Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS) creates and distributes

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

for English-language resources used in

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...

schools, primarily for integration with integrated library systems. , 93 per cent of Australian schools and 49 per cent of New Zealand schools are subscribed, with a total of 107 international schools also subscribed, across 22 countries.

Data and Standards

As well as doing original cataloguing, SCIS maintains the SCIS Subject Headings List (SCISSHL), an alternative to the

Library of Congress Subject Headings The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject ...

suited to use in K-12 education contexts, and the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing And Data Entry (SSCDE). SSCDE reflects international standards including

Resource Description and Access Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a standard for descriptive cataloging initially released in June 2010, providing instructions and guidelines on formulating bibliographic data. Intended for use by libraries and other cultural organization ...

and

International Standard Bibliographic Description The International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) is a set of rules produced by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to create a bibliographic description in a standard, human-readable form, especial ...

with adaptations to suit the K-12 education sector. SCIS catalogues bibliographic and audio-visual resources, both physical and digital, including trade fiction and non-fiction and educational materials. SCIS metadata includes full and abridged

Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Section 4.1 ...

, subject headings from SCISSHL and the linked-data Schools Online Thesaurus, and name and series authorities maintained by SCIS. SCIS data supports MAchine-Readable Cataloguing and

Metadata Object Description Schema The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) is an XML-based bibliographic description schema developed by the United States Library of Congress' Network Development and Standards Office. MODS was designed as a compromise between the complexity o ...

formats and is made available to subscribing schools via the

z39.50 Z39.50 is an international standard client–server, application layer communications protocol for searching and retrieving information from a database over a TCP/IP computer network, developed and maintained by the Library of Congress. It is c ...

protocol and via an online portal

Background

SCIS is a business unit of Education Services Australia (ESA). ESA is a not-for-profit

government business enterprise A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the government ...

established from a 2009 merger of Curriculum Corporation and Education.au, with the purpose of delivering educational technology solutions. Australian Schools Catalogue Information Service (ASCIS) was created in 1984 with funding from Australia’s Commonwealth Schools Commission, with the purpose of reducing the cost and duplication of effort of cataloguing resources in schools. This closely followed the 1981 creation of the

Australian Bibliographic Network The Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), formerly part of the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) and for some years renamed Kinetica, is a national shared library cataloguing network, hosted by the National Library of Australia. ...

, set up to support shared

bibliographic Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...

data for university, state, public and special libraries. The newly formed Curriculum Corporation subsumed ASCIS in 1989. The name SCIS was adopted when the New Zealand government joined the board of Curriculum Corporation in 1992.

Use

, 93 per cent of Australian schools and 49 per cent of New Zealand schools are subscribed, with a total of 107 international schools are also subscribed, across 22 countries.

References

External links

* *{{official, https://scis.edublogs.org/, SCIS blog Library cataloging and classification Library automation Library science Bibliographic databases and indexes