There is an interesting note on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:
When we originally launched Sitemaps, we included support for the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) 2.0 protocol, an interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting. In the meantime, however, we've found that the information we gain from our support of OAI-PMH is disproportional to the amount of resources required to support it. Fewer than 200 sites are using OAI-PMH for Google Sitemaps at the moment.
There are a few ways of looking at this. Perhaps ‘open access’ repositories are less concerned with Google rankings than the typical website owner. Perhaps the penetration of OAI-PMH in the world is still below any level that Google could find particularly interesting - certainly they never went to great lengths to advertise this support while it lasted. Clearly, Google have come to the end of a ‘trial period’ for their support for this protocol in their main indexing service. [paul walk’s weblog » Blog Archive » Google gives up on supporting OAI-PMH for Sitemaps]
OCUL (Ontario Council of University Libraries) has released a nice white paper which discusses issues in providing an end-user access environment for its shared resources, and more interestingly, how that environment engages with the behaviors and expectations of its academic users.
This document (pdf) was created to highlight opportunities and drive discussion for the OCUL consortium in both the short term through the launch of a new Scholars Portal server in 2008, and in the long term by incorporating more 'social' means of sharing and organizing information within OCUL's Scholars Portal and the larger academic community that it serves. [Scholr 2.0]
As one might expect from a discussion white paper, there is a focus on questions and potential directions. Recommendations are given in several areas:
Enhance and improve the user interface • Enrich Scholars Portal content by bringing in metadata from sources outside the journal repository • Explore the implementation of controlled vocabulary, thesauri and authority control • Add user tagging functionality
Connect the citation network to user workflow • Provide table of contents (TOC) RSS feeds with links that facilitate authentication. If it is possible, allow users to generate their own RSS feeds. • Provide users of scholarly resources with social bookmarking services • Consider services that support the whole of the user’s research process and the development of online space for OCUL research communities. • Seek means for Scholars Portal to be integrated into Learning Management Systems used by OCUL
Embrace standards and technologies that will allow present and future network discovery systems to make use of what we offer • Provide both permalinks as well as COinS OpenURLs in the Scholars Portal server and to encourage OCUL libraries to adopt their own versions of LibX or promote other COinS readers • Investigate how to take advantage of the attribute-based information that Shibboleth can provide • Consider what semantic metadata could be provided through Scholars Portal
'open' is a word that usually needs to be qualified to be of any use in our conversations. Simply standing on its own it is not clear what it means. Unless qualified the word is like 'home made', 'new' or 'natural', a widely applied promotional label with little informational value.
The storm in a teacup around OpenTranslators is interesting in this context. This is a hosted service from Care Affiliates, working with Index Data and WebFeat. It is a nice idea.
OpenTranslators will allow libraries to use the federated search interface of their choice to access over 10,000 databases using SRU/SRW/Z39.50. The databases consist of: licensed databases, free databases, catalogs, Z39.50, Telnet and proprietary databases. Libraries that already have a Z39.50 client in their OPAC will be able to connect to, not only library catalogs, but also thousands of additional databases. Those libraries that are building or already using an open source federated search tool will now be able to expand the world of information that can be accessed. Finally, for those institutions/organizations building new mashup clients, this will allow them to access and use vast amounts of additional content. [OpenTranslators; the ability to choose the Federated Search Interface and Content of your choice using open standards.]
This is open in the sense that it is placing a standards-based layer over a bundle of useful functionality. The translators can be accessed through a well-defined public interface (in this case SRU/SRW/Z39.50), the definition of which is under the control of no single organization. This is a well-established and long-standing sense of 'open', as in 'open standards' or 'open systems'.
However, calling a service 'open' in this sense says absolutely nothing about the business model or configuration under which it is made available. It might be available for free, on a fee-for-use basis, as a subscription service; it might be available as locally deployable software, as a service in the cloud, and so on. In this case, Care Affiliates are making a subscription service available to users on a hosted basis.
To use the service you need appropriate client (SRU/SRW/Z39.50) capability. There are many choices here. Libraries will have this capability as part of software they buy from a vendor, or in some cases as part of an open source package. There is no necessary link between 'open source' and the use of the 'OpenTranslators' service.
While this new development was generally welcomed, some of the responses discussed the service in terms of 'open source' or even 'open access'.
This prompted the following from Dan Chudnov (who had taken notes and was naming names). Language mattered, he suggested, and .....
Open source, open access, and open standards are completely different activities undertaken by completely different combinations of people in completely different circumstances. To conflate them all because of the common word "open" is shortsighted enough - to misapply the terms against the intent of the proponents of each of these separate categories of endeavors is to sow distrust. [Welcome to 1998 | One Big Library.]
Looking at these exchanges I was reminded of early discussion around OAI where the 'O' for open looked towards 'open access' but also towards open standards independent of the business model supporting the application.
The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The Open Archives Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. The fundamental technological framework and standards that are developing to support this work are, however, independent of the both the type of content offered and the economic mechanisms surrounding that content, and promise to have much broader relevance in opening up access to a range of digital materials. [Open Archives Initiative]
Bob Wolven has an interesting piece in netConnect about cataloging. He mentions our approach to standards, among other things.
Perhaps worse, the kind of consensus we have demanded drives us toward complexity. Our libraries acquire a vast and wildly diverse set of resources, yet we insist on treating all of them by the same rules. We prize consistency over practicality. If some works, in some contexts, benefit from a precise transcription of statements of responsibility, or from detailed recording of pagination and illustrations, we apply those same principles to all. We apply the same level of subject analysis to the 20-page pamphlet and the 1000-page treatise. We do this not out of obduracy or short-sightedness, but because it's the only way we have found to build trust among what is, after all, a very large and diverse group. [In Search of a New Model - 1/15/2008 - netConnect]
We do sometimes treat standards activity as if the desired outcome were socially acceptable consensus. This has meant that we may allow optionality or discretion in how data is represented, or, for example, we may suggest that data go into notes. This may have been more acceptable when actual data exchange was not very frequent, or data was created for human display. However, as more of our services are supported by communicating applications, and as the volume and variety of data transfers increase, this approach is less useful. Think of how we want to process data for faceted display, or for clustering into works, or think about using data to manage flows into mass digitization or offsite storage where we want to track volumes through workflows. We want to make sure that the full intellectual effort that goes into description is available for re-use by applications.
An interesting announcement about some metadata standards from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) which use Dublin Core. Dale Meyerrose, mentioned in the quote, is associate director of national intelligence and chief information officer at ODNI.
These standards are a part of a broader attempt by Meyerrose and Defense Department Chief Information Officer John Grimes to make information more usable across the intelligence community. Meyerrose, who spoke at a lunch sponsored by the Industry Advisory Council last September, said he has signed memos since June 2007 that focus on creating a data dictionary that deals with security level labeling and one that creates a central repository for intelligence information. [ODNI issues new metadata standards]
The goal here is sharing of information within the intelligence community.
“My goal is to improve collaboration,” Meyerrose said at the event. “Another aspect is how well we collaborate with others charged with the business of intelligence.” [ODNI issues new metadata standards]
Under the auspices of OASIS appears a discussion document about the 'search web service'.
The Search web service is a means of opening a database to external enquiry in a standardized manner that facilitates discovery of query and response possibilities and makes it possible for heterogeneous databases to be queried simultaneously with the same or similar queries. Client software can be easily configured using a standardized XML explain document that is accessible from the base URL or via the explain operation. In contrast with protocols such as SQL and XQuery, detailed knowledge of a database’s structure is not necessary as the explain document contains parsable information on server defaults, searchable indexes and record schemas that are returned in the response. [OASIS Specification Template]
There is a cryptic note about its relationship to SRU:
This specification is based on the SRU (Search Retrieve via URL) specification which can be found at http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/. It is expected that this standard, when published, will deviate from SRU. How much it will deviate cannot be predicted at this time. The fact that the SRU spec is used as a starting point for development should not be cause for concern that this might be an effort to fast track SRU. The committee hopes to preserve the useful features of SRU, but not to preserve those that are not considered useful. [OASIS Specification Template]
One area where growing interest in identifiers is very clear is that of people, particularly in their role as authors or creators. In this context, the Names Project in the UK is interesting:
The project is going to scope the requirements of UK institutional and subject repositories for a service that will reliably and uniquely identify names of individuals and institutions.
It will then go on to develop a prototype service which will test the various processes involved. This will include determining the data format, setting up an appropriate database, mapping data from different sources, populating the database with records and testing the use of the data.
This will provide important information about the future usefulness of a name authority service for institutional and subject-based repositories, and other applications beyond the repository sector. [The Names Project]
The website does not talk about how any ensuing service might be sustained.
The project has produced a useful Landscape report [pdf], documenting relevant standards and projects. Including Worldcat Identities and the VIAF project.
The benefits of using a consistent name are clear from a discovery point of view. So it is interesting that many people are inconsistent in how they identify themselves on their works. Search engines have probably made people more conscious of the distinctiveness - or otherwise - of their names? The additional step of unique identification would facilitate various services.
Link resolvers and the serials supply chain [pdf] is the title of an interesting report commissioned by the UK Serials Group and written by James Culling. From the summary:
The current knowledge base data supply chain is characterized by a complex series of roles, relationships and inter-dependencies between publishers, other content hosts, subscription agents, link resolver suppliers, libraries and others. [Link resolvers and the serials supply chainpdf]
The report argues that a lack of understanding between these stakeholders results in many inefficiencies.
It could be said that whilst the community's attention has been mostly focused on what it means to be OpenURL compliant, a code of practice and information standards to ensure knowledge base compliance and the efficient transfer of data through the supply chain have been sorely absent and overlooked. [Link resolvers and the serials supply chainpdf]
The report discusses issues from different stakeholder perspective. It recommends the establishment of an organization which brings stakeholders together around a "code of practice for effective participation in the knowledge base supply chain". Counter is suggested as a model.
My colleague Phil Norman alerted me to the publication of the report.
I was looking at the metadata framework proposed by Karen Coyle, Diane Hillman, Jonathan Rochkind and Paul Weiss and was interested to see that the categories they use mapped pretty well onto the categories I have sometimes used when talking about library and related metadata and interoperability.
Model=information model
Schema=element set
Encoding=encoding
Guidance=content values
where the first column is from the Coyle et al framework, and the second from my .ppt above.
I had some offline conversation with Karen and in response to a query I noted that I had a version of the picture above in the presentation I loaded into Slideshare some months ago as an experiment. Prompted by the exchange I loaded a couple more presentations yesterday. I was interested to see how the service had moved on since I last looked at it. There are quite a few more presentations loaded, and they show you related presentations based on matches. The service has been up and down in the last twenty four hours or so: I don't know if that if a current issue, or on ongoing issue. I still think it is a nice idea: it is useful to be able to make presentations available and URL addressable at the page level. That said, I thought I might see more folks use it in this way. Much as Flickr is used to acquire and share a URL for a picture.
Incidentally, it is very kind of Karen and colleagues to list this as a framework, but I would hesitate to lean too heavily on what is something produced quickly for some presentations .....
Ooops - I did insert the date on the version I presented ;-)
I came across the helpful JISC Standards Catalogue while checking something for a presentation. It is in the form of a Wiki maintained by UKOLN and provides descriptive information about standards of interest to the educational community.
This is really an excellent set of presentations from knowledgeable presenters, and they all repay reading.
I was interested to see 'disclosure' used as a category by several folks: it is increasingly of general interest. I was also interested to see the phrase 'evidence-based librarianship' used in the context of Sushi and Counter. Issues of metadata and identifiers were identified as crucial, across the range of resources that we need to manage (institutions, people, and collections, for example, as well as information objects).
Here are some things that especially caught my eye, although, again, all the presentations are interesting.
Mark Bide has a useful introduction looking at flows of data between libraries and publishers
Hugh Look has a nice slide showing the overwhelming acronymic density of our current environment.
Robert Bley of Ex Libris has an interesting discussion about ERM and its relationship to other parts of the library systems environment.
Frances Shipsey talks about versioning issues with eprints and journal articles.
James Culling talks about issues of managing knowledge bases.
Ralph Levan has a succinct article in the current Information Technology and Libraries explicating the current profusion of search protocols by placing them on a continuum of complexity. Here is the e-print.
My colleague Jeff Young has a blog - Q6 - where he is discussing issues around the design and deployment of OpenURL 1.0. it is aimed at those with some familiarity with OpenURL.
The first thing to notice is that OpenURL 1.0 blows the doors off of OpenURL 0.1. OpenURL is no longer limited to citation linking. The abstractions provided in the OpenURL 1.0 model extend its range to encompass any imaginable web service. Not enough people realize the significance of this. [Q6]
Judith Pearce of the National Library of Australia has written a really good paper on the emerging shape of resource discovery and delivery, with some contribution from my OCLC Pica colleague Janifer Gatenby.
It takes a systemwide perspective: so the focus is on what we somtimes call resource sharing. I find this especially interesting as most libraries are part of one or more systems of provision, which underlie aspects of local service delivery. I believe that such systems will become more important, not less. Look for example at the current discussions surrounding off-site storage and mass digitization. In each case we are considering how a system organizes itself to achieve its goals. However, the articulation of these systems generally tends to receives less attention than local service environments.
The paper touches on many of the interests discussed in in these pages. Here are some thoughts prompted by it. I use the discover/locate/request/deliver string of verbs (Judith uses similar strings):
We will increasingly see the discovery process separated from the location/request/delivery process. So, for example, a user may discover that something exists in a search engine or Amazon and then want to be connected through to library services. This is different than the current common presumption, where the user's discovery experience is in the catalog.
The end-to-end process articulation required to give a user a smooth or 'well-seamed' discovery-to-delivery experience is still not quite in place. Judith suggests that users will want to complete the complete workflow within the discovery interface which will require much communication of components behind the scenes.
This in turn means that we need a robust, lightweight, widely deployed protocol infrastructure. We are not there yet ;-)
It also raises another interesting question: where should we try to work with existing complicated situations, and where should we be trying to change the service and organizational settings to facilitate new ways of working? So for example, the paper refers to an argument that I have made that we would benefit from fewer larger resources to search given the expense of Metasearch. This is a technical issue may need to be resolved by business and organizational change.
Working in a systemwide way requires better intelligence about the system. This will be in the form of registry or directory information about entities within the system: collections, services and institutions are examples.
Finally, I sometimes wonder what people mean by interoperability in general discussion. If you are talking about bibliographic data, then one can talk about interoperability in the context that that establishes. If you are talking about search protocols, then one can talk about interoperability within the context that that establishes. But more generally it is impossible to have a conversation without a context. That is one reason why we are seeing more interest in frameworks and models. As we expect systemwide services to play well together we need a model of the system so that we know what what components are important, what components need to talk to each other, and what is the best way for them to talk to each other. Judith mentions a couple of iniatives looking into these questions.
I have been working on a post about the catalog which touches on some of these points.
The QA Focus was an activity provided by UKOLN and the AHDS to JISC projects. Now finished, it continues to make available eighty briefing documents on various aspects of information service development and management, which seem like a useful resource.
Each is a short, pragmatic introduction to a topic. A wide range is covered, including, for example, current topics like podcasting and folksonomies as well as many other management and technical issues.
Think of services provided to human interfaces as P-services - where p stands for person (or presentation). Think of services provided to machine interfaces as M-services where m stands for machine (or mediated).
Our dominant model of delivery is P-service, a web interface oriented for presentation to human users. M-services have tended to be a minority interest, very much in the back-office. That is about to change as we move into a flatter web world of light-weight M-services.
Think of the first generation of protocol adoption which saw the emergence of Z39.50 and ISO-ILL, protocols developed in an OSI idiom which did not travel outside a library niche and which have seen steady if not spectacular usage. These support B2B interaction between library applications, and typically those connections have been few in number. They connect isolated peaks. In fact, like EDI approaches in business they were developed before the web itself.
Typically, at the consumer end, the M-services are combined in an application - a metasearch engine, a resource sharing system, and so on - which needs significant technical attention. The costs of consuming and combining M-services has traditionally been high. They typically cannot be combined easily by an end-user using desktop tools. And maybe the structure of the library systems industry has also limited broader adoption.
A second generation of protocol adoption has seen the emergence of OAI-PMH, OpenURL, SRU, and NCIP. Here, a web services idiom is prevalent, and it will be interesting to see whether that flexibility supports better adoption outside the originating community. In general, these protocols are more lightweight. They are designed to encourage wider adoption in a 'flatter world', a world where we want to mix data and services in many user applications. OpenURL is a good example of how a lighter weight approach has delivered real value as it has been implementated widely to join up the journal article supply chain.
Until recently the general distinction between P- and M-services seemed quite clear-cut. Recent developments in the wider environment bring them closer together - consider RSS, for example, Ajax, and REST-style URL-based protocol interaction, which move machine-based interaction closer to the user. In the flatter world of today's web, we want to be able to more flexibly recombine data and services to support user experiences.
This prompts thinking about a third generation of protocol adoption. Here the emphasis is actually moving M-services right into the browser, closely linked to the P-services which create the user environment. In this case, library based protocols need to play well with more general approaches; we need effective bridges. Here are a couple of examples:
COinS. Here the aim is to make links to appropriate licensed material available more broadly. COinS specifies a way of embedding citation information in a web page, where it can be recognized and activated by a client-side program.
We are experimenting with the Microsoft Research Pane to surface library servies in MS Office applications. We have written gateways between the MS web services and SRU and other machine interfaces, which allows us to bring up any SRU database in MS Office. This work was done for the terminology services project.
At the Access 2005 conference Ross Singer impressed the audience with a compelling presentation of how one could stitch library services into user environments leveraging the 'sloppy underbelly' of the web. He showed firefox extensions, bookmarklets, scraping and scripting approaches, acknowledging that while they create real value they are in their nature often not as robust as one would like. This presentation clearly struck a chord in the crowd.
A major strand of library activity needs to be to make hooks into library services available in such a way that we can more readily develop services and tools to build compelling user applications of the type that Ross suggested. This thought is behind my question at Access [ppt]: what would a library service which can only be delivered through common services (Flickr, delicious, Technorati, ....) and browser tools (toolbars, bookmarklets, ..) be like.
We seem to have turned a corner: we recognize that it is vital to put the library in the user environment. It is nice when the user comes to the library environment, but we cannot assume that they always will: we need to be where they are.
In this context, I was interested to come across Libx the other day. This is a firefox extension which combines several of the approaches that Ross described to place access to library services at several places in the a user's webflow. (I was pleased to see that one of the services it uses is xISBN, a web service that we provide which accepts an ISBN and returns ISBNs for other editions, versions, etc, of the same work).
See also Jenny's recent post linking to presentations on similar matters.
The papers from the recent NISO OpenURL and Metasearch meeting provide a very useful roundup of the state-of-the-art in the declared subject area. But they also touch on other topics facing libraries as they construct distributed information environments. Some things that lodged with me as I skimmed powerpoint:
One stop shop vs an ecosystem of services. The most interesting presentations to me were those about institutional deployment, in particular those at Rochester [ppt by David Lindahl and Jeff Suszczynski] and California State University, San Marcos [ppt by David Walker]. In each case, metasearch is seen as a platform which makes databases available for search to other applications. The aim is to provide service which fits into patterns of user behavior and abstracts away from the boundaries of database providers. The focus was on putting data where it was useful. The focus was not on putting the user in front of a 'one-stop-shop' which is how metasearch often seems to be presented. Both presentations also usefully see metasearch as a part only of a wider system of services which discover, locate, request and deliver resources of interest.
Registries. There are presentations of the UK Information Environment Service Registry [ppt by Anne Apps], registry activity within the NSDL project Ockham [ppt by Martin Halbert], and OCLC's registry of OpenURL resolvers [ppt by Phil Norman]. This type of application is becoming more important. Each is exploring how to develop systemwide 'intelligence' about entities required to run distributed applications. As we move further towards distributed services, this type of 'intelligence' becomes more important, and we need good ways of creating, propagating, and sustaining the 'intelligence', or metadata, about these entities. What entities? Well, in the cases above, we are talking about being able to locate and use OpenURL resolvers (a particular type of network service), collections, network services, and agents (typically organisations such as publishers, resource operators, suppliers, etc). This data is needed to populate local knowledge bases, and for other purposes, and will increasingly be available in directory or registry services.
Describing collections and services. One of the strands of the metasearch initiative focuses on collection and service description. There has been a significant focus on collection description in recent years, though there are no widescale consistent deployment of services which create, share or use them. Of course, archives have long been used to thinking about description at the collection level, but historically it has not been a part of general library practice. Services in the sense used here focuses on services which make collections available: the network functionality through which it is accessed. Metasearch applications variably use collection and service desciptions and there is a view in some quarters that the burden of creating this data should be shared, in the way that the burden of cataloging is shared through union catalog organizations. The jury is out on this one. Collection level descriptions were mentioned in the recent Open Content Alliance announcement and have been highlighted, to take one example, in the TEL service, a metasearch service across European national library catalogs.
Whither metasearch? Despite the level of activity represented here, or maybe because of it, metasearch still seems like an interim approach to me, for business, social and technical reasons. I have discussed this many times in these pages (see links below). Metasearch is a high cost activity; the incentives of data providers, metaseach application providers, and library users may not always be aligned; and it is difficult to build value added services on top of this lowest-common-denominator, federated resource. This last point is especially important, as the demands on our services grow and as we want to manipulate and mine data to create value. These factors point to the potential value of consolidating data in a smaller number of disciplinary or genre verticals, where one can focus on search quality and adding value. I was interested recently to come across a presentation by Mark Krellenstein, CTO of Elsevier, at an NFAIS meeting on metasearch which discusses these issues along similar lines [ppt].
Acronymic flyby. In the collection description area, the metasearch group is proposing a collection description schema which is an adaptation of the Dublin Core Collection Description Application Profile, which in turn is an adaptation of the RSLP Collection Description schema. In the search area, the metasearch group is proposing MXG [see ppt by my colleague Ralph Levan], which is an adaptation of SRU/SRW, which is an adaptation of Z39.50. Each of these cases is an example of a sorry profusion of acronyms which helps no-one. Raymond Yee suggests that we need fewer APIs and fewer metadata specs, and he is right.
xISBN. It was nice to see that a couple of presentation mentioned their use of xISBN, our web service that accepts an ISBN and returns ISBNs in the same work set. See the Rochester presentation [ppt] mentioned above and Ross Singer's discussion of his work with OpenURLs [ppt].
Taken with the discussion of authentication [ppt by my colleague Mike Teets], many of these discussions clearly evoke an environment of services, whether within a library or increasingly withing a distributed group of libraries, providers and users. Such environments need directories or registries, and good ways of streamlining communication between parts. These presentations give a snapshot of much of the relevant work going on in the library community now. We have much more to do ...
The formation of SirsiDynix prompted a couple of interesting posts. Kenton Good predicted that there would be another coming together this year and wondered would it be Innovative Interfaces and Endeavor Information Systems. He speculated that:
Ex Libris feeling isolated will radically shift their business model. Leveraging their plans to modularize their ILS, they will shift to the Red Hat open source model - open source their code - and sell support for the resulting product. [Kenton Good My Fearless ILS Predictions]
Ken Chad of Talis reviewed the history of consolidation in the industry. He notes two patterns. In one, a library systems company is bought by some larger group. These have not proved to be longterm relationships, so he predicts that Elsevier will divest itself of Endeavor. In the other, a stronger company buys a weaker one, often to acquire a customer base. Ken suggests a reason for the lack of long term success of the first model, where a broader group acquires a library system:
This theme, of vertical application vendors, is picked up in the Talis white paper, Project Silkworm, which was published a little while ago. It includes an analysis of the Amazoogle experience, and how it compares with a library experience, in terms similar to those in these pages, introduces some Web 2.0 concepts and suggests how they might alter the structure of the library market, and talks about Talis's own directions. The most interesting paragraph in the report to me was the following:
Currently, the library market is structured in a high cost way with many vertical vendors and little horizontal specialization. It will be too expensive for each player to provide an all-encompassing experience and the market should not have to bear the weight of each vendor duplicating this. Vendors will therefore need to work together. Indeed, it's the sign of any mature market that a horizontal structure is required to lower the total costs for all.
Recently also, Roland Dietz and Carl Grant, of Endeavor and VTLS respectively, wrote an article in Library Journal which considered factors which hamper innovation in the library environment. They talk about the need for library system vendors, and the libraries they serve, to work together in new ways.
We've seen cross-licensing in metasearch and link resolving products, yet cross-licensing between direct competitors is still rare. The benefits could be huge for the vendors, the profession, and thus the users. For this actually to happen, librarians must tell vendors that it is what they want to see. The "not invented here" syndrome is very real in all technology companies, and ILS vendors are no different. What is equally real is that any vendor that desires longtime survival listens to customers' needs. [Library Journal - The Dis-Integrating World of Library Automation]
So, we see an expectation of further consolidation among library system vendors. In a level funding environment each is extending its offerings to cover resolution, digital object management, e-resource management, metasearch and so on. As each vendor struggles to develop the full range of vertical applications, capacity for innovation is squeezed. Economies resulting from horizontal specialization or sharing of components (in a Web 2.0 platform sense, or in a more traditional sense) have not been realized. Such mixing of approaches between vendors is technically possible, but what it might mean in business and service terms has not been worked through. This seems to me to be the main reason that VIEWS has been slow to coalesce around an agenda: service and business models need to co-evolve with the developing capacities that web services (or web 2.0) provide. At the same time, there is not a dominant player around which technologies or service models can be consolidated. All of this meanst that progress is uneven and slow, through the variety of consensus-making forums in which library system vendors participate with each other and and with libraries and other service providers.
At the same time, it is interesting to observe how some library system vendors are developing new services which have a more 'horizontal' flavor, even if they are available only within their vertical application domain. Here are some examples:
Ex-libris supports customers of its resolution application with its knowledge base. They could potentially offer knowledge base services to libraries with other resolver products.
SirsiDynix is a sponsor of the Normative Data Project, working with partners to collect and analyse data about collections and transactions as a source of management intelligence.
Several library system vendors have associated union catalogs. These include Talis and OCLC Pica. Historically, this category also included Libertas, a UK company acquired by Innovative Interfaces. In the Silkworm paper mentioned above, Talis suggests that one possible direction is to offer union catalog service to others, not just those that buy its system.
Of course, there are already significant providers of 'horizontal services' - OCLC and RLG, for example. Think also of RefWorks and Serial Solutions. And some organizations provide horizontal services within particular funding domains - the California Digital Library, at the University of California and DEFF, in Denmark, for example. One wonders would a case ever arise where those services were offered more broadly.
I have noted several times in these pages that I think that the major issues facing libraries moving forward are organizational. This is an example, where the way in which library system vendors, other service organizations, and libraries will move to new alignments. Greater horizontal specialization around software, service and data aggregation seems highly desirable. We don't have good venues to have those discussions at the moment. Or good models to focus attention, which is a major reason why I think that 'business architecture' is critical. I hope that this work which DLF has started will be taken up in other settings also as scaffolding within which we can develop the shared understanding that is necessary for some of what is called for above.
[It is interesting to consider how innovation emerges and its results are secured in our community - but that big question is for another day ;-)]
NISO commissioned a Blue Ribbon Panel, chaired by Cliff Lynch, to advise on its strategic planning process. [Full disclosure: I was a member of the panel.]
The report of the Panel [pdf] is now available and makes compelling reading for anybody interested in how standards work is organized - or not organized - in our space.
And as more processes move into a network environment, standards become much more important. This means that we would benefit from better ways of identifying standards needs, better ways of supporting standards activities through their whole life-cycle, and a better synthesising framework within which to understand priorities and gaps.
The PREMIS Working Group has published the Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final Report of the PREMIS Working Group. Find the report and its components on the PREMIS project web page.
This group was chaired by Priscilla Caplan and Rebecca Guenther and supported by Brian Lavoie and Robin Dale. They have completed a major piece of work which deserves the attention of all interested in the practice and theory of digital preservation going forward.
One of the interesting points about the report is its description of a data model which includes events. The report defines an event as: "an action that involves at least one object or agent known to the preservation repository". It is important to note that I am not talking about an 'event' as the subject of a work here, as in a book about the Galway Races or the American Civil War. Traditional library cataloging practice has largely been concerned with published material. Our central event is 'publication'. Another involves copyrighting, closely tied to publication, or translation. Other events tend not to figure so much. For example, we do not typically record in our bibliographic records the date the item was acquired by the library.
As resources become more fluid, we will become much more interested in events: actions on objects that we may wish to record. Resources may be digitized, tranformed, excerpted, migrated, and so on. And events in this sense are integral to other models, for example the Ontology-x work reported by Godfrey Rust at the FRBR workshop held here recently [ppt].
This raises a question I will return to: how simple is simple enough when it comes to metadata.
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