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Interoperability and the DNER
Paul Miller
Interoperability FocusUK Office for Library & Information Networking (UKOLN)
[email protected] http://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.
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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/See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/
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• Not just technology• Often actually the easy bit
• Social
• Organisational
• Political
• Continual
• etc.
What is interoperability?
See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/
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Why interoperate?
• The whole is more than the sum of the parts• Fulfilling ‘joined–up’ agendas
– “De–siloisation”
• Delivering services to users– What they want, when and where they want it
• Presenting a wealth of content to FE and HE, the UK and the world
– Interoperable resources fit within other services, such that the user need not always visit the ‘host’ site.
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Just one example…
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Westerwood
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How to interoperate…
• Depends upon the situation, of course, but…
standards
standards
standards!de facto
de jure
national
international
community
initiative
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The nice thing about standards…
…is that there are so many to choose from!
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Some standards…
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Terminology
• Terminology– ‘Roma’, not ‘Rome’– ‘Roma’ is preferred to ‘Rome’– ‘Hull, Quebec, Canada’ or ‘Kingston upon Hull, East
Riding of Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom’
• Format– ‘Miller, A.P. 1971–’, not ‘Paul Miller’
The more these are used, the more accurate recall should be, but records may well cost more to create.
See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/metadata/See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/metadata/
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Metadata
• But what is it?– meaningless jargon– or
a fashionable, and terribly misused, term for what we’ve always done
– or“a means of turning data into information”
– and“data about data”
– andthe name of a person (‘Tony Blair’)
– andthe title of a book (‘The Name of the Rose’).
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Metadata
• Description of resource content– “What is it?”
• Description of resource form– “How is it constructed?”
• Description of resource use– “Can I afford it?”
Dublin Core perhaps the best known across domains, but there are others
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Syntax<RDF xmlns = “http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax#” xmlns:dc = “http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”> <Description about = “URI:R”> <dc:title> A Presentation </dc:title> <dc:creator> Paul Miller </dc:creator> </Description></RDF>
A common syntax allows machines to interpret and manipulate data from others.• The UK’s e–Government
Interoperability Framework mandates XML for inter–system exchange.
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Search
• Content needs to be found to be of value– Crawl named websites with a commercial search
engine – Harvest to a central location, and search database
normally– OAi ?
– Reach into databases at source, wherever they may be
– Z39.50 ?
• Increasing expense and complexity, aligned to increased functionality.
See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/See www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
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But…
the technological issues are the easy part of interoperability.• How do organisations work together?• How do we compare similar resources
from different places?• How do we effectively deploy a range
of standards within the work–flow?• How do we release valuable resources
from within organisations, and deliver them to the user?
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Some conclusions…
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Common themes…
• …whether actual or desirable…• A vision
– Access, Access, Access
• Effective scoping– Nothing can be all things to all people
• User rather than institutional focus– Are historical organisational structures really
relevant?
• A managed programme– Requires funding, staff, and the power to
mandate/ co–ordinate for the common good
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Common themes…
• Considered deployment of standards– Bath Profile, Dublin Core, terminological
controls, procedural controls, etc.– Don’t just adopt; help to shape
– Interoperability Focus is active across a range of initiatives.
