In 2010, the first doctoral thesis was defended at the Faculty of Documentation Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid under the title, Applications of Syndication for the Management of Bibliographic Catalogs. The research focuses on studying the applications of content syndication techniques to transmit records, bibliographic catalogs, and even manage collections. Using the same principles that govern news aggregation methods in online media in RSS format, a similar process is developed using the MARC-XML standard as the basis for effective bibliographic redistribution and transmission between libraries. This method would allow the creation of collective catalogs in a simple and straightforward manner, without requiring more complex infrastructures such as Z39.50 servers.
Today, the thesis is fully published on the Complutense University’s E-Prints portal and is available for download in PDF format (15MB). Its statistics highlight that it has been downloaded over 1,000 times from 33 different countries, primarily the United States and Spain.
Reference
BLÁZQUEZ OCHANDO, M. 2010. Aplicaciones de la sindicación para la gestión de catálogos bibliográficos. Available at: http://eprints.ucm.es/11233/
Abstract
Content syndication constitutes the primary object of study around which the research on new applications for bibliographic catalog management is structured. From this perspective, evidence and experiments are provided regarding both the functioning of bibliographic syndication and the inherent properties and attributes determined by its format and methods of representation and retrieval. Regarding the sections addressed in the thesis, the following are distinguished: 1) Analysis of library services for bibliographic management, 2) Technological foundations of content syndication and its formats, 3) Definition, concept, and functioning of content syndication, 4) Development and experimentation of the SYNC and SYNCORE platforms. Among the most notable conclusions of this work, it is essential to highlight the evidence that content syndication can be configured as an alternative method to the Z39.50 protocol, which is more complex to implement, and to which must be added capabilities for retrieval, management, and editing of the bibliographic collection. Furthermore, the research provides results concerning the operational ranges of content syndication, the suitability of syndication formats, and the implementation of MARC-XML in real bibliographic collections, creating the first web service of its kind according to the specifications of the Library of Congress.