VITALFedora as Common Information Infrastructure for Campus Digital Collections

1
VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• A Discussion on the Intersection of Culture,
  Process and Technology in the Academy
• A Yale University Library Initiative

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VITAL-Fedora as CII for Campus Digital Collections

• Introduction to Discussion
• The Panelist
• David Gewirtz AMT-Library Project Manager
• Gretchen Gano University Library Social Science
  Data Librarian
• Jeffery Barnett University Library Research
  Analyst
• Framing the Discussion The Context, Purpose and
  Problem David Gewirtz
• Understanding the Process Gretchen Gano
• Linking Technology to Context and Process
  Jeffery Barnett
• Open Discussion with Panelist

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Context for the Trial
• An IAC Initiative
• Sponsor Meg Bellinger AUL for Integrated Library
  Systems and Technical services
• Implement integration goals established by
  Library
• What has been the catalyst for change?
• What has changed on Campus?
• Why is there a need to respond?
• How Does the Vital trial contribute to a
  solution?
• Why VITAL/Fedora?

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Context for the Trial
• What has been the catalyst for change?
• Personal Computers
• Ubiquitous Networks
• World Wide Web
• All have become commodity resources
• Core Infrastructure for e-learning and
  e-collaboration

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Context for the Trial
• What has changed in the Academy?
• The fundamental means by which scholars, students
  and researchers seek knowledge and communicate
• How has scholarly communication changed?
• Through the creation and dissemination of
  information over network in processabe electronic
  formats
• Virtual Collaboration and Learning Spaces
• Why is there a need for the Library to Respond?
• Analog systems do not support the new paradigm
  for the pursuit of knowledge (discovery, access,
  integration, and repurposing) and stewardship of
  scholarly resources in digital formats

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Context for the Trial
• Why Vital- Fedora ?
• Promotes the integration of digital collection
  into e-learning and collaboration systems
• Potential to deliver real-time collections for
  instructions
• Promotes discovery of collections through an OAI
  protocol
• Promotes life cycle management, stewardship and
  preservation of digital collections

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Purpose of Trial
• Evaluate a new technology for digital collections
• Architecture functionality and support
• Gaps
• Evaluate a process to introduce new technology
• Use case
• Collaboration
• Assessment
• A spectrum of collection builders from different
  academic domains
• Process used to introduce new technology is as
  important as the technology itself
• The right process promotes adoption through
  buy-in or ownership

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Framing the Discussion
• The Problem
• In the academy scholarly requirements are more
  like a bazaar then a cathedral one size fits
  all (!).
• The academy is a high distributed environment
  where independence is perceived as a key
  attribute to a scholars success.
• Idiosyncratic requirements and distributed
  independence do not promote stewardship,
  sustainability or preservation of digital
  collections.

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Process in the context of the Trial
• Sakai workspace -Through Sakai courseware
  workspace, record experiences with implementation
  document bugs
• Use cases - employ a use case framework to
  describe gaps in components of the VITAL software
  that are used to create workflows, ingest
  content, brand collection interfaces and to
  manage the system

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information
Infrastructure for Campus Digital Collections

• Process Context for employing use-cases
• Integrated Access Council Institutional
  Repository whitepaper
• Survey of IR evaluations at other institutions
• Johns Hopkins University Digital Knowledge
  Center, A Technology Analysis of Repositories
  and Services, http//dkc.mse.jhu.edu/repository.h
  tml

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Process - the academic setting
• Decentralized organization
• Diverse idiosyncratic collections

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections
Process Test Collections and File Formats
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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Process Integrating features of VITAL/FEDORA
• Integration of digital collections with
  e-learning and collaboration systems like Sakai
• Potential to deliver real-time collections for
  instruction
• Discovery of other collections through the OAI
  protocol
• Lifecycle management of digital collections
• Preservation of digital collections
• Stewardship of digital collections
• Metadata for collections at the point of creation

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Use Cases
• Characteristics
• represents a discrete unit of interaction between
  a user (human or machine) and the system.
• a single unit of meaningful work
• describes the desired functionality
• may 'include' another Use Case's functionality or
  'extend' another Use Case with its own behavior.
• typically related to 'actors'. An actor is a
  human or machine entity that interacts with the
  system to perform meaningful work.

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Use Cases
• Typical components
• Goal statement
• Requirements
• Constraints
• Scenarios
• Scenario diagrams -Sequence diagrams to depict
  the workflow
• Additional attributes such as implementation
  phase, version number, complexity rating,
  stereotype and status

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Process - Utility of the use case model
• Allows groups to specify individual collection
  needs using a common framework
• Autonomy
• Comparability
• Facilitates the identification of common needs
  and patterns across collections

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Process Influence on Outcomes
• Efficient and comprehensive tools for evaluating
  the technology
• Building capacity among collection builders to
  articulate need reinforcing principles of
  user-centered design
• Ownership in the common information
  infrastructure encourages adoption or common
  practices across the organization.

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information
Infrastructure for Campus Digital Collections

• Process - sustainability
• What happens beyond the trial period
• Library of use cases
• Extend use case method to inform additional
  development projects
• Next steps
• How to scale the process
• How to incorporate feedback from additional
  actors
• How to map needs assessment data to the use case
  form

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Integration VITAL Technology and Media
  Initiatives
• Common Infrastructure
• Emphasis on discovery and reusability
• Internal and external resources share interfaces
• Common Yale point of entry
• Compatible with multiple standardized access
  methods

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Integration VITAL Technology and Media
  Initiatives
• Communities define their own Goals
• Use case methodology allows goals to be defined
  based on the actual actors involved, and mapped
  to repository functional components by technology
  specialist
• Capturing goals, preconditions, success and
  failure scenarios assures that system behavior is
  fully described and understood before
  configuration begins
• Service tasks become building blocks for user
  interface
• Unsuccessful scenarios for the basis for gap
  analysis and recovery

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Integration VITAL Technology and Media
  Initiatives
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Web Services support existing standards to assure
  compatibility and reusability
• Both Clients and Services are scalable and
  reusable.
• SRW and CQL enable advanced search
• Support for local as well as international
  schemas

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Integration VITAL Technology and Media
  Initiatives
• Open Archives Harvesting supports resource
  discovery
• Dublin Core support for all objects
• Additional metadata as needed and available
• Remote resources can be discovered locally
• Local resources can be discovered remotely

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections

• Integration VITAL Technology and Media
  Initiatives
• Common building blocks facilitate Courseware
  integration
• Sakai framework recognizes SOAP/WSRP web services
• Shared authentication and access control services
• RSS publishing and consumption supported
• Rights management promotes resource sharing
• Capability for on-demand exhibits (demo)

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VITAL-Fedora as Common Information Infrastructure
for Campus Digital Collections