"Presence or absence of an XML declaration does not affect interoperability. Certain implementations might always precede their XML serialization with the XML declaration." So no, it's not required. >Now, just as an experiment, I did take the test out. Your server did >beautifully, except for this search, which blew it up: >http://srw.cheshire3.org:80/services/spy?version=1.1&query=dc.title+exac >t+"dominika jones"&operation=searchRetrieve&maximumRecords=1 Fixed. I fixed that bug on a different server, but forgot to put the change into my 'production' version. Ooops. Rob