AAC

An audio format designed by Apple as a successor to MP3 and used in its iPod and iTunes products

AACR2R

Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (second edition, revised), published by the American Library Association

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a 1968 standard 7-bit code for representing the Roman alphabet plus numerals and special symbols

Authority control

The practice of using a list of preferred terms or proper names for metadata values within a library catalog

BibTeX

Scheme for managing bibliographic data and references within documents in the TeX format

Boolean query

Query to an information-retrieval system that may contain AND, OR, NOT

Browsing

Accessing a collection by scanning an organized list of metadata values associated with the documents (such as author, title, date, and keywords)

Building

Process of creating the indexing and browsing structures that are used to access a collection

Case-folding

Making uppercase and lowercase words look the same, for searching purposes

CD-ROM

Compact disk read-only memory, a 650-MB disk that uses the same technology as audio CDs

CGI

Common Gateway Interface, a scheme that allows users to activate programs on the host computer by clicking on Web pages

CGI script

Code associated with a button, menu, or link on a Web page that specifies what the host computer is to do when clicked

Collection

Set of documents that are brought together under a uniform searching and browsing interface

Collection configuration file

File that specifies how a Greenstone collection is to be imported and built, what indexes and language interfaces are to be provided, and so on

Cookie CSS

A short message sent by a Web server to a Web browser and then returned unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server, the purpose being to retain a unique identifier for the user between invocations

Cascading Style Sheets, a way of controlling the presentation of HTML and XML documents

DDL

Description Definition Language, a form of XMLSchema used in MPEG-7 to allow users to create their own metadata format

Digital library

Collection of digital objects (text, audio, video), along with methods for access and retrieval, as well as methods for selection, organization, and maintenance

Document

Basic unit from which digital library collections are constructed, which may include text, graphics, sound, and video

DOI

Digital Object Identifier, a scheme for permanent URLs that uses the Handle system and is maintained by the International DOI Foundation

DSpace DTD

Open source institutional repository software, designed by the MIT Library in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard (Document Space)

Document Type Definition, a specification used in XML (and also SGML) to express the structure of a particular set of documents

Dublin Core

An intentionally minimalist standard for describing metadata, designed to be applied to resources on the Web

DVD

Digital Versatile Disk, a disk format that can hold from 5 to 20 GB of data

Dynamic HTML

Combination of HTML with CSS, Web-page scripting, and the document object model that provides functionality comparable to XSL

EBCDIC

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code, an alternative code to ASCII

Encapsulated PostScript

Variant of PostScript designed for expressing graphics of a single page or less that are to be included in other documents

Endnote

Commercial program for managing bibliographic data and references within documents

Faceted classification

Browsing scheme that allows users to navigate the document space using different metadata elements or "facets"

FAO

United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization

Fedora

A repository architecture founded upon a powerful digital object model, which is extremely flexible and configurable (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture)

FLAC

Lossless audio coding scheme (Free Lossless Audio Codec)

FO

Formatting Objects, the component of the XML specification that deals with page layout and related formatting issues

FTP

File transfer protocol

GB-encoding

Standard way of encoding the Chinese language

GIF

Graphics Image Format, a widely used compression scheme for lossless images

GNU Public License

Software license that permits users to copy and distribute computer programs freely, and to modify them, so long as all modifications are made publicly available

Greenstone

The name of the digital library software used as an example in the book (www.greenstone.org)

HTML

HyperText Markup Language, the language in which Web documents are written

HTML Tidy

Software utility that converts older HTML formats to XHTML

HTTP

Hypertext transfer protocol

Hyperlink

Link to another document or to another place within this document

Importing

Process of bringing collections of documents into a digital library system

Index

Information structure that is used for searching or browsing a collection

Institutional repository

A specialized kind of digital library designed to collect, preserve, and disseminate an institution’s intellectual output

ISBN

International Standard Book Number

ISCII

Indian Script Code for Information Interchange, an ASCII extension that incorporates Brahmi-based Indic scripts

JPEG

Standard for (mainly) lossy image compression, named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group

JPEG 2000

Later version of the JPEG image compression standard

LCSH

Library of Congress Subject Headings, a controlled vocabulary for assigning subject descriptors

LZW

Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression scheme, used in GIF, TIFF, PDF, and PostScript Level 2 and above

MADS

Metadata Authority Description Schema, an XML-based format for authority control information

MARC

Machine-readable cataloging format, a metadata scheme designed in the late 1960s for use by professional library catalogers

MARCXML

A standard way of representing MARC data in the XML language

Metadata

Structured information, such as author, title, date, keywords, and so on, that is associated with a document (or document collection)

METS

Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard for the representation, maintenance, and exchange of digital objects

MIDI

Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a representation of music used by music synthesizers

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, a standard for including different types of file—text, images, audio, video, or application-specific data—in e-mail messages

Mirror

The process of copying a Web site, or part of a Web site, to another location and making it available there

MP3

A lossy digital audio encoding format (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3)

MODS

Metadata Object Description Schema, an XML-based format for metadata from the U.S. Library of Congress

MPEG

Set of standards for representing multimedia material, named after the Motion Picture Experts Group

MXF

Material Exchange Format, a container format for video data

New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL) Project

Research project in the Computer Science Department at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, that created the Greenstone software (www.nzdl.org)

OAI-ORE

Standard designed expressly for representing aggregations of digital objects (Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange)

OAI-PMH

Protocol designed for the efficient dissemination of digital library metadata (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting; often abbreviated to simply OAI)

OCR

Optical Character Recognition, the process of producing a digital representation of the textual content of a document image

ODF

Open Document Format, an XML-based set of specifications for office documents

Ogg Vorbis

Lossy digital audio encoding format specifically designed to be free of all patent restrictions

Ogg Theora

Lossy digital video encoding format specifically designed to be free of all patent restrictions

OID

Object Identifier, a unique identification code associated with a document or other digital object

OMR

Optical Music Recognition, the musical analog of OCR

OOXML

Office Open XML, an XML-based format for representing documents in Microsoft Office products

Phrase query

Query to a full-text retrieval system that comprises several consecutive words

PDF

Portable Document Format, a page description language designed for interactive use as a successor to PostScript

PNG

Portable Network Graphics, an open standard for lossless images

PostScript

The first widely used page description language

PREMIS

PREservation Metadata Implementation Strategies, a standard for preservation and administrative metadata

Protocol

Set of conventions according to which two systems communicate

PURL

Persistent URL, a particular style of URN

Ranked query

Natural-language query to an information-retrieval system, for which the documents that match the query are sorted in order of relevance

RDF

Resource Description Framework, a scheme designed to facilitate the interoperability of metadata

RSLP collection description

A particular application of RDF by the Research Support Libraries Program based at the University of Bath, United Kingdom

RTF

Rich Text Format, a standard format for interchange of text documents

Searching

Accessing a collection through a full-text search of its contents (or parts of contents, such as section titles)

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language, a metalanguage for describing markup formats that was standardized in 1986 and forms a precursor to XML

SQL

Structured Query Language, an industry-standard database-query language

SRU

Search/Retrieval via URL, a Web service version of Z39.50

Stemming

Stripping endings off a term to make it more general

SVG

XML-based language for describing two-dimensional graphics

TEI

Text Encoding Initiative, a project founded in 1987 that developed SGML DTDs for representing scholarly texts in the humanities and social sciences

TIFF

Tagged Image File Format, a file format for raster images that incorporates facilities for descriptive metadata

UCS

Unicode Character Set, the set of characters supported by Unicode

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Unicode

Standard scheme for representing the character sets used in the world’s languages

URI

Universal Resource Identifier, a generic name for URLs and URNs

URL

Universal Resource Locator, a standard way of addressing objects on the Web (but this term is supposed to be superseded by URI)

URN

Universal Resource Name, a way of naming resources instead of specifying their locations

UTF

UCS Transformation Format, a scheme for representing Unicode characters with three variants: UTF-32, UTF-16, and UTF-8

VRML

Virtual Reality Modeling Language, used for presenting virtual reality experiences on the Web

Web server

Standard program that computers use to make information accessible over the World Wide Web

Word

Microsoft Word, a widely used word processing program

XHTML

Modern version of HTML that incorporates the stricter syntactic rules of XML

XLink

XML linking language that provides a more powerful method for connecting resources than HTML hyperlinks

XML

Extensible Markup Language, a metalanguage for describing markup formats for structured documents and data on the Web

XML Schema

Way of specifying the structure of a particular set of documents that provides more expressive facilities for structures and data types than DTDs

XMP

Extensible Metadata Platform, a way of embedding metadata within files like images and PDF documents

XPath

XML specification that allows the selection of parts of a document

XPointer

Development of XPath that provides a finer degree of control over the parts of the document being selected

XQuery

Format used for expressing queries in the style of XML

XSL

Extensible Stylesheet Language, a way of controlling the presentation of XML documents (and XML-compliant HTML ones) that is more expressive than CSS

XSLT

XSL Transformations, a component of the XML specification that allows you to manipulate parts of the document tree

Z39.50

International standard communications protocol developed for use by library catalog systems