Report on "International Standards in Library Automation and Networking" held at Bangalore University Introduction Bangalore University, Indian Academic Library Association (IALA) and Kesavan Institute for Information and Knowledge Management (KIIKM) together organized this workshop in Bangalore University, Jnana Bharathi Campus. It was attended by 60 librarians from Academic libraries, Research organizations, Corporates and Public Libraries. This workshop took place from 17th March 2008 to 21st March 2008. The overwhelming success of this workshop is evident from the great satisfaction levels of the participants. Resource persons 1. Mr. L.J.Haravu (Kesavan Institute for Information and Knowledge Management) 2. Dr. A.R.D. Prasad (DRTC, Bangalore) 3. Dr. Ramesha (Associate Professor, Bangalore University) 4. Dr. Krishnamurthy (Librarian, Mysore University Library) 5. Mr. E.M.Siddartha (NewGenLib Foundation) Technical sessions The technical sessions started with an overview of metadata standards. In this session metadata standards like MARC21, and Dublin core were discussed, and also the importance of using metadata standards were discussed. The next session was on MARC21. Participants were explained the importance and prominence of MARC21 standard. Practical sessions were held online to make participants understand the structure of MARC21, they were also taught on how to use the documentation of MARC21. In fact the session became so exciting that participants requested for an extra one hour session on MARC21 to further examine the standard and know more about it. MARC21 for Bibliographic data, Authority data and Holdings data were covered during this session. Session on Dublin Core discussed the Dublin core metadata standard in detail. This session created an awareness in Participants about semantic web and describing the web resources A session on "What are Interoperability standards?" has discussed concepts like Z39.50 and other related interoperability standards were discussed. The session on Z39.50 protocol, server and client made the participants know more this protocol A session on SRU/W (Search Retrieve through URLs and Web services) was taken, where it was explained how the web services are taking over the traditional standards in database interoperability. A query language Common Query Language (CQL) was also explained. Most importantly participants were able to do practical sessions on invoking SRU/W based services and also see the results. One of the most exciting sessions was on XML. The importance of XML and its implementations were discussed here. Participants also had practical session ob creating XML documents and interpret XML documents. After this session participants were able to interpret MARC XML documents easily. There was also a session on Unicode. This session discussed the importance and implementations of Unicode One of the current buzz words in library automation is RFID. There was a half day session on RFID and also NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP). RFID equipment was practically shown and demonstrated to the participants The session on OAI-PMH discussed the importance of creating institutional archives, making these archives accessible and its importance was discussed. OAI-PMH harvesters were also discussed in this session. Putting all the things above together a platform or application that could support the global standards was explained. In this session it was discussed on how "Open Source" software can address the above requirements. A discussion on various open source software and their pros and cons were also discussed. Finally there was session on NewGenLib Open source. Participants were explained "What is open source?", Features of NewGenLib Open source, and a hands-on session on installation of NewGenLib Open source -- Dr.P.V.Konnur Fulbright Fellow (University of Illinois) University Librarian, Bangalore University Library, Jananabharati, Bangalore-560056 Phone: 080-22961131, 23215510 Website: http://library@bub.ernet.in -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.