“Interoperability”??? Opportunities for Applied Research on the Creation, Management, Preservation and Use of Digital Content IMLS Washington, DC March 16-18, 2003

Process? Necessarily, an iterative process… Discussion document: copies at door Transcripts. (Acronym List) Recorders: Session 1:Martha Crawley Session 2: Bill Barnett (Thanks!) 25 Participants

What is relationship of IMLS to: –NSF/NSDL –LoC –NEH –NLM General queries about IMLS Mission?

High Level Definitions Session 1: Interoperability describes the exchange, over time, of information among systems (such as people, machines, uses and ontological regimes) and supports the full possible range of information seeking behaviors and applications. Session 2: A user-centric process in which services (including new content creation) are performed between systems and a complete range of digital objects (controlled by IPR) move between systems in a way that is agnostic about the objects and their potential usesand is transparent to the user with respect to the source(s) of information.

Selected Comments and questions? “Digital Object” best defined by Wilensky and Kahn Interoperability requires: –disclosure/exposure –discovery –delivery “Interoperability creates the potential for recombinant growth” “Preservation is interoperability over time.” “Interoperability releases the optimal value of investment.” “Not all interoperability is good.”

Selected Comments and questions? “Interoperability is all about IPR.” “How much metadata is too much?” “DMCA must be addressed…” We should be careful to build on what has already been developed (particularly by the commercial sector). Focus on the general relationship between interoperability and infrastructure?

Economic social & cultural issues? What are the incentives to interoperate (and the relative costs of interoperation)? –For institutions? (commercial?/nonprofit?) –For individuals? What are the opportunity costs of not interoperating? (for example, what are the costs of excessive assertion of proprietary controls?) What is the role of interoperation in “community practice”?

Economic social & cultural issues cont. What do we know about the process of metadata creation? How can we catalyze community-level discussions on interoperability to accomplish broad changes in culture? (for example, in the natural history community with museums, gardens, herbaria, zoos, aquaria…) What do we know about “the sociology of the standards process” – how do standards become normative? What are available or potential models for inclusive permission of use across the full community? (“Commons” model? )

Technical definitions/questions concerning interoperability Develop a taxonomy of repository types? Develop taxonomy of digital services and tools? Focus on language issues: character sets, lexicons? Focus on authentication Digital preservation? (Emulation? Migration?) Reliability? Currency? Integrity of objects? “Fine grained access control”? Capture metadata history? Can we arrive at an agreed approach to collection-level description (as is being undertaken in U.K.)?

Specific Research Projects: Test bed(s): Build more than one system on top of a test bed of 4-5 repositories – explore variant Web services architecture. (Questions: Which core Web services – including traditional authority files -- are essential to interoperability? Which architectures are most suited to optimal interoperability?)

Specific Research Projects: cont. Detailed examination of data mining? –Metadata registries? –Mapping of standards to each other? –Alternative methods of ontological processing? –“Distortion metrics” measures of “distortion” in consequence of metadata “filtering functions” ?

Specific Research Projects: cont. Testing of agents capable of addressing multiple standards (not known in advance)?

Specific Research Projects: cont. Native / vernacular metadata: to insure most parsimonious, optimal use of “native metadata” ( particularly from communities with very large potential metadata sets) what Web services can best be applied within given domains of knowledge to insure enhancement and extension of metadata?

Specific Research Projects: cont. How can we insure optimal (most efficient) heritability of metadata (migration? blending? parenting?)