select="employees/head:header/namespace::head"
File: Data.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="Transform.xslt" type="text/xsl"?> <employees> <head:header xmlns:head="http://www.domain.com/namespace/header"> <title>Employee Data File</title> <maintainer>developer 1</maintainer> </head:header> <employee eid="1" dept="programming"> <contact addInfo="info1"> <name> <firstName>Joe</firstName> <middleName int="B">Brian</middleName> <lastName>Smith</lastName> </name> <address> <street>1 Drive</street> <city>Vancouver</city> <state>BC</state> <zipcode>80210</zipcode> </address> <phone> <tel type="wk">111-1111111</tel> <tel type="hm">222-222222</tel> <fax>303-4667357</fax> </phone> <email>a@a.com</email> </contact> <hireDate>2008-10-29</hireDate> </employee> </employees> File: Transform.xslt <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:head="http://www.domain.com/namespace/header" version="1.0"> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:value-of select="employees/head:header/namespace::head"/> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>http://www.domain.com/namespace/header