Study On The Compatibility Of Information Resources Description Formats In Libraries In Networked Environment

With the rapid growth in the number of information resources description formats and in the requirements of users' unified retrieval, it becomes more and more imperative for description formats to be compatible, which has become one hot topic in the study on metadata. Referring to the information resources description formats in libraries in the networked environment, this dissertation studies on their compatibility systematically. It contains four chapters.Chapter 1 discusses the necessity of resources description formats in libraries to be compatible. Presents the diversification of resources description formats in networked libraries, analyses its background and reasons. Then investigates the incompatibility of resources description formats in several famous libraries, analyses its phenomenon, reasons and disadvantage. Points out the significance of the compatibility of description formats. It will advance the development of cataloguing science, especially fulfill catalogue controlling and information organization. Meantime, in the distributed environment, it is also very helpful in cross-system resource discovery, users' integration retrieval, jointly resource building, acknowledgement and sharing, the development of libraries, information network and description formats themselves.Chapter 2 theoretically discusses the compatibility of resources description formats. After defining resources description formats compatibility, analyses its relevance to crosswalk, mapping and interoperability, discusses the theoretical foundation of description formats compatibility. Outlines the content of description formats compatibility, which includes target, formats, content, construction, function. In practice, the study on the content of description formats focuses on three aspects: content construction, syntax construction and semantic construction. Evaluates the scope and degree of description formats compatibility in three ways: the number of compatible formats, the number of disciplines for which formats used, the technology used for compatibility. Last analyses those main factors affecting description formats compatibility, which include the degree of discipline superposition, semantic matching and syntax matching.Chapter 3 Expatiates the development of description formats compatibility in libraries. Classify the development into three parts: within traditional description formats, within new description formats-metadata, between traditional and new formats. Of traditional formatsUSMARC, ISO2709 and its relevance, UNIMARC are discoursed upon, MARC being used to catalogue networked resource is also introduced. Of new formats, DC is a focus, other metadata are discussed too. Last sums up several features of the development in networked environment: formats' openness, tending to be core and expanding, semantic encoding, diversity of formats compatibility, being compatible automatically.Chapter 4 Raises a scheme and some measures to carry out description formats compatibility in libraries. First, in the scheme, discusses two basic compatibility patterns: concentrating pattern and expanding pattern, and brings forward some ways for current and future description formats to achieve compatibility respectively. Then, advances some measures on the whole: pushing the standardization of description formats, applying new technology, using the achievement of information retrieval language compatibility for reference. Finally, referring to the shortcomings in our libraries, puts up some opinions about how to ameliorate the situation: emphasis the necessity of compatible description formats, enhance the study on standardization of Chinese resources description formats, actively cooperate with other organizations.