Page 145 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 6

FIGURE 6.7
MODS Record Example

of digital library efforts have begun to try to formalize MODS support to
either replace or augment previously Dublin Core-only metadata systems.
Likewise, groups like the Digital Library Federation have started recom-
mending that organizations and software designers provide a MODS-based
OAI harvesting capability to allow for a higher level of metadata granularity.
E-print systems like DSpace have looked at ways of utilizing MODS either
as an internal storage format or as a supported OAI protocol, while digital
repositories like Fedora currently utilize a MODS-like metadata schema
as the internal storage schema. What’s more, interest has grown in using
MODS for ILS development, due in large part to the open-source develop-
ment work being done by the Georgia Public Library System on Evergreen,
and the open-source ILS building around MODS.
Finally, MODS was not developed in a vacuum or as a one-off alterna-
tive to MARC. MODS was developed as a subset of a number of larger ongo-
ing metadata initiatives at the Library of Congress. While MODS offered the
library community many potential benefits, it was developed in part as an
extension format to METS, in order to provide a MARC-like bibliographic
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