interoperability: the digital library holy grail roy tennant...
TRANSCRIPT
Interoperability:The Digital
Library Holy Grail
Roy Tennant
escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/ala2000/exlibris/
An Assumption & an Acknowledgement
• You have a passing familiarity with common digital library terms
• I stole some of the following from Paul Miller, Interoperability Focus, UKOLN, see http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/
Why Interoperability?A Brief Look at 3 Digital Library
Projects
Why Interoperability?:The Vision
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Why Interoperability?
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Why Interoperability?
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Why Interoperability?
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http://searchlight.cdlib.org/
Facets of Interoperability
• Technical
• Semantic
• Political/Human
• Inter-Community
• International
Technical Interoperability
• The ability of technical systems to interoperate
• Standards are needed in at least these areas:– Communication (e.g., TCP/IP)– Transport (e.g., HTTP)– Representation (e.g., XML)– Linking (e.g., SFX)
Semantic Interoperability• Agreement on meaning• The problem:
– Using different labels for the same thing (e.g., author, creator, composer)
– Using the same label to describe different things (e.g., date)
• Possible solutions:– Thesauri and vocabularies (with crosswalks)– Standardization of terminology
See http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/metadata/ for more info
Political/Human Interoperability
• Making resources widely available has impacts on people and organizations
• Possible difficulties of differing goals, clienteles with varying needs, need for staff training, etc.
• Will require a high degree of communication, cooperation, and political will
Inter-Community Interoperability• Ability of differing communities to interoperate• Libraries, museums and archives are a prime
example• Possible difficulties include divergent perspectives
on item description, different terminologies, different needs
• Strategies for success may include focusing on common problems and providing for customization
International Interoperability• All of the issues above, but across political, temporal,
and geographic barriers
• Difficulties include differences in professional practices enshrined in age-old precedent, language and script issues, varying degrees of subsidy and support, etc.
• Mundane but frustrating barriers:– Time zone differences– Differences in communication styles– Our unwillingness to accept international standards
Example Interoperability Initiatives
• NSF-Funded cooperative digital library project: UCSB, UCB, Stanford, CDL, and SDSC, see http://www.npaci.edu/Thrusts/DI/libraries.html/
• UK Interoperability Focus, see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/
• Virtual Canadian Union Catalogue, see http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/resource/vcuc/
• ONE - OPAC Network in Europe, see http://www.dbc.dk/ONE/oneweb/
Methods of Achieving It
• All use the same systems and infrastructure
Not bloody likely!
• Create a massive union catalog of resources
Hmm….kinda sounds like OCLC...
• All adhere to the same protocols, standards, and guidelines
Hey — now you’re talking!
Methods of Achieving It: Standards
• MARC (with AACR2)• Z39.50 (w/ Bib-1, Bath Profile, etc.)• XML (w/TEIlite DTD, etc.)• Dublin Core• SFX, OpCit, CrossRef• Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol
(SDLIP)?• And more...
Methods of Achieving It: Guidelines & Best Practices
• Guidelines and best practices can help where standards don’t exist or are inappropriate
• Some areas in which best practices are now available:– Metadata capture and recording– Imaging
Methods of Achieving It: Strategies• Develop standards, guidelines, and best practices
(cooperatively as much as possible)
• Establish formal linkages between existing organizations and projects
• Create cooperative development projects (I’ll see your programmer and raise you a project manager…)
• Broadly share your ideas and technologies
• Require vendors to support key standards as a condition of sale
Why Will it Never be Fully Achieved?
• Market forces
• The pace of change
• Complexity of systems and diversity of data, metadata, terminologies, etc.
• Organizational, political, and cultural realities
But is it Worth the Quest?
Certainly! Our users deserve no less.Godspeed!