   
Universal Dataflow and Telecommunications
Archive - Historical Material
Summer 1995
Issue #28
UDT Office Personnel
Leigh Swain, Director of the IFLA International Office for
UDT, would like to announce the following personnel changes.
In March 1995, Paula Tallim, Programme Officer, began
working on assignment elsewhere in the National Library of
Canada. We wish her well in her new endeavours! Louise Lantaigne,
who is replacing Ms. Tallim, is responsible for
publication sales, newsletter distribution, general queries,
and other administrative activities. Ms. Lantaigne has
previously worked in several key areas of the National
Library of Canada, and we welcome her formidable
organizational skills. Terry Kuny, Global Village Research,
an Ottawa-based Internet and electronic communications
consulting company, has been contracted by the UDT Core
Programme to develop and maintain the IFLANET World Wide Web
service. He is also on contract to the National Library of
Canada for consulting services with regard to information
policy and technological developments. Also involved with
IFLA electronic communications is Gary Cleveland of the
National Library, author of several IFLA publications, who
will attend the Istanbul conference with Leigh Swain.
Members of the UDT Core Programme Office can be reached via
e-mail at the following addresses:
Preliminary Plans for Istanbul
At the 1995 IFLA Conference in Istanbul (August 19-25), the
IFLA Section on Information Technology (IT) is planning to
join with the Section on Serial Publications to hold an Open
Session on the control of electronic publications,
particularly journals. One important focus will be on
standards issues. This is a timely topic in an area that is
moving rapidly out of control as the electronic media
proliferate.
In addition, the Section will sponsor a half-day morning
“Workshop on Internet Basics” for colleagues who are just
beginning to use the Internet and explore its many aspects.
Since the conference in Havana, the number of World Wide Web
sites has exploded and the subject of Internet discovery
tools has become more complex. At least one other IFLA
group plans to present a complementary afternoon program on
a specific Internet topic.
(From "IT Review", the newsletter of the IFLA Section on
Information Technology, March 1995, No. 24)
National Digital Library Federation
Agreement Signed
On May 1, leaders of fifteen of the largest U.S. research
libraries and archives and the Commission on Preservation
and Access signed an agreement that pledges collaboration
toward the establishment of a National Digital Library
Federation. At the signing held at Harvard University, the
founding members of the Federation — collectively
responsible for hundreds of millions of cultural, scholarly
and historical resources — agreed to cooperate on defining
what must be done to bring together, from across the nation
and beyond, digitized materials that will be made accessible
to students, scholars, and citizens everywhere, and that
document the building and dynamics of United States heritage
and cultures.
A primary goal of the Federation is the implementation of a
distributed, open digital library accessible across the
global Internet. The library will consist of collections —
expanding over time in number and scope — to be created from
the conversion to digital form of documents contained in
founding member institutions and other libraries and
archives, and from the incorporation of holdings already in
electronic form. In support of this goal, the Federation
will establish a collaborative management structure, develop
a coordinated funding strategy, and formulate selection
guidelines to ensure conformance to the general theme of
U.S. heritage and culture. The Federation also will adopt
common standards and best practices to ensure full
informational capture and guarantee universal accessibility.
The agreement recognizes and acknowledges the important
leadership role that the Library of Congress has played in
raising as a national issue the need for such a digital
library.
The first phase of the Federation's work will be completed
in six months. During that time, a task force coordinated
by the Commission on Preservation and Access and composed of
senior members of the staffs of the founding institutions
will develop an action plan to address, among other issues,
funding strategies and the involvement of additional
institutions. The Commission will report regularly on
developments.
The primary mission of the Commission on Preservation and
Access is to foster, develop and support collaboration among
libraries and allied organizations to ensure the
preservation of the published and documentary record in all
formats and to provide enduring access to scholarly
information. It operates as a private, non-profit
corporation supported by foundation grants and the
sponsorship of colleges, universities, associations,
libraries, and publishers.
Information:
Maxine K. Sitts,
Program Officer,
Commission on Preservation and Access,
1400 16th St., NW, Suite 740, Washington, DC 20036
Internet: mksitts@cpa.org
The mission statement and list of parties to the agreement
are available in the CPA area of Conservation OnLine:
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/
(Information from a Commission on Preservation and Access
news release)
Confederation Project of National Library of Canada
On April 5, National Librarian Marianne Scott announced at a
press conference in Sutherland's River, Nova Scotia, that
the National Library of Canada is playing an active role in
the creation of an "electronic library" by initiating
efforts to digitize Canadian material and make it available
on the Information Highway.
The announcement marked the launch of a demonstration
project involving both the National Library of Canada and
the Library of Congress. Two schools, East Pictou Rural
High School in Sutherland's River, Nova Scotia and Hammond
Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia, participated in a
week-long demonstration of the project by accessing
information on Canada's Confederation and the U.S. Civil War
through Internet links to both libraries.
The project is based on the idea of using the Internet to
provide wider and more immediate accessibility of
information. As Marianne Scott explained, "This project
allows us to share the resources of the National Library
with a greater audience and to promote the study and
appreciation of Canada's published heritage." The National
Library's long-term objective is to provide electronic
access to a much greater volume of Canadian material, both
in Canada and around the world.
The Stentor Alliance, a consortium of Canada's telephone
carriers, represented by Mr. Colin Latham, President and
CEO, Maritime Telephone & Telegraph (MT&T), made a
commitment of $450 000 to the Friends of the National
Library. Accepting on their behalf, the National Librarian
said: "We are grateful to the members of the Stentor
Alliance for their contribution. We hope that this is the
first of many corporate contributions that will support the
National Library's efforts to promote and increase
Canadian content on the Information Highway."
Marianne Scott was joined at the launch by the Honourable
John Savage, Premier of Nova Scotia; Mr. Colin Latham,
President and CEO, MT&T; and Mr. Alex Burney, Manager,
Canadian Business Development. Dr. James Billington,
Librarian of Congress; Ms. Linda Roberts, US Secretary of
Education; Mr. Derek Burney, Chairman, Bell Canada
International; Mr. Glenn Jones, CEO, Jones Intercable, and
Mr. Decker Anstrom, President, American Cable Association
also participated in the launch in Alexandria, Virginia,
Toronto and New York via satellite links.
(From a National Library of Canada news release)
Campus Watch
Campus Watch is an electronic newsletter published by CAUSE,
a Colorado association, to share news concerning effective
management and use of higher education information
resources, including information, technology, and services.
Here are two items of interest from the April 28, 1995
issue:
University of Michigan Forms Coalition to Reinvent
Information Education
The University of Michigan's School of Information and
Library Studies (SILS), with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation,
has formed the Kellogg Coalition on Reinventing Information
Science, Technology, and Library Education (CRISTAL-
ED). Under the five-year project, SILS hopes to radically
change its instructional program, using an international,
multidisciplinary consortium of schools to define new
professional specializations focussing on information access
and use. SILS has started a moderated listserv on the
subject; subscribe by sending an e-mail to majordomo
@sils.umich.edu with the message: subscribe cristal-ed.
Web home page: http://sils.umich.edu/publications/
CRISTALED/Kellogg-HomePage.html
Harvard Initiates Policy Project on Digital Libraries
The Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at
Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government has announced
a four-year project on policy development for the "digital
library". The project, funded by the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation, will investigate financial, legal, and
institutional issues, focussing on life-cycle management of
information resources. Contact: Brian Kahin, director,
Information Infrastructure Project, kahin@harvard.edu
What's New on IFLANET?
The IFLANET World Wide Web (WWW) home page is located at:
URL: http://www.ifla.org/index.htm
We are extremely pleased to report that within the first six
weeks of operation, the IFLANET WWW home page was visited by
over 2000 people. Users from more than 30 different
countries accessed the server in March. So far, users have
been from Australia, Chile, South Africa, Thailand, China,
Israel, and almost every country of Europe and North
America. Initial feedback indicates that the IFLANET WWW
service is becoming regarded as one of the premier Internet
sites for information pertaining to libraries!
A number of new electronic resources have been added to the
WWW service since February. Among the most popular pages
have been:
Digital Libraries - Resources and Project.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/diglib.htm
G-7 Information Society Conference Information. A meeting
was held in Brussels on February 25-26, 1995 to encourage
the development of a worldwide information society.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/g7.htm
Copyright and Intellectual Property Resources.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/cpyright.htm
Information Technology Standards and Organizations.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/standard.htm
The Unesco Public Library Manifesto (1994).
URL: http://www.ifla.org/documents/libraries/policies/unesco.htm
UDT Occasional Papers
The first is a set of three papers exploring information and networking technologies in Russian
libraries.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/VI/5/op/index.htm
Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery and Resource Sharing
Information.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/ill.htm
Cataloguing and Indexing of Electronic Resources.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/catalog.htm
World Guide to Doctoral Dissertations in Science and Technology.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/V/wgddst/wgddst.htm
IFLA Grants Information.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/III/members/grants.htm
Libraries and Related Information Policy Statements.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/libpol.htm
Electronic Text Archives.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/II/etext.htm
61st IFLA General Conference Information.
URL: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla61/61intro.htm
Watch for future IFLANET additions! Upcoming services will
include:
- Internet and library software archive (June 1995)
- The Gutenberg Electronic Text archive (July 1995)
- An electronic icon and clipart archive for libraries (late summer/fall 1995)
Additions and changes to the IFLANET WWW service are
announced regularly to the PACS-L and IFLA-L listservers.
Please check the IFLANET WWW home page "What's New" section
for the latest developments.
If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions
pertaining to the IFLANET WWW service, please send a message
to:
IFLANET@ifla.org
Agora: Retrieving IFLANET WWW Documents through Electronic Mail
Agora is a service to allow users who have access only to
electronic mail on the Internet to retrieve content from
World Wide Web (WWW) servers. This service is being
provided by the W3 Consortium http://www.w3.org/Consortium/, the international
organization that is promoting WWW standards, applications
and development.
IFLANET administration will be examining the possibility of
mirroring Agora on IFLANET in the future to alleviate the
load on the W3 Consortium computers.
The following information about Agora has been adapted from
text prepared by Arthur Secret (agora-request@mail. w3.org)
of the W3 Consortium.
The following information has been prepared by Arthur Secret at the W3 Consortium.
To retrieve a WWW document through Agora, you just have to specify its "address", called a
Uniform Resource Locator (URL). For example, the URL of this help document is:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Agora/Help.txt
This means that to get it, you just have to send a mail to listserv@mail.w3.org, with whatever subject you like,
the body of the mail being:
SEND http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Agora/Help.txt
If this is the first time you enter this new medium, we suggest you look at the following
documents:
In this new medium, most documents are hypertext. In such a
case you will notice numbers in square brackets such as [12]
next to certain words. This means that you can access
another document, hopefully related to the word(s) preceding
the [12]. If you want to see this document, you will find
at the bottom of the document containing the [12] a list of
URLs, next to numbers. Copy the URL next to [12], and paste
it to the body of the request you sent to
listserv@mail.w3.org.
There is another way to retrieve W3 documents through email.
Reply to listserv@mail.w3.org, and specify in the body the
number(s) you are interested in. This program will figure
out which document you are interested in by looking at the
subject header, which you then must save.
Example 1
You'd like to know more about the World Wide Web Initiative?
The number within brackets is 1. At the bottom of the page,
1 corresponds to
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
So you have to send a mail to listserv@mail.w3.org with the body:
SEND http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
Example 2
You still have some questions on World-Wide Web ? All right, the
appropriate documents are "World-Wide Web Developpment" and
"Frequently Asked Questions". They have the numbers 2 and 3 in
brackets next to them. So you reply to the mail from
listserv@mail.w3.org that you are currently reading, and write in
the body:
Note: If your mail tool truncates subject lines, it may be useful for you to know that
this robot needs only the part
(URL: ...) to determine what the numbers refer to.
Commands related to the retrieval of W3 documents
Everything appearing in [] below is optional; everything
appearing in is mandatory; all arguments are case insensitive.
Only the first 10 lines of requests will be processed.
this will send you back the document you requested, with all its
hrefs, so that you may ask further requests. (if the document is too
large, you will get only its first 5 000 lines). The url sent may
contain the following characters:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJK
LMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789:/._-+@%*()?$#&
Example:
SEND http://www.w3.org/
WWW http://www.cern.ch/
rsend
Same as "send", but you can specify a different return-path
Example:
rsend zorro@horsemen.holywood.com http://www.w3.org/
deep
Same as "send", but it will also send you the documents refered to in
the URL you mentioned. (If the documents are too large, you will get
only the first 5 000 lines of what "deep" should provide).
Be cautious when using "deep"! Agora might mail to you
several dozens of documents!
Example:
source
Same as "send", but allows you to see the source of the document, so
that you may use a nicer HTML browser to read it
Example:
source http://www.w3.org/
rsource
Same as "source", but you can specify a different return-path
Example:
rssource zorro@horsemen.holywood.com http://www.w3.org/
help
Shows you this document.
References from this document
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML): Overview and Developments
by George Charlebois, National Library of Canada, National Library of Canada
Introduction
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is an International Organization for
Standardization Standard (ISO 8879) that describes a language for text encoding. It provides a
set of conventions for marking up, or describing, a full text document so that individual parts of
the document can be identified and manipulated by processing applications. These conventions
specify what codes are allowed, which are mandatory, how to distinguish markup from text, and
what each code means.
Overview and Description
SGML is a product of the publishing industry, having had its origins in the automation of
proofreaders markup in the 1970s. The concept of a generic markup language was first
discussed at a meeting between the Graphics Communication Association and the Canadian
Government Printing Office in 1967. Work resulting from this meeting culminated in the
publication of a standard for the first generic markup language, GML, in the early 1970s. By
1978 this had been developed into the first version of Standard Generalized Markup Language
(SGML) published as a Graphics Communication Association Standard. By 1986, this had been
revised and published as International Standard, ISO 8879 which is the definitive version still in
use today.
Unlike most other markup languages, SGML is non-proprietary, that is, it is not owned by any
one vendor and does not have to be licensed for use. Anyone can study the SGML specification
and implement a version of it. It is also not machine or application dependent. SGML tagging
does not embed specific formatting codes into the text of a document, it only identifies the
various parts of the document for later processing. This unique ability to separate format,
structure and content and to process each separately affords SGML encoded documents a
degree of hardware and software independence not available by any other method.
An SGML document consists of :
- Document Declaration which specifies basic facts about the "dialect" of SGML being
used. This is where one sets defaults, specifies options and delimiters, declares which
character set is being used and similar functions. The Document Declaration may be held as a
table in the processing applications rather than in the actual document , and so may be invisible
to the user.
- Document Type Definition (DTD) which specifies the document's structure. One DTD
may be used for a whole class of similar documents if an organization has a large publishing
program. For example, all the administrative manuals may share the same DTD, all the
catalogs may share another. Sharing DTDs in this way is not only economical, it also provides a
uniform "family" look and feel to the documentation produced by an organization. The main
function of the DTD is to specify the tagset used to encode the text of a document. This includes
specifying the actual tag names, the relationship between the tags, the order in which they
appear in the document, and any qualifying attributes which apply to individual tags. Another
important function of the DTD is to define the format for linkages to other documents.
- Document Instance is the actual text of the document with the SGML tags embedded
into it to identify the various parts of the text. Most of these texts are plain ASCII files created on
a word processor or SGML author/editor. Although a Document Instance can share a DTD with
several other documents as mentioned above, it can conform to only one DTD itself, and cannot
draw on tagsets, defaults or definitions from several DTDs.
- Output Specification which carries information about the formatting of specific text
elements, such as type face, indention and font size. It is especially useful in cases where you
must preserve the exact format of a document, such as in forms transmission. There are two
types currently available, Formatting Output Specification Instance (FOSI), used for printed
material, and Document Style Semantic and Specification Language (DSSSL), used for other
types of media as well as printed. The DSSSL is an ISO standard currently in its second draft,
and is still undergoing extensive revisions.
There are two types of SGML systems in use today. Those that operate directly on SGML
encoded files are referred to as native SGML systems, and those that convert SGML encoded
files to some proprietary internal format for processing are called quasi-SGML systems. Both
major word processing packages, MS WORD and WordPerfect, are of this later quasi-SGML
type. As could be expected, the conversions between SGML tags and word processing styles,
are not perfect, and some of the SGML functionality is lost in the process. This is the first
generation of word processors to have this capability however, and the companies concerned are
committed to full support of SGML in future releases of their products.
Applications
Many of the most successful SGML applications are in the area of publishing and information
handling. One of the earliest implementations was the Computer Aided Logistics Support (CALS)
Project of the U.S. Department of Defense. The DOD and its defense contractors used SGML
encoded documents to exchange data, bids and technical specifications for weapons systems
contracts. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), a consortium of academic institutions, is using
SGML to make available electronic versions of texts in the humanities for scholars to study. In
conjunction with other similar projects, they have so far made available all known works in
classical Greek, all the works of Shakespeare, all English poetry before 1900, and a substantial
body of English prose works as well. Statistics Canada uses SGML to produce the Canada
Yearbook, and is transferring most of its statistical publications to SGML format. Beginning in
Sept. 1994, they also offer on-line access via the Internet to their SGML-based statistical
databases. In addition, there are applications of SGML used to create Braille and large print
books for the handicapped, to provide access to flight information and technical data in the
aviation industry, and to monitor automobile emissions for conformance to EPA standards in the
automotive industry. The increasing number of SGML-based projects and systems all highlight
the growing acceptance of generic data encoding with its long term advantages of platform and
application independence for valuable corporate data resources.
New Developments: SGML and World Wide Web (WWW)
A milestone in Internet history was announced at the SGML '94 Conference in Washington, D.C
held in early November. Yuri Rubinski, President of SoftQuad a major SGML software supplier,
and Joseph Hardin from the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA),
announced that as of January 1995 it will be possible to create, view and distribute fully
conformant SGML documents on the Internet. This will be possible thanks to SoftQuad's decision
to distribute its SGML viewer, PANORAMA, free of charge as part of NCSA's MOSAIC software
package.
NCSA has been a leader in the development and distribution of freeware on the Internet. Their
World Wide Web (WWW) client, MOSAIC, is probably the most popular Web client in use today,
and is freely available from NCSA. Applications on the Web currently use Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML), a reduced tagset version of SGML, to encode their documents, and an HTML
viewer supplied by NCSA. The advent of a full capability SGML viewer like PANORAMA will
provide a considerable impetus for the use of SGML conformant applications on the Internet.
In the short term this means that any existing SGML document can be put up and viewed on the
Internet in its native format. In the longer term, it probably means that SGML will consolidate its
position as the document encoding standard of choice for use on the Web. SGML will also
provide much richer and more functional documents than HTML is capable of handling, and over
time, it will develop in ways as yet unforeseen. It also provides impetus to document registry and
repository projects, which will be necessary to control and manage the increasing number of
SGML documents on the Web.
The HTML DTD itself will not disappear. NCSA, the creators of HTML, indicated that they are
going to develop the HTML DTD to become a fully conformant SGML DTD in order to support
the additional functionality offered by PANORAMA. This will mean a significant expansion of the
current HTML tagset, and the incorporation of many new features of the SGML standard into the
HTML DTD. The new HTML will probably be scaleable, that is it will support several levels of
conformance to the SGML standard. Currently existing HTML encoded documents will not
become obsolete. You will still be able to view and update them, but new documents conforming
to full SGML will be handled with equal ease.
SGML information on the Internet
Usenet
COMP.TEXT.SGML - news:comp.text.sgml
FTP archive for the above newsgroup
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
URL: http://www.osf.org:8001/osfdtd/sgml-faq.html
An Introduction to SGML
Discussion Lists
SGML-L Discussion List
TEI-L Discussion List
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