This presentation discusses radioactive metadata records and an interoperability testing approach based on metadata utilization. The research is part of Z-Interop, an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences' (IMLS) National Leadership Grant supported project.

This document discusses decomposing MARC 21 records for analysis. To prepare the test dataset of the 1% sample of MARC 21 records from the WorldCat database for use in the Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed, the authors need to be able to efficiently analyze the records to determine relevant records to be returned for a set of test searches. The first step in that analysis is to determine the occurrence of test search terms in specific records. This document describes the general approach for this analysis and identifies specifications for the analysis.

Report on the MARC 21 bibliographic format database.

In this document, the authors present some aspects of data normalization of the decomposed records to improve the results of analysis. The data normalization processes use pattern-matching techniques to eliminate and/or generalize anomalous characters and terms. Since the unit of analysis in preparing the test dataset of 400,000 MARC 21 records is a "word," there was a need for data normalization to provide reliability in the subsequent analysis.

This document describes the procedures that participants in the Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed (Z-Interop Participant) are to use when testing Z39.50 client (Z-client) applications. The testing of a Z-Interop reference implementation Z39.50 server. Specifically, the attribute combination and other query components (e.g., Boolean operators) are reviewed, and a report of the results will be prepared for each Z-Interop participant.

This document describes the data analysis procedures developed to create the Aggregate and Candidate Record Groups using SQL statements. This is the preliminary version of these procedures tested and validated on a sample of decomposed MARC records. (For a description of how the MARC records were decomposed see the Z-Interop document, Decomposing MARC 21 Records for Analysis. A subsequent version may be necessary as the authors move to the procedures for the entire file of decomposed records.