Names Project

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Names Project

• Web Services and repositories workshop
• Daniel Needham

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What is the Names Project?

• A JISC funded project in collaboration with the
  British Library
• Aims to investigate the potential and
  requirements for a Name Authority Service
• As part of this a prototype service is under
  development

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Overview of the prototype

• Envisaged as a piece of middle ware
• Pulls in data from external sources and attempts
  to disambiguate unique entities
• Provides access to this data as a Web Service
  for use by external repositories and services
• Potential for data feedback from repositories
  through the web interface and user tool

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Architecture
Name Authority Service
Data source Web Service
Repository
Disambiguator
Web Service
Data Source Database Extract
Other Client App
Database
Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Repository use case
Institutional Repository
Name Authority Service
Item Submission
Insert/Update record
Retrieve Names
Search Records
Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Sample Output

• Associated Names
• Fields of Interest
• Titles
• Collaborative Relationships
• Associated Works

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Names as a Web Service

• Machine-to-machine access is provided via a
  RESTful(ish) url based query interface
• Flexibility of the interface is a requirement
• Allow people to easily hook up their system to
  utilize our records with the minimum of effort
• Provision of a variety of output formats

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Developing the service

• Developers were much more interested in RESTful
  interfaces than SOAP
• REST provides quicker development time
• Less bloated
• Quicker to hack something up with!

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Developing the service

• Working with Cranfield University to develop and
  validate the API
• Developing example code to demonstrate how the
  service could be utilised to pull in entity names
  into Dspace
• Investigating the possibility of sending data
  back from a remote client to the service

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Developing the service
Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Pros

• Web services can help centralise and standardise
  functionality
• Web services can reduce duplication of work
• Build on each others work
• Do things we hadn't even considered
• But..

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Cons

• In order to appeal to developers they need to be
• Well documented
• Quick to integrate
• Flexible
• Needs to be reliable when integrated into
  external work flows

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Summary

• I'm interested to hear from anyone who can
  provide data on individuals for use in Names
• Also from anyone who would like to work with the
  API in its current development state
• daniel.needham_at_manchester.ac.uk
• http//names.mimas.ac.uk/

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09
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Further reading

• Good source of information on RESTful web
  services..
• RESTful Web Services
• by Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby
• ISBN 0596529260

Web Services and repositories workshop 02/06/09