Announcement for NCI PDQ(c) Distribution Partners

The National Cancer Institute, Office of Communications and Education, 
Communications Technology Branch (CTB), has made data enhancements to the 
PDQ database that will be distributed within the coming weeks.  The 
changes will affect the media, glossary, drug information and summary files.

We are in the process of including MP3 audio files in our data set of 
media documents.  These new media files will contain pronunciation of 
English or Spanish glossary terms.

Due to these new audio files we're also making some changes to our DTD.
We're adding a "type" attribute to the MediaLink element to identify if
a link points to an image file (type="image/jpeg") or an audio 
file (type="audio/mpeg").  Also, the DrugInformation Summaries will 
include a new element within the DrugInfoMetaData section.  The new element
is named PronunciationInfo and it will contain the elements TermPronunciation
and the MediaLink element which is pointing to the audio pronunciation 
file of the specific drug.
The content of the element FDAExternalRef, which is also new within the
DrugInfoMetaData section, is currently repeated as the first paragraph of 
the DrugInformationSummary.

We're in the process of updating the PDQ XML Specification Guide and will
have this available on our FTP site shortly.  The updated DTD is already 
available for download at CIPSFTP.NCI.NIH.GOV, under the /pub/pdq/pdq_xml 
directory.

Please feel free to forward this information to any other appropriate staff 
who you feel should be notified. 

If you have questions on the administrative aspects of these changes, 
please contact the Licensing Program at 
	license@cips.nci.nih.gov

If you have any technical questions regarding these enhancements, please 
contact the CIPS technical staff at 
	operator@cips.nci.nih.gov. 

Thank you for your continued interest and support in distributing cancer 
information products of the National Cancer Institute.