IESR: A Registry of Collections and Services Ann Apps MIMAS, The University of Manchester, UK

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 2 Outline Purpose of JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) IESR content description IESR services Using IESR Future directions of service registries

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 3 Why IESR? JISC Information Environment: –Collections of resources for researchers, learners, teachers in UK Single central registry – m2m access –Improve awareness and access Funded by JISC: –MIMAS, UKOLN –Registry developed and hosted by MIMAS

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 4 IESR Content Descriptions of: –Collections of resources –Made available via Informational Services –Agents: Owners / Administrators –Transactional Services Contributed by resource providers QA check by IESR content manager

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 5 Services and Collections Collection: –An aggregation of resources Service: –A system that provides one or more functions Informational service: –Provides access to a collection Transactional service: –Other functionality

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 6 IESR Entities Collection ServiceAgent administers owns provides access

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 7 IESR Entity Description Entities identified with URI Described by metadata Metadata defined by Application Profile –Semantics –Occurrence –Searchable Application Profile for human reading –More restrictive than XML schema

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 8 IESR Collection Metadata Based on RSLP Collection Description Simplification for electronic resources Consistent with standards development: –DCMI Collection Description Application Profile –NISO MI Collection Description Specification

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 9 Vocabulary Encoding Schemes Defined in Application Profile Single backbone subject scheme –Dewey Decimal Classification System Other common vocabularies supported iesr:usesControlledList –IESR defined list (extensible) –Use by: Terminology service Portal item level search

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Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 11 IESR Service Metadata More than RSLP CD ‘locator’ A few IESR properties to support discovery and registry application IESR agnostic about protocol Single access method / protocol: –SRU, Z39.50, SOAP, OAI-PMH, Web/CGI Location URL

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 12 IESR Service Metadata (continued) Prototype service type list –e.g. Alert, Harvest Authentication details –Will investigate Shibboleth AAP Interface property for some service protocols –Connection details –Uses appropriate schema

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Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 14 Service Connection Details SOAP: Locator: access URL; Interface: WSDL Z39.50, SRU: Interface: ZeeRex SRW: Interface: ZeeRex; WSDL OAI-PMH: Locator: BaseURL OpenURL: Locator: BaseURL Web CGI: Interface: WSDL (HTTP binding) Web page: Locator: URL

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Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 16 IESR Administrative Metadata Included with every entity IESR includes: –Creating organisation –Publisher: IESR –Latest modification date –Rights to reuse descriptions

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 17 IESR Creative Commons Licence All IESR records licensed under a Creative Commons licence: –Non-commercial (freely available) –Share-alike (maintain same licence) –Attribution-required (attribute provenance) Contributors agree to this licence

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 18 IESR Services Z39.50 –Search via Bib-1 attributes –Results: text (SUTRS); composite XML OAI-PMH for harvesting: entity XML OpenURL Link-To Resolver –Implements IESR identifier resolution Web Search and Browse Data Editor for Contributors

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 19 Future Services SRU (Search / Retrieve over HTTP) –NISO Metasearch XML Gateway (MXG) Web Services SOAP / SRW RSS UDDI view

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 20 Service Registry Use Registry Client / Portal Collection / Service Register / ContributeDiscover Invoke

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 21 Portal in JISC IE JISC defines a portal: A network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to an end user.

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 22 Using IESR Portal –amalgamated set of resources IESR provides: –Discovery of resource collections –Up-to-date details of access to collections –Discovery of transactional services RSS OpenURL resolvers IESR will develop Use Cases

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 23 Portal Metasearch Scenario Social Scientist: find resources about family health Social Science portal discovers collections with e.g. Z39.50 services –Vocabulary service needed Portal provides cross-search to end- user using e.g. Z39.50

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 24 IESR Benefits for Portal IESR provides for: –Discover –Locate: access details in retrieved composite record –Invoke: interface ZeeRex connection details Portal builder doesn’t need to know about all resources Users discover collections unaware of

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 25 Harvesting IESR OAI-PMH allows replication of IESR Portal harvests IESR records Caches locally for use by portal software, e.g.: –Local service registry –Knowledgebase after conversion to appropriate format Scenario: portal for Open Access material in Institutional Repositories

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 26 MIMAS Metadatabase Use Scenario MIMAS Metadatabase is a catalogue of resources provided by MIMAS Metadatabase will –Harvest changed IESR records nightly –Select MIMAS records and transform –Update Metadatabase Staff have only one set of descriptions to maintain XML descriptions for other uses

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 27 e-Research Scenario Bioinformatics researcher: find research literature about a cattle disease Bioinformatics Portal builder discovers bibliographic collections with SOAP services, e.g. Zetoc –Vocabulary service needed Portal builder plugs in bibliographic service Researcher includes in workflow

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 28 Use by Portal Builder Discover resource and access details by Web interface Handcraft resource into metasearch Possible future Digital Library build software will automate process SOAP services need manual intervention

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 29 Other Uses Portal Links to Web Search –General resource discovery Reuse collection description –Initially created by resource provider –Shared by multiple registries and applications RSS Aggregator (news; data alerts) –Personal digital library portal

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 30 Metadata Schema Use OCKHAM (US): Outcomes of NSF projects CETIS / DEST: eLearning/Admin in Australia aDORe Digital Object Repository (LANL) Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories: collection description service Standards development: –DCMI Collection Description / Agents –NISO Metasearch Initiative

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 31 Wider Information Environment Scope of IESR –JISC, UK, international? –Data ownership and maintenance Distributed / federated model –Each node describes own resources How to cross search? –Metasearch; UDDI; OAI-PMH harvest IESR collaboration with OCKHAM in US –Replication by OAI-PMH; search local

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 32 UDDI Standard for discovery and publicising of services on offer Built prototype registry (UKOLN) –jUDDI / MySQL (JDBC) –Not a lot of software available Mapping IESR data to UDDI –businessEntity – Agent (administrator) –businessService – conflate Service and Collection Loss of rich collection detail?

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 33 UDDI in IE Is there a requirement? Little evidence in Digital Libraries Some use in eScience: –Grid Engineering Taskforce –Grimoires Also richer RDF metadata IESR UDDI view planned –Interoperate with other registries –But may be ‘lossy’

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 34 Sharing Descriptions Sharing collection descriptions –Created by resource provider –Reuse with possible local augmentation –Needs common / derivable metadata schema Standards: NISO Metasearch Initiative / DCMI Collection Description: provide common core IESR a practical example application Rights issues –Simplified with common CC licence

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 35 IESR Future More and updated content New IESR services Maintenance of metadata schema –Stakeholder requirements : eResearch eFramework –Standards development

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 36 IESR Future (continued) Demonstrating viable IESR use –Use Cases –JISC IE Test Bed Project Collaboration with Service Registry development, UK and international –OCKHAM test bed experiment Persistence of content

Digital Repositories, e-Research and Portals Workshop 37 IESR Details Thank You! Questions? Information: Application Profile: XML Schema: Web Search: Z39.50 service: OAI-PMH service: IESR Helpline service: