The Bath Profile: making Z39.50 interoperable

1. The Bath Profile: making Z39.50 interoperable Paul Miller UKOLN P.Miller@ukoln.ac.uk Carrol Lunau National Library of Canada Carrol.Lunau@nlc-bnc.ca 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. What’s wrong with Z39.50? • Profiles for each discipline • Defeats interoperability? • Vendor interpretation of the standard • Bib–1 bloat • Largely invisible to the user • Seen as complicated, expensive and old–fashioned • Surely no match for XML/RDF/ whatever. See http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/

3. The Bath Profile • Vendors and systems implement areas of the Z39.50 standard differently • Regional, National, and disciplinary Profiles have appeared over previous years, many of which have basic functions in common • Users wish to search across national/regional boundaries, and between vendors. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

4. Learning from the past • The Bath Profile is heavily influenced by • ATS–1 • CENL • DanZIG • MODELS • ONE • Z Texas • vCUC. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

5. Learning from the past See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

6. Doing the work • ZIP–PIZ–L mailing list, hosted by National Library of Canada • Meeting face–to–face • JISC supported a face–to–face meeting in Bath (UK) over the summer of 1999 • A draft was widely circulated for comment • Profile presented at DC7 in Frankfurt • Open Concertation day in the UK • Discussion and feedback world–wide See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/ activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

7. Makx Dekkers PricewaterhouseCoopers/ EC Janifer Gatenby GEAC Juha Hakala National Library of Finland Poul Henrik Joergensen Danish Library Centre Carrol Lunau National Library of Canada Paul Miller UKOLN Slavko Manojlovich SIRSI/ Memorial University of Newfoundland Bill Moen University of North Texas Judith Pearce National Library of Australia Joe Zeeman CGI. Doing the work See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/ activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

8. What we proposed • Minimisation of ‘defaults’ • Where possible, every attribute is defined in the Profile (Use, Relation, Position, Structure, Truncation, Completeness) • Three Functional Areas • Basic Bibliographic Search & Retrieval • Bibliographic Holdings Search & Retrieval • Cross–Domain Search & Retrieval • Three Levels of Conformance in each Area. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

9. What we proposed • Basic Bibliographic Search & Retrieval • Level 0 • Author, Title, Subject, ‘Any’ • Level 1 • Author, Title, Subject, Standard Identifier, Date of Publication, ‘Any’ • (including more exact ATS searches) • Scan. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

10. What we proposed • Bibliographic Holdings Search & Retrieval • Level 0 • Holdings info embedded in the record, etc. • Level 1 • Access to Locations, Summary Information and Holdings Count. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

11. What we proposed • Cross–Domain Search & Retrieval • Level 0 • Creator, Title, Subject, ‘Any’ • Level 1 • Creator, Title, Subject, Standard Identifier, Date of Publication, ‘Any’ • (including more exact ATS searches). See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

12. What we proposed • SUTRS and one of UNIMARC or MARC21 for Bibliographic Search results • All three at Level 1 (for Targets) • SUTRS and Dublin Core (in XML) for Cross–Domain results • Other record syntaxes also permitted, but conformant tools must support at least these. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/z3950/int_profile/bath/

13. Finishing it off… • Consolidate comments, and revise where necessary • Direct approaches to international vendors • User testing in Canada and Texas • ZIG meeting this week • ISO Internationally Recognised Profile status during 2000 • Addition of Functional Areas and Levels of Conformance as required. See http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/texas/texas.html

14. And now for a quick case study… The United Kingdom’s DNER

15. The D… N… what? • Distributed National Electronic Resource • Policy aspiration of the Joint Information Systems Committee • Intended to provide greater access to JISC’s Current Content Collection • RDN • AHDS • MIMAS/ EDINA/ Data Archive • EDUSERVE • COPAC • eLib projectsetc. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html

16. Building the DNER • Construction of various Portals to facilitate user–centric access • ‘JISC Portal’ ? • Data Centre Portals (EDINA, MIMAS…) • Subject Portals (the RDN, etc.) • Data Type Portals (images, movies, sound…) • Institutional Portals (a Hybrid Library?) • Personal Portals (Paul’s web!) • Also providing other access to discrete resources. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html

17. Building the DNER But how can we link these services together? At the moment, Z39.50 is seen as the only feasible mechanism across the range of services JISC wish to offer. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html

18. Building the DNER • Remaining challenges • Authentication hell • Move from endless authentication to single authentication • Alignment of different data types • Ordnance Survey maps at Edinburgh • Satellite imagery in Manchester • Electronic journal articles in many formats, etc. • Census data at the Data Archive • Survey data in Manchester • Chemical structures in Manchester • Collection Level Description.