The Academic Information Environment

The Academic Information Environment “Discovery and Access: Standards and the Information Chain” JISC/ALSPS/Cross Ref Seminar: 7th December 2006 Joint Information Systems Committee Supporting education and research

Catherine Grout: JISC Programme Director : e-Content “We are drowning in information and starved of knowledge” (Anon)

Summary • Outline the JISC and the Academic Information Environment • New(er) trends on the Web • Background to the PALS metadata programme: how and why JISC is working in this area with partners in the Publishing industry

Ten Years Ago • What was the information environment like?:“The Internet is a shallow and unreliable electronic repository of dirty pictures, inaccurate rumours, bad spelling and worse grammar, inhabited largely by people with no demonstrable social skills. “(Chronicle of Higher Education April 1997) • “When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page. “(Bill Clinton (1946 - ), announcement of Next Generation Internet initiative, 1996 • Where are we going?...

What is the JISC Information Environment? • Defined in JISC 5 Year Strategy as“tobuild an on-line information environment providing secure and convenient access to a comprehensive collection of scholarly and educational material". • Set of programmes (with associated budgets) to explore approaches and develop shared infrastructure (including some pilot services) • Set of technical standards and technical model • Implications for all those who working the academic information chain • What is its purpose? • Now - we have a rich distributed network of diverse educational digital content • The Information Environment is needed to enable students and staff to access and use those resources in ways meaningful to them and to take away barriers • The Information Environment aims to allow discovery, access and use of resources for research and learning irrespective of their location

JISC Strategy

Supporting provision of diverse content metadata websites abstracts reference statistical data bibliographies Geospatial data still images catalogues citations sound E-journals moving images

The Vision • What is the problem? • Quality content is under utilised, staff and students in higher and further education are not getting most benefit from what is available • e-Resources are competing for attention in a cluttered space • Content for learning and research is coming from a wide range of sources- community created content is becoming increasingly important • Even for the committed user, time and effort is needed to navigate this space and find resources of interest • What is part of the solution? • A collaborative landscape of online service providers (public and commercial) working together to provide seamless access for users • Enabled by use of a common standards framework (both technical and semantic)

Information Environment Technical Architecture Preservation Common services Content Delivery Interoperability Interfaces

“Content is King and Linking is Queen” (Bill Gates) • This technical architecture meets existing and emerging standards for business to business applications as well as academic communication • This more seamless and multi channel environment is how things have developed on the web. Aggregation and multiple access points are the future • Deployment of key standards now will pay dividends further down the line • E.g. open standards can enable integration of resources with university platforms.. if it is not integrated with the local learning platform, library service, or institutional repository - will it be used? • Bottom line: adoption of IE Standards and Protocols can make publisher offerings more visible to users and also more attractive to information managers. • Makes it easier to build high quality services at an institutional level • Standards working behind the scenes make things easier to find could increase uptake and therefore increase demand

Moving with the tide • Although this activity is moving with the tide technically it still needs central investment to realise its potential • JISC therefore makes significant investment in technical development activities involving cutting edge work which may be considered “unviable” in the commercial sector • There is ongoing Investment to realise the vision in: common services, preservation, resource discovery, shared repository infrastructure – to make the IE happen • JISC works with partners to understand the potential of this area, what is practical and how and why different stakeholders might engage with this agenda • International collaboration ensures that JISC’s IE work is a part of the global networked environment

The Key Standards • Good description in 5 steps to becoming an Information Environment content provider:(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue33/info-environment) • Standards cover DISCLOSURE, SEARCH and ACCESS MANGEMENT • Step 1: Expose metadata about your contentfor distributed searching or harvesting (you can do both if you like!). OAI-MPH; Z39.50 • Step 2: Share news/alerts using RSS Repositories • Step 3 and 4: implement Open URL • Step 5: Use persistent URIs Also: • Provide institutions with user statistics in a standardised way (Counter) • Adopt JISC supported authentication standards (ATHENS to Shibboleth)

Web 2.0: popular trends.. • Important point is: working with the environments that users are accustomed to - technologies and standards to enable integration • These might be the organised world of the library, repository, or learning management system (VLE) - that has its challenges • However there is now a need to capitalise on the more “popular” ways of organising the web and exchanging personal and professional information • Personal publishing and exchange of content (BLOGs. youtube, Flickr) • Collaborative tools (Wikis etc.) • Annotation and categorisation (Folksonomies, social tagging, user annotation etc.) • These new trends offer opportunities and challenges • Big one is how will “my web space, with my book marks and my content” fit with more formal and mediated content. This is a challenge for libraries and publishers. • Standards can undoubtedly help but we’ll need to think creatively about how they are deployed

Web 2.0: technical trends • All about aggregating and disaggregating services as well as content • The layer behind what is “presented to the user” • You may have come across the word “Web Services” • Important acronyms are SOAP, UDDI, SOA and REST • Idea is a “service” (which may be a small component of a larger service) is made available on the network and this service makes how it works or its technical characteristics known though implementing standards • If you know these characteristics you can pick it up/communicate with it and combine it with other services to make THE Service you want for your users • Bit like building a range of different things with a Lego set • It’s a car, it’s a plane, it’s a robot (it depends how you combine the bricks). • There is important work to define these web services in Registries or Directories • This is how the e-Framework works • Like the Information Environment except covers the application layer (IE mainly e-framework research and e-learning applications like e-assessment for example)

Examples of Publishers working with the JISC IE • PALS metadata and interoperability projects (2 phases) • Phase 1: funded six projects in 2003 • Core areas: • Publisher and aggregator interoperability pilots, making metadata available using open standards (e.g. Z39.50, OAI, RSS, OpenURL and DOI or PURL) • Publisher initiative interoperability projects, looking to implement publisher originated standards and initiatives as part of the JISC Information Environment • The production of guidance and documentation to assist publishers with linking to JISC Information Environment development work. • Ideas developed and overseen by a working group of JISC community and publishers • Small scale short term projects co-funded by JISC and a range of Publishers

PALS metadata group members

PALS Metadata Phase 2 Projects • Similar aims: more tools and implementation focussed • explore the issues around presenting content from a range of sources by developing interoperability demonstrators • investigate the issues surrounding the integration of publisher-initiated standards into the JISC IE • develop tools and guidelines to simplify the effective adoption of metadata and interoperability standards • take forward rights expression standards, for example by building implementations of them in particular contexts or by mapping between them • AIMSS: Automating Ingest of Metadata on Serial Subscriptions • COUNTER Filter: Improving the Comparability of Usage Statistics • Dictate: Distributed Content Tagging Tool for EPrints • Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms: Specifying Publisher Tools and Library Benefits • Electronic Expression of Licensing Terms: XML Expression of a Publisher/Library Licence • metadata+: Machine Services for Metadata Discovery and Aggregation • Stargate: Static Repository Gateway and Toolkit • TOCRoSS: Table of Contents by Really Simple Syndication • TIME: E-books metadata and interoperability testbed

PALS Project Outcomes • Outcomes: • Tools, software, testbeds, reports and other documentation • This dissemination event and a synthesis website • Aimed at core stakeholders, publishers, aggregators, librarians, systems vendors, funding bodies • Identify what work might take place in the future and who needs to take what forward • Some follow up work already underway • Sense of common cause emerging: • All committed to developing standardised approaches to making metadata available, better presentation of e-resources, and uniting information across the supply chain • Common cause can be seen across Publisher standards bodies and activities and JISC development community • Much ongoing thinking about workflows and how information and metadata flows between different parties

A publisher view on the Information Environment work… “JISC's vision is definitely one of a web 2.0 future, and suggests that publishers need to focus strongly on building content and services suitable for these environments. Nature again provides good examples - it publishes blogs and databases (Signaling Gateway and Cell Migration Gateway) that encourage community interaction, a key tenet of Web 2.0. Using JISC funding and benefiting from insights gained through a range of projects will be very valuable for publishers making their way in the Web 2.0 world.” • JISC MAPS OUT THE WEB 2.0 ROAD AHEAD, 30/03/06, Kate Worlock, Director, Electronic Publishing Services

Aims of Today • Today is about understanding the implications of the PALS programme work, what might be done next and who needs to do it • JISC only works in areas where it feels it can add real value through central investment and where clear benefits accrue for the communities we serve • JISC may not always be the appropriate protagonist – we (generally) know our place • The JISC and its academic community are part of a broader information landscape composed of a variety of providers both public and commercial • Its important to work proactively to develop our vision and agenda and in partnership with others who are key to the process • We are keen to get disseminate the results of what we feel has been a successful programme and to get your views today of how the work can be deployed and where we go next.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING Catherine Grout c.grout@jisc.ac.uk Rachel Bruce r.bruce@jisc.ac.uk Leads on the development of the Information Environment For more information on the JISC plans for the Information Environment visit our website and click on the theme

The Academic Information Environment