The recombinant library: portals and people Improved access to library collections University of Oklahoma Libraries March 6-7 Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC

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The recombinant library portals and
peopleImproved access to library collections
University of Oklahoma LibrariesMarch
6-7Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC
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Overview

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three

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Portal
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Portal
How the library mediates the engagement of users
and resources in a network environment
A density of resources and services on the
network. A bag or portfolio.

• All vogue words tend to share a similar fate
  the more experiences they pretend to make
  transparent, the more they themselves become
  opaque. Zygmunt Bauman

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Creative knowledge you can put in your pocket
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Library?
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5 laws

• Resources are for use
• Needs to be easier!
• A part of research, learning, cultural engagement
• Each user his or her resource
• Each resource its user
• Release the value of resources in creative use
• Save the time of the user
• An obstacle course!
• attention
• The library is a growing organism
• Extensible, flexible, ..

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Some aims

• Provide a web environment
• Saves time for research, learning and personal
  fulfillment
• Surfaces potentially valuable resources which
  otherwise might be overlooked in the trees
• Allows users and library to focus on collections
  rather than mechanics of interaction
• Will increasingly need to interact with other
  environments
• Learning management, institutional portal
  frameworks,
• Library portal transitional

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On the discrimination of portals
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Portal

• End user needs to
• Know what is available
• Learn multiple interfaces
• Manually fuse results

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Library portal approach
Provide intermediate layers between user and
resources. Manage multiple collections.
Resources
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A portal grid!
Static
Dynamic
Deep (Mediation/Presentation)
Flat (Presentation)
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Institutionalrepository
Commercialresource
Communityrepository
Resource 2
Resource 4
Record fusion enrichment
Delivery
Request
Configuration
Harvesting data
Terminology services
V. Ref
Rightsmanagement
Distributed query
Resolution
Syndication
Identity management
Annotation
Notification
Presentation

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Mediation
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Query Harvest Request reference
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Applications

• Search
• Custom
• Distributed query (Z39.50, SRW/SRU)
• Harvest (OAI)
• Crawl
• Link
• OpenURL
• Alert
• RSS
• Distributed request
• ILL
• Reference

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Thoughts

• Mediation expensive
• Best examples hidden licensed resources
• We make little use of data
• Confusion between local node and whole digital
  environment
• One stop shop one shop stop
• Not webby enough
• Business, service and technical architectures
  unclear
• E.g. at what level to do utility services

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Mediating the engagement between libraries and
users

• Some random issues

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user environments
library
resource environment
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Collections grid!
stewardship
high
low
low
uniqueness
high
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Within and across institutions

• Streamline access to licensed resources (within
  institution)
• Federate cultural heritage, research and learning
  materials (across institutions)

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University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Library
- Champaign, IL - 499,440 2002 National
Leadership Grants for Libraries - Research
Demonstration In this three-year research
project, the Library of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will create a
collection-level registry of digital collections
created with IMLS funding from 1998 to 2005 and
will research, design and implement a prototype
item-level metadata repository service
based on the Open Archives Initiative Metadata
Harvesting Protocol.
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Institutional realities

• Portal envy
• Learning management system
• Campus portal
• Aggregators
• Proliferation of portals
• Pitiful portal pretensions
• A node in a network of services

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Dynamic presentation
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Research and learning
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Service on demand threads/channels

• Do a comprehensive literature search
• Find 20 most heavily used resources on ..
• Generate a reading list
• What general material can I get this afternoon on
  
• Can you answer this question
• Can you recommend some starting points for ..
• Find commentaries on

• Can I comment on this resource
• Can I create a reading list
• I need images of x which I can use for this
  purpose
• Who are the most cited authors on the web in x
• Can I look for engineering drawings, previous
  experimental design,

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Portals

• Recombinant library
• Different modes of aggregation within and between
  institutions
• Institutional proliferation of portals
• Integration Weave services into research and
  learning
• Surface appropriate services when needed

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So

• How do we effectively manifest library services
  on the network?
• Services may be fine-grained or grouped in
  portfolios
• It may (or may not) be sensible to bring services
  together in a library portal
• and in a learning management system, and in a
  reading list, and .

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