Re-imagining the national data store Warwick Cathro Assistant Director-General, Innovation

Outline How does the National Library view the future of the national discovery services? What factors are driving our plans? What are the key issues and challenges?

Background The NLA’s current portfolio of national discovery services: –Libraries Australia, Picture Australia, Music Australia, ARROW Discovery Service, RAAM New projects –Newspaper Digitisation –People Australia The need to consolidate and integrate services

The imperatives For users: –make major improvements in “rapid and easy access” to information resources (ranking, navigation, clustering, annotation) –give users access to a wider and better integrated national data store For the NLA as service manager: –manage and maintain discovery services more effectively –IT Architecture Group report:

The problem: silos NBD RAAMPicture AustraliaPeople AustraliaARROWNewspapers Music Australia Pandora Journals NLA Catalogue

Our new approach Service Oriented Architecture –based on small, loosely coupled, shareable, functional service components Single Business approach –integrated national data store –“collection views” of that store –manage the discovery service in an integrated way –recognise unique requirements of each collection view Use Lucene as preferred platform

High level model Discovery Service Authentication Service Search Service Annotation Service Request Service Newspapers View Journals View Pictures View Music View National data store

What it might look like In Australian librariesOnline Australian All Newspapers Journals Pictures Maps more >> Advanced search Preferences TM In my libraries

What makes it unique A place for Australians to start a search that: –enables Australians to understand ourselves and our place in the world –gives prominence to information in Australia’s collecting institutions –is authoritative, impartial, non-commercial –is wide-ranging in scope –is easy to use

Collection views: issues What collection views and filters to promote? What data to be aggregated by the NLA and what to search as external targets? How to ensure that users find what they need regardless of the collection view they choose to start their search? How to navigate from one collection view to another?

Filters For all views there may be “filters” such as those allowing the user to limit a search to: –in Australian libraries –in my libraries –Australian –online

Content of the national data store National Bibliographic Database National digital newspaper collection The national web archives –PANDORA –Whole Domain Harvest Finding aids, journal indexes, oral history transcripts, biographical information, pictures metadata

Books Nation’s library collections –represented in the ANBD External targets: –WorldCat –Google Book Search [etc.] Potential for incorporating digitised text from out-of-copyright books

Journals Information about all Australian journals –including library holdings External targets –Google Scholar –Informit indexes and full text –ERA (Electronic Resources Australia) targets APAIS and AMI indexing data –business model transition Potential for incorporating digitised text from out- of-copyright journals

Newspapers Information about all Australian newspapers whether digitised or not –including library holdings External target possibilities –Factiva –Sydney Morning Herald Full text of all digitised newspaper issues

Research Scope cuts across potential collection views: –books, journal articles, pre-prints, theses, data sets Includes metadata harvested from university repositories for the ARROW Discovery Service External targets: –Australian Bureau of Statistics (NDN) –Future Australian National Data Service Facilitation of harvesting by Google Scholar and other aggregators (OAI target)

Further examples Pictures –all known pictures whether digitised or not –external targets: Flickr, Google Images Archives and manuscripts –include finding aids harvested from partners –external targets: major institutional collections that have implemented OpenSearch Oral history –summaries and transcripts from the NLA and other oral history collections

Implications NLA is envisaging replacing its ILMS catalogue with an “in my library” view of the future national data store Possibility of other libraries leveraging off the national data store for local purposes Discussions within NSLA about collaboration on the service framework

Where are we up to? Formed an internal “Business Integration Taskforce” to drive this forward Will develop a prototype of new service (September to November 2007) Functional service components are being developed: –Newspaper Digitisation Project –People Australia Project We envisage a staged transition to the new model