[Please excuse the cross postings.]

At the end of this month I will have the privilege of a presenting a
day-long, hands-on workshop on open source software and XML at the
Ticer "digital library" school, and I have made much of my
presentation available online in the hopes of getting some feedback
from you, sets of my peers. Please see:

   About Ticer - http://tinyurl.com/yso2ey
   OSS and XML - http://boole.uvt.nl/

The OSS and XML workshop covers things such as:

   * reading and writing MARC records
   * indexing and searching MARC records
   * harvesting and serving metadata via OAI-PMH
   * moving from MARC to XML
   * designing and implementing XML vocabularies
   * transforming XML into other document types
   * indexing and searching XML
   * "mashing" content together

 From the workshop's summary:

    The combined use of open source software and XML are the current
    means for getting the most out of your computing infrastructure.
    Their underlying philosophies are akin to the principles of
    librarianship. They enable. They empower. They are flexible.
    They are "free". The way to get from here to there is through a
    bit of re-training and re-engineering of the way libraries do
    their work, not what they do but how they do it. Let's not
    confuse the tools of our profession with the purpose of the
    profession. If you think libraries and librarianship are about
    books, MARC, and specific controlled vocabularies, then your
    future is limited. On the other hand, if you think libraries are
    about the collection, organization, preservation, and
    dissemination of data, information, and knowledge, then the
    future is quite bright.

Finally, be forewarned, the link to the workshop is temporary since
the hosting machine will be wiped clean as soon as a the day after
the workshop.

--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
University Libraries of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604