2. UKOLN is supported by: 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. www.bath.ac.uk a centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

3. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop2 Overview 1.Mapping the business process: the intricate mix of humans and machines 2.Some thoughts about workflow 3.Social networks and service development 4.Summary: take home message

4. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop3 What do we mean by business process???

5. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop4 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.

6. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop5 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???

7. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop6 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.

8. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop7 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.

9. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop8 eBusinesseScience Closed + secure systemsExtremely open (data) Resources are finite + known Describe + discover resources: rich semantics + metadata standards High levels of trust 3 rd party verification Mission critical + liability Peer review 3 rd party repetition + re-enactment Static (mission critical)Dynamic, agile, iterative, flexible, rapid modificatn Small data volumes Simple structures Large data volumes Highly complex Transaction-centricNot transaction-centric? Customers + managersResearchers are users and managers Comparing workflow Tom Oinn 2003 http://twiki.mygrid.org.uk/

10. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop9 eBusinesseScienceeLibraries Closed + secure systemsExtremely 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 3 rd party verification Mission critical + liability Peer review 3 rd party repetition + re-enactment Provenance, trusted digital repositories, trusted (reliable) services Static (mission critical)Dynamic, agile, iterative, flexible, rapid modificatn Mixed model but trend to be more agile Small data volumes Simple structures Large data volumes Highly complex Mixed model: distributed, federated, centralised Transaction-centricNot transaction-centric?Mixed model: loans vs preservation Customers + managersResearchers are users and managers Consumers and producers?

11. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop10 OK - so in the context of our institutions …… (and digital libraries)….. what exactly do we mean by business process and workflow ???

12. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop11 (Very simple) e-Research Cycle Formulate hypothesis / ideas, test, experiment, observe: data creation, collection & capture Adding value: Data linking, annotation, visualisation, simulation (New) knowledge extraction: data mining, modelling, analysis, synthesis e-Infrastructure Open access Collaboration Scholarly communications: data disclosure, publication, citation, discovery, re-use Data management storage & validation: description, deposit, self-archiving, preservation, certification Data processing This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0Creative Commons License

13. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop12 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

14. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop13 JISC Digital Repository Programme DigiRep wiki http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/JISC_ Digital_Repository_Wiki

15. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop14 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

16. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop15 User scenario (…part of….) 1.Produce strategy for synthesis (=idea) 2.Submit plan to SmartTea system (incl. identifiers) 3.Retrieve and follow instructions (sub-workflow?) 4.Experimental synthesis metadata automatically recorded on instruments (Smart Lab) 5.Create record for synthesised sample (+ proposed chemical identifier) in R4L laboratory data management system 6.Run spectral analyses on sample capturing further analysis metadata (incl. time-stamp, analysis software version, researcher details etc.) 7.Save spectrum in native and common formats 8.Invoke R4L data capture service and deposit files + metadata in laboratory repository….

17. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop16 Services for simple & rapid deposit Data manipulation toolbox Associated Metadata Value added Format conversion

18. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop17 Crystallography workflow RAW DATADERIVED DATARESULTS 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

19. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop18 A data repository entry ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk

20. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop19 Access to the underlying data

21. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop20 Laboratory Repositories R4L Slide: Simon Coles, Univ. Southampton

22. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop21 eBank UK Project Aggregator service harvests metadata from institutional repository (e-crystals archive) eBank service embedded in PSIgate portal for 3 rd party search Service linking from data to derived research publication Embedding eBank service in learning workflows UKOLN (lead), University of Southampton, University of Manchester http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/ebank-uk/

23. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop22 But…. ….how should we be formalising workflows?

24. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop23 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?

25. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop24 Kepler Project http://kepler-project.org/Wiki.jsp?page=KeplerProject

26. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop25 http://taverna.sourceforge.net/

27. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop26 Slide: Carole Goble

28. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop27 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 ? ? ?

29. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop28 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

30. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop29 Some observations…. 1.We dont know enough about institutional business process: –Learning & teaching, research, admin, enterprise 2.How to analyse, express and model processes 3.What types of models? –At what levels of granularity: strategic (for a manager) vs detailed mathematical specifications (for a developer) 4.Which workflow tools & standards should we use? 5.Learn from e-Science projects 6.Which processes are best driven by machines and which by humans? 7.How do human-directed processes interact with machine-driven ones? 8.What are the digital library touch points in these processes?

31. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop30 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?)

32. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop31 Orchestrating the knitting Integration trumps re-invention We work in a services ecosystem new social models for DLs Polygamous recombination

33. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop32 Discovering data: Coles, S.J., Day, N.E., Murray-Rust, P., Rzepa, H.S., Zhang, Y., Org. Biomol. Chem., 2005, (10),1832-1834. DOI: 10.1039/b502828k Domain identifier: International Chemical Identifier (INChI) code Google molecule using INChI Slide from Simon Coles

34. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop33 Avian flu outbreaks mashup - Nature January 2006

35. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop34 New prototype services

36. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop35

37. British Library / JISC / UKOLN Workshop36 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

38. 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.