The DNER - a national digital library

Andy Powell

ZIG Meeting, YorkOctober 2001

UKOLN, University of Bath

a.powell@ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

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Contents

• what is the DNER• network systems architecture

• discover• access

• based on DNER Architecture Study<www.dner.ac.uk/architecture>

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The DNER… wot!?

• The DNER is…• a national digital library... for higher and further

education• a managed collection of resources• a distributed resource supporting learning and

research in the UK• heterogeneous… bibliographic, images, data,

video, geospatial, etc.• an information environment that enables

people to discover, access and use a wide variety of quality assured resources

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But what does it stand for?

• Distributed National Electronic Resource• …but the name may change! :-)

• an initiative of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

• not new… in that JISC has been funding provision of collections of information for a long time, but...•DNER more coordinated•provided within shared architectural framework

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Primary Content

Secondary Content

Funded

Institutional

External

Web

pag

es

Museum

s

home pages

thes

es

research papers

OPACs

Institutional gateways

GoogleYahoo

Northern

Light

RDN A&I

imagesFull-text

statistics

Map data

COPAC

Amazon

Public libraries

cour

sew

are

DNER scope by content

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DNER collections• content typically in the form of ‘collections’

• where collection is one or more items• collections of stuff (text, images, data, ...)• collections of metadata about stuff (e.g subject

gateway’s, library catalogues)• local collections, ‘JISC’ collections, other collections

• network services make digital collections available at digital ‘locations’

• real services make physical collections available at physical ‘locations’

• people access content through services

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Simple scenario

• consider a lecturer searching for materials for a course module covering the development of business in China

• the aim is to construct a hybrid reading list that can be given to students to support their coursework

• he or she searches for ‘business china’ using:• the RDN, to discover Internet resources •ZETOC, to discover recent journal articles

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Issues• different user interfaces

• look-and-feel• subject classification, metadata usage

• eveything is HTML – human-oriented• difficult to merge results, e.g. combine into reading

lists• difficult to build a reading list to pass on to students

• difficult to move from discovering journal article to having copy in hand (or on desktop)

• users need to manually join services together

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The DNER problem…

• DNER information environment can be characterised as providing the solution to two problems

• portal problem - how to provide seamless discovery across multiple content providers

• appropriate-copy problem - how to provide access to the most appropriate copy of a resource (given access rights, preferences, cost, speed of delivery, etc.)

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A solution…?• DNER information environment provides

framework for shared machine-oriented services

• DNER as coherent whole rather than lots of stand-alone services

• simple underlying functional model of the DNER

• discover, access, use

• discover• finding stuff across multiple content providers

• access• streamlining access to appropriate copy

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Discover

• want to allow end-user to discover across multiple DNER content providers...

• services need to expose metadata about their content for

• searching• harvesting• alerting

• develop services that bring stuff together• portals

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Portals

• portals provide access to multiple network services

• there will be many kinds of portals...• subject portals• data centre portals• institutional portals• personal portals (agents)• virtual learning environments

• thin portals (shallow linking)• thick portals (deep linking, richer discovery and

use functionality)

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Searching - Z39.50

ZETOCContent

End-user

Portal

Z39.50Bath Profile

HTTP

RDN

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database

Harvesting - OAIContent

End-user

Portal

OAI MetadataHarvestingProtocol

HTTP

ZETOCRDN

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Searching and sharing!

ZETOCContent

End-user

Portal

Z39.50Bath Profile

RDN

OAI

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Common sense• both approaches based on metadata ‘fusion’ -

merging metadata records from multiple content providers

• need shared understanding and metadata practice across DNER

• need to agree ‘cataloguing guidelines’ and terminology

• 4 key areas• subject classification - what is this resource about?• audience level - who is this resource aimed at?• resource type - what kind of resource is this?• certification - who has created this resource?

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Shared services• how does a portal know what collections are

available?• DNER collection description service

• how does a portal know how to interact with the service(s) that make a collection available?

• DNER service description service

• details not agreed but UDDI, WSDL strong contenders for service description

• also need other shared services• terminolgy service, metadata registry, user preferences,

authentication/authorisation, ...

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Alerting - RSS

• many services offer ‘alerting’ or ‘news’ services• news about the service / press releases

• news about new resources

• alerts often sent by email• ZETOC alerts are a good example - email

alerts about new journal issues• how can alerts from content providers be

embedded into portals?• RSS - RDF Site Summary, an XML application

for Web news feeds

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Alerting - RSS

ZETOCContent

End-user

Portal

RSS/XML

HTTP

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WARNING: this isonly a page mockup

ZETOC RSSchannel embedded

in RDN page

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Access

• discovery phase results in metadata about a resource - including its identifier or a locator

• RDN results include one or more URLs - can simply click on them to get the resource

• ZETOC results are about journal issues or articles - need to find a mechanism for locating the most appropriate copy of the resource given:• user and inst preferences, cost, access

rights, location, etc.

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OpenURL

• provide access to appropriate copy by using OpenURLs (in discovered metadata) and OpenURL resolvers

• OpenURLs in DNER search results or alerts containing information about books, journals, journal issues and/or articles

• variety of resolvers• national• institutional• personal

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WARNING: this isonly a page mockup

ZETOC OpenURLsresolved usingRDN resolver

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resolving to ZETOC

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...to ingenta

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...to local OPAC

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Summary

• portals provide ‘discovery’ services across the DNER

• Z39.50 (Bath Profile), OAI, RSS and Dublin Core are key technologies...

• ...supported by various shared infrastructural services including collection desc. and service desc.

• access to resources via OpenURL and resolvers where appropriate

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Issues

• need to finalise details of collection and service description services:• schema, access protocols, etc.

• unqualified Dublin Core, the default metadata format in Bath Profile and OAI, not rich enough•audience

• continuing perception by some that Z39.50 not the ‘right’ choice for searching•watching ZNG (and ‘Web services’) with interest