UKOLN and the Interoperability Focus
Paul Miller
Interoperability [email protected]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/
23 April 1999
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Synopsis
• UKOLN– the United Kingdom Office for Library &
Information Networking
• Setting the Scene– problems, potentials, and a glance over
the horizon
• Building Solutions– Interoperability Focus
• Close–up on one solution– The Dublin Core
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UKOLN
• The UK Office for Library & Information Networking
– funded by Library & Information Commission (LIC) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils
– receives additional project–based funding from the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib), the European Commission and others
– advocates UK interests in a wide range of contexts, and involved at the local level in New Library, NGfL, UfI, etc.
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UKOLN• Staff interests include;
– distributed library issues– cataloguing– public libraries– standardisation– the World Wide Web
– UK Web Focus
– convergence between libraries and related information sources
– electronic publication– Ariadne– Exploit Interactive
– ‘metadata’.
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UKOLN
• For more information on UKOLN, visit
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
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Defining some problems
• Resource description communities• the Web explosion• the emancipation of resource
But why can’t I find what I’m looking for?
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Resource Description Communities
A resource description community is characterized by agreement on common semantic, structural, and syntactic conventions for exchange of resource description information.
Libraries
MARC AACR2
But what if I want to search across more than one community?
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A little language...
Semantics
Structure
Syntax
“Let’s talk English”Standardisation ofcontent
Standardisation ofform
“Here’s how to make a sentence”
Standardisation ofexpression
“These are the rulesof grammar”
“cat milk sat drank mat ”
“Cat sat on mat. Drankmilk.”
“The cat sat on the mat.It drank some milk.”
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The Web Explosion
• Two million web sites• Half a billion addressable pages• High consumer expectations, versus
primitive tools and infrastructure• Uncertainty over quality, trust and
integrity.But why can’t I find what I want?
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Emancipation of resource
• Corporate data are being released• Museum catalogues are going online• Library OPACs are available over the
Web• A wealth of surrogates are becoming
available to all• Governments are unlocking doors.
But Alta Vista only seesa query screen...
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But I don’t want just a library book, or a web page, or a museum object.
I want information about Hull, or the World Cup, or Post–Impressionist Art, or whether it will rain today.
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The road to solutions
• Distributed searching• ‘Metadata’• Consensus and co–operation• Standards, standards everywhere.
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What is ‘Metadata’?– meaningless jargon– or
a fashionable term for what we’ve always done– or
“a means of turning data into information”– and
“data about data”– and
the name of a film director (‘Luc Besson’)– and
the title of a book (‘The Lord of the Flies’).
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What is ‘Metadata’?
• Metadata exists for almost anything;• People• Places• Objects• Concepts• Web pages• Databases.
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What is ‘Metadata’?
• Metadata fulfils three main functions;• Description of resource content
– “What is it?”
• Description of resource form– “How is it constructed?”
• Description of resource use– “Can I afford it?”.
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Standards abound
MICI
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Challenges
Many flavours of metadatawhich one do I use?
Managing changenew varieties, and evolution of
existing forms
Tension between functionality and simplicity, extensibility and interoperability
Functions, features, and cool stuff Simplicity and interoperability
Opportunities
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Introducing Interoperability Focus• Focus upon enabling interoperability
between resources in:
libraries
archives
the cultural heritage sector
etc.
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Introducing Interoperability Focus• By:
• disseminating best practice• participating in relevant global standards
development initiatives• encouraging/ facilitating cross–walks and
cross–project communication• representing UK interests internationally• raising awareness of interoperability’s
benefits to users, creators & holders.
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Interoperability What…?
• Not the most transparent job title in the world, now is it…?• Searching for a ‘strap line’
to explain it.• JISC suggestion…
“Interoperability Focus: making sure the drains run downhill”
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Introducing the Dublin Core
• An attempt to improve resource discovery on the Web
– now adopted more broadly
• Building an interdisciplinary consensus about a core element set for resource discovery
– simple and intuitive– cross–disciplinary– international– flexible.
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• 15 elements of descriptive metadata• All elements optional• All elements repeatable• The whole is extensible
– offers a starting point for semantically richer descriptions
• Interdisciplinary– libraries, museums, archives…
• International– available in 20 languages, with more on the
way...
Introducing the Dublin Core
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• Title• Creator• Subject• Description• Publisher• Contributor• Date• Type
• Format• Identifier• Source• Language• Relation• Coverage• Rights
http://purl.org/dc/
Introducing the Dublin Core
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• Modular extensibility…– additional elements to support local needs– complementary packages of metadata
• …but only if we get the building blocks right
Extending the Dublin Core
Description Archival Management
Terms & Conditions
Based on a slide by Stu Weibel
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• Implemented by the Australian and assorted Nordic governments
• Used or mentioned by the majority of new projects
• Rapidly approaching CEN and NISO accreditation
• Expressable in HTML, RDF, local databases…
• A powerful ‘switching mechanism’ for diverse resources.
Dublin Core today
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The end…?
• Increasing quantities of data arebecoming available
• Structures need to evolve to turnthem into information in a form that users actually want
• Interoperability Focus is part of the (slow!) process whereby old standards can converge and new standards can emerge to enable user interaction with data in as seamless and friendly a fashion as possible.
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