CAUL Meeting 2004/2

1
CAUL Meeting 2004/2 Hobart 13 September 2004
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Roadmap

• Recap
• Partners
• Extent and Intent
• Activity and Operational Structures
• APSR Developments
• Digital Sustainability Program (NLA)
• Practices and Testbeds Program
• ANU
• USyd
• UQ
• National Services Program
• International Linkages Program
• External Involvement

3
Recap
Partners

• The Australian National University (Lead
  institution)
• The National Library of Australia
• The University of Queensland
• The University of Sydney
• Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing

4
Recap
Extent and Intent

• In responding to the call to develop national
  research infrastructure through the creation of a
  broad repository-based architecture, the APSR
  proposal had at its core
• an overall focus on critical issues of access
  continuity to and sustainability of digital
  collections
• a determination to build on a base of
  demonstrators for digital continuity and
  sustainability embedded in developmental
  repository facilities within partner
  institutions
• an aspiration to contribute to national
  strength by encouraging development of skills
  and expertise and providing coordination
  throughout the sector via a platform of national
  services and international linkages

5
Recap
An open partnership both in its manner of working
and its ultimate manifestation within a national
centre - predicated on a belief that - the
higher education sector needs catalysts to
encourage and enable institutions to take action
based on best practice that will ensure
continuity of access to key information resources
over time
6
Recap
Such resources not simply text-centric in nature.
Real challenge lies in coping with huge volume
of research data and resources in varying formats
and configurations emerging from the eScience and
eHumanities movements Within APSR, role of APAC
to carry these eResearch links, beyond their
direct involvement in University of Sydney
testbed project
7
Recap
Activity Structure
8
Recap
Operational Structure
9
APSR Developments

• Tom Ruthven appointed as Executive Officer July
  2004
• Website established ltwww.apsr.edu.augtwww.apsr.ed
  u.au
• University of Queensland ltwww.library.uq.edu.au/es
  cholarshipgt
• University of Sydney ltsorrt.library.usyd.edu.augt
• Presentations
• Questnet 2004, Cairns, 6 July
• Robin Stanton - APSR and the national
  information infrastructure
• IAML Biennial Conference, Canberra, 13 September
• Tom Ruthven - The brave new world of libraries
  and repositories

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Digital Sustainability (Core Program)

• Led by NLA program will support and work with
  demonstrator or testbed projects and also feed
  directly into National Services and International
  Linkages programs (notably in its links with the
  recently established Digital Curation Centre in
  Edinburgh)
• Primary objective to provide mechanisms and
  expertise to ensure digital information resources
  remain
• available usable understandable
• findable trustworthy re-usable
• for as long as they are needed
• Seeks to develop national centre of excellence,
  providing such services as best practice
  documentation, software frameworks and archives,
  generic tools, format registries, planning
  strategies, and technology watch services

11
Digital Sustainability
Progress

• Project Officer appointed from 1 September
• Strategy paper developed in consultation with
  ANU, USyd, UQ testbed projects
• Work continuing on
• partner expertise registry
• sustainability analysis of testbed repositories
• sustainability assurance for testbed repositories
• Consultation with Digital Systems Technology
  Centre (DSTC) about digital preservation tools

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Practices and Testbeds Program (1) Implementation
of Repository Technology in a Standards
Framework (ANU)

• Objectives
• Develop an open source repository infrastructure
  that addresses the needs of Australian
  universities for the management of digital assets
• Develop mechanisms for building effective
  partnerships with academic community for the
  management of their digital assets
• Participate in federation services with APSR
  partners and other SII projects

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ANU

• Key Tasks
• Develop repository system based on needs analysis
  from a broad set of representative collections
• Become major contributor to DSpace open source
  development
• Contribute to international standards and best
  practice for the management of digital
  repositories
• Populate ANU repository
• Develop policy framework for partnerships with
  academic staff
• Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the
  objectives of the Digital Sustainability program
• Evaluate success of software and policy
  development

14
ANU

• Progress
• ANU DSpace ltdspace.anu.edu.augt
• Production environment Development area
• 4 communities 13 communities
• 105 collections 108 collections
• Participating repository in PictureAustralia
• Staff appointments
• 2 additional project officers about to be
  appointed to join 2 existing project staff
  members
• DSpace development
• ANU contribution
• image derivative/thumbnail generation
• integrating Apache Cocoon with DSpace
• Presentation
• OpenPublish 2004, Sydney, 30 July Peter
  Raftos DSpace and ANU

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Practices and Testbeds Program (2) Sustainability
and Interoperability in a Complex Distributed
Environment (University of Sydney)

• Objectives
• Develop a sustainable model for large complex
  object repositories
• within a distributed research environment
• Document a set of supporting protocols and
  standards
• Develop appropriate enabling middleware and tools

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USyd

• Key Tasks
• Establish a project methodology for the testbed
  facilities
• Develop protocols within the common XML
  environment of the testbed facilities
• Cooperate with other testbed projects and the
  MAMS project to meet the objectives of the
  Digital Sustainability program
• Scope prototype demonstrator projects (cultural,
  health, historical)
• Develop and implement appropriate middleware and
  tools to enable demonstrators
• Develop and implement testing and evaluation
  methods
• Undertake evaluation of protocols within partner
  and other facilities nationally and
  internationally

17
USyd

• Progress
• Sustainability framework
• Requirements and specifications, primarily in
  CIPHE image banks and PARADISEC, under
  development
• Interoperability middleware
• Framework under development for internal testing
  in November (ACL)
• APAC
• Extensible storage space provided to USyd
  testbeds to investigate storage processes
• Staff appointments
• 1.5 programmers appointed
• SORRT
• Project branded as SORRT (Sustainable Object
  Repositories for Research and Teaching)

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Practices and Testbeds Program (3) eScholarship
Australia (University of Queensland)

• Objectives
• Develop an integrated entry point to a range of
  repositories of research output
• Encourage better reporting of academic research
  outputs
• Facilitate access to information about Australian
  research

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UQ

• Key Tasks
• Identify existing repositories at UQ to be used
  in project
• Investigate and adopt appropriate standards to be
  used, with emphasis on open standards
• Test a range of harvesting protocols, including
  OAI-PMH
• Examine subject mapping techniques to ensure
  metadata conform to appropriate thesaurus
  descriptors. (Existing institutional subject
  classification schemes will be mapped to the
  Australian Standard Research Classification.
  Where metadata lack appropriate thesaurus
  descriptors, automatic and semi-automatic subject
  mapping techniques will be used.)
• Investigate and implement mechanisms to identify,
  capture, organise and manage non-text, non-OAI
  compliant resources
• Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the
  objectives of the Digital Sustainability program
• Extend demonstrator application to other
  institutions

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UQ

• Progress
• Data and service provider models
• Keystone and Fedora software under evaluation
• Test repositories identified
• UQ Research Quantum
• ePrints_at_UQ
• Australian Digital Theses Program
• Standards
• Series of open standards identified for adoption
• Staff appointments
• Programmer appointed

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National Services Program

• Objective
• Provide services to national higher education and
  researchsector
• Technical advisory services
• Knowledge transfer and educational services
• Consultation and collaboration services
• Timeframe
• 2005-2006

22
National Services

• Progress
• Program to begin formally in 2005
• Commitment to make ANU version of DSpace
  available to Australian higher education sector
  Q4 2004
• DSpace in a box on CD or DVD

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International Linkages Program

• Objectives
• Participate in and contribute to the development
  of international standards applicable to digital
  access and sustainability
• Participate in selected international programs in
  the digital access and sustainability area
• Maintain a technology watching brief across a
  wide range of international programs in the
  digital access and sustainability area
• Timeframe
• 2005-2006

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International Linkages

• Progress
• Program to begin formally in 2005
• Existing or prospective partnerships
• Digital Curation Centre (DCC), Edinburgh
• Thomson Scientific (ISI) Web Citation Index
  Project
• (ANU, CalTech, Cornell, Max Planck Society,
  Monash, NASA/Langley, University of Rochester)
• DSpace/Google/OCLC IR Search Project
• (ANU, Cornell, Cranfield, European University
  Institute, HKUST, IUPUL, MIT, Minho University,
  Ohio State, Univ Arizona, Calgary, Oregon, Parma,
  Rochester, Toronto, Washington, Wisconsin)
• Digital Publishing System (DPubS) Cornell and
  Penn State
• (ANU investigating involvement)
• University of Sydney
• SETIS (Michigan, Oxford and Virginia), PARADISEC
  (AILLA and DELAMAN),
• ACL/SSIU/TimeMap (UCLA and Unesco)

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External Involvement

• Potential for involvement in APSR by others than
  immediate project partners
• National Services Program (starting in 2005)
• Occasional open workshops and forums

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External Involvement

• Also potential opportunity for others to
  participate as project partners (specifiedin
  both original proposal and agreement between ANU
  and existing project partners)
• Such participation would require
• Strategic commitment to the development of
  institutional digital repositories
• Significant implementation program involving
  repository technology and a collection
  program focused on research materials having
  sector-wide relevance
• Commitment to sector-wide cooperation in the
  development of institutional repositories
• Commitment to APSR objectives and willingness
  to contribute to APSR processes
• Acceptance that partner responsibilities
  include participation in APSR core activities
  such as standards setting, evaluation and
  adoption, expertise network, skills pool,
  international linkages and benchmarking
• New partners would bring own resources to APSR
• There would be no access to DEST funding unless
  additional monies were granted

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Thank you
Vic Elliott 13 September 2004