Overview of content related to 'interoperability'

The LIPARM Project: A New Approach to Parliamentary Metadata

lisrw — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:41:15 +0000

Richard Gartner outlines a collaborative project which aims to link together the digitised UK Parliamentary record by providing a metadata scheme, controlled vocabularies and a Web-based interface.

Parliamentary historians in the United Kingdom are particularly fortunate as their key primary source, the record of Parliamentary proceedings, is almost entirely available in digitised form. Similarly, those needing to consult and study contemporary proceedings as scholars, journalists or citizens have access to the daily output of the UK's Parliaments and Assemblies in electronic form shortly after their proceedings take place.

Unfortunately, the full potential of this resource for all of these users is limited by the fact that it is scattered throughout a heterogeneous information landscape and so cannot be approached as a unitary resource. It is not a simple process, for instance, to distinguish the same person if he or she appears in more than one of these collections or, for that matter, to identify the same legislation if it is referenced inconsistently in different resources. As a result, using it for searching or for more sophisticated analyses becomes problematic when one attempts to move beyond one of its constituent collections.

Finding some mechanism to allow these collections to be linked and so used as a coherent, integrated resource has been on the wish-list of Parliamentary historians and other stakeholders in this area for some time. In the mid-2000s, for instance, the History of Parliament Trust brought together the custodians of several digitised collections to examine ways in which this could be done. In 2011, some of these ideas came to fruition when JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded a one-year project named LIPARM (Linking the Parliamentary Record through Metadata) which aimed to design a mechanism for encoding these linkages within XML architectures and to produce a working prototype for an interface which would enable the potential offered by this new methodology to be realised in practice.

This article explains the rationale of the LIPARM Project and how it uses XML to link together core components of the Parliamentary record within a unified metadata scheme. It introduces the XML schema, Parliamentary Metadata Language (PML), which was created by the project and the set of controlled vocabularies for Parliamentary proceedings which the project also created to support it. It also discusses the experience of the project in converting two XML-encoded collections of Parliamentary proceedings to PML and work on the prototype Web-based union catalogue which will form the initial gateway to PML-encoded metadata.

Background: The Need for Integrated Parliamentary Metadata

The UK's Parliamentary record has been the focus of a number of major digitisation initiatives which have made its historical corpus available in almost its entirety: in addition, the current publishing operations of the four Parliaments and Assemblies in the UK ensure that the contemporary record is available in machine-readable form on a daily basis. Unfortunately, these collections have limited interoperability owing to their disparate approaches to data and metadata which renders the federated searching and browsing of their contents currently impossible. In addition, the disparity of platforms on which they are offered, and the wide diversity of user interfaces they use to present the data (as shown by the small sample in Figure 1), render extensive research a time-consuming and cumbersome process if it is necessary to extend its remit beyond the confines of a single collection.

Figure 1: Four major collections of Parliamentary proceedings, each using a different interface

A more integrated approach to Parliamentary metadata offers major potential for new research: it would, for instance, allow the comprehensive tracking of an individual's career, including all of their contributions to debates and proceedings. It would allow the process of legislation to be traced automatically, voting patterns to be analysed, and the emergence of themes and topics in Parliamentary history to be analysed on a large scale.

One example of the linkages that could usefully be made in an integrated metadata architecture can be seen in the career of Sir James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1940. Figure 2 illustrates some of the connections that could be made to represent his career:-

Figure 2: Sample of potential linkages for a Parliamentarian

The connections shown here are to the differing ways in which he is named in the written proceedings, to his tenures in both Houses, the constituencies he represented, the offices he held and the contributions he made to debates. Much more complex relationships are, of course, possible and desirable.

The advantages of an integrated approach to metadata which would allow these connections to be made have long been recognised by practitioners in this field, and several attempts have been made to create potential strategies for realising them. But it was only in 2011 that these took more concrete form when a one-day meeting sponsored by JISC brought together representatives from the academic, publishing, library and archival sectors to devise a strategy for integrating Parliamentary metadata. Their report proposed the creation of an XML schema for linking core components of this record and the creation of a series of controlled vocabularies for these components which could form the basis of the semantic linkages to be encoded in the schema [1]. These proposals then formed the basis of a successful bid to JISC for a project to put them into practice: the result was the LIPARM (Linking the Parliamentary Record through Metadata) Project.

Motivations for the Development of a Web Resource Synchronisation Framework

lisrw — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:58:46 +0000

Stuart Lewis, Richard Jones and Simeon Warner explain some of the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework.

This article describes the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework. The Framework addresses the need to synchronise resources between Web sites. Resources cover a wide spectrum of types, such as metadata, digital objects, Web pages, or data files. There are many scenarios in which the ability to perform some form of synchronisation is required. Examples include aggregators such as Europeana that want to harvest and aggregate collections of resources, or preservation services that wish to archive Web sites as they change.

SUSHI: Delivering Major Benefits to JUSP

lisrw — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:54:19 +0000

Paul Meehan, Paul Needham and Ross MacIntyre explain the enormous time and cost benefits in using SUSHI to support rapid gathering of journal usage reports into the JUSP service.

A full-scale implementation of the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) would not be possible without the automated data harvesting afforded by the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) protocol. Estimated time savings in excess of 97% compared with manual file handling have allowed JUSP to expand its service to more than 35 publishers and 140 institutions by September 2012. An in-house SUSHI server also allows libraries to download quality-checked data from many publishers via JUSP, removing the need to visit numerous Web sites. The protocol thus affords enormous cost and time benefits for the centralised JUSP service and for all participating institutions. JUSP has also worked closely with many publishers to develop and implement SUSHI services, pioneering work to benefit both the publishers and the UK HE community.

JUSP: Background to the Service

The management of journal usage statistics can be an onerous task at the best of times. The introduction of the COUNTER [1] Code of Practice in 2002 was a major step forward, allowing libraries to collect consistent, audited statistics from publishers. By July 2012, 125 publishers offered the JR1 report, providing the number of successful full-text downloads. In the decade since COUNTER reports became available, analysis of the reports has become increasingly important, with library managers, staff and administrators increasingly forced to examine journal usage to inform and rationalise purchasing and renewal decisions.

In 2004, JISC Collections commissioned a report [2] which concluded that there was a definite demand for a usage statistics portal for the UK HE community; with some sites subscribing to more than 100 publishers, just keeping track of access details and downloading reports was becoming a significant task in itself, much less analysing the figures therein. There followed a report into the feasibility of establishing a ‘Usage Statistics Service’ carried out by Key Perspectives Limited and in 2008 JISC issued an ITT (Invitation To Tender). By early 2009 a prototype service, known as the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) had been developed by a consortium including Evidence Base at Birmingham City University, Cranfield University, JISC Collections and Mimas at The University of Manchester; the prototype featured a handful of publishers and three institutions. However, despite a centralised service appearing feasible [3], the requirement to download and process data in spreadsheet format, and the attendant time taken, still precluded a full-scale implementation across UK HE.

Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice in 2009 however mandated the use of the newly-introduced Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) protocol [4], a mechanism for the machine-to-machine transfer of COUNTER-compliant reports; this produced dramatic efficiencies of time and cost in the gathering of data from publishers. The JUSP team began work to implement SUSHI for a range of publishers and expanded the number of institutions. By September 2012, the service had grown significantly, whilst remaining free at point of use, and encompassed 148 participating institutions, and 35 publishers. To date more than 100 million individual points of data have been collected by JUSP, all via SUSHI, a scale that would have been impossible without such a mechanism in place or without massive additional staff costs.

JUSP offers much more than basic access to publisher statistics, however; the JUSP Web site [5] details the numerous reports and analytical tools on offer, together with detailed user guides and support materials. The cornerstone of the service though is undeniably its SUSHI implementation, both in terms of gathering the COUNTER JR1 and JR1a data and - as developed more recently - its own SUSHI server, enabling institutions to re-harvest data into their own library management tools for local analysis.

JUSP Approach to SUSHI Development and Implementation

Once the decision was made to scale JUSP into a full service, the development of SUSHI capability became of paramount importance. The team had been able to handle spreadsheets of data on a small scale, but the expected upscale to 100+ institutions and multiple publishers within a short time frame meant that this would very quickly become unmanageable and costly in staff time and effort - constraints that were proving to be a source of worry at many institutions too: while some sites could employ staff whose role revolved around usage stats gathering and analysis, this was not possible at every institution, nor especially straightforward for institutions juggling dozens, if not hundreds, of publisher agreements and deals.

Two main issues were immediately apparent in the development of the SUSHI software. Firstly, there was a lack of any standard SUSHI client software that we could use or adapt, and, more worryingly, the lack of SUSHI support at a number of major publishers. While many publishers use an external company or platform such as Atypon, MetaPress or HighWire to collect and provide usage statistics, others had made little or no progress in implementing SUSHI support by late 2009 - where SUSHI servers were in place these were often untested or unused by consumers.

An ultimate aim for JUSP was to develop a single piece of software that would seamlessly interact with any available SUSHI repository and download data for checking and loading into JUSP. However, the only client software available by 2009 was written and designed to work in the Windows environment, or used Java, which can be very complex to work with and of which the JUSP team had limited expertise. The challenge therefore became to develop a much simpler set of code using Perl and/or PHP, common and simple programming languages which were much more familiar to the JUSP team.

23rd International CODATA Conference

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:41:16 +0000

Alex Ball reports on a conference on ‘Open Data and Information for a Changing Planet’ held by the International Council for Science’s Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan on 28–31 October 2012.

CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in 15 different countries across 4 continents.

euroCRIS Membership Meeting, Madrid

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:07:57 +0000

Rosemary Russell and Brigitte Jörg report on the bi-annual euroCRIS membership and Task Groups meetings which took place in Madrid on 5-6 November 2012.

euroCRIS membership meetings [1] are held twice a year, providing members and invited participants with updates on strategic and Task Group progress and plans, as well as the opportunity to share experience of Current Research Information System (CRIS)-related developments and seek feedback. A CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) tutorial is usually included on the first morning for those new to the standard, and the host country reports on local CRIS initiatives in the ‘national’ session.

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:44:54 +0000

Anna Mastora and Sarantos Kapidakis report on TPDL 2012 held at Paphos, Cyprus, over 23-27 September 2012.

The 16^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012 [1] was another successful event in the series of ECDL/TPDL conferences which has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 15 years. Across these years, the conference has brought together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries by addressing issues in the area where theoretical and applied research meet, such as digital library models, architectures, functionality, users, and quality.

Online Information 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:10:56 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the largest gathering of information professionals in Europe.

Online Information [1] is an interesting conference as it brings together information professionals from both the public and the private sector. The opportunity to share experiences from these differing perspectives doesn’t happen that often and brings real benefits, such as highly productive networking. This year’s Online Information, held between 20 - 21 November, felt like a slightly different event to previous years.

Data Citation and Publication by NERC’s Environmental Data Centres

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Sarah Callaghan, Roy Lowry, David Walton and members of the Natural Environment Research Council Science Information Strategy Data Citation and Publication Project team describe their work in NERC’s Environmental Data Centres.

Data are the foundation upon which scientific progress rests. Historically speaking, data were a scarce resource, but one which was (relatively) easy to publish in hard copy, as tables or graphs in journal papers. With modern scientific methods, and the increased ease in collecting and analysing vast quantities of data, there arises a corresponding difficulty in publishing this data in a form that can be considered part of the scientific record.

The Future of the Past of the Web

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:06:52 +0000

Matthew Brack reports on the one-day international workshop 'The Future of the Past of the Web' held at the British Library Conference Centre, London on 7 October, 2011.

We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web.

IMPACT Final Conference 2011

lisrw — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:36:33 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the two-day conference looking at the results of the IMPACT Project in making digitisation and OCR better, faster and cheaper.

The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs.

Book Review: University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments

lisrw — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:38:31 +0000

Sylvie Lafortune reviews a collection of essays that examine the transformation of academic libraries as they become part of digital learning environments.

This book examines how academic libraries are realigning themselves with the university of the 21^st century, which is increasingly becoming a digital learning environment. The expectations of the Google generation, the interdependence of teaching and research, and the changing roles of library staff and technology all play a fundamental part in this environment–and to lead the discussions in this book, the editors have called on 18 experts and practitioners.

eSciDoc Days 2011: The Challenges for Collaborative eResearch Environments

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:20:52 +0000

Ute Rusnak reports on the fourth in a series of two-day conferences called eSciDoc Days, organised by FIZ Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Digital Library in Berlin over 26-27 October 2011.

eSciDoc is a well-known open source platform for creating eResearch environments using generic services and tools based on a shared infrastructure. This concept allows for managing research and publication data together with related metadata, internal and/or external links and access rights. Development of eSciDoc was initiated by a collaborative venture between FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 67: Changes Afoot

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 67.

For readers who might have been wondering, I shall resist Mark Twain's remark about reports of his demise being exaggerated, and reassure you that while Ariadne has been undergoing changes to the way in which it will be delivered to the Web, it has been business as usual in the matter of the content, as you will see from the paragraphs that follow. Issue 67, while currently not looking any different, is in the process of being migrated to a new platform developed to enhance functionality and give a more user-friendly look and feel to the publication.

Towards Interoperabilty of European Language Resources

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Sophia Ananiadou and colleagues describe an ambitious new initiative to accelerate Europe-wide language technology research, helped by their work on promoting interoperability of language resources.

A core component of the European Union is a common market with a single information space that works with around two dozen national languages and many regional languages. This wide variety of languages presents linguistic barriers that can severely limit the free flow of goods, information and services throughout Europe.

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Bernard M Scaife describes how an innovative use of the EPrints repository software is helping to preserve official documents from the Web.

When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian's life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still.

Open Educational Resources Hack Day

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Kirsty Pitkin reports on a two-day practical hack event focusing on Open Educational Resources (OER), held by DevCSI and JISC CETIS in Manchester on 31 March - 1 April 2011.

The Open Educational Resources Hack Day event was designed to bring together those interested in rapidly developing tools and prototypes to solve problems related to OER. Whilst there is a growing interest in the potential for learning resources created and shared openly by academics and teachers, a number of technical challenges still exist, including resource retrieval, evaluation and reuse. This event aimed to explore some of these problem areas by partnering developers with the creators and users of OER to identify needs and potential solutions.

Book Review: Preparing Collections for Digitization

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Michael Day reviews a recently published book on the selection and preparation of archive and library collections for digitisation.

Over the past 20 years a great deal of information and guidance has been published to support cultural heritage organisations interested in undertaking digitisation projects. It is well over a decade now since the seminal Joint National Preservation Office and Research Libraries Group Preservation Conference on Guidelines for digital imaging [1] and standard introductory texts on digitisation like Anne Kenney and Oya Rieger's Moving theory into practice [2] and Stuart Lee's Digital imaging: a practical handbook [3] are of a similar age - although still extremely useful. More up-to-date guidance is also available from services like JISC Digital Media [4] and the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative [5].

Into this mix comes this new book on the preparation of collections for digitisation by Anna Bülow and Jess Ahmon, respectively Head of Preservation and Preservation Officer at The National Archives in Kew, London. The book claims to fill a gap in the existing literature, covering the practical aspects of safeguarding collections during image capture. It is perhaps worth noting upfront that the main focus of the book is on textual resources and documentary records, meaning that it would seem to be most useful for those working in the libraries and archives sectors.

The first chapter provides some essential context, linking digitisation initiatives to the ongoing collection management practices of archives and libraries. It makes the general point that collection management has three main aspects: the development, use and preservation of collections.

Collection management involves making well informed decisions in order to prioritise actions and optimise the allocation of resources to maintain as much accessible value as possible. (p. 5)

Bülow and Ahmon argue that digital technologies have created new challenges for collection management, e.g. being partly responsible for a shift in attention from the development and preservation role to the development and use role. In practice, however, the link between the roles can be more nuanced. For example, in some cases digitisation may benefit conservation aims by helping to reduce the physical handling of fragile materials. In general, however, the authors feel that while the long-term sustainability challenges of digital content remain unresolved, "digitization of any book or document cannot be seen as a preservation measure for the original itself." (p. 8). The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the four phases of digitisation, each of which is made up of multiple steps. Of these, this book focuses primarily on the first two stages, covering all of the tasks that need to be done prior to imaging (e.g. selection, rights clearance, document preparation) as well as those associated with the digitisation process itself (imaging, quality assurance, transcription, metadata creation). The remaining two stages, chiefly facilitating use and sustainability, are not dealt with in any detail by this book.

International Digital Curation Conference 2010

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Alex Ball reports on the 6th International Digital Curation Conference, held on 7-8 December 2010 in Chicago.

The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago.

Book Review: Practical Open Source Software for Libraries

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Muhammad Rafiq takes a look at a work on the open source community and open source software.

Open source (OS) usually refers to an application whose source code is made available for use or modification in line with users' needs and requirements. OS projects usually develop in the public domain where contributors participate in a collaborative manner and update or refine the product. OS offers more flexibility and freedom than software purchased with licence restrictions. Both the OS community and the library world share many common principles. They share and promote open standards and believe in sharing.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 65: Ariadne in Search of Your Views

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 65.

You may have already noted in the editorial section of this issue a link to the Reader Survey which I ask you seriously to consider completing, whether you are a frequent Ariadne reader or are reading the Magazine for the first time. Moves are afoot to give Ariadne some effort towards improvements in your experience of the publication and I cannot emphasise enough the value I place on suggestions and comments from you. I am very keen to know what readers value and dislike in Ariadne.

Why UK Further and Higher Education Needs Local Software Developers

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Mahendra Mahey and Paul Walk discuss the work of the Developer Community Supporting Innovation (DevCSI) Project which focuses on building capacity for software developers in UK Further and Higher Education to support innovation in the sector.

Software developers are important to Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE). They are needed to develop and implement local FEI (Further Education Institution) and HEI (Higher Education Institution) solutions, to build e-infrastructure, and to innovate and develop ideas and prototypes that can be exploited by others. They also play an important part in the development and uptake of open standards and interoperability.

Developing Infrastructure for Research Data Management at the University of Oxford

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

James A. J. Wilson, Michael A. Fraser, Luis Martinez-Uribe, Paul Jeffreys, Meriel Patrick, Asif Akram and Tahir Mansoori describe the approaches taken, findings, and issues encountered while developing research data management services and infrastructure at the University of Oxford.

The University of Oxford began to consider research data management infrastructure in earnest in 2008, with the 'Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data' Project [1]. Two further JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded pilot projects followed this initial study, and the approaches taken by these projects, and their findings, form the bulk of this article.

Survive or Thrive

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay reports on a two-day conference organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC to consider growth and use of digital content on the Web, which was held in Manchester in June 2010.

Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 64: Supporting the Power of Research Data

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 64.

In these cash-strapped times among all the admonitions to save money here, and resources there, I rather hope to hear much about the necessity of protecting and building the knowledge economy if the UK is to make its way in the globalised world, since we cannot pretend to compete easily in other areas of endeavour. Hence research has to be regarded as one of the aces remaining to us, and thus I hope the importance of gathering, managing and preserving for long-term access research outcomes will be widely appreciated and supported.

Retooling Libraries for the Data Challenge

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Dorothea Salo examines how library systems and procedures need to change to accommodate research data.

Eager to prove their relevance among scholars leaving print behind, libraries have participated vocally in the last half-decade's conversation about digital research data. On the surface, libraries would seem to have much human and technological infrastructure ready-constructed to repurpose for data: digital library platforms and institutional repositories may appear fit for purpose. However, unless libraries understand the salient characteristics of research data, and how they do and do not fit with library processes and infrastructure, they run the risk of embarrassing missteps as they come to grips with the data challenge.

Whether managing research data is 'the new special collections,'[1] a new form of regular academic-library collection development, or a brand-new library specialty, the possibilities have excited a great deal of talk, planning, and educational opportunity in a profession seeking to expand its boundaries.

Faced with shrinking budgets and staffs, library administrators may well be tempted to repurpose existing technology infrastructure and staff to address the data curation challenge. Existing digital libraries and institutional repositories seem on the surface to be a natural fit for housing digital research data. Unfortunately, significant mismatches exist between research data and library digital warehouses, as well as the processes and procedures librarians typically use to fill those warehouses. Repurposing warehouses and staff for research data is therefore neither straightforward nor simple; in some cases, it may even prove impossible.

Characteristics of Research Data

What do we know about research data? What are its salient characteristics with respect to stewardship?

Size and Scope

Perhaps the commonest mental image of research data is terabytes of information pouring out of the merest twitch of the Large Hadron Collider Project. So-called 'Big Data' both captures the imagination of and creates sheer terror in the practical librarian or technologist. 'Small data,' however, may prove to be the bigger problem: data emerging from individual researchers and labs, especially those with little or no access to grants, or a hyperlocal research focus. Though each small-data producer produces only a trickle of data compared to the like of the Large Hadron Collider Project, the tens of thousands of small-data producers in aggregate may well produce as much data (or more, measured in bytes) as their Big Data counterparts [2]. Securely and reliably storing and auditing this amount of data is a serious challenge. The burgeoning 'small data' store means that institutions without local Big Data projects are by no means exempt from large-scale storage considerations.

Small data also represents a serious challenge in terms of human resources. Best practices instituted in a Big Data project reach all affected scientists quickly and completely; conversely, a small amount of expert intervention in such a project pays immense dividends. Because of the great numbers of individual scientists and labs producing small data, however, immensely more consultations and consultants are necessary to bring practices and the resulting data to an acceptable standard.

Variability

Digital research data comes in every imaginable shape and form. Even narrowing the universe of research data to 'image' yields everything from scans of historical glass negative photographs to digital microscope images of unicellular organisms taken hundreds at a time at varying depths of field so that the organism can be examined in three dimensions. The tools that researchers use naturally shape the resulting data. When the tool is proprietary, unfortunately, so may be the file format that it produced. When that tool does not include long-term data viability as a development goal, the data it produces are often neither interoperable nor preservable.

A major consequence of the diversity of forms and formats of digital research data is a concomitant diversity in desired interactions. The biologist with a 3-D stack of microscope images interacts very differently with those images than does a manuscript scholar trying to extract the underlying half-erased text from a palimpsest. These varying affordances must be respected by dissemination platforms if research data are to enjoy continued use.

One important set of interactions involves actual changes to data. Many sorts of research data are considerably less usable in their raw state than after they have had filters or algorithms or other processing performed on them. Others welcome correction, or are refined by comparison with other datasets. Two corollaries emerge: first, that planning and acting for data stewardship must take place throughout the research process, rather than being an add-on at the end; and second, that digital preservation systems designed to steward only final, unchanging materials can only fail faced with real-world datasets and data-use practices.

Making Datasets Visible and Accessible: DataCite's First Summer Meeting

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Tom J Pollard and J Max Wilkinson report on DataCite's First Summer Meeting, a two-day event focused on making datasets visible and accessible, held in Hannover, Germany, in June 2010.

Learning How to Play Nicely: Repositories and CRIS

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Nick Sheppard reports on the event examining integrated, systemic approaches to research information management organised by the Welsh Repository Network and supported by JISC and ARMA at Leeds Metropolitan University, in May 2010.

More than 60 delegates convened at the Rose Bowl in Leeds on 7 May 2010 for this event to explore the developing relationship and overlap between Open Access research repositories and so called 'CRISs' – Current Research Information Systems – that are increasingly being implemented at universities.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 63: Consider the Users in the Field

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 63.

For those who can either remember or are battling still to make the technology work, be it coding, integration or test, it is easy and understandable enough if the technology assumes an overwhelming profile on the horizon of one's project and daily work. It is very understandable when they privately grumble that colleagues unburdened with the minutiae of such work display a breath-taking insouciance to the consequences of asking for a change in spec because there has been an unexpected development in the requirements of the users.

Usability Inspection of Digital Libraries

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Lorraine Paterson and Boon Low highlight findings from the usability inspection report conducted for the UX2.0 research project.

Moving Towards Interoperability: Experiences of the Archives Hub

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Jane Stevenson and Bethan Ruddock describe the work that the Archives Hub team has been doing to promote the sharing of content.

Turning on the Lights for the User: NISO Discovery to Delivery Forum

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Laura Akerman and Kim Durante report on Discovery to Delivery, Creating a First-Class User Experience, a NISO Forum on today's information seekers and current standards developments held in March 2010 at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center.

Volcanic Eruptions Fail to Thwart Digital Preservation - the Planets Way

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Matthew Barr, Amir Bernstein, Clive Billenness and Manfred Thaller report on the final Planets training event Digital Preservation - The Planets Way held in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010.

In far more dramatic circumstances than expected, the Planets Project [1] held its 3-day training event Digital Preservation – The Planets Way in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010. This article reports its proceedings.

Towards a Toolkit for Implementing Application Profiles

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Talat Chaudhri, Julian Cheal, Richard Jones, Mahendra Mahey and Emma Tonkin propose a user-driven methodology for the iterative development, testing and implementation of Dublin Core Application Profiles in diverse repository software environments.

Get Tooled Up: Xerxes at Royal Holloway, University of London

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Anna Grigson, Peter Kiely, Graham Seaman and Tim Wales describe the implementation of an open source front end to the MetaLib federated search tool.

Rarely is software a purely technical issue, though it may be marketed as 'technology'. Software is embedded in work, and work patterns become moulded around it. Thus the use of a particular package can give rise to an inertia from which it can be hard to break free.

Moreover, when this natural inertia is combined with data formats that are opaque or unique to a particular system, the organisation can become locked in to that system, a potential victim of the pricing policies or sluggish adaptability of the software provider. The speed of change in the information world in recent years, combined with the actual or expected crunch in library funding, has made this a particular issue for library management system (LMS) users. While there is general agreement on the direction to take - more 'like Google' - LMS suppliers' moves in this direction can prove both slow and expensive for the user.

Open source software has often been suggested as an alternative, but the nature of lock-in means that the jump from proprietary to open system can be all or nothing; in effect too big (and complex) a risk to take. No major UK university libraries have yet moved to Koha, Evergreen, or indeed any open source LMS [1].

The alternative, which brings its own risks, is to take advantage of the pressures on LMS suppliers to make their own systems more open, and to use open source systems 'around the edges' [2]. This has the particular benefit of creating an overall system which follows the well-established design practice of creating a clean separation of 'view' (typically the Web interface) from 'model' (here the LMS-managed databases) and 'controller' (the LMS core code). The 'view' is key to the user experience of the system, and this separation gives the ability to make rapid changes or to integrate Web 2.0 features quickly and easily, independently of the system back-end. The disadvantage of this approach is that it is relatively fragile, being dependent on the willingness of the LMS supplier to provide a detailed and stable application programming interface (API).

There are several current examples of this alternative approach. Some, like the Vufind OPAC, allow the use of plug-ins which adapt the software to a range of different LMSs. Others, like Xerxes, are specialised front-ends to a single system (MetaLib from ExLibris [3]). This has an impact on evaluating the software: in particular, the pool of active developers is likely to be smaller in the latter case.

Royal Holloway Library Services

Within this general context, Royal Holloway Library Services were faced with a specific problem. The annual National Student Survey had given ratings to the Library well below those expected, with many criticisms centred on the difficulty in using the Library's MetaLib federated search system.

MetaLib is a key access point to the Library's e-resources, incorporating both A-Z lists of major online databases available to library users, and a federated search tool. Feedback showed that many users found the interface less than satisfactory, with one user commenting that:

'MetaLib is possibly the worst and most confusing library interface I have ever come across'

The Library Management Team decided to remedy this as a matter of urgency and set a deadline of the start of the 2009 Autumn term. There was no funding available to acquire an alternative discovery system so the challenge was to identify a low-cost, quick-win solution for the existing one. With this work in mind, the incoming Associate Director (E-Strategy) had already recruited two new colleagues over the Summer vacation: a systems officer with Web development experience, the other an experienced e-resources manager.

The first possible route to the improvement of MetaLib was modification of the existing MetaLib Web interface. This was technically possible but presented several major difficulties: the underlying ExLibris designs were based on the old HTML 4.0 and pre-dated current stylesheet-based design practice; the methods to adapt the designs were opaque and poorly documented, based on numbered variables with semantics that changed depending on context; and perhaps most importantly, the changes were to be made over the summer months, giving no time for user feedback on the details of the changes to be made.

The second possibility was the use of Xerxes [4]. Xerxes offered the advantage of an interface design which had been user-tested on a range of (US) campuses, partially solving the user feedback issue. It was not, however, entirely cost-free, as ExLibris charges an annual maintenance fee for the MetaLib X-server API on which Xerxes depends.

Abstract Modelling of Digital Identifiers

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Nick Nicholas, Nigel Ward and Kerry Blinco present an information model of digital identifiers, to help bring clarity to the vocabulary debates from which this field has suffered.

Discussion of digital identifiers, and persistent identifiers in particular, has often been confused by differences in underlying assumptions and approaches. To bring more clarity to such discussions, the PILIN Project has devised an abstract model of identifiers and identifier services, which is presented here in summary. Given such an abstract model, it is possible to compare different identifier schemes, despite variations in terminology; and policies and strategies can be formulated for persistence without committing to particular systems. The abstract model is formal and layered; in this article, we give an overview of the distinctions made in the model. This presentation is not exhaustive, but it presents some of the key concepts represented, and some of the insights that result.

The main goal of the Persistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure (PILIN) project [1] has been to scope the infrastructure necessary for a national persistent identifier service. There are a variety of approaches and technologies already on offer for persistent digital identification of objects. But true identity persistence cannot be bound to particular technologies, domain policies, or information models: any formulation of a persistent identifier strategy needs to outlast current technologies, if the identifiers are to remain persistent in the long term.

For that reason, PILIN has modelled the digital identifier space in the abstract. It has arrived at an ontology [2] and a service model [3] for digital identifiers, and for how they are used and managed, building on previous work in the identifier field [4] (including the thinking behind URI [5], DOI [6], XRI [7] and ARK [8]), as well as semiotic theory [9]. The ontology, as an abstract model, addresses the question 'what is (and isn't) an identifier?' and 'what does an identifier management system do?'. This more abstract view also brings clarity to the ongoing conversation of whether URIs can be (and should be) universal persistent identifiers.

Identifier Model

For the identifier model to be abstract, it cannot commit to a particular information model. The notion of an identifier depends crucially on the understanding that an identifier only identifies one distinct thing. But different domains will have different understandings of what things are distinct from each other, and what can legitimately count as a single thing. (This includes aggregations of objects, and different versions or snapshots of objects.) In order for the abstract identifier model to be applicable to all those domains, it cannot impose its own definitions of what things are distinct: it must rely on the distinctions specific to the domain.

This means that information modelling is a critical prerequisite to introducing identifiers to a domain, as we discuss elsewhere [10]: identifier users should be able to tell whether any changes in a thing's content, presentation, or location mean it is no longer identified by the same identifier (i.e. whether the identifier is restricted to a particular version, format, or copy).

The abstract identifier model also cannot commit to any particular protocols or service models. In fact, the abstract identifier model should not even presume the Internet as a medium. A sufficiently abstract model of identifiers should apply just as much to URLs as it does to ISBNs, or names of sheep; the model should not be inherently digital, in order to avoid restricting our understanding of identifiers to the current state of digital technologies. This means that our model of identifiers comes close to the understanding in semiotics of signs, as our definitions below make clear.

There are two important distinctions between digital identifiers and other signs which we needed to capture. First, identifiers are managed through some system, in order to guarantee the stability of certain properties of the identifier. This is different to other signs, whose meaning is constantly renegotiated in a community. Those identifier properties requiring guarantees include the accountability and persistence of various facets of the identifier—most crucially, what is being identified. For digital identifiers, the identifier management system involves registries, accessed through defined services. An HTTP server, a PURL [11] registry, and an XRI registry are all instances of identifier management systems.

Second, digital identifiers are straightforwardly actionable: actions can be made to happen in connection with the identifier. Those actions involve interacting with computers, rather than other people: the computer consistently does what the system specifies is to be done with the identifier, and has no latitude for subjective interpretation. This is in contrast with human language, which can involve complex processes of interpretation, and where there can be considerable disconnect between what a speaker intends and how a listener reacts. Because the interactions involved are much simpler, the model can concentrate on two actions which are core to digital identifiers, but which are only part of the picture in human communication: working out what is being identified (resolution), and accessing a representation of what is identified (retrieval).

So to model managing and acting on digital identifiers, we need a concept of things that can be identified, names for things, and the relations between them. (Semiotics already gives us such concepts.) We also need a model of the systems through which identifiers are managed and acted on; what those systems do, and who requests them to do so; and what aspects of identifiers the systems manage.

Our identifier model (as an ontology) thus encompasses:

Entities - including actors and identifier systems;
Relations between entities;
Qualities, as desirable properties of entities. Actions are typically undertaken in order to make qualities apply to entities.
Actions, as the processes carried out on entities (and corresponding to services in implementations);

An individual identifier system can be modelled using concepts from the ontology, with an identifier system model.

In the remainder of this article, we go through the various concepts introduced in the model under these classes. We present the concept definitions under each section, before discussing issues that arise out of them. Resolution and Retrieval are crucial actions for identifiers, whose definition involves distinct issues; they are discussed separately from other Actions. We briefly discuss the standing of HTTP URIs in the model at the end.

The Future of Interoperability and Standards in Education: A JISC CETIS Event

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Sarah Currier reports on an international working meeting involving a range of educational interoperability standards bodies and communities, organised by JISC CETIS.

The stated intention of this working meeting organised by JISC CETIS, and held at the University of Bolton, UK, on 12 January 2010 was to:

Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Puplett reports on the conference Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context held at the British Library in January 2010. The conference launched Economists Online (EO), an innovative economics subject repository.

Institutional repositories are now common in Higher Education, but successful examples of subject repositories, which cater to an entire discipline, are much rarer. The Subject Repositories conference taught some key lessons about the role of transnational collaboration in setting up a subject repository. The conference drew on the expertise of renowned specialists in the field and the two and a half-year-long development process of Economists Online [1].

News and Events

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform – February 2010

UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform:
A chance to see one of the world's top 10 best intranets
Free informal Intranets Forum meeting for UKeiG members

ERM, 2/F Exchequer Court, 33 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AA
Friday 26 February 2010, 4.00 - 5.30 p.m.
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/

Enhancing Scientific Communication through Aggregated Publications

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Arjan Hogenaar describes changes in the publication and communication process which will mean that the role of authors will become a more prominent one.

The Internet has caused a revolution in the way scientists and scholars have access to scholarly output. Only 15 years ago, the (university) library decided what sources should be offered to the staff and individual scientists could only hope the librarian would listen to their wishes. In this system scientists frequently had no instantaneous access to the information they wanted. In such instances they had to rely on the Interlibrary Loan System.

Live Blogging @ IWMW 2009

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Kirsty McGill provides a live blogger perspective on the three-day Institutional Web Managers Workshop, held by UKOLN at the University of Essex, Colchester, in July 2009.

The 12th annual Institutional Web Managers Workshop (IWMW) attracted nearly 200 delegates, making it the largest workshop in the event's history. Whilst the popularity of the physical event has grown, so too has the remote audience. So this year organisers Marieke Guy and Brian Kelly decided that it was time to start treating this remote audience as first class citizens.