XC Begins Phase Two in Earnest

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation–funded eXtensible Catalog (XC) project from the University of Rochester, NY, a new metadata manager and interface tool for bibliographic information, has received a major upgrade to its web presence in an outward sign of a larger behind-the-scenes effort. In transitioning from a WordPress blog to a Drupal site featuring significantly more background and framework info, the project's second phase of coding and software design has ramped up, helping XC make the move from a planning architecture to a workable and distributable set of open source (OS) software components.

The XC, geared toward academic libraries and scheduled to be released in summer 2009, will serve as a means for managing many different kinds of library metadata, including MARC, Dublin Core, and FRBRized records. On the new site, project managers add that they hope to initiate “a next phase of development to integrate the benefits of the RDA metadata standard once it is released.” In addition, XC “will enable library content to be revealed through other services that libraries may already be using, such as content management systems and learning management systems.”

“Many libraries are looking for an immediate way to provide a better web interface for their collections, and, not surprising, they are being drawn to these vendor products and to their open source alternatives, such as VuFind,” Jennifer Bowen, co–principal investigator for the eXtensible Catalog Project, told LJ. “You could think about XC as what comes after these 'next-generation catalogs'—to provide a more extensible infrastructure that will allow libraries to integrate information about their resources into a variety of web interfaces (such as content management and learning management systems) rather than just into a single new interface product.” Development partners are already on board to design “connectors” to nearly all of the major ILS systems, as well as learning management systems (LMS) like Blackboard. Partners are still being sought to help integrate XC with the SirsiDynix Unicorn ILS and the open source Sakai LMS.

The XC project is of great interest to the OS and library software communities, given the major funding it has received and the breadth of support already committed at this stage in its design. The project has attracted some $2.8 million in grants and money from the University of Rochester and partner institutions, including a $749,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation for the current second phase.