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This page proposes an XML notation for DSpace's internal Item metadata, that is, the metadata fields stored in the database for each Item. It is used by XsltCrosswalk. It is called the Intermediate format because it is inteded solely as an intermediate stage in XML-translation-based crosswalks. To reiterate, This is an INTERMEDIATE format, it is NOT for exporting or harvesting metadata!
XSLT translation
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XSLT is a powerful mechanism for transforming one XML expression into another. Since many metadata formats are expressed in XML, you can use XSL stylesheets quite effectively to implement crosswalks.
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