Schools Catalogue Information Service

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Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS) creates and distributes metadata for English-language resources used in K-12 schools, primarily for integration with integrated library systems. As of 2016, over 94% of Australian K-12 schools subscribed to SCIS, over 55% of New Zealand schools, and schools from 25 other nations. [1]

An integrated library system (ILS), also known as a library management system (LMS), is an enterprise resource planning system for a library, used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed.

Contents

Data and Standards

As well as doing original cataloguing, SCIS maintains the SCIS Subject Headings List (SCISSHL), an alternative to the Library of Congress Subject Headings suited to use in K-12 education contexts, and the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing And Data Entry (SSCDE). SSCDE reflects international standards including Resource Description and Access and International Standard Bibliographic Description with adaptations to suit the K-12 education sector. [2] [3]

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject Headings are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize and disseminate documents. It first appeared in year 1898, a year later to the publication of Library of Congress Classification(1897). The latest 38th edition was published in year 2016. LOC has ceased the print publication and a weekly updated list, supplement to the 38th edition is published. LCSHs are applied to every item within a library's collection, and facilitate a user's access to items in the catalogue that pertain to similar subject matter. If users could only locate items by 'title' or other descriptive fields, such as 'author' or 'publisher', they would have to expend an enormous amount of time searching for items of related subject matter, and undoubtedly miss locating many items because of the ineffective and inefficient search capability.

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a standard for descriptive cataloging initially released in June 2010, providing instructions and guidelines on formulating bibliographic data. Intended for use by libraries and other cultural organizations such as museums and archives, RDA is the successor to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2).

The International Standard Bibliographic Description is a set of rules produced by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to create a bibliographic description in a standard, human-readable form, especially for use in a bibliography or a library catalog. A preliminary consolidated edition of the ISBD was published in 2007 and the consolidated edition was published in 2011, superseding earlier separate ISBDs for monographs, older monographic publications, cartographic materials, serials and other continuing resources, electronic resources, non-book materials, and printed music. IFLA's ISBD Review Group is responsible for maintaining the ISBD.

SCIS catalogues bibliographic and audio-visual resources, both physical and digital, including trade fiction and non-fiction and educational materials. SCIS metadata includes full and abridged Dewey Decimal Classification, subject headings from SCISSHL and the linked-data Schools Online Thesaurus, and name and series authorities maintained by SCIS. SCIS data supports MAchine-Readable Cataloguing and Metadata Object Description Schema formats and is made available to subscribing schools via the z39.50 protocol and via the online portal scisdata.com. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Dewey Decimal Classification library classification system

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Originally described in a four-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries, currently maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers.

The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) is an XML-based bibliographic description schema developed by the United States Library of Congress' Network Development and Standards Office. MODS was designed as a compromise between the complexity of the MARC format used by libraries and the extreme simplicity of Dublin Core metadata.

Z39.50 is an international standard client–server, application layer communications protocol for searching and retrieving information from a database over a TCP/IP computer network. It is covered by ANSI/NISO standard Z39.50, and ISO standard 23950. The standard's maintenance agency is the Library of Congress.

Background

SCIS is a business unit of Education Services Australia (ESA). ESA is a not-for-profit government business enterprise established from a 2009 merger of Curriculum Corporation and Education.au, with the purpose of delivering educational technology solutions. [8] Australian Schools Catalogue Information Service (ASCIS) was created in 1984 with funding from Australia’s Commonwealth Schools Commission, with the purpose of reducing the cost and duplication of effort of cataloguing resources in schools. This closely followed the 1981 creation of the Australian Bibliographic Network (later to become Libraries Australia), set up to support shared bibliographic data for university, state, public and special libraries. [9] The newly formed Curriculum Corporation subsumed ASCIS in 1989. The name SCIS was adopted when the New Zealand government joined the board of Curriculum Corporation in 1992. [10] [11]

Education.au Limited, established in 1996, was a not-for-profit ministerially owned national company located in Adelaide, South Australia. It was governed through a Board by nominees from the Australian Government, higher education, school education, and vocational education and training sectors.

Australian Bibliographic Network is a national shared library cataloguing network that commenced in 1981 in Australia.

Related Research Articles

The Dublin Core Schema is a small set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe digital resources, as well as physical resources such as books or CDs, and objects like artworks. The full set of Dublin Core metadata terms can be found on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) website. The original set of 15 classic metadata terms, known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is endorsed in the following standards documents:

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is an organization to develop and apply technical interoperability standards for archives to share catalog information (metadata). It attempts to build a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for archives containing digital content. It allows people to harvest metadata. This metadata is used to provide "value-added services", often by combining different data sets.

National Science Digital Library open-access digital library from United States

The United States' National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is an open-access online digital library and collaborative network of disciplinary and grade-level focused education providers. NSDL's mission is to provide quality digital learning collections to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community, both formal and informal, institutional and individual. NSDL's collections are refined by a network of STEM educational and disciplinary professionals. Their work is based on user data, disciplinary knowledge, and participation in the evolution of digital resources as major elements of effective STEM learning.

Summary of this page

MARCstandards are a set of digital formats for the description of items catalogued by libraries, such as books. Working with the Library of Congress, American computer scientist Henriette Avram developed MARC in the 1960s to create records that could be read by computers and shared among libraries. By 1971, MARC formats had become the US national standard for dissemination of bibliographic data. Two years later, they became the international standard. There are several versions of MARC in use around the world, the most predominant being MARC 21, created in 1999 as a result of the harmonization of U.S. and Canadian MARC formats, and UNIMARC, widely used in Europe. The MARC 21 family of standards now includes formats for authority records, holdings records, classification schedules, and community information, in addition to the format for bibliographic records.

In library science, authority control is a process that organizes bibliographic information, for example in library catalogs by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or a numeric identifier for each topic. The word authority in authority control derives from the idea that the names of people, places, things, and concepts are authorized, i.e., they are established in one particular form. These one-of-a-kind headings or identifiers are applied consistently throughout catalogs which make use of the respective authority file, and are applied for other methods of organizing data such as linkages and cross references. Each controlled entry is described in an authority record in terms of its scope and usage, and this organization helps the library staff maintain the catalog and make it user-friendly for researchers.

Learning object metadata

Learning Object Metadata is a data model, usually encoded in XML, used to describe a learning object and similar digital resources used to support learning. The purpose of learning object metadata is to support the reusability of learning objects, to aid discoverability, and to facilitate their interoperability, usually in the context of online learning management systems (LMS).

A metadata registry is a central location in an organization where metadata definitions are stored and maintained in a controlled method.

Cataloging process of listing information resources for inclusion in a database

In library and information science, cataloging is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as creator names, titles, and subject terms that describe resources, typically through the creation of bibliographic records. The records serve as surrogates for the stored information resources. Since the 1970s these metadata are in machine-readable form and are indexed by information retrieval tools, such as bibliographic databases or search engines. While typically the cataloging process results in the production of library catalogs, it also produces other types of discovery tools for documents and collections.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library science:

Agricultural Information Management Standards, abbreviated to AIMS is a space for accessing and discussing agricultural information management standards, tools and methodologies connecting information workers worldwide to build a global community of practice. Information management standards, tools and good practices can be found on AIMS:

An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize and disseminate documents. They are used as keywords to retrieve documents in an information system, for instance, a catalog or a search engine. A popular form of keywords on the web are tags which are directly visible and can be assigned by non-experts. Index terms can consist of a word, phrase, or alphanumerical term. They are created by analyzing the document either manually with subject indexing or automatically with automatic indexing or more sophisticated methods of keyword extraction. Index terms can either come from a controlled vocabulary or be freely assigned.

Geospatial metadata is a type of metadata that is applicable to objects that have an explicit or implicit geographic extent, i.e. are associated with some position on the surface of the globe. Such objects may be stored in a geographic information system (GIS) or may simply be documents, data-sets, images or other objects, services, or related items that exist in some other native environment but whose features may be appropriate to describe in a (geographic) metadata catalog.

A bibliographic index is a bibliography intended to help find a publication. Citations are usually listed by author and subject in separate sections, or in a single alphabetical sequence under a system of authorized headings collectively known as controlled vocabulary, developed over time by the indexing service. Indexes of this kind are issued in print periodical form, online, or both. Since the 1970s they are typically generated as output from bibliographic databases.

ISO/IEC 19788Information technology – Learning, education and training – Metadata for learning resources is a multi-part standard prepared by subcommittee SC36 of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC1, Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training. This committee was created to deal with the consequences of substantial overlap in areas of standardization done at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission.

BIBFRAME is a data model for bibliographic description. BIBFRAME was designed to replace the MARC standards, and to use linked data principles to make bibliographic data more useful both within and outside the library community.

References

  1. ↑ Education Services Australia (2016). Annual Report 2015-16 (PDF). Melbourne: Education Services Australia, Ltd. p. 27.
  2. ↑ O'Connell, Judy (2013). "RDA for school libraries: The next generation in cataloguing". Access. 27 (4): 4.
  3. ↑ Hider, Philip (2014). "Contemporary Cataloguing Policy and Practice in Australian Libraries". Australian Academic & Research Libraries. 45 (3): 193–204.
  4. ↑ Chadwick, Benjamin (2017). "SCIS is more". Connections. 102: 14.
  5. ↑ Hider, Philip; Freeman, Ashley (2009). "A Comparison of ScOT and SCISSH as Subject Retrieval Aids in School Library Catalogues". Access. 23 (4): 14.
  6. ↑ Murphy, M (2007). "Library Technician Courses-Recognition". Incite. 28 (7): 8.
  7. ↑ Chadwick, Benjamin (2016). "When MARC consumed ScOT: a tale of linked educational metadata". VALA2016 - Proceedings.
  8. ↑ Standing Committee on Education and Employment. "Inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools". Australian Government. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  9. ↑ National Library Of Australia. "Our History". Libraries Australia. National Library Of Australia. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  10. ↑ Deveson, Lance (2017). "Looking back: school library catalogues and the online revolution". Connections. 100: 1–3.
  11. ↑ Spence-Richards, Pamela; Wiegand, Wayne; Dalbello, Marija (2015). A History of Modern Librarianship: Constructing the Heritage of Western Cultures. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. pp. 191–193. ISBN   9781440834738.
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