1. Z39.50 Profiles The Bath Profile ZIG Meeting Leuven, Belgium July 2000 William E. Moen <wemoen@unt.edu> School of Library and Information Sciences University of North Texas Denton, TX 72603

2. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 2 Profiles o An auxiliary standards mechanism o Defines a subset of specifications from one or more standards o Goal of profiles is to improve interoperability o Profiles are useful for: o prescribing how Z39.50 should be used in a particular application environment o solving interoperability problems with existing Z39.50 implementations within a community or across two or more communities

3. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 3 Profiles Z39.50 Specifications Represents community consensus on requirements Identifies Z39.50 specifications to support those requirements Improves search and retrieval results Aids in purchasing decisions Provides specifications for vendors to build Z39.50 products Complete Z39.50 Specifications Z39.50 Profile

4. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 4 A Plethora of Z39.50 Profiles! o Library applications profiles o The Bath Profile (International) o ONE-2 and CENL Profiles (Regional and Project) o DanZIG Profile (National) o Union Catalogue Profile o Other information communities profiles o The GILS Profile (government information) o The CIMI Profile (cultural heritage) o The Geo Profile (geospatial) o Application-support profiles o Zthes Profile (thesaurus profile) o Check the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency siteZ39.50 Maintenance Agency site

5. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 5 Interoperability: The Fundamental Problem o Ability of client to successfully search and retrieve information in a meaningful way o Key issue when searching multiple databases containing similar resources o Difficult problem when searching databases containing diverse types of resources o Z39.50 profiles provide a solution

6. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 6 Threats to Interoperability è Differences in implementation of the standard è Differences in local information retrieval systems o Z39.50 cannot improve searchability of resources only support what local and remote systems offer o It can only support what local and remote systems offer

7. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 7 Levels of Interoperability o Low-level protocol (syntactic) o do Z-client and Z-servers interchange PDUs according to standard? o High-level protocol (functional) o do Z-client and Z-servers support appropriate Z39.50 services for user tasks o Semantic level o can Z-clients and Z-servers and local IR systems preserve and act on meaning of IR tasks

8. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 8 Interoperability and Z39.50 Searching o Issues o Use attributes supported (Z39.50 Implementation) o Differences in indexing, searchable fields available, search support, etc. (Local IR System) o Implications o Different results from similar databases implemented on separate Z-servers o Different results on same database when searched locally or through Z39.50

9. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 9 Interoperability and Z39.50 Retrieval o Issues o Z39.50 Record Syntaxes supported (Z39.50 Implementation) o Capability of local IR system to prepare records in one or more formats for interchange (Local IR System) o Implications o Clients and servers may or may not be able to interchange records

10. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 10 The Bath Profile The Bath Profile: An International Z39.50 Specification for Library Applications and Resource Discovery, Release 1.1 o Internationally Registered Profile (IRP) o Enables effective use of Z39.50 in a range of library applications: o Search and retrieval from library catalogues o Search and retrieval of bibliographic holdings info o Cross-domain searching o Item ordering and document delivery

11. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 11 Evolution towards Bath o ATS-1 Profile (1995) o CENL Profile (1997) o DanZIG Profile (1997) o MODELS Profile (1997) o ONE Profile (1997) o Virtual Canadian Union Catalogue Profile (1998) o The Z Texas Profile (1999)

12. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 12 Structure of the Profile o Modular o Groups related requirements and specifications o Defines 3 Functional Areas o Functional Area A: Basic Bibliographic Search & Retrieval o Functional Area B: Bibliographic Holdings Search & Retrieval o Functional Area C: Cross-Domain Search & Retrieval o Defines several Conformance Levels

13. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 13 Bath Profile Functional Area A o Basic Bibliographic Search o Conformance Level 0 (4 searches) o Author Search Precision Match for Established Name Heading o Title Search Keyword o Subject Search Keyword o Any Search Keyword o Conformance Level 1 (15 searches) o Browsing Indexes o 6 Scans specified o Basic Bibliographic Retrieval o Combination of UNIMARC or MARC21, and o SUTRS and/or XML

14. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 14 Summary of Bib-1 Attributes Required Attribute TypeAttribute ValuesAttribute Name Use (1)4, 21, 31, 1003, 1007, 1016 title, subject heading, date of publication, author, identifier- standard, any Relation (2)1, 2, 3, 4, 5less than, less than or equal, equal, greater than or equal, greater than Position (3)1, 3first in field, any position in field Structure (4)1, 2, 101phrase, word, normalized Truncation (5)1, 100right truncation, do not truncate Completeness (6)1, 3incomplete subfield, complete field

15. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 15 Bath Profile Functional Area B o Bibliographic Holdings Search and Retrieval o Requires new Holdings Schema o Conformance Level 1 defines two Element Set Names o Locations Only o Locations, Summary Information, and Count if available o Work on this functional area will be completed in Fall 2000.

16. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 16 Bath Profile Functional Area C o Cross-Domain Search and Retrieval o Defines two levels o Conformance Level 0 (4 searches) o Creator Search Keyword o Title Search Keyword o Subject Search Keyword o Any Search Keyword o Level 1 (9 searches) o SUTRS and XML as record syntaxes o Dublin Core DTD for XML record syntax o Conformance Level 2 will specify Cross Domain and Utility Attribute Sets

17. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 17 Addressing Interoperability o Identify searching requirements (tasks) o Several levels of searching: recall-oriented, precision- oriented o Defining the searches (semantics and behavior) o Specifying Z39.50 query to represent the search o Standard combination of Z39.50 Attribute Types and Values o Clients must send all attribute type values specified o Servers must be able to process all values o Suggested mapping and indexing of local systems (e.g., MARC fields to index, etc.)

18. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 18 Level 0 Title Keyword Search Attribute TypeAttribute ValueAttribute Names Use (1)4Title Relation (2)3Equal Position (3)3Any Structure (4)2Word Truncation (5)100Do not truncate Completeness (6)1Incomplete subfield Uses: Searches for complete word in a title of a resource.

19. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 19 Level 1 Title First Words in Field Attribute TypeAttribute ValueAttribute Names Use (1)4Title Relation (2)3Equal Position (3)1First in field Structure (4)1Phrase Truncation (5)100Do not truncate Completeness (6)1Incomplete subfield Uses: Searches for complete word(s) in the order specified in fields that contain a title of a resource. The field must begin with the specified character string. This search is useful when the beginning words in a title are known to the user.

20. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 20 Bath as Core Specifications o National and regional profiles based on the Bath Profile o DanZIG Profile o ONE-2 Profile o CENL Profile o Compatible supersets of Bath o Addressing how different profiles will work together o Bath and CIMI o Bath and GILS

21. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 21 Z Texas and Bath o Z Texas Profile o Z Texas as companion profile to Bath o Z Texas as compatible superset of Bath o Final revisions to Z Texas to harmonize with Bath o Continuing development on Texas-specific requirements: o for searching o for retrieval o for addressing other types of information o A US National Profile – developed by NISO

22. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 22 Next Steps: Indexing Guidance o Prescribing Z39.50 implementation specifications is half the battle o Developing indexing and mapping guidance is necessary o Can we as a community define a standard way to index bibliographic data?

23. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 23 Next Steps: Assuring Quality of Products o Approaches o Taking the vendors word for it o Conformance testing o Interoperability testing o Challenges of interoperability testing o Rigorous methodology o Tests for different levels of interoperability o Metrics for benchmarks and comparison o Setting up an interop testbed

24. William MoenZ39.50 Profiles -- ZIG Meeting Leuven, July 2000 24 Z Texas and Bath Profile Resources o Bath Profile o Copy of draft profile http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/draft/ o Listserv for Discussion ZIP-PIZ-L (subscribe by sending message to: LISTSERV@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA) o Z Texas Profile o Project Website http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/z3950/ o TZIG Member List http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/z3950/committee.htm o Texas Z39.50 Listserv http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/z3950/list.htm