Notice to the reader: This document is no longer in effect. It has been archived online and is kept purely for historical purposes.

About the Profile

The Profile

The Maintenance Agency

• Amendment Procedures

• Defect Report Procedures

Resources

Bath Profile Meeting

January 20, 2000 (9:00-5:45) --- January 21, 2000 (12:45-3:15)

Record of Decisions: January 20th

Chair: Carrol Lunau, Library and Archives Canada

Attendees: See attached list.  Not all participants were able to attend the entire meeting.

1. Comment Period

The meeting began with a general comment period on the revised draft of 'The Bath Profile: An International Z39.50 Specification for Library Applications and Resource Discovery', revised January 10, 2000. The key issues raised were:

• The relationship of the new attribute architecture and the profile. Appendix A will deal with this but it has not yet been developed.
• Character set support and the use of Unicode for Level 1 compliance in Functional Area A.
• The requirement for servers to support SUTRS and UNIMARC and MARC21 for Level 1 compliance in Functional Area A.
• The question was raised about the OID for character set negotiation. Ray Denenberg clarified that there is really only one definition and the profile should state something like 'should support most recent definition' or, more specifically, 'the current definition'.
• Suggestion that an appendix be included giving guidelines for indexing with MARC and UNIMARC. It was generally agreed that guidance on the preferred mapping from MARC/UNIMARC tags to indexes would be useful the information would be better in a separate guidelines document than as an appendix to the profile. As an appendix it might be considered normative.
• The possibility of adding a new functional area to the profile to identify specifications for community information database searching and retrieval.
• The issue of using XML for resource discovery rather than GRS-1 was discussed.
• It was suggested that Functional Area C for resource discovery be removed from the Bath Profile and become a separate profile.
• As a general principle, when deciding on the issue of record syntaxes, it was suggested that it should be 'less' rather than 'more' with the 'pain' shared between clients and servers.
• Language needs to be added to explain what conformance means and how to claim it. Maybe a new section at the beginning of the Conformance section that tells people how to state conformance.

2. Discussion of Open Issues

Issues, described in 'Open Issues and Potential Requirements for Bath Profile based on Public Comment Period (October - December, 1999)' prepared by William E Moen, were discussed and resolved.

2.1 Scope of the Profile

It was decided to leave Functional Area C in the Bath Profile but to revisit the issue in the future. There was also discussion of the need for a meeting of drafters of profiles to discuss a core profile. Ray Denenberg had proposed this during the earlier discussions and agreed to help organize it.

It was also decided that Community Information fell within the scope of the Bath Profile and the Bath group would keep in touch with Keith Belton from Solinet who is working in this area.

2.2 Clarifying the Term 'Support' for Syntaxes and Claiming Conformance

This issue is related to systems which can support a specific syntax but which have made a business decision not to supply records in that syntax to some groups of users. A new diagnostic is required to address this specific situation. William Moen will submit a proposal for a new diagnostic which addresses the availability of a record in the required syntax.

2.3 Required Syntaxes for Bibliographic Retrieval, Functional Area A

The general principle of putting the burden on the client by requiring support for all record syntaxes while servers need to support the syntaxes required for their business was accepted after lengthy discussion. The new requirements for conformance are:

• Functional Area A: Level 0 Conformance
     CLIENT: UNIMARC OR MARC 21 AND XML AND SUTRS
     SERVER: UNIMARC OR MARC21 AND XML OR SUTRS
  
• Functional Area A: Level 1 Conformance
     CLIENT: UNIMARC AND MARC21 AND SUTRS AND XML
     SERVER: UNIMARC OR MARC21 AND XML OR SUTRS
  
• Functional Area C: Level 0 & Level 1 Conformance
     CLIENT: XML AND SUTRS
     SERVER: XML OR SUTRS
  
• Functional Area B: Level 0 Conformance
     Identical to Functional Area A Level 0
  
• Functional Area B: Level 1 Conformance
     CLIENT: UNIMARC AND MARC21 AND GRS-1 AND XML AND SUTRS
     SERVER: UNIMARC OR MARC21 AND GRS-1 AND XML OR SUTRS

2.4 Server Behavior

A new diagnostic is required as well as a clarification. Ray Denenberg indicated that he would write a clarification to provide guidance on proper server behavior in this instance.

2.5 Defining a Brief Element Set Name

Providing guidance as to what should be included in a brief element set will be considered.

2.6 Clarifying the Term 'Support' for Required Attributes and Claiming Conformance

This issue would likely arise with searches which resulted in extremely large result sets. The date of publication search is an example of such a search and the wording for that search deals with the possibility by specifying that it should be used in combination as a search limiter.

2.7 Boolean Operators for Multi-keyword Searches

Decision: No change to the profile.

2.8 Truncation Attribute Values

Decision: No change to the attributes assigned but need some language that states how a multiple term keyword search can use the different searches defined in Level 1 and ) as operands in the same query.

2.9 Cross-Index Searches

Will add some general statement about providing basic functionality (author, title, subject), similar to what there is for the Any search.

2.10 Phrase Searching

It was decided to leave the profile as it is.

2.11 Use of Structure Attribute 101 (Normalized Name) or Attribute 1 (Phrase) for Author Search - Precision Match

It was decided to keep Attribute 101 and to add a note about the comma being used to separate surname from forenames.

2.12 Adding an Author Search - Precision Match for Established Name Heading with Right Truncation

Agreed to add the search as defined.

2.13 Change Attribute Values in Level 1 Standard Identifier Search

Agreed to change:
   Structure value from 2 to 1, from word to phrase
   Completeness from 3 to 1, from complete field to incomplete subfield

Decided not to change
   Position value from 1 to 3, from first in field to any position in field

2.14 Change Completeness Attribute Value in Level 1 Date Search

Agreed to change from 3 Complete to 1 Incomplete subfield

2.15 Dublin Core DTD for XML

Paul Miller will provide appropriate wording to point to the new definition.

2.16 SCAN and Sending All Attribute Types/Values

The attribute values will be specified for SCAN but the following changes will be made for all phrase and keyword searches:

2.17 Holdings: Record Syntax

It was decided to keep GRS-1 as the record syntax in Functional Area B Level 1 Conformance.

2.18 Segmentation

It was decided that support for Segmentation should be considered for Functional Areas B and C at Level 1. ONE have done this and William Moen will look at the ONE Profile and the rationale for doing this.

2.19 Unicode Support

This issue was not part of the original issues document but was raised during the morning session. It was decided that the requirement for support of Unicode would be moved to Functional Area A Level 2 Conformance. The full specifications for this Conformance Level will be defined in a later version of the Bath Profile.

3. Holdings

The holdings working group met during the morning and Janifer Gatenby briefed the Bath Profile group on the decisions taken at the holdings meeting. The holdings group discussed the draft holdings attribute set and agreed to some changes. Janifer will redo the document overnight and make it available tomorrow.

The three pieces required for developing holdings are now in place: the schema, the attribute set and eSpecQ.

The Bath Profile wording needs to be cleaned up to reflect the use of the Holdings Attribute set at Level 1 and indicate that Functional Area B Level 1 Conformance does not inherit the Level 0 requirements. This is a change from other areas of the profile.

4. Maintenance Agency

It was announced that the Library and Archives Canada had agreed to serve as the Maintenance Agency for the Profile.

5. Next Steps

• Write to Sally McCallum notifying her of intent to submit IRP.
• Compile a list of decisions and send to original Bath Group for confirmation.
• Make revisions to the Bath Profile and post for comments (mid-February target date)
• Begin advocacy with vendors and librarians
• Acquire approval as IRP (target date Spring 2000)
• Determine necessity for another meeting along with date and location

Decisions: January 21st

A follow-up meeting was held at the conclusion of the ZIG meeting. The members of the original Bath Profile drafting group and the TZIG met to confirm the decisions which had been taken the previous day and to brief those members who were unable to be present for the entire meeting. The decisions were reaffirmed.

Additionally there was more discussion of holdings and Janifer presented the revised Holdings Attribute Set. She also indicated that it would be necessary to profile holdings searches in the profile. The following actions are needed:

A document needs to be written bringing together the schema, the attribute set and eSpecQ. The document should be posted on the Maintenance Agency site. Joe Zeeman and Janifer Gatenby volunteered to work on it. Janifer will talk to Ray Denenberg about this and about writing the eSpecQ portion.

Scenarios need to be developed for using holdings in order to create the specifications for Functional Area B. Chris Peterson will work with the TZIG, Paul Miller with the M25 Group, and Carrol with some Canadian groups to do this. They will be based on the earlier scenarios developed by Joe Zeeman (link to this and other schema through the Z39.50 archive: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/iso/z3950/holds5.htm).

The ONE group will be profiling holdings. Poul-Henrik Jorgensen will circulate the document to the Bath Group for review.

Bath Profile Meeting Attendees