Disruptive Library Technology Jester » Digital Library Federation

On Innovation in the ILS Marketplace

Peter Murray — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:15:32 +0000

Last month the ILS Discovery Interface Task Force of the DLF called a meeting of library system vendors (including one commercial support organization for open source ILS software) to talk about the state of computer-to-computer interfaces in-to and out-of the ILS. The meeting comes as the work of the task force is winding down. An outcome of the meeting, the “Berkeley Accord,” was posted last week to Peter Brantley’s blog. The accord has three basic parts: automated interfaces for offloading records from the ILS, a mechanism for determining the availability of an item, and a scheme for creating persistent links to records.

Taken as a whole, these three items are arguably the most sought-after functionality by software developers seeking to extend the functionality of traditional library catalogs. The three enable all sorts of other things to happen with data stored in the ILS. Already, there has been a great deal of discussion cross-posted to the DLF ILS-DI mailing list and the Jangle-Discuss group about the form and format of the mechanism for determining the availability of an item. (Think that is easy? It comes down to the “maybe” case and the various definitions of “maybe.”)

All in Favor, Say “Aye”

The statement was signed by Talis, Ex Libris, LibLime, BiblioCommons, SirsiDynix, Polaris Library Systems, VTLS, California Digital Library, OCLC, and AquaBrowser. It would be interesting to go through and calculate the percentage of reach that the signees have in the library marketplace, but for academic libraries I’m guessing it is pretty high. There is one notable exception, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

All Opposed, Say “Nay”

Fortunately, none of the representatives disagreed. To disagree with the stated goals would call into question the vendor’s seriousness about open data systems and the right of the library to make use of its own data. It would probably also put them at a severe commercial disadvantage.

Abstentions? The Representative from Emeryville?

As some have noted, all of the participating vendors agreed to the principles in the accord with the exception of Innovative Interfaces, which abstained. On Friday, Betsy Graham of Innovative posted a reply on the company blog. (Good to see your post, Betsy! I hope to see you around the blogosphere in the future.) She says, in part:

Innovative considers its commitment of resources carefully. We abstained for what I believe to be a good reason: that without having worked out the details, we simply were not sure what we would be committing to. The participants at this meeting had greatly varying needs and expectations for what the ILS-DI would mean to them. Some, while endorsing, even went so far as to endorse “not just what is on the table”. Not to be too flip, but OCLC has endorsed this document. Does this then mean that we’ll all soon be harvesting WorldCat at our whim? Maybe not.

I’m finding it difficult to reconcile Peter’s preface to the Berkeley Accord and Betsy’s posting. It seems that the statement was drafted at the meeting out of the parts of the DLF ILS Discovery Interface draft that could be readily agreed upon. When I prompted Peter in a comment on his blog posting asking about the effort to include information other than bibliographic MARC data (e.g. item holdings, serials checkin, and order information) in the harvesting, he said “it was made optional to achieve the larger good of obtaining a baseline agreement.”

The accord is good step, and I respect the efforts of the representatives in trying to come to a baseline that everyone could support. So why wouldn’t Innovative sign onto the same baseline? Admittedly, the details are yet to be worked out, but the details are mostly about how one is going to sling the bits of data around. It is the principles that are important. I’d be willing to bet that Innovative would be among the first to support the consuming of data described in the accord in advancing its ILS-agnostic Encore discovery layer product. And if others want to support more of the DLF ILS Discovery Interface draft than the three baseline operations described in the accord, then I hope they shout from the highest mountaintop that they plan to do so; but to do so does seem to be above and beyond what is called for in the wording (and my interpretation) of the accord.

Also, without intending to be overly confrontational (particularly since I wasn’t at the DLF meeting with the ILS vendors), I’ll point out that OCLC’s response could have been from the perspective of their European ILS operations and not from WorldCat itself. Although the discussions about what is coming in WorldCat Grid would start to fulfill the three functions described in the accord from the perspective of a union catalog.

Disclaimer

It should go without saying, but probably doesn’t hurt to explicitly mention in closing, that the views expressed here are my own and not necessarily that of my employer.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.encoreforlibraries.com/main.html to http://www.encoreforlibraries.com/ on June 9th, 2011.

Survey on Digital Preservation Systems is Seeking Respondents

Peter Murray — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:10:25 +0000

There are just a few days left to respond to the “International Digital Preservation Systems Survey” being run by Karim Boughida and Sally Hubbard from the Getty Research Institute. From the survey description:

This survey is intended to provide an overview of digital preservation system (DPS) implementation. DPS is defined here as an assembly of computer hardware, software and policies equivalent to a TDR (trusted digital repository) “whose mission is to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now, and in the future”¹.
The survey was produced by the Getty Research Institute departments of Digital Resource Management and Library Information Systems, and will be distributed primarily among members of the Digital Library Federation (DLF). Results will be shared at the DLF Spring Forum, April 23-25, 2007, and with all respondents who provide contact information.
Please respond by March 30, 2007.
¹RLG. 2002. Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities. Mountain View, Calif.: RLG, Inc. http://www.rlg.org/en/pdfs/repositories.pdf.

This month has been an explosion of news for repository systems focused on digital preservation. First was the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment report and worksheet from Digital Curation Centre (DCC) in the UK and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE). The second was the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist from the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), OCLC/RLG, and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). I haven’t had a chance to digest these two documents, but I’m looking forward to doing that plus the publication of the results of this survey from Getty.

DLF’s Upcoming Workshop on Developing a Services Framework for Digital Libraries

Peter Murray — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:46:20 +0000

I know I said I would only be taking “a day’s break” from posting about applying the Service Oriented Architecture pattern to library services but, well, real work gets in the way. Thoughts are still bubbling around — some of them have even reached draft form — but nothing new yet. In the meantime, though, take a look at this DLF Workshop on Developing a Services Framework for Digital Libraries to be held on Tuesday, November 07, 2006 in Boston. These sound like great outcomes:

This workshop will provide an overview of the work of the group to date [Service Framework for Digital Libraries DLF progress report dated 17 May 2005 and A Library Service Framework in the July/August 2006 issue of D-Lib] and then focus on a hands-on approach to define various library/digital library activities. The workshop attendees will break into three small groups to work through the business logic for three library areas: Digitization, Storage of digital assets, and Discovery of digital assets. The output is expected to be a series of flow charts and a set of decomposed business processes and functions that will be included in the services framework. These will provide a basis for further systems analysis in the future as a SOA-based approach to library automated services is considered. Workshop attendees are expected to have experience with library IT management and/or technical development of digital library projects.

I only wish I could be there myself — I’ve already been engaged by the University of Windsor to talk about Library SOA at about the same time — and I’m looking forward hearing about to the outcomes from the workshop.

Seeking Documents on the Application of Service Oriented Architectures in Academic Libraries

Peter Murray — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:02:11 +0000

I’ve been tasked to write a whitepaper envisioning a Service Oriented Architecture for OhioLINK’s services and operations. I’ve found a bit of information through my own networking and searching, but in putting out this list and asking for additions I want to be sure that I’m not already missing the holy grail of documents that I could just rebrand as an OhioLINK document. (With appropriate permission, of course.) I’m looking for strategic/explanatory documents over technical documents, although the latter will undoubtedly be useful in later iterations and derivatives of the whitepaper.

CDL Common Framework

The CDL Common Framework is an open, services-oriented technical architecture that provides an integrating framework for services related to digital libraries. As a layered architecture it aims to separate front-end tools from back-end services from underlying data storage so that different components can be reused in multiple applications, reducing the time and money it takes to develop and maintain code. The Common Framework also supports easy integration of local and third party tools and services through a plug-in approach. It is available through both machine (i.e. web services) and human interfaces.

A ‘service oriented’ view of the JISC Information Environment

This document is intended to help clarify the relationship of the JISC IE architecture to ‘service oriented’ architectures such as those adopted by the DLF Abstract Services Taskforce and the e-Framework for Education and Research. It starts from the set of ‘service components’ shown in the JISC IE architecture diagram, extrapolating a list of the ‘abstract services’ that are expected to be offered and then listing a set of candidate ‘service bindings’ (that correspond with the protocols and standards listed in the JISC IE technical standards document. This document builds on an earlier attempt to develop a tentative ‘reference model‘ for the discovery to delivery space occupied by the JISC IE. The previous document took a functional approach, using UML use cases to document the anticipated behaviour of end-users of the JISC IE, then building up a set of ‘business processes’, ‘abstract services’ and ‘service bindings’. However, the list of abstract services provided in the older document is too simplistic and incomplete to be useful.

e-Framework for Education and Research

Resources on this site include: The eFramework for Education and Research; an overview briefing paper provides an overview of the e-Framework for Education and Research (the e-Framework), its strategic context, its aims and objectives, its overall approach, the stakeholders, the benefits and its expected outcomes and impact. Workflow and Webservices examines the topic of coordinating workflows of web services within an elearning context, and identifies the requirements, challenges, and technology choices involved. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) technical architecture specifies a set of standards and protocols that support the development and delivery of an integrated set of networked services that allow the end-user to discover, access, use and publish digital and physical resources as part of their learning and research activities. The E-Learning Framework (ELF)constitutes the e-learning domain within the e-Framework. The abstract service definitions and resources within the ELF will be merged with those of the JISC Information Environment, and the emerging domain factorisations for e-science and e-administration to form the e-Framework.

DLF Service Framework for Digital Libraries

A progress report for the DLF Steering Committee from 17 May 2005. Has headings of Context, Why is a Digital Library Service Framework needed?, Some benefits of a Service Framework for DLF and research libraries, What has the DLF Service Framework Group done so far?, Some open issues, and Recommendations moving forward.

ALA TechSource’s Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture

“In an era of computing dominated by the World Wide Web, technology referred to as Web services stands as a key one for allowing computers to communicate machine to machine, program to program….Web services make it easy to connect all types of computer applications to each other. As you will see throughout this report, Web services deliver a foundation of interoperability greatly needed in a world where computer services and digital information exist in many different forms and flavors,” says Breeding in his “Introduction” in the latest issue of Library Technology Reports, “Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture.”

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/common_framework/ on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/ to http://www.e-framework.org/Resources/tabid/609/Default.aspx on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/eframeworkrV1.pdf to http://www.e-framework.org/Portals/9/docs/papers/Briefing060802.pdf on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.e-framework.org/resources/SOAandWorkflow2.pdf to http://www.e-framework.org/Portals/9/Resources/SOAandWorkflow2.pdf on November 17th, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/web-services-and-the-service-oriented-architecture.html to http://www.alatechsource.org/ltr/web-services-and-the-service-oriented-architecture on November 17th, 2010.

Electronic Resource Management Systems in Consortial Environments

Peter Murray — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:49:02 +0000

This is a summary of the discussion of the LITA Library Consortia / Automated Systems Interest Group meeting on Monday morning of the ALA Annual Convention in New Orleans. The meeting consisted of a managed discussion of the use of Electronic Resource Management (ERM) systems in consortial environments. In some cases, comments from the two primary speakers and discussion among the commingled and unattributed. Inaccuracies and comments taken out of context are the responsibility of the author of this posting, and corrections or embellishments are welcome in the form of comments to this post or as private e-mail messages.

The first speaker was from Yale (unfortunately, I arrived late and didn’t get her name — a helpful hint in a comment to this posting would be appreciated). Yale purchased and “implemented” (actually getting any ERM system up and running is not a trivial task, so it is hard to say when “implemented” is) Verde about 14 months ago when it was in alpha development. Ex Libris delivered a production version to Yale in September 2005 and from them until two weeks ago Yale has been working through configuration and getting an the electronic journal coverage load into the ERM system to know what they have(“took quite a while to get there”). Next they will be migrating information about which databases and e-books they have, followed by data entry for subscription, license, and administrative information for all records in the system. They will probably set up these data entry projects with three different groups, one for each metadata type, operating concurrently.

Yale’s ILS is Endeavor Voyager. They looked at Endeavor’s Meridian and Innovative’s ERMS in addition to Verde. ERMS, although it was in production, was less attractive because it would add third vendor in their automation mix. A major part of their selection process came down to which of their existing systems needed to be more closely integrated with the ERM, and they decided it was more important to be more closely aligned with their existing SFX and Metalib implementations that with the ILS. Yale’s systems department thinks they will be able to pull read-only acquisitions information from the Voyager system via a custom ‘report’ function using the purchase order number as a key. Yale is not putting print serial information into Verde. (Verde has the capability to create a “print record” for a “work” (e.g. bibliographic record).) They have an automated lookup from SFX to their ILS that the user can use to find information about print subscriptions.

The second speaker was Diane Carol from the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). They have an Innovative Interfaces ILS and because of existing consortial arrangements, had no choice but to use ERMS from Innovative. Prior to implementing an ERM system, they used things like the 856 fields in the ILS to point to electronic journals plus an external SQL/ColdFusion database for public users and spreadsheets for administrative information, license information, and statistics. At one point they were trying to maintain holdings in five or six systems (above plus Ovid, PubMed, etc.) In 2003 they decided to integrate the information about electronic products into one place. This single source of data would be used to upload to other systems and OpenURL resolves, allow wider access to the license data, and centralize the collection development decisions.

Information from their old coverage database (ISSN, URLs, and Holdings) was loaded and attached to a resource records. ISSN connected it to the existing bibliographic record in the ILS. Also has a license record that is also attached to the resource record. Doing things this way created “skeletal records” for resource records — the minimal of what is needed to start loading the system. Because OHSU is part of a consortial union catalog, doing this added a lot of brief records in the union catalog; they are now looking at the process needed to clean this up. OHSU’s OpenURL resolver is Innovative’s WebBridge, and coverage data is automatically updated.

Helpful Hints

Both speakers echoed the need to involve disparate groups of people in the project. Yale commented that they faced a decision about whether to start with just a small group of people to do a deep load of just the licensing attributes or involve more people with a broad perspective of not just the back-end technical services changes but also the public A-Z list changes. Yale ended up going with the bigger scope and she was not sure they could have made any other choice.

Yale started by walking through the DLF ERMI data dictionary to determine what fields they wanted to use what values to put in those fields (e.g. establishing standard terminology), but found it very different when they started the data load and thinking about how they would use it. For instance, does one need to record in the ERM the state of where the license will be adjudicated? If it isn’t part of reporting needs or a public display, then don’t bother. (One can always look it up later out of the paper files.) In other words, don’t create a “high bar” for the initial implementation by thinking that you will fill every field of every record.

If you already have a link resolver and/or a metasearch engine from a vendor other than that of your ILS, decide whether you need tighter integration with the link resolver/metasearch engine or the ILS and have that weight your selection criteria. For instance, Yale reports that Verde can eliminate some duplicative data entry — information entered into Verde can be pushed into SFX. SFX can also be configured to look up permissions, license rights, and technical information in Verde (an “i” information button in SFX). However, from the same vendor, Metalib is not talking to Verde in any way; it is a concern of Yale for when they start to record database information into Verde. Yale is seeking from Ex Libris a best practice for data entry now to be prepared for the day when the integration is done. The general observation of the group was that institutions tend to go with their link resolver product vendor versus their ILS vendor.

To pay attention

Know whether you getting a “Knowledge Base” with your product? If not, that will add on to the ultimate cost. (Meridian, for instance, doesn’t come with a knowledge base.)

Implementation is done for Verde 2.0, documentation done on July 1, early adopters are using the software, public demonstration sites are ready, general release date announcement coming soon. Verde 2.0 has some new features for consortia. Although it not available yet, it is still useful to have their 1.1 implementation to start addressing how the consortium will deal with the definition of fields and how they will be used across the consortium.