IESG Issues Last Call Review for MODS/MADS/METS/MARCXML/SRU Media Types

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has received a requestfrom an individual submitter the following Standards Track I-D as anIETF Proposed Standard: "The Media Types application/mods+xml,application/mads+xml, application/mets+xml, application/marcxml+xml,application/sru+xml." The IESG plans to make a decision in the nextfew weeks, and solicits final comments on this action; please sendsubstantive comments to the IETF lists by 2010-04-12.This document "specifies Media Types for the following formats: MODS(Metadata Object Description Schema), MADS (Metadata AuthorityDescription Schema), METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard),MARCXML (MARC21 XML Schema), and the SRU (Search/Retrieve via URLResponse Format) Protocol response XML schema. These are all XMLschemas providing representations of various forms of informationincluding metadata and search results.The U.S. Library of Congress, on behalf of and in collaboration withvarious components of the metadata and information retrieval community,has issued specifications which define formats for representation ofvarious forms of information including metadata and search results.This memo provides information about the Media Types associated withseveral of these formats, all of which are XML schemas. (1) 'MODS:Metadata Object Description Schema' is an XML schema for a bibliographicelement set that may be used for a variety of purposes, and particularlyfor library applications. (2) 'MADS: Metadata Authority DescriptionSchema' is an XML schema for an authority element set used to providemetadata about agents (people, organizations), events, and terms(topics, geographics, genres, etc.). It is a companion to the MODSSchema. (3) 'METS: Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard" definesan XML schema for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structuralmetadata regarding objects within a digital library.(4) 'MARCXML MARC21 XML Schema' is an XML schema for the direct XMLrepresentation of the MARC format (for which there already exists amedia type, application/marc; By 'direct XML representation'is is meantthat it encodes the actual MARC data within XML... (5) 'SRU: Search/Retrieve via URL Response Format' provides an XML schema for the SRUresponse. SRU is a protocol, and the media type 'sru+xml' pertainsspecifically to the default SRU response. the SRU response may besupplied in any of a number of suitable schemas, RSS, ATOM, for example,and the client identifies the desired format in the request, hence theneed for a media type. This mechanism will be introduced in SRU 2.0;in previous versions (that is, all versions to date; 2.0 is indevelopment) all responses are supplied in the existing default format,so no media type was necessary. SRU 2.0 is being developed within OASIS.http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-denenberg-mods-etc-media-types-01.txtSee also IANA registration for MIME Media Types: http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/