MALVINE Manuscripts and Letters Via Integrated Networks in Europe

Catalogues of manuscripts and letters, encoded in XML using EAD

About the MALVINE SGML Feasibility Study

The aim of the EU founded project MALVINE is to faciliate the access to modern manuscript holdings, kept and catalogued in European libraries, archives, documentation centres and museums. As a part of this project a SGML feasibility study is done at HIT - The Humanities Information Technologies Research Programme at the University of Bergen.

Main results

These reports are available from the SGML Feasibility Study:

The interchange format EAD is a set of rules for designating the intellectual and physical parts of catalogues and other archival finding aids so that the information contained therein may be searched, retrieved, displayed, and exchanged in a predictable, platform-independent manner. EAD is developed by the Encoded Archival Description Working Group at the Society of American Archivists, see http://www.loc.gov/ead/.

XML encoded catalogues available

On this page you will find a few XML encoded files which contain a small subset of some of the catalogues of manuscripts and letters from the MALVINE partners. The DTD -Document Type Definition- used by these samples, are EAD - Encoded Archival Description. The encoding is preliminary, and the given samples cover only a small subset from each of the catalogues. The data providers are still testing and verifying the XML encoded version of their catalogues. The files and their content, belong to and are copyrighted by each of the catalogue owners. To read more about the MALVINE project, check the MALVINE home page.

You have to use a Web browser which understands XML. At the moment the only major XML compatible Web browser is Internet Explorer 5.0 for PC and UNIX. There is currently no Macintosh version available. Netscape is expecting to release an XML version, probably a beta version of Gecko. If you do not have an XML browser, you will be asked if you want to download the sample files as text files to you computer.

A short guide to the samples:

Each sample contains a header and a body. The header gives information about the file (copyright, last changed date, etc.). The body contains a series of records. The layout of the records is determined by the stylesheet used (you choose the style from the list of styles given after the list of available catalgues).

MALVINE samples available:

Only a few samples are currently available to the public. If you are a MALVINE partner, please send an e-mail to per.vestbostad@hit.uib.no or tone.bruvik@hit.uib.no to have access to all the samples.

Click on the radio button to select one of the samples
Correspondences dating from the 16th to the 20th century, (1060 items, with references to the persons in the next file), from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany.
Person name authority file (521 records), from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany.
Literary archives of the XIXth and XXth centuries (57 records) from Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal.
Samples from mss. inventories at Biblioteca Nacional Portuguesa, Portugal. (766 records) from Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal.
Swiss Literature Archive collection (Helvetical) (29 records), from Swiss National Library, Bern, Switzerland.
Sample of mss. inventories (712 records), from Austrian National Library, Vienna, Austria.
Not available Library Catalogue (9 records), from Biblioteca de Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.
Not available Index of the merged catalogue (701 records, points to the manuscripts in the next file), from British Library, London, UK.
Not available Manuscripts description of the merged catalogue (123 records), from British Library, London, UK.
Not available "Kallias" (114 records), from Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, Germany.
Not available Different kinds of modern manuscripts and letters (162 records), from Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für Österreichische Philosophie, Graz, Austria.
Not available General letter catalogue (12 records), from Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar, Germany.
Not available Inventaire des archives historiques Aubier-Montaigne (2136 records), from Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine, Paris, France.
Not available International collection - Ethnographic collection (16 records), from National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Not available World Biographical Index (102 records) from K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich, Germany.

Choose a display style:
XML source code
MALVINE generic
NMD style (under construction)
ÖNB (under construction)
USMARC (under construction)

About the different styles:

XML source code
This style shows the source code of XML file.

MALVINE generic
Each field in a record has a label followed by the data in that element. The labels are made from the MALVINE metadata set. This set is used by all the different catalogues.

NMD style
This style shows the XML file in the format used by the export from NMD - National Museum of Denmark. This style is closely connected to Dublin Core. All tags are shown in red, data in blue, and data from the source with no mapping (at the moment) to the given format are shown in green.

ÖNB style
This style shows the XML file in the format used by the export from ÖNB - Austrian National Library. The encoding is allegro-HANS with RNA/MAB2 in bottom. All tags are shown in red, data in blue, and data from the source with no mapping (at the moment) to the given format are shown in green.

USMARC style
This style shows the XML file in the USMARC exchanged format. All tags are shown in red, data in blue, and data from the source with no mapping (at the moment) to the given format are shown in green.

Technical information:

The XML versions of the catalogues are made using a script written in the programming language Perl which translate the catalogues from their native format into SGML or XML using the EAD DTD. Among the native formats are UNIMARC, USMARC and RNA/MAB2.

XSL stylesheets

The layout of the XML files is produced by various XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) stylesheets:
  • Malvine.xsl, this stylesheet is based on a stylesheet made at Cornell University, see the Cornell Insititute For Digital Collections, the EAD/XML finding Aids Project.)
  • Malvine_cgi.xsl, as the one above, but with links that work when the XML file is delivered using the CGI.
  • malvine_test.xsl, this stylesheet code is small and compact, and with a JAVA script making the labels.
  • NMD.xsl.
  • ÖNB.xsl.
  • USMARC.xsl.

    Validation

    The XML files are all checked for validity. We have used the XML validator available at Brown University, and also SoftQuad XMetal 1.0. The character encoding used is UNICODE implementation level 1, which is the same as ISO-8859-1.

    The source code

    The script 2malvine.cgi does the translation between the native formats and EAD, and has been written by us. 2malvine.cgi may be run locally as a Perl script, or it may be installed on a Web server, and runned as a CGI, see the EAD converter.
    The mapping and conversion info between the native catalogue formats and EAD is encoded in these files:
  • The file collInfo.txt, gives information and parameters on each of the collections.
  • The file mal_loc.txt, gives the mapping between the different local encoding and EAD.
  • The file charcode.txt, gives the mapping between the involved character encoding systems.
  • The file termcode.txt, gives the translation from the encoding used by the local catalogues, into understandable phrases.
  • The file exprcode.txt, gives the mapping of chunks of text from the local catalogues, into EAD.

    We have also made a small Perl script called 1marccon.txt to translate MARC files encoded in ISO 2709 into a format readable by the 2Malvine.pl script.

    CGI

    The choosen catalogue and stylesheet is delivered to the user by a CGI(The Common Gateway Interface) script written in Perl. The script can be downloaded from here. This script takes two parameters: the path and name of the XML file to be delivered, and the path and the name of the stylesheet to be used. Then this script changes the stylesheet specified in line two of the XML file to the given XSL stylesheet, and the resulting XML file is sent to the user's browser.

    Contact us:

    Tone Merete Bruvik and Per Vestbøstad, HIT, Allégt. 27, N-5007 Bergen, Norway
    +47 55 58 94 66
    +47 55 58 94 70
    tone.bruvik@hit.uib.no and per.vestbostad@hit.uib.no

    Visitor number after 23/12/1999.

    Last changed 16.03.2000 tone.bruvik@hit.uib.no