Repositories & Interoperability RSP Summer School th June 2008 Chris Yates

Session overview What interoperability is Repositories and interoperability Interoperability services A look at OAI-PMH Speed Unconference

Interoperability – What is it? Wikipedia describes interoperability as: “Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate)” Often referred to in technical systems but used in many different contexts

Interoperability: Repository Software Context In software, the term interoperability means: “The capability of different programs to exchange data via a common set of exchange formats, to read and write the same file formats, and to use the same protocols and services.”

Understanding Requirements Consider this:

Understanding Requirements Terrestrial TV Satellite TV Watch Videos/DVDs Play Games High Definition TV? The requirements for the system will determine what services/systems it will need to connect to achieve these goals

Repositories: Effective use To understand the relationship between repositories & interoperability we need to ask: What are you trying to achieve with your repository? Effective use of a repository is only possible if you know what you want to use your repository for. Likewise with interoperable systems

Repository Goals Knowledge, information and data sharing Facilitating research Impact (& career development) Data management Preservation Anything else?

Repository Uses Knowledge, information and data sharing Facilitating research Impact (& career development) Data management Preservation Anything else? Global

Repository Uses Knowledge, information and data sharing Facilitating research Impact (& career development) Data management Preservation Anything else? Global Local

Repository Local Interoperability Management Information Virtual Learning Environment Web pages File Store Content Management System Personal Information Portal

Global Interoperability Services Institution with Repository Searching Harvesting Retrieving Citing Collaboration

Repository Goals Knowledge, information and data sharing Facilitating research Impact (& career development) Data management Preservation Anything else?

How interoperability achieves these goals Knowledge, information and data sharing Exposure to discovery services (OAIster, Intute etc) Repository Services (OAI-PMH, Sword, SRU/SRU-W, RSS) Web 2.0 services Facilitating research Exposure to discovery services Citation services (Citebase) Bibliographic Services Impact (& career development) Exposure to discovery services RAE (Research Assessment Exercise)

How interoperability achieves these goals Data management Metadata schemas, application profiles & standards Local system integration: LDAP, Shibboleth Metadata records. Ingest of partial records from services (IMS/WoS) to assemble complete records Persistent Identifiers (Handle/DOI/PURL) Preservation Preservation facilitated by harvesting Digitisation initiatives through projects such as ethos

With that thought: Repositories are not just isolated islands To be effective they need to be interoperable with both the local institutional services and external services

Interoperable Services What systems do you want your repository to interoperate with? Search & dissemination services Management Information Systems Library catalogues Institutional websites (automated publication) Publication/Bibliographic Databases Virtual Learning Environments Repository registries

Interoperability standards OAI-PMH SRU/W RSS/ATOM LDAP Google Analytics IRS IMS-DRI Site Maps Handle/PURL /DOI Shibboleth SWORD OAI-ORE IMS-LODE SCORM CORDRA SQI

Example Services RSS/ATOM RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP is an application protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP SRU/W Standard XML-focused search protocol for Internet search queries

Software Interoperability: How is it achieved? Through five interrelated ways: Product Testing Product Engineering Industry/Community Partnership Common Technology Standards Implementation

Software Interoperability: How is it achieved? Through five interrelated ways: Product Testing Product Engineering Industry/Community Partnership Common Technology Standards Implementation

OAI-PMH for Interoperability Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting: Mechanism used to achieve interoperability between digital repositories Provides a system to facilitate the harvesting, sharing and discovery of distributed resources. Repository material accessed by a greater number of users via external services. In addition, data harvested via OAI-PMH is now being used for Reporting enhanced user interfaces for direct searching of local repositories, and assisting with the ingest of data into other systems.

How Does OAI-PMH work? Client/server architecture Data provider (for example; repositories) Service provider (for example; OAIster). Service providers issue requests to the data provider OAI-PMH interfaces Data provides respond with a formatted XML response.

How Does OAI-PMH work? OAI Request have 2 parts: The base URL of the data provider Key value pairs which specify the type and details of the request The request can be one of 6 key value pairs For OAI compliance, a repository must expose and allow dissemination of unqualified Dublin Core. More on OAI-PMH

Example OAI Request

Searching for a harvested item

Discussion: Speed Unconference An unconference is a facilitated, face-to-face, and participant-driven conference centred around a theme or purpose Why? Combination of the best parts of a conference face-to-face discussions Generating of new ideas Passionate debates Information exchange Removes the conventional structure of ‘chalk & talk’ Aim: Promote new thinking and new outcomes.

How? Discussions take place at designated breakout spaces (flipcharts) Participants are free to move between groups Participant(s) choose topic(s) to discuss Conversations recorded in a form that can be reported back to the group (key points/ideas/thoughts) At the end of the session the full group reconvenes for comments and reflection

Roles Host: the person who feels a burning passion for the subject and is willing to take responsibility to call the conversation, invite others in and make sure something gets harvested. Participant: Anyone who is drawn to a conversation wants to stay the whole time and participate fully. Bumble bee: The ones who move from conversation to conversation cross-pollinating the learning. Butterfly: A butterfly may not want to be in any conversation, instead they prefer to sit on the lawn and look beautiful. A new, unexpected conversation may happen when two butterflies meet.

Rules Law of two feet: If you're neither contributing nor getting value where you are, use your two feet and go somewhere where you can. From the law flow four principles: Whoever comes are the right people Whatever happens is the only thing that could have Whenever it starts is the right time When it's over, it's over

Dotmocracy Way of making, collecting and prioritizing ideas together Everyone has an equal opportunity How? Coloured dots are placed marking ideas which participants prefer Produces a visual representation of the collective group preferences

Discussion What should repositories be interoperable with? Current interoperable systems - do they work? Global or Local services? What services should a repository offer? Interoperability, what’s it mean to you?

Chris Yates