The role of XSLT in digital libraries, editions, and cultural exhibits


[Malta by Piri Reis]

Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) [Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported License] Last modified: 2013-09-28T18:58:21+0000


Description and goals

This half-day tutorial, under the auspices of the Seventeenth annual conference on theory and practice of digital libraries (TPDL 2013), explores the role of XSLT in digital library and digital humanities projects. The tutorial will help participants in planning for their own organization’s digital efforts and scholarly communications as well as in facilitating their efforts at digitization and creating interoperability between document editions. In four instructional modules, including hands-on exercises, we will help participants gain experience and knowledge of the possibilities that XSLT offers in transforming documents from one metadata schema to another, from XML to HTML, and from XML to text. Participants will be able to learn how to navigate the XML tree with XPath 2.0; understand the use of namespaces; work with templates; use functions; and use XML editors for simple transformation of XML documents. We will focus on most common metadata schemas used in today’s libraries and similar information organizations, such as MARC21, Dublin Core, MODS, etc. Finally, we will demonstrate the role of XSLT in creating and maintaining digital editions.

The workshop instructors are Violeta Ilik, Assistant Professor and Metadata Cataloging Librarian, Texas A&M University Library (vilik@library.tamu.edu, http://library.tamu.edu/directory/people/vilik), and David J. Birnbaum, Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh (djbpitt@gmail.com, http://www.obdurodon.org).

Workshop description on the conference web site

Before the workshop

Workshop program

Overview

We offer a half-day tutorial that will explore the role of XML and XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, themselves XML documents) in digital library and digital humanities projects. Digital libraries ideally aim to provide both access and interaction. Digital libraries and digital humanities projects should foster edition building and curation. Therefore, this tutorial aims to teach librarians, scholars, and those involved in cultural heritage projects a scripting language that allows for easy manipulation of metadata, pictures, and text. The modules in this tutorial will help participants in planning for their own organizations digital efforts and scholarly communications as well as in facilitating their efforts at digitization and creating interoperability between document editions. In four instructional modules, including hands-on exercises, we will help participants gain experience and knowledge of the possibilities that XSLT offers in transforming documents from XML to HTML, from XML to text, and from one metadata schema to another.

Unit 1: Introduction to working with XML (2:00–2:30)

Using provided examples, attendees will review how to identify and create well-formed XML documents, as well as the concepts of well-formedness and schema validation. These examples will also provide for quick discussions of the XML tree, and of elements and attributes. The first module will include an introduction to creating and editing XML using the <oXygen/> XML editor.

Outline

Unit 2: Introduction to XPath and XSLT (2:30–3:30)

This unit introduces XSLT, a programming language used to transform XML (in this case, to HTML) and XPath, an ancillary language that XSLT uses to locate and address parts of the input document.

Outline

Coffee break (3:30–3:45)

Unit 3: How to display XML data in an HTML page (3:45–4:30)

Focusing on writing XSLT transformations and using the <oXygen/> XML editing software, attendees will be shown how to generate HTML pages of sample data. This module will expand upon the concepts of the previous module, using the transformation of XML to HTML to provide a tutorial on the XML DOM, avoiding XML data islands, and why XSLT is the preferred style sheet language for transforming XML to final-form document.

Outline

Unit 4: How to build a crosswalk between multiple metadata formats (4:30–5:30)

Libraries, archives, and museums constantly manage heterogeneous data while documenting the cultural heritage information. The heterogeneous types of material create collections described by different metadata schemas. Many well-known metadata standards are expressed as XML schemas, including MARCXML, Dublin Core, MODS, METS, EAD, and others. A crosswalk can be built among various schemas that defines the semantic mapping of the elements of a source metadata schema to the elements of an output metadata schema. The flexible structure of XML makes it possible to convert data from one metadata standard to another. Specific examples will be shown, such as stylesheets for transforming a MARCXML document into Dublin Core. (slides)

Supporting files

Using XPath and XSLT to transform XML to HTML

Miscellaneous documents

Bdinski sbornik

MARCXML XSLT stylesheets

Cataloguing references and tools

XSLT and related references

On line

Books