An XML infrastructure for archives, libraries and museums: resource discovery in the COVAX project Available to Purchase

Although the idea of collaborative distributed resource discovery systems in libraries, museums and archives is not new, XML (extensible markup language) offers a new technical basis for development. Contemporary Culture Virtual Archive in XML (COVAX) is a project that has used XML to build ‘’middleware” that enables integrated searches via the Web for materials held in libraries, archives and museums, including electronic resources. Materials described in so‐called legacy systems have been converted to XML formats, using publicly available standards, including MARC, EAD (Encoded Archival Description), Amico‐2‐in‐1 and TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). A metasearch engine has been developed to allow searching of distributed repositories that store records in native XML format collections using database products such as TEXTML or TAMINO. Benefits and disadvantages of XML technology are discussed and the COVAX architecture and end‐user prototype solution are described.