Building Bridges: steps towards a seamless information environment

1. Building Bridges:steps towards a seamless information environment Paul Miller Interoperability Focus UK Office for Library & Information Networking (UKOLN) P.Miller@ukoln.ac.uk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN is funded by the Library and Information Commission, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the Universities of Bath and Hull where staff are based.

2. Standard solutions The nice thing about standards… …is that there are so many to choose from!

3. Standard solutions

4. So… why use standards? • Benefit from the expertise of others • Standards are (often!) compiled by groups of very knowledgeable people… and you can’t afford to employ them all yourself… • Enforce rigour in internal practices • Standards are means of asserting control over the resource, allowing you to manage it more effectively • Facilitate interoperability (and access) • Museums hold their resources ‘in trust’ • Considered deployment of standard solutions makes access to those resources feasible for many • A virtual museum for the works of Da Vinci?.

5. What do standards do? • Help identify what’s important • CIMI’s “Access Points” • Mandatory fields • Allow for consistent use of terminology • Name Authority Files • Thesauri • Look–up tables • Enable internal and external data exchange • Reduce duplication of effort • Minimise (hopefully!) wasted effort • Reflect consensus.

6. What types of standard are there? • Terminology • ‘Roma’, not ‘Rome’ • ‘Roma’ is preferred to ‘Rome’ • Format • ‘Miller, A.P. 1971–’, not ‘Paul Miller’ • Discovery/ Semantics/ DBMS • A gross simplification, and a very big bucket • ‘Creator’, ‘Subject’, ‘Title’, ‘Description’… • Syntax • <RDF xmlns = “http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax#”> • Transfer • ftp://ftp.niso.org/… .

7. What is ‘Metadata’? • meaningless jargon • ora fashionable, and terribly misused, term for what we’ve always done • or“a means of turning data into information” • and“data about data” • andthe name of an author (‘William Golding’) • andthe title of a book (‘the Smithsonian’).

8. Introducing the Dublin Core • An attempt to improve resource discovery on the Web • now adopted more broadly • Building an interdisciplinary consensus about a core element set for resource discovery • simple and intuitive • cross–disciplinary — not just libraries!! • international • open and consensual • flexible. See http://purl.org/dc/

9. Introducing the Dublin Core • 15 elements of descriptive metadata • All elements optional • All elements repeatable • The whole is extensible • offers a starting point for semantically richer descriptions • Interdisciplinary • libraries, government, museums, archives… • International • available in more than 20 languages, with more on the way...

10. Introducing the Dublin Core • Title • Creator • Subject • Description • Publisher • Contributor • Date • Type • Format • Identifier • Source • Language • Relation • Coverage • Rights http://purl.org/dc/

11. Introducing XML • eXtensible Markup Language • World Wide Web Consortium recommendation • Simplified subset of SGML for use on Web • Addresses HTML’s lack of evolvability • Easily extended • Supported by major vendors • Increasingly used as a transfer syntax, but capable of far more…. See http://www.w3.org/XML/

12. Introducing RDF • Resource Description Framework • W3C Recommendation • Fully compliant application of XML • Improves upon XML, HTML, PICS… • Machine understandable metadata! • Supports structure • Increasing interest See http://www.w3.org/RDF/ See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/ dc/datamodel/WD–dc–rdf/

13. Introducing Z39.50 • North American Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.50–1995 [version 3]) • International Standard (ISO 23950) • Originally library–centric • Permits remote searching of databases • Access via Z client or over web • Relies upon ‘Profiles’ • CIMI profile for cultural heritage • GEO profile for Geospatial data. See http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/

14. Z39.50 Challenges • Profiles for each discipline • Defeats interoperability? • Vendor interpretation of the standard • Bib–1 bloat • Largely invisible to the user • Seen as complicated • Seen as expensive • Seen as old–fashioned • Surely no match for XML/RDF/ whatever.

15. Getting involved… • Cultural Heritage bodies • Already produce excellent standards within the community (SPECTRUM, CIDOC reference model…) • Collaborate with broader initiatives • CIMI produced a standard for Cultural Heritage information and Z39.50 (the CIMI Profile), now before ISO • Dublin Core used by CIMI, AMOL, AHDS, AMICO, and others • Good cultural heritage representation on committees • Rights Management issues from the music/film/book publishing sphere very relevant to museums • Have a great deal in common with libraries, archives and others.

16. Some pointers • Interoperability Focus • http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/ • ‘Interoperability’ Mailing List • http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/interoperability/ • Dublin Core • http://purl.org/dc/ • W3C • http://www.w3.org/ • Z39.50 • http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/