XForms for Metadata Creation

I just got back from Code4lib 2008 in Portland Oregon.  Last year I did a lightning talk on XForms, this year I did full 20 minute presentation. Well, actually I did half a 20 minute presentation. I split the slot with Michael Park from Brown. We had both been working on MODS editors and had been in touch over the past few months about our work. Since our needs and solutions were so different it made sense to demo both forms and talk about the different possible approaches. Mike is serving a much more diffuse audience then I am and a server side solution for him was absolutely necessary. Also the users targeted for his editor are faculty as opposed to librarians. In his case the full complexity of MODS is less important that insuring he gets the right minimum data submitted with each record.

Here are the slides, video will be coming eventually, although I need to redo the audio portion of my half of the talk due to a technical snafu.

Doing a joint 20 minute presentation was quite a challenge, I think both Mike and I could have easily used the entire 20 minutes, but I think it was a good thing for people to see the two different editors, and be able to talk to us both after the presentation about which ever approach might be most appropriate for their institution.

Both Mike and I have released the code for our editors as opens source (Mike’s is quite well documented, I’m still working on documentation). You can see examples of the forms and get the code at the locations below.

UVM

• Code: http://code.google.com/p/xforms4lib/
• Examples:
  • http://cdi.uvm.edu/exist/xforms/mods
  • http://cdi.uvm.edu/exist/xforms/modsSimple

Brown

• Code and documentation: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/its/software/metadata/
• Example: http://riker.services.brown.edu:8080/repo/mods/demo.html