Joined up Doing: the road to truly virtual heritage organizations

1
Joined up Doingthe road to truly virtual
heritage organizations

• Dr. Paul Miller
• Interoperability Focus
• UK Office for Library Information Networking
  (UKOLN)
• P.Miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk www.ukoln.ac.uk/

UKOLN is funded by Resource the Council for
Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the
Further and Higher Education Funding Councils, as
well as by project funding from JISC and the EU.
UKOLN also receives support from the Universities
of Bath and Hull where staff are based.
2
eGovernment
e
New Library the Peoples Network
Joined up Talking
Virtual Museum of Canada ?.
A Netful of Jewels
CIMI
MEG
the Semantic Web
eCulture
eUniversity
3
CHIN ?.
AMICO
Joined up Building
ukonline.gov / firstgov.gov / .gov
The Peoples Network
Distributed National Electronic Resource
4
Joined up Doing
Interoperability
5
What is interoperability?

• to be interoperable,
• one should actively be engaged in the ongoing
  process of ensuring that the systems, procedures
  and culture of an organisation are managed in
  such a way as to maximise opportunities for
  exchange and re-use of information, whether
  internally or externally.

See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/
6
Why interoperate?

• because, at the end of the day, the user really
  doesnt care which high quality data repository
  gives them the stuff they want
• so long as they can get it!.

7
Why interoperate?

• The cultural heritage need not respect
  organisational views we impose upon it
• A virtual museum of all Da Vincis work?
• All of the Parthenon stonework in one place,
  virtually if not in reality?
• The content of the British Museum available to
  people in a language other than English?
• The paintings of the Louvre, explained to a seven
  yearold?
• Books, archival folios, and physical objects
  relating to a topic available together?.

8
Why interoperate?

• Internally
• to manage our information better
• Externally
• to be more visible
• to meet the needs of our (often remote) users
• to align with portal, etc., developments
• To minimise manual repackaging of information in
  response to every request, exhiblet, etc..

See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/
9
How to interoperate

• Depends upon the situation, of course, but

de jure
standards
standards
community
standards!
international
national
de facto
initiative
10
The nice thing about standards is that
there are so many to choose from!
11
Standard solutions
12
Some types of standard

• Metadata
• resource discovery
• Administration
• management
• Terminology
• Thesauri
• classification systems
• Communication
• network infrastructure
• packaging of data
• Syntax
• ltxml /gt

13
What is Metadata?

• meaningless jargon
• ora fashionable, and terribly misused, term for
  what weve always done
• ora means of turning data into information
• anddata about data
• andthe name of a monument (South Cadbury)
• andthe title of a book (Principles of
  Archaeological Excavation).

14
Challenges
Opportunities

• Many flavours of metadata
• which one do I use?
• Managing change
• new varieties, and evolution of existing forms
• Tension between functionality and simplicity,
  extensibility and interoperability

15
Introducing the Dublin Core

• An attempt to improve resource discovery on the
  Web
• now adopted more broadly
• Building an interdisciplinary consensus about a
  core element set for resource discovery
• simple and intuitive
• crossdisciplinary not just libraries!!
• international
• open and consensual (DC8 in Ottawa)
• flexible.

See purl.org/dc/
16
Introducing the Dublin Core

• 15 elements of descriptive metadata
• All elements optional
• All elements repeatable
• The whole is extensible
• offers a starting point for semantically richer
  descriptions
• Interdisciplinary
• libraries, government, museums, archives
• International
• available in more than 20 languages, with more on
  the way...

17
Introducing the Dublin Core

• Title
• Creator
• Subject
• Description
• Publisher
• Contributor
• Date
• Type

• Format
• Identifier
• Source
• Language
• Relation
• Coverage
• Rights

purl.org/dc/
18
Introducing Z39.50

• North American Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.501995
  version 3)
• International Standard (ISO 23950)
• Originally librarycentric
• Permits remote searching of databases
• Access via Z client or over web
• Relies upon Profiles
• CIMI profile for cultural heritage
• GEO profile for Geospatial data.

See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
19
Z39.50 Challenges

• Profiles for each discipline
• Defeats interoperability?
• Vendor interpretation of the standard
• Bib1 bloat
• Largely invisible to the user
• Seen as complicated and expensive
• Seen as oldfashioned
• Surely no match for XML/RDF/ whatever.

See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
20
Some Joined up working The Bath Profile

• Vendors and systems implement areas of the Z39.50
  standard differently
• Regional, National, and disciplinary Profiles
  have appeared over previous years, many of which
  have basic functions in common
• Users wish to search across national/regional
  boundaries, and between vendors.

See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
21
Learning from the past

• The Bath Profile is heavily influenced by
• ATS1
• CENL
• DanZIG
• MODELS
• ONE
• Z Texas
• vCUC
• CIMI/Aquarelle

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
22
Learning from the past
See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
23
Doing the work

• ZIPPIZL mailing list, hosted by National
  Library of Canada
• Meeting facetoface
• JISC supported a facetoface meeting in Bath
  (UK) over the summer of 1999
• A draft was widely circulated for comment
• Discussion and feedback worldwide
• Profile presented at DC7 in Frankfurt
• Open Concertation day in the UK
• etc.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
24
Doing the work

• Makx Dekkers
• PricewaterhouseCoopers/ EC
• Janifer Gatenby
• GEAC
• Juha Hakala
• National Library of Finland
• Poul Henrik Joergensen
• Danish Library Centre
• Carrol Lunau
• National Library of Canada

• Paul Miller
• UKOLN
• Slavko Manojlovich
• SIRSI/ Memorial University of Newfoundland
• Bill Moen
• University of North Texas
• Judith Pearce
• National Library of Australia
• Joe Zeeman
• CGI.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
25
What we proposed

• Minimisation of defaults
• Where possible, every attribute is defined in the
  Profile (Use, Relation, Position, Structure,
  Truncation, Completeness)
• Three Functional Areas
• Basic Bibliographic Search Retrieval
• Bibliographic Holdings Search Retrieval
• CrossDomain Search Retrieval
• Three Levels of Conformance in each Area.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
26
What we proposed

• SUTRS or XML and UNIMARC or MARC21 for
  Bibliographic Search results
• SUTRS and Dublin Core (in XML) for CrossDomain
  results
• Other record syntaxes also permitted, but
  conformant tools must support at least these.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
27
Finishing it off

• Bath Profile 1.1 accredited as ISO
  Internationally Registered Profile (IRP)
• National Library of Canada as Maintenance Agency
• Direct approaches to international vendors
• User testing in Europe and North America
• Does the Profile do what its meant to?
• Revision of CIMI Profile and others to include
  Bath as a core subset.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
28
Finishing it off

• Inclusion of explicit Bath Profile requirements
  in RFPs across North America and Europe already.
• Bath Editorial Group working on stock text
• Addition of Functional Areas and Levels of
  Conformance as required
• Community Information?
• Next open meeting in Newfoundland, 2425
  September.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/bath/
29
Relevance to me?

• Users want content
• Good, quality controlled content, but not only
  from you
• You (probably) sit on a wealth of information
• But how much of it is really accessible to the
  world?
• Joinedup everything
• Government agendas
• ADS
• CHIN
• Portalitis.

30
Users want content
Gimme stuff!

• Welcome to the information economy
• But if youre selling, then theyre customers
• People only buy what they can see
• Educational agendas
• Every (UK) school online by 2002, but wheres the
  stuff?
• National Grid for Learning
• Learning for Life/ Social Inclusion
• eUniversity
• 24 Hour Museum.

See www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/education/
31
Portalitis

• Making your stuff portable and visible, makes it
  reusable and valuable.
• ukonline.gov/
• Ask Giraffe
• DNER
• Peoples Network/ NOFDIGI
• A(H)DS
• Heritage Gateway?
• 24 Hour Museum
• National Grid for Learning
• Pauls portal
• etc.

32
See www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/
Mail P.Miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk
Join www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/interoperability/