School readers import

SRD stands for School Readers Data standard (schema).

The standard can be used for data exchange between programs. In particular for importing school readers to library management systems like LibraNET or MOL NET+.

How to create an SRD file

Ideally an SRD file would be generated via some software. It is a text file so you can view it in almost any editor, but creating it by hand might be complicated. So the SRD file should be created with an automatic export or a script.

Note that by SRD file we mean an XML file that was created in accordance with the SRD standard. You can use srd extension for your files (e.g. pupils.srd). Just like in the examples.

What is in the file

An SRD file is mainly for students (pupils), but can also contain data of teachers etc. So for all readers in a library.

Basic structure of the XML

• The root of XML is the DATA element (tag). The tag can contain attributes for validation. See e.g. examples/pupils.srd.
• You should add a SOURCE element on top to provide meta-data of the source program.
• Base element with data is a STUDENT element (also used for pupils).
• You can optionally use OTHER to also import teachers and other stuff members.

By design readers can be of any nationality. So in examples you will see various national letters (e.g. Czech "ř", Polish "ś"). That is why you SHOULD use UTF-8 as an encoding of your file.

Basic requirements

• Any reader MUST have a first and a last name.
• Readers uniqueness SHOULD be recognised with a combination of fields: first name, last name, national ID.
• For students school ID and class ID (grade) SHOULD also be taken into account for uniqueness.

So to add a reader with the same first and a last name you have to add a national ID. But also students with the same first and a last name can be in different classes/grades (or in different schools).

National ID

• NID for Poland is the PESEL.
• NID for USA is the Social Security Number.
• NID can be skipped especially for countries that don't use it (e.g. UK).

Notes

• You can find more notes in the XSD file (in xs:documentation tags).
• Some fields MIGHT have other requirements depending on specific needs of a program or a library (institution).
• The destination program SHOULD check it's own specific requirements (not only validate with XSD).
• For example barcode MIGHT need to be unique for a whole library. Also checked with records added earlier.
• Some fields MIGHT have special meaning for example email might be used both for identification (auth) and for contacting readers (notifications).
• Some fields MIGHT also need to be of specific length.

Validation

The srd.xsd contains definition of XSD to be used for basic validation of readers data.

There are various tools (also on-line) that validate XML against XSD. One way is to use Netbeans IDE for that. Below we also provide instructions for a smaller editor - Visual Studio Code (VSC).

Netbeans validation

Netbeans is a free, large program for developers (IDE).

1. Add attributes to a root element of a SRD file (so in DATA tag):

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="srd.xsd"

2. Open the SRD in Netbeans.

3. Run validation (via shortcut: ALT+SHIFT+F9; or choose from menu).

All errors will be shown below.

VSC validation

Visual Studio Code is a free, lightweight code editor with many extensions.

For XML/XSD validation you can use Redhat XML extenstion.

Once installed you just need schema location attributes added to a root element of your SRD file (same as for Netbeans).

The extension works live (continuously). All invalid attributes should be underlined. They should also be shown in Problems panel.