Hi Ethan, I have to admit, I don't have any working knowledge of XForms, but after making myself as smart as spending a couple of minutes online and a brief chat with a colleague can make you, I have a couple of working assumptions and questions I'd like to run past you. (If I am wrong, I trust that you'll correct me.)
What I think I've learned: You can use XForms to store keyed data in an XML format of your choosing. However, you can't use XForms to transform pre-existing structured data into XML. In other words, in the context of descriptive metadata, it seems to me that XForms would only be useful in an instance where you are cataloging from scratch. From my vantage point, the most pressing issue in museums is to transform existing data housed in collections management systems into XML, and from what I've learned so far, XForms is not applicable to that task. So in the end, my key question is the niche which XForms could fill in a museum context: how do you envision XForms could help an institution whose core information system is a database? In other words, what would a use case for a CDWA Lite editor be? How would a museum use XForms to create metadata when the main investment in creating that metadata is the collections management system? Cheers, G?nter *** G?nter Waibel OCLC Research voice: +1-650-287-2144 G?nter blogs at ... http://www.hangingtogether.org -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 5:18 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: [MCN-L] Fwd: [CODE4LIB] new mailing list for XForms in libraries Hi all, I don't know the extent of the museum technologist community's experimentation with XForms in the creation of metadata, but in the research library community, there is an increasingly strong demand for tools used in the creation of MODS, METS, VRA Core, and EAD files. I am currently working on an EAD editor (http://code.google.com/p/eaditor/), dabbled with a VRA Core editor, and have contemplated starting work on a CDWA editor. I firmly believe that XForms applications represent the future of metadata creation, with database-related options eventually fading away, for a wide variety of reasons. I am forwarding this email from code4lib. I encourage technologists and museum professionals that have a vested interest in metadata creation to subscribe to the listserv described in the email below. I am personally interested in the adaptation of common library software tools to museums and other cultural heritage institutions, so I think that museum professionals should play a role in engaging in a dialog with library professionals in developing these sorts of tools. Ethan Gruber University of Virginia Library ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: [Your Name] <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 12:48 PM Subject: [CODE4LIB] new mailing list for XForms in libraries To: CODE4LIB at listserv.nd.edu There's been some interest lately on this list in the use of W3C XForms for library metadata (e.g. MODS, EAD, VRA Core...). Several institutions have committed in one degree or another to their use, and many more are investigating the possibility. To provide a venue for more specific discussion (implementations, code sharing, etc.) I've created a list at: https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/xforms4lib I hope we can generate some useful discussion there, and perhaps even some partnership-building. As my colleague Ethan Gruber has pointed out to me, there are at least four or five institutions implementing MODS editors alone. It would seem that there's a lot of room to help each other. --- A. Soroka Digital Research and Scholarship R & D the University of Virginia Library _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
