1. Digital Libraries and the business process: reflections on a theme
Dr Liz Lyon, Director
UKOLN, University of Bath, UK
BL/JISC/UKOLN Workshop, British Library
March 2006.
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UKOLN is supported by:
a centre of expertise in digital information management

2. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop
Overview
Mapping the business process: the intricate mix of humans and machines
Some thoughts about workflow
Social networks and service development
Summary: take home message
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3. What do we mean by “business process”???
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4. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop
“A business process is a collection of related structural activities that produce something of value to the organization, its stake holders or its customers. It is, for example, the process through which an organization realizes its services to its customers”.
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

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“The linkage of business process with value generation leads some practitioners to view business processes as the workflows which realize an organization's use cases”.
…..Workflows???
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“Workflow at its simplest is the movement of documents and/or tasks through a work process.
More specifically, workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked”.
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

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“Distinction can be made between "scientific" and "business" workflow paradigms.
While the former is mostly concerned with throughput of data through various algorithms, applications and services,
….the latter concentrates on scheduling task executions, including dependencies which are not necessarily data-driven and may include human agents”.
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

8. eBusiness eScience Comparing workflow Tom Oinn 2003
Closed + secure systems
Extremely open (data)
Resources are finite + known
Describe + discover resources: rich semantics + metadata standards
High levels of trust
3rd party verification
Mission critical + liability
Peer review
3rd party repetition +
re-enactment
Static (mission critical)
Dynamic, agile, iterative, flexible, rapid modificat’n
Small data volumes
Simple structures
Large data volumes
Highly complex
Transaction-centric
Not transaction-centric?
Customers + managers
Researchers are users and managers
Comparing workflow
Tom Oinn 2003
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

9. eBusiness eScience eLibraries
Closed + secure systems
Extremely open (data)
Mixed model
OA+licensed content
Resources are finite + known
Describe + discover resources: rich semantics + metadata standards
Describe + discover: “core” metadata schema, high-level vocabularies, KOS
Community tagging
High levels of trust
3rd party verification
Mission critical + liability
Peer review
3rd party repetition +
re-enactment
Provenance, trusted digital repositories, trusted (reliable) services
Static (mission critical)
Dynamic, agile, iterative, flexible, rapid modificat’n
Mixed model but trend to be more agile
Small data volumes
Simple structures
Large data volumes
Highly complex
Mixed model: distributed, federated, centralised
Transaction-centric
Not transaction-centric?
Mixed model: loans vs preservation
Customers + managers
Researchers are users and managers
Consumers and producers?
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

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OK - so in the context of our institutions …… (and digital libraries)….. what exactly do we mean by “business process” and “workflow” ???
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

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(Very simple) e-Research Cycle
(New) knowledge extraction: data mining, modelling, analysis, synthesis
Formulate hypothesis / ideas, test, experiment, observe: data creation, collection & capture
Data processing
Data processing
Data processing
Data management storage & validation: description, deposit, self-archiving, preservation, certification
e-Infrastructure
Open access
Collaboration
Adding value: Data linking, annotation, visualisation, simulation
Data processing
Data processing
Scholarly communications: data disclosure, publication, citation, discovery, re-use
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12. Gathering information about (e-)research
Project StORe: Source-to-Output Repositories (Edinburgh)
primary data : research publications
Survey questionnaire
RepoMMan: Repository Metadata and Management (Hull)
Survey questionnaire and interviews
Activity diagram
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JISC Digital Repository Programme DigiRep wiki
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Data capture
R4L Repository for the Laboratory Project (JISC-funded) automated data capture from instrumentation, deposit of results (chemistry) at Univ. Southampton
SMART TEA electronic Laboratory notebook + annotations
R4L deposit scenario
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15. User scenario (…part of….)
Produce strategy for synthesis (=idea)
Submit plan to SmartTea system (incl. identifiers)
Retrieve and follow instructions (sub-workflow?)
Experimental synthesis metadata automatically recorded on instruments (Smart Lab)
Create record for synthesised sample (+ proposed chemical identifier) in R4L laboratory data management system
Run spectral analyses on sample capturing further analysis metadata (incl. time-stamp, analysis software version, researcher details etc.)
Save spectrum in native and common formats
Invoke R4L data capture service and deposit files + metadata in laboratory repository….
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16. Services for simple & rapid deposit
Data manipulation toolbox
Associated Metadata
Value added
Format conversion
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17. Crystallography workflow
RAW DATA
DERIVED DATA
RESULTS DATA
Initialisation: mount new sample set up data collection
Collection: collect data
Processing: process and correct images
Solution: solve structures
Refinement: refine structure
CIF: produce CIF (Crystallographic Information File)
Validation: chemical & crystallographic checks
Report: generate Crystal Structure Report
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A data repository entry
ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk
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19. Access to the underlying data
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20. Laboratory Repositories R4L
Slide: Simon Coles,
Univ. Southampton
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eBank UK Project
Aggregator service harvests metadata from institutional repository (e-crystals archive)
eBank service embedded in PSIgate portal for 3rd party search
Service linking from data to derived research publication
Embedding eBank service in learning workflows
UKOLN (lead), University of Southampton, University of Manchester
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

22. But…. ….how should we be “formalising” workflows?
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23. Workflow systems & standards
YAWL
METEOR-S
BPEL
OpenWFE
RADRunner
BPSS (ebXML)
PSL
Geo-Opera
JDF
XLANG
Taverna
Kepler
Pegasus
Triana
SPA
ICENI
BioOpera
Wildfire
BPML
WS-CDL
Is “workflow standard” an oxymoron?
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Kepler Project
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Slide: Carole Goble
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27. DL workflows : a complex picture
Workflows for data capture, deposit, preservation, citation, discovery, mining &&….
Multiple workflows interacting together
Workflows may call on each other, in a defined order
Multiple workflows may use “common” services e.g. Assign (identifier)
Require sequential or parallel execution, have dependencies, be time-limited, repetitive
Have an owner (control)
Include essential human interventions
? ? ?
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Workflow…the answers to Who? What? When? in a business process. A workflow is only as good as the business process beneath it. Margie Virdell, IBM developerWorks
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Some observations….
We don’t know enough about institutional business process:
Learning & teaching, research, admin, enterprise
How to analyse, express and model processes
What types of models?
At what levels of granularity: strategic (for a manager) vs detailed mathematical specifications (for a developer)
Which workflow tools & standards should we use?
Learn from e-Science projects
Which processes are best driven by machines and which by humans?
How do human-directed processes interact with machine-driven ones?
What are the digital library “touch points” in these processes?
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

30. Service-oriented architectures for Digital Libraries
Produce process models (DLF?)
Experience of VRE projects
Integrative Biology user scenarios
Service typology (e-Framework?)
Identify services: service definitions
Service interactions: service patterns
Orchestration of Web services
Choreography of Web services
Workflow interoperability…. (another oxymoron?)
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“Orchestrating the knitting”
“Integration trumps re-invention”
“We work in
a services ecosystem”
“new social models for DLs”
“Polygamous recombination”
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32. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop
Discovering data:
Domain identifier: International Chemical Identifier (INChI) code
Google molecule using INChI
Slide from Simon Coles
Coles, S.J., Day, N.E., Murray-Rust, P., Rzepa, H.S., Zhang, Y., Org. Biomol. Chem., 2005, (10), DOI:  /b502828k
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Avian flu outbreaks mashup - Nature January 2006
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New prototype services
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Take home messages
Need to understand more about institutional business process: cultural heritage, learning & teaching, research, admin, enterprise…
Assessment of the value of workflow studies
Evaluation of workflow systems, tools & standards
How best to analyse, express and model processes
Types of models
At what levels of granularity
Interactions between human-directed processes & machine-driven ones: implications for services
Social development of Digital Library services: creation, interaction, recombination and integration
….an intricate mix of humans & machines
British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop

37. Thank you. More information: UKOLN http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
UKOLN receives core funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council (MLA) and is based at the University of Bath, UK.