i used the validator at
>> http://www.validome.org/xml/) i get zillions of error messages.
>> So obviously i have a namespace problem. I'm trying to make a file of
>> records that i can expose via OAI-PMH and i don't really know what the
>> wrapper or header or namespace elements should look like, i've just
>> copied them from harvested records, and since each of those was a
>> little different, i didn't know how to put them together:
>>
>> I put my stylesheet here:
>> http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/TestXSLFileLatest.xsl
>> and the file i'm trying to transform is here
>> http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/PPSPosters82208Edited.xml
>>
>> If someone could take a look at this and give me a tip on what i'm
>> doing wrong, i'd be very grateful. Or if there is some sort of
>> template online that could tell me what these elements are supposed to
>> look like for a MODS or a Dublin Core record and any necessary OAI
>> stuff? I've looked at the OAI documentation, but it's not at a level i
>> can understand.
>>
>> Sorry if this is too elementary!
>>
>> thanks
>> Greta de Groat
>>
>>
>> ----- End forwarded message -----
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:22:02 -0400
>> From: "Riley, Jenn" <jenlrile at indiana.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [Metadatalibrarians] xslt question
>> To: "'A listserv for Metadata Librarians'"
>> <metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com>
>> Message-ID:
>> <89D12171D3EA6E48900F2B7BF14864EA13CC5E0E76 at iu-mssg-mbx06.ads.iu.edu>
>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> Hi Greta,
>>
>> The core of the issue here is you're trying to use the default
>> namespace (xmlns="whatever", the one without the namespace prefix on
>> elements) for both the OAI-PMH wrapper and for the MODS elements.
>> How to fix this depends on what method you'll use to deliver these
>> records via OAI-PMH.
>>
>> If you're using full OAI-PMH data provider software, it will
>> probably handle providing the wrapper for you, so you don't need to
>> worry about outputting it as a result of this transformation. All
>> you'd need in that case would be MODS records that would then be
>> loaded into the data provider. If you have a big XML file with just
>> MODS, then you can use the default namespace
>> (xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3") or a specified prefix
>> (xmlns:mods="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3", along with mods: in front
>> of all the MODS elements). Depending on how you're loading the MODS
>> records into the data provider you might need one big file with
>> <modsCollection> as the root element and lots of <mods> inside, or
>> lots of XML files each with a <mods> root element. For the latter,
>> <xsl:result-document> in XSLT 2.0 is very helpful.
>>
>> If you do want to output a whole OAI-PMH wrapper around the MODS,
>> you should pick either the wrapper or MODS to be the default
>> namespace (I'm guessing the former is better maybe?). Define that in
>> the root element of the stylesheet (right now it's not defined
>> until opening the wrapper output in the stylesheet, which I think
>> means it's only defined for that template and no others - but this
>> is starting to get beyond my expertise...). Also in the root element
>> of the stylesheet define the prefix for the other format (e.g.,
>> xmlns:mods="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3).
>>
>> Hope that helps you down the right track...
>>
>> Jenn
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: metadatalibrarians-bounces at lists.monarchos.com
>>> [mailto:metadatalibrarians-bounces at lists.monarchos.com] On Behalf Of
>>> Greta de Groat
>>> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 12:40 PM
>>> To: metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
>>> Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] xslt question
>>>
>>> Ok, i'll ask an XSLT question. Just to be clear, i'm not doing
>>> this for my day job. I'm also volunteering at a small museum and i'm
>>> trying to teach myself XML/XSLT/OAI by creating and exposing records
>>> for some museum collections which i'm putting online. So there's
>>> nobody there on staff who can help.
>>>
>>> I'm working with an XSLT 1.0 processor, that's what i have access to
>>> at the moment. I am trying to work with XML data exported from a
>>> museum program called PastPerfect (thus the "ppdata" in my files), and
>>> i'm trying to turn that into MODS. (I'll work on DC when i get this
>>> one straight). I do get a transformation to happen, but each element
>>> has a blank namespace declaration in it. For example:
>>> note xmlns=""
>>> abstract xmlns=""
>>> etc.
>>> And when i try to validate the resulting file (i used the validator at
>>> http://www.validome.org/xml/) i get zillions of error messages.
>>> So obviously i have a namespace problem. I'm trying to make a file of
>>> records that i can expose via OAI-PMH and i don't really know what the
>>> wrapper or header or namespace elements should look like, i've just
>>> copied them from harvested records, and since each of those was a
>>> little different, i didn't know how to put them together:
>>>
>>> I put my stylesheet here:
>>> http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/TestXSLFileLatest.xsl
>>> and the file i'm trying to transform is here
>>> http://www.stanford.edu/~gdegroat/PPSPosters82208Edited.xml
>>>
>>> If someone could take a look at this and give me a tip on what i'm
>>> doing wrong, i'd be very grateful. Or if there is some sort of
>>> template online that could tell me what these elements are supposed to
>>> look like for a MODS or a Dublin Core record and any necessary OAI
>>> stuff? I've looked at the OAI documentation, but it's not at a level i
>>> can understand.
>>>
>>> Sorry if this is too elementary!
>>>
>>> thanks
>>> Greta de Groat
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- End forwarded message -----
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Metadatalibrarians mailing list
>>> Metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
>>> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-
>>> monarchos.com
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Metadatalibrarians mailing list
>> Metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
>> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com
>>
>>
>> End of Metadatalibrarians Digest, Vol 50, Issue 19
>> **************************************************
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Metadatalibrarians mailing list
> Metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com
> http://lists.monarchos.com/listinfo.cgi/metadatalibrarians-monarchos.com
--
R. John Robertson
skype: rjohnrobertson
Repositories Research Officer (JISCCETIS),
Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement
University of Strathclyde
Tel: +44 (0) 141 548 3072
http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/johnr/
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC015263
More information about the Metadatalibrarians
mailing list