IESR: the JISC Information Environment Service Registry

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IESR the JISC Information Environment Service
Registry

• Amanda Hill
• MIMAS

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Outline

• Purpose of today's workshop
• IESR overview

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Information Environment
Users
Lists of resources, metasearch products,
institutional portals, subject portals, search
engines
Electronic resources
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Need to know what resources are available (and
appropriate) for their users
Users
Discovery services lists of resources,
metasearch products, institutional portals,
subject portals, search engines
Electronic resources
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Service Registries

• Contain information about available resources
• Can be used by other services to provide
  appropriate view of available resources to the
  users of those services

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IESR

• Evolved from two scoping studies commissioned by
  JISC and RSLP in November 2001
• Collection Description Service
• Service Description Service

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JISC Information Environment architecture May
2002
Andy Powell, 'JISC Information Environment
Architecture Collection Description
Service' www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/jisc-
ie/arch/collection-description/
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IESR pilot project

• Combined Collection Description Service and
  Service Description Service
• Proof-of-concept 14-month project started in
  November 2002
• Has since had funding extended in two further
  phases

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What is the IESR?

• Aims to make it easier for people to discover
  resources that will be useful for their research,
  learning and teaching
• Particularly focused on resources that are
  directly accessible for use by other applications

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IESR content

• Collection descriptions (overview of resource)
• Service descriptions (information on access
  methods)
• Agent descriptions (organisations)
• Aims to be a repository of 'master descriptions'
  for resources

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JISC Information Environment April 2003
Andy Powell, 'JISC IE Architecture external
trends and their potential impact'
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/jisc-ie
/arch/presentations/tech-trends-2003/ie-arch-tech-
trends.ppt
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Most recent version
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IESR for service providers

• Provides information about resources based on
  existing descriptive standards
• Can be re-used in a variety of contexts
• Advertises resources
• Might lead to increased use

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www.curl.ac.uk Archives Hub The Archives Hub
is a collaborative service which provides a
single point of access to descriptions of archive
collections held in universities and colleges
throughout the United Kingdom. More than 140
institutions are contributing information about
their archives to the Hub, which holds thousands
of descriptions. The website is free to use and
contains information relevant to a wide range of
research areas. The service is funded by the
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is
overseen by CURL. MIMAS runs the service at the
University of Manchester and development work on
the Archives Hub software is undertaken by the
Cheshire Development Team at the University of
Liverpool.
www.jisc.ac.uk Archives Hub no expiry
dateThe Archives Hub is a national gateway
providing free access to descriptions of archives
and manuscript collections held in UK
universities and colleges. The service covers
archives in over 80 academic institutions and
holds over 18,000 collection descriptions, many
of which are available online for the first time.
New collection descriptions are being added every
week. The Archives Hub forms part of the emerging
National Archives Network and covers a broad
range of subject areas.
www.humbul.ac.uk Main Title Archives hub
  Web Address (URL)http//www.archiveshub.ac.uk/ 
Description The UK Archives Hub is a national
gateway providing free access to descriptions of
archives held in UK universities and colleges.
The service covers archives in over 75 academic
institutions and is growing rapidly, with
approximately 15,000 collection descriptions at
present. The wide range of material has relevance
to many areas of research and many collection
descriptions are available for online for the
first time. Initially records are collection
level descriptions, however the long-term aim is
to include access to multi-level descriptions,
full text and digitised items where appropriate.
This resource is freely available.The Archives
Hub receives funding from the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC). This resource is also
described by the JISC Resource Guide for the Arts
and Humanities. 
www.artifact.ac.uk Title Archives hub
revolutionising access to the archives of UK
universities and colleges URL http//www.archives
hub.ac.uk/ Description The Archives Hub is a
national gateway providing free access to
descriptions of archives and manuscript
collections held in UK universities and colleges.
The service covers archives in over 90 academic
institutions and holds over 18,000 collection
descriptions, many of which are available online
for the first time. New collection descriptions
are being added every week. The Archives Hub
forms part of the emerging National Archives
Network and covers a broad range of subject
areas.
www.google.com Archives Hub Gateway for access to
archive and manuscript collections in the UK's
Higher Education sector.www.archiveshub.ac.uk/
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Problems

• Multiple descriptions of the same resource,
  compiled at different points in time
• No single, up-to-date description, maintained by
  resource owner, available to direct list-creators
  towards
• Compilers of manually-maintained services have to
  have develop knowledge of a wide range of
  resources

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Beyond web pages

• Machine-to-machine access methods need to be
  described as well as web pages
• Z39.50 for cross-searching (often used for
  library catalogues)
• OAI repositories (e.g. information about journal
  articles)
• Web Services interfaces (SRW/SRU/SOAP)
• OpenURL

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Web-cgi
Web search
SRW/SRU
COPAC
OpenURL
Z39.50
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Information about services

• COPAC machine access information is available
  from the COPAC website
• Human intervention required to read and interpret
  this
• Information about machine access needs to be
  discoverable directly by other applications

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IESR

• Describes a wide variety of machine- and
  human-readable services
• Aims to ensure that these are accurate and
  up-to-date
• Makes the information available in a variety of
  ways for re-use by other applications and services