The Role of XSLT in Digital Libraries, Editions, and Cultural Exhibits

Abstract

We offer a half day tutorial that will explore the role of XML and XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, themselves XML documents) in digital library and digital humanities projects. Digital libraries ideally aim to provide both access and interaction. Digital libraries and digital humanities projects should foster edition building and curation. Therefore, this tutorial aims to teach librarians, scholars, and those involved in cultural heritage projects a scripting language that allows for easy manipulation of metadata, pictures, and text. The modules in this tutorial will help participants in planning for their own organizations digital efforts and scholarly communications as well as in facilitating their efforts at digitization and creating interoperability between document editions. In five instructional modules, including hands-on exercises, we will help participants gain experience and knowledge of the possibilities that XSLT offers in transforming documents from XML to HTML, from XML to text, and from one metadata schema to another.