Threats or Opportunities?

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Threats or Opportunities?

• Resources in the New Information Landscape

William E. Moen ltwemoen_at_unt.edugt Texas Center for
Digital Knowledge School of Library and
Information Sciences University of North Texas
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Two areas of professional responsibility

• Connect users to information
• Instruct users to use tools and resources
• Both of these require awareness and knowledge of
• Available resources
• Information organization practices
• Tools to access those resources
• Standards and technologies used by the tools
• How the tools work

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What/how to expose? How to find?
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Evolving information landscape

• Order of the book is over
• Fewer formal structures that serve as
  gatekeepers, filters, etc. for whats available
• Does not mean authoritative and credible
  information is not available
• Maybe its in different places
• Maybe it looks a bit different
• Our users are finding it so what is our role?

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The librarys diminishing market share

• Think in terms of value-added services
• What value do we add that save potential users
  time, money, effort, etc?
• We have valuable resources but are users using
  them?
• Library catalog is being bypassed
• Large allocation of budget for commercially
  provided resource (licensed databases, etc.)
• We make users use our systems that are not easy
  to use
• Think of the various interfaces of the licensed
  databases
• Are we driving them away?

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Exposing/Finding Option 1
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What happens if Google

• Acquires or licenses for global access key
  commercial information resources
• Indexes the resources
• Provides single, easy to use search interface to
  all those resources
• Charges 10/month for users to have access to all
  of that
• Who will use our hard-to-use resources with all
  those different interfaces?

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The Networked Information Landscape According to
Google
Digitized Books
Open Web
Google
Licensed Databases
WorldCat
Digital Repositories
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Exposing/Finding Option 2
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New resources and tools

• Repository applications
• Metadata harvesting and building collections
• Metasearch to reduce access barriers

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What are repositories?
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Repository types

• Digital repository (sort of a generic term)
• Image repository
• (e.g., http//pro.corbis.com/)
• Learning objects repository
• (e.g., http//careo.ucalgary.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects
  /CAREO.woa?themecareo)
• Data repository
• (e.g.,http//www.public.asu.edu/huanliu/DHub/bioi
  nformatics.html)
• Institutional repository
• (e.g., http//txspace.tamu.edu/)
• Differentiated by
• Types of objects
• Types of metadata
• Purpose

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Repositories The technical side

• Database component
• Metadata component
• Search and browsing component
• Web interface component
• Submission component
• Administration component

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Institutional repositories

• A repository application
• Preserve and provide access to the intellectual
  output of an institution
• Crow, Raym. The Case for Institutional
  Repositories A SPARC Position Paper. 2002
• A set of services that a university offers to the
  members of its community for the management and
  dissemination of digital materials created by the
  institution and its community members
• Lynch Clifford A. Institutional Repositories
  Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the
  Digital Age. 2003
• Characterized by
• Organizational commitment to long-term
  stewardship
• Open access

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Characteristics of IRs

• Institutionally defined rather than subject-based
  repository
• Web-based system for storage of and access to
  scholarly material
• Long-term stewardship of intellectual assets
• Support the process of scholarly communication
• Open and interoperable
• Mark Ware Consulting Ltd. Pathfinder Research on
  Web-based Repositories Final Report.2004

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Potential contents for IRs

• Pre-prints and post-prints
• Technical reports, working papers
• Theses dissertations
• Books or chapters of books
• Conference proceedings
• Presentations
• Sound and video files
• Digital research materials( e.g. simulations,
  code)

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Cornell Repository
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Texas AM Repository
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Texas AM
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Texas AM
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Metadata The key

• Boundaries between information communities are
  porous
• The world will not be made up of MARC
• Many metadata schemes
• To describe and manage resources
• Provide structured representations of the
  resources that can be processed by machines
• Serving needs of different information
  communities
• Typically using Extended Markup Language (XML)
• Syntax for encoding metadata for exchange and
  reuse

I've often said librarians should like any
metadata they see. (R. Tennant)
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Dempseys acronymic density or
this is the present future!!

• Metadata schemes
• DC, MODS, CDWA, VRA, etc.
• Metadata content standards
• AACR, CCO, DACS, etc.
• Metadata encoding standards
• MARC, XML, RDF, etc.
• Metadata container/wrapper standards
• METS, MPEG, etc.
• Discipline specific metadata schemes
• GILS, CSDGMI, GEM, IEEE-LOM, etc.
• Other schemes of interest
• TEI, EAD, etc.

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Extending the visibility OAI-PMH

• Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
  Harvesting
• http//www.openarchives.org/
• http//www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesproto
  col.html
• Defines a protocol for harvesting metadata from
  repositories
• Partitions the world into
• Data providers
• Service providers
• Uses Dublin Core Metadata Element Set as standard
  metadata representation for exchange
• Uses XML for exchanging the metadata records

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OAI architecture
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Harvesting metadata
From http//www.oaforum.org/tutorial/
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OAIster

• A union catalog of digital resources
• Contains nearly 11,000,000 records describing
  freely-available and restricted-access digital
  resources
• Uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
  Metadata Harvesting
• Harvests the descriptive metadata (records) and
  makes those searchable
• Currently harvesting from over 700 digital
  repositories

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OAIster results library reference services
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Metasearch (or federated search)

• Single search interface
• Concurrent searching of two or more resources
• Uses various technologies
• Standards such as Z39.50 information retrieval
  protocol Search and Retrieve Web Service
• Proprietary Connectors (e.g., WebFeat, Muse
  Global)
• Screen scraping (not a good idea!)
• Helps users get started discovering resources

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Exposing/Finding Option 3
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Exposing/Finding Option 4
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Exposing/Finding Option 5
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Index Data Master Key (prototype)

• Enables efficient metasearching of hundreds of
  databases at the same time
• Uses Z39.50, SRU/W, or proprietary protocols
• Open-source-based alternative to proprietary,
  closed-source metasearch alternatives.
• Supports
• on-the-fly merging
• relevance-ranking
• sorting by arbitrary data elements
• facets for limiting result sets by subject,
  author, etc.
• Current demo searches open web resources
• OAIster
• Open Directory
• Wikipedia
• Open Content Alliance
• Can be used for metasearching of catalogs,
  commercial dbs, etc.

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MasterKey
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Challenges and opportunities

• A good reference librarian
• Assesses resources
• Knows how to access the resources
• Understands how the resources are organized
• Helps users understand information needs
• Helps users learn to assess and access
• And now needs to
• Understand new technologies underlying important
  new resources
• Understand new organizational schemes (i.e.,
  metadata beyond MARC)
• Provide new value-added services to use new
  resources
• Help build new virtual collections to serve users

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References

• Institutional Repositories. Roy Tennant. 2002
• http//libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?l
  ayoutarticlePrintarticleIDCA242297publication
  libraryjournal
• Institutional Repositories Essential
  Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital
  Age. Clifford A. Lynch. 2003
• http//www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html
• OAI-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
• http//www.openarchives.org/
• http//www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesproto
  col.html
• OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum
  online tutorial
• http//www.oaforum.org/tutorial/
• OAIster.org
• http//www.oaister.org/
• Index Data Master Key
• http//mkey.indexdata.com/demo/
• Z39.50 and Search and Retrieve Web Service
  (SRU/SRW)
• http//www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/
• http//www.loc.gov/standards/sru/

For a copy of this presentation, go to
http//www.unt.edu/wmoen