Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Program: electronic library and information systems, Volume 43, Issue 1

Maja Zumer in her review in this issue of the book Metadata (Zeng and Qin, 2008) notes that although there are many books about metadata this is not surprising, as resource discovery is at the centre of most library and information science applications and research. Articles on cataloguing issues, MARC and metadata that assist in the resource discovery process have regularly appeared in Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems over the years. One of the first papers published in the journal covered the production of a computer-produced book catalogue at Rand Afrikaans University in South Africa (Zastrau, 1969). In the same issue there was a paper on the use of MARC, then a very new development of the Library of Congress and the British National Bibliography, for selection, cataloguing and acquisition (Ayres, 1969). Catalogue records and MARC could be thought of as metadata – but the term was little used in the 1970s and 1980s. Heery’s (1996) paper published in the journal in 1996 explained how the term metadata was being used to specify records which refer to digital resources available across a network. More recent papers in the area of resource discovery that have been published in Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems have covered the use of federated search tools for Egyptian scholars (Mohamed and Hassan, 2008), digital initiatives and metadata use in Thailand (SuKantarat, 2008) and the cataloguing of e-books (Belanger, 2007).

In this issue papers on MARC, cataloguing and metadata for resource discovery have been brought together. Williams is a Collection Management Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University Library in the US who believes that a knowledge of MARC is useful amongst all library professionals – and not just cataloguers. MARC21 is one of the metadata formats considered by Beamer, formerly Project Collections Officer at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, in her review investigating various metadata formats for maps. The authors of the third paper, Bevan and Tyler, of the National Library of Wales and CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales respectively, include details of a federated search system recently introduced in Wales so that, using the WebFeat software, all the catalogues of varying types of library (public, academic, special, etc.) in the country can be searched following one search statement. This service, Cat Cymru, is just one of a number of initiatives underway in Wales as a result of money in the library, archive and museum sector made available through the Welsh Assembly Government. The paper by Zou and Liu, both systems librarians at university libraries in Ontario, Canada, covers the development of a Chinese version of the Evergreen open source library management software. Evergreen is a popular choice for libraries in North America wishing to implement an open source solution for their library management system – which includes an OPAC facility for searching the catalogue of resources. Open source software, FreeMarker, is used by Radjenovic, Milosavleljevic and Surla of the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, who describe in their paper its use for the production, inter alia, of catalogue cards based on the MARC format as part of the BISIS open source based library management system. The final paper in the “special” issue on resource discovery covers the development of a personalised information support system for researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.

The majority of software used in archives, libraries, information centres and museums throughout the world is in English. However, when users search for items in any collection it is important that they are able to search using their preferred language. In this small collection of papers there are examples of systems developed providing Chinese, Serbian and Welsh search facilities reflecting the international range of the journal. I hope you find this issue on resource discovery interesting.

Lucy A. Tedd