This document describes an application profile for the use of ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995, Information Retrieval (Z39.50): Application Service Definition and Protocol Specification [10] for search and retrieval of cultural heritage information. This profile is named the CIMI Profile, where CIMI refers to the Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information. Cultural heritage information includes resources covering art, architecture, cultural history, and natural history. The CIMI Profile includes specifications for using Z39.50 in this application, although specifications in the Profile, such as the CIMI-1 Attribute Set for searching museum information, may have utility outside of Z39.50 implementations.
CIMI initiated a demonstration project in 1995 funded in part by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities to enable users to search for and retrieve cultural heritage information from disparate and distributed information systems, including museums, libraries, image banks, etc. Project CHIO (Cultural Heritage Information Online) consisted of two interrelated demonstration projects, CHIO Structure and CHIO Access, to show respectively the utility of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and Z39.50. The development of the CIMI Profile and the experience during Project CHIO are documented in the final report to the National Endowment for the Humanities. A public version of that report is available at the CIMI website www.cimi.org.
During 1995-1997, CHIO Access explored the utility of Z39.50 to search and retrieve museum information captured in digital form (e.g., object records, images). It demonstrated how Z39.50 offers solutions to the difficulties in achieving meaningful online search and retrieval of museum information of different types and structure (e.g., structured records, full-text documents, images) regardless of the hardware and software used to store the data or search for it.
To implement Z39.50 in this application, the CIMI Z39.50 Working Group developed the CIMI Profile. The Working Group consisted of Z39.50 experts, experts in museum systems and museum information resources, software developers, and commercial vendors. The specifications included in the CIMI Profile reflect the consensus of this group, input from a range of stakeholders, and practical implementation experience through the 1997 CIMI Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed.
The initial development of the CIMI Profile occurred as a component of the Project CHIO demonstration. The CIMI Z39.50 Working Group agreed that a pragmatic approach should be used in developing the Z39.50 specifications. This agreement had important consequences:
CIMI issued a draft version of the CIMI Profile in June 1996. In 1997, CIMI organized an interoperability testbed with the goal of gaining practical implementation experience with specifications from the draft CIMI Profile. A subset of the draft CIMI Profile constituted an evolving set of specifications recorded in several versions of an implementors agreement that guided implementations in the testbed. Upon completion of the testbed and with input from participants in the Aquarelle Project and other feedback, the CIMI Profile underwent major revision. This document is the culmination of these efforts.
3. Scope and Field of Application
The CIMI Profile specifies a subset of Z39.50 features, options, and parameters needed to support functional and user requirements for search and retrieval of cultural heritage information. Z39.50 clients supporting this Profile (i.e., CIMI Z-clients) will be able to interconnect with any Z39.50 server supporting this Profile (i.e., CIMI Z-servers). These CIMI Z-clients will behave in a manner that allows interoperability with a CIMI Z-server. Clients that support Z39.50 but do not implement the CIMI Profile (e.g., existing bibliographic Z39.50 clients) will be able to access CIMI Z-servers but with less than full CIMI functionality. Section 6.6. defines several conformance levels to enable predictable interoperability between CIMI Z-clients and Z-servers, and other Z39.50 clients and servers.
The CIMI Profile, Release 1.0, provides specifications for search and retrieval of several types of cultural heritage information resources. These resources may be held in one or more databases accessible via one or more CIMI Z-servers or other Z39.50 implementations. A user may search these databases to retrieve digital representations of museum information such as object records, images with associated text, and cataloging records. These representations may be compound documents comprising multimedia formats of resources.
The CIMI Profile is a companion profile to the Z39.50 Profile for Access to Digital Collections [7], which means that the CIMI Profile specifies compatible extensions to that Profile (hereafter referred to as the Digital Collections Profile). The CIMI Profile, Release 1.0, utilizes a small subset of that profile, but future releases of the CIMI Profile may utilize additional specifications from the Digital Collections Profile.
The CIMI Profile addresses Z39.50 search and retrieval of cultural heritage information (e.g., intersystem interactions and information interchange) but imposes no restrictions on user interface requirements, the internal structure of databases that contain the digital information objects, or search engine functionality.
The following list contains documents with provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of the CIMI Profile. At the time of this publication, the editions indicated were valid. All documents are subject to revision, and parties to agreements based on the CIMI Profile are warned against automatically applying any more recent editions of the documents listed below. The nature of references made by the Profile to these documents is that they may be specific to a particular edition. In addition, this list contains other documents that can be consulted for further information pertinent to this Profile.
[1] Art Information Task Force. (1995). Categories for the Description of Works of Art. Santa Monica, CA: Art History Information Program Publications. http://www.gii.getty.edu/cdwa/FULLBIB.HTM.
[2] Attribute Set Bib-1 (Z39.50-1995): Semantics. (1995, September). ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/z3950/defs/bib1.txt.
[3] Conference of European National Librarians. (1997, October 15). Z39.50 Bib-1 Attribute Set Profile for CENL, Version 1.1. http://linnea.helsinki.fi/z3950/cenl_profile.html.
[4] Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core.
[5] Janney, Kody and Sledge, Jane. (1995, September). A User Model for CIMI Z39.50 Application Profile. http://www.cimi.org/documents/Z3950_app_profile_0995.html.
[6] Library of Congress. (n.d.). ATS-1 Profile. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/profiles/ats.html.
[7] Library of Congress. (1996). Z39.50 Profile for Access to Digital Collections. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency.
[8] Lynch, Clifford A. (1994). RFC 1729, Using the Z39.50 Information Retrieval Protocol in the Internet Environment. http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1729.txt.
[9] National Information Standards Organization. (1994). ANSI/NISO Z39.2-1994. Information Interchange Format. Bethesda, MD: NISO Press.
[10] National Information Standards Organization. (1995). ANSI/NISO Z3950-1995. Information Retrieval (Z39.50): Application Service Definition and Protocol Specification. Bethesda, MD: NISO Press. Electronic version of Z39.50 available at the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency.
[11] Network Development and MARC Standards Office. (1997). Dublin Core/MARC/GILS Crosswalk. http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/dccross.html.
[12] System Simulation Ltd. (1997, September 26). Aquarelle Z39.50 Profile, Revision 1.15.
[13] USMARC Format for Bibliographic Data. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service. See also http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/.
[14] Z39.50 Implementors Agreement. (1996). Returning Diagnostics in an Init Response. Z39.50 Implementors Agreements are available from the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/agree/initdiag.html.
[15] Z39.50 Maintenance Agency. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency.
[16] Z39.50 Maintenance Agency. Z39.50 Date/Time Definition. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/defs/date.html
[17] Z39.50 Maintenance Agency. TagSet -G and -M Elements. http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/defs/tag-gm.html
For purposes of this Profile, the following definitions apply. For definitions of Z39.50 terms and concepts not listed here, see ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995, Information Retrieval (Z39.50): Application Service Definition and Protocol Specification [10]. For definitions of terms and concepts related to the Digital Collections Profile, see Z39.50 Profile for Access to Digital Collections [7].
Cataloging record. Refers to records of bibliographic information describing or representing books or other bibliographic entities.
Companion Profile. In terms of the Digital Collections Profile, a set of compatible extensions to the Digital Collections Profile to accommodate the specific requirements of an application.
Object Record. A record that provides descriptive information about a museum object or site (e.g., its component parts, measurements, weight, creation and creator, ownership, history of use, materials and techniques used in its manufacture, inscriptions, identifying numbers, historical context, rights and restrictions, credit line for display or publication). An object record enables a museum to be accountable for and to uniquely identify an object.
Profile. Specifications for the use of a particular standard (or group of standards) to support a particular application, function, community, environment, or class of information. A profile selects options, subsets, values of parameters, etc., where these choices are left open in a standard, and where these selections are necessary to accomplish identified functions. A profile may also specify aspects of client and server behavior that are beyond the scope of the base standards. Purposes of a profile include: (1) to provide a specification for vendors to build to, resulting in products that will interoperate; and (2) to provide a specification that customers may reference for procurement purposes.
Rendition. An element in the CIMI Schema that occurs for each version (e.g., differing resolutions, color-depth, and sampling rate) of an image (where image can be any type of digital resource including audio, video, and images).
Tombstone. A brief record that comprises sufficient elements from a database record to enable the presentation essential information about an object.