Access to distributed resources

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Access to distributed resources

• Lorcan Dempsey
• VP, Research
• Research Library Directors Conference OCLC
  Institute Post-Conference, "Building the Global
  Digital Library Access, Transform, Create,
  Integrate," Wednesday, March 6

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From portal to environment

• Unified discovery experience across heterogeneous
  resources
• Focus on access rather than use
• Overview
• Retrospective look at portals (Z)
• OAI
• Towards an information environment

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The portal/gateway/broker mid 90s
Aligned presentation
Individualpresentation
Flexiblepresentation
Independentapplications
Independent applications
United service
Components/data
Monolithic
Monolithic
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Vertical and horizontal integration
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Broker component examples
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Some observations

• interoperability a mantra
• Scepticism about strong interoperability
• Limited targets
• Information landscape vs information brandscape
• Some emerging demand
• Reference linking
• Metadata sharing (OAI)
• Authentication/authorisation

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OAI-based mediation
OAI Harvester
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Z and OAI working together

• http//www.humbul.ac.uk
• http//www.rdn.ac.uk
• http//www.renardus.org

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Towards an information environment

• No single resource is the sole focus of a users
  attention
• In a distributed environment resources can be
  specialized to provide particular function
• Leverage communication between resources to add
  value to users experience

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provision
content
shared services
brokers and aggregators
infrastructure
mediation
portals
presentation
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Presentation/Portals

• Surface resources, pulling together other
  services available in the environment
• Learning management, library portal, button
  services
• Tools for manipulation, analysis, assembly, play,
  
• No prescription

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Infrastructure/Shared services

• Add value to applications by being provided as
  part of infrastructure
• Directory services environment intelligence
• Collection description
• Service description
• Schema description

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Infrastructure/Shared services

• Resolution
• Resolution service
• Institutional profiling
• Personal profiling
• Authorization
• Knowledge services
• Gazetteer
• Terminology services

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Applications/Mediation

• Services which mediate access to distributed
  heterogeneous resources
• Search services (z39.50, ..)
• Gathering services (OAI, ..)
• Alerting services

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Content

• Metadata and data of interest

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A note on metadata

• Data which supports operations on entities
• Life cycle
• Creation, discovery, assembly, administrative,
  contextual, preservation, rights,
• Domain
• Learning, library, archives, etc

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A couple of other consensus issues

• Semantic diversity common sense
• subject
• audience level (who is this resource aimed at?)
• resource type (what kind of resource is this?)
• certification (who has created this resource?)
• Collection description

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Some issues

• Focus on standards and acronyms needs to give way
  to a focus on architecture
• Clarifies roles and relationships
• Bridges between business and technical
  perspectives by identifying specialised functions
• Our organisational and business models do not
  well support such an approach
• E.g. How do we secure infrastructure

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Thank
you
dempseyl_at_oclc.org
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Acknowledgments

• Draws on work done over several years within
  UKOLN models project and the DNER
• http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/models
• http//www.dner.ac.uk/arch
• http//www.oclc.org/research/staff/dempsey/publica
  tions.shtm