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Using RSS to Promote Scholarly Publications - Ken Varnum, Tufts University

RSS stands for real simple syndication. It's an xml-based data format for syndicating content. Way to send a title, URL and abstract to aggregators, websites, etc.

I was in a meeting this week where the topic of “Data-centric” vs. “Document-centric” XML arose. These concepts aren’t immediately obvious, and it took me a reasonable amount of time to understand them. So here’s the deal…

Executive Summary

SRW/U is an acronym for Search/Retrieve via the Web or URL and you might want to think of it as Sonne of Z39.50 sans the federated searching.

What It Is

Z39.50 is (was) a protocol -- a communication method -- for information retrieval. Originally designed to allow for the searching of remote databases, and while rather arcane, it truly was ahead of its time. (Much like the MARC record data structure, arcane but ahead if its time.)

OPML stands for Outline Processing Markup Language. It is an XML language used for marking up multi-level lists—that is, outlines.

Its chief use currently is as an interchange format for blogrolls. Bloglines, for example, imports and exports blogrolls in OPML format.

Executive Summary

The term Dublin Core refers to set of metadata elements intended to represent information that is "core" across all knowledge domains. It is frequently referred to as a "lowest common denominator" metadata format, and is often used as a base metadata format for cross-collection searching.

Executive Summary

TEI stands for Text Encoding Initiative, and it is used to markup literary documents such as poetry and prose. Through TEI it is possible to not only denote the descriptive aspects of works but the analytical aspects as well. Used to its fullest exstent, TEI provides the means for a great deal of textual analysis.

Executive Summary

Ajax refers to the use of several technologies to create highly interactive web sites. Rather than completely reloading a web page when the user clicks on something, a request is sent out to the server by Javascript, using an XML-based protocol, with the resulting response processed and displayed by the Javascript directly in the web page already displayed to the user.