Throughout your professional library reading, you will occasionally come across esoteric library technology acronyms. It’s annoying to have to stop reading to look up their meanings. To help prevent that, we present our list of more common library technology acronyms.
These acronyms have been added to the Library Technology Acronyms page.
AACR2 – Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, a set of cataloging rules succeeded by Resource Description and Access (RDA).
COUNTER – Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources, standards for recording and reporting online usage statistics.
CAPTCHA – Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, a test that aims to protect web forms from entry by bots.
CSS – Cascading Style Sheets, a language used for describing the presentation of a web document (usually in HTML).
CSV – Comma-Separated Values, data items in table record consisting of one or more fields, separated by commas.
DDA – Demand Driven Acquisition, a system where an e-resource is purchased after a pre-specified number of uses trigger its purchase. Replaces Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA).
DOI – Digital Object Identifier, a persistent interoperable identifier under International Organization for Standardization standard ISO 26324.
DRM – Digital Rights Management, access control technologies used to restrict access to certain rights-holders.
EDI – Electronic Data Interchange.
ERM – Electronic Resource Management, system used to track electronic resources such as databases, ebooks, and e-journals.
FRBR – Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, model of metadata that includes four levels of representation: work, expression, manifestation, and item.
HTML – Hypertext Markup Language, a markup language for describing web documents.
ISO – International Organization for Standardization, independent developer of voluntary International Standards.
LDAP – Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a method of user authentication.
LITA – Library and Information Technology Association is a division of the American Library Association (ALA).
LOCKSS – Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe, multiple electronic backup system for preserving library materials.
MOOC – Massive Open Online Course, a web-based course, often with very large enrollments.
OA – Open Access.
OCLC – Online Computer Library Center, Inc., a nonprofit provider of library services for cataloging, discovery, and resource sharing.
PDA – Patron Driven Acquisition, see DDA (Demand-Driven Acquisition).
PURL – Persistent Uniform Resource Locator.
RDA – Resource Description and Access, a unified cataloging standard which is replacing AACR2 and based on FRBR (see above).
RDM – Research Data Management.
RFID – Radio Frequency Identification Technology, the wireless use of electromagnetic fields to transfer data from tags typically affixed to print library materials.
SaaS – Software as a Service.
SAML – Security Assertion Markup Language, XML standard for single sign-on (SSO).
SMS – Short Message Service, for sending text messages on mobile phones.
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer, a security technology for establishing an encrypted connection between a webserver and a browser, succeeded by Transport Layer Security (TLS).
SUSHI – Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative.
TLS – Transport Layer Security, a security technology for establishing an encrypted connection between a webserver and a browser, replacing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
UX – User eXperience.
WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
XML – eXtensible Markup Language, a language for encoding documents in both a human-readable and machine-readable text format.
XSL – eXtensible Stylesheet Language, a language used to transform and render XML documents.