scope:

The schema is designed to cover the holdings of all types of resources, physical and electronic, all types of
resource format such as printed text, visual images, sound recordings, videos, electronic media and resources
published or issued once such as monographs or those published serially or in part.
The schema is primarily designed to be included in responses to queries. Two primary query types have been
identified and targeted, based on availability (main focus) and historical usage. Nevertheless, the specific
query (such as SRU, Z39.50 or Open Search) including search attributes and index definition is out of scope
for this standard. Simply put, the schema's main purpose is to answer the question "who has one or more
copies of this resource or this group of resources, is it available now and to me and what are the conditions?"
Although the schema may be used for reporting holdings to a federated metadata repository such as a
centralized union catalogue, metasearch database such as Google or centralized document repository, this is
not its primary focus. The focus of this schema is for interactive exchange of a combination of stable and
dynamic information. Reporting and harvesting convey only stable information and other schemas are already
in use for this purpose such as MODS, MARC 21 Holdings, COPAC and ONIX. Most of these schemas
include richer detail especially in relation to serial holdings. For this same reason, the schema is not intended
to contain the detail necessary to predict new serial issues and claim missing serial issues.
In a similar vein, the standard is not designed to populate link resolver databases, although it may be included
in information sent to a resolver during a resolution process to declare known locations and ask for
alternatives or more information about known locations. Resolvers also may employ the schema in
information used to transfer information to another resolver.
How data is gathered and assembled to populate the holdings schema is also outside the scope of the
standard. Data may be dispersed in several locations such as a union catalogue, local catalogue and a policy
directory or repository. A variety of standards may be employed for this purpose including NCIP for local
holdings, XACML and LDAP for policy, authentication and authorisation information and SRU and Z39.50 for
all types of searching and retrieval.
The holdings reported in the schema may relate to one or more bibliographic resources. As the schema is
employed in a query response, the bibliographic resource or resources will be known, therefore detailed
resource description is out of scope for this standard. The schema may be incorporated as a fragment within
other XML bibliographic resource descriptions such as MODS.