This paper introduces the main ideas and concepts underlying Web services, and their potential for a new generation of Internet‐based distributed applications. A summary of the key standards that are the foundation of Web services technology and its underlying basic model is provided, exploring the potential for interoperability among independently managed systems. This is of special importance for libraries, along with the advantage of reducing the development and deployment costs of distributed applications, and of leveraging the value of IT and data legacy assets. The paper explains developments in Web services technology in the library field and underlines its significance for changes in the library information systems paradigm.

This paper presents an analysis of current limitations to the reuse of bibliographic data in the Semantic Web and a research proposal towards solutions to overcome them. The limitations identified derive from the insufficient convergence between existing bibliographic ontologies and the principles and techniques of linked open data (LOD); lack of a common conceptual framework for a diversity of standards often used together; reduced use of links to external vocabularies and absence of Semantic Web mechanisms to formalize relationships between vocabularies, as well as limitations of Semantic Web languages for the requirements of bibliographic data interoperability. A proposal is advanced to investigate the hypothesis of creating a reference model and specifying a superontology to overcome the misalignments found, as well as the use of SHACL (Shapes Constraint Language) to solve current limitations of RDF languages.

Bibliographic datasets have revealed good levels of technical interoperability observing the principles and good practices of linked data. However, they have a low level of quality from the semantic point of view, due to many factors: lack of a common conceptual framework for a diversity of standards often used together, reduced number of links between the ontologies underlying datasets, proliferation of heterogeneous vocabularies, underuse of semantic mechanisms in data structures, "ontology hijacking" (Feeney et al., 2018), point-to-point mappings, as well as limitations of Semantic Web languages for the requirements of bibliographic data interoperability. After reviewing such issues, a research direction is proposed to overcome the misalignments found by means of a reference model and a superontology, using SHACL (Shapes Constraint Language) to solve current limitations of RDF languages.

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:368933 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractDigital preservation is currently a major concern for the information management, technological and scientific communities in all domains. It is also critical at the organisational level, with special pressure for all institutions with a responsibility for preservation, such as libraries and archives. This paper provides a brief overview of the main issues in digital preservation, highlighting current research and standards efforts.

This article proposes a schema for meta‐information about MARC that can express at a fairly comprehensive level the syntactic and semantic aspects of MARC formats in XML, including not only rules but also all texts and examples that are conveyed by MARC documentation. It can be thought of as an XML version of the MARC or UNIMARC manuals, for both machine and human usage. The article explains how such a schema can be the central piece of a more complete framework, to be used in conjunction with “slim” record formats, providing a rich environment for the automated processing of bibliographic data.