Building our DNER the Z way

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Building our DNER the Z way

• Paul Miller
• Interoperability Focus
• UK Office for Library Information Networking
  (UKOLN)
• P.Miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/

UKOLN is funded by the Library and Information
Commission, the Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding
Councils, as well as by project funding from the
JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also
receives support from the Universities of Bath
and Hull where staff are based.
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Building the DNER

• Distributed National Electronic Resource
• Policy aspiration of the Joint Information
  Systems Committee
• Intended to provide greater access to JISCs
  Current Content Collection
• RDN
• AHDS
• MIMAS/ EDINA/ Data Archive
• EDUSERVE
• COPAC
• eLib projectsetc.

See http//www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html
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Building the DNER

• Construction of various Portals to facilitate
  usercentric access
• JISC Portal ?
• Data Centre Portals (EDINA, MIMAS)
• Subject Portals (the RDN, etc.)
• Data Type Portals (images, movies, sound)
• Institutional Portals (a Hybrid Library?)
• Personal Portals (Pauls web!)

See http//www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html
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Building the DNER

• But how can we link these services together?

At the moment, Z39.50 is seen as the only
feasible mechanism across the range of services
JISC wish to offer.
See http//www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html
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What is Z39.50?

• North American Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.501995
  version 3)
• International Standard (ISO 23950)
• Originally librarycentric
• Permits remote searching of databases
• Access via Z client or over web
• Relies upon Profiles
• CIMI profile for cultural heritage
• GEO profile for Geospatial data.

See http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
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Whats wrong with Z39.50?

• Profiles for each discipline
• Defeats interoperability?
• Vendor interpretation of the standard
• Bib1 bloat
• Largely invisible to the user
• Seen as complicated, expensive and oldfashioned
• Surely no match for XML/RDF/ whatever.

See http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/
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The Bath Profile

• System vendors implement areas of the Z39.50
  standard differently
• Regional, National, and disciplinary Profiles
  have appeared over previous years, many of which
  have basic functions in common
• Users wish to search across national/regional
  boundaries, and between vendors.

See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/z3950/int_profile/bath/
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Learning from the past

• The Bath Profile is heavily influenced by
• ATS1
• CENL
• DanZIG
• MODELS
• ONE
• Z Texas
• vCUC.

See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/z3950/int_profile/bath/
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Learning from the past
See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/z3950/int_profile/bath/
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Doing the work

• ZIPPIZL mailing list, hosted by National
  Library of Canada
• Meeting facetoface
• JISC supported a facetoface meeting in Bath
  over the summer
• A draft was widely circulated for comment
• Concertation day on Friday.

See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/events/bathprofileconcertation/
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What we proposed

• Minimisation of defaults
• Where possible, every attribute is defined in the
  Profile (Use, Relation, Position, Structure,
  Truncation, Completeness)
• Three Functional Areas
• Basic Bibliographic Search Retrieval
• Bibliographic Holdings Search Retrieval
• CrossDomain Search Retrieval
• Three or more Levels of Conformance in each Area.

See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/z3950/int_profile/bath/
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What we proposed

• SUTRS and one of UNIMARC or MARC21 for
  Bibliographic Search results
• Or all three at Level 1?
• SUTRS and Dublin Core (in XML) for CrossDomain
  results
• Other record syntaxes also permitted, but
  conformant tools must support at least these.

See http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/activiti
es/z3950/int_profile/bath/
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Finishing it off

• Consolidate comments, and revise where necessary
• Direct approaches to international vendors
• User testing in Canada and Texas
• ZIG meeting in Texas, January 2000
• ISO Internationally Recognised Profile status
  during 2000
• Addition of Functional Areas and Levels of
  Conformance as required.

See http//lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/texas/texas
.html
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Building the DNER

• Remaining challenges
• Authentication hell
• Move from endless authentication to single
  authentication
• Alignment of different data types
• Ordnance Survey maps at Edinburgh
• Satellite imagery in Manchester
• Electronic journal articles in many formats, etc.
• Census data at the Data Archive
• Survey data in Manchester
• Chemical structures in Manchester
• Collection Level Description.