Threats or Opportunities?

Resources in the New Information Landscape

William E. Moen<wemoen@unt.edu>

Texas Center for Digital KnowledgeSchool of Library and Information Sciences

University of North Texas

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Two areas of professional responsibility

Connect users to information Instruct users to use tools and resources

Both of these require awareness and knowledge of:

Available resources Information organization practices Tools to access those resources Standards and technologies used by the tools How the tools work

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What/how to expose? How to find?

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Evolving information landscape

Order of the book is over Fewer formal structures that serve as

gatekeepers, filters, etc. for what’s available Does not mean authoritative and credible

information is not available Maybe it’s in different places Maybe it looks a bit different

Our users are finding it – so what is our role?

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The library’s diminishing market share

Think in terms of value-added services What value do we add that save potential users time,

money, effort, etc?

We have valuable resources but are users using them?

Library catalog is being bypassed Large allocation of budget for commercially provided

resource (licensed databases, etc.)

We make users use our systems that are not easy to use

Think of the various interfaces of the licensed databases Are we driving them away?

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Exposing/Finding Option 1

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What happens if Google …

Acquires or licenses for global access key commercial information resources

Indexes the resources Provides single, easy to use search interface

to all those resources Charges $10/month for users to have access

to all of that

Who will use our hard-to-use resources with all those different interfaces?

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The Networked Information Landscape According to Google

LicensedDatabases

WorldCat

DigitizedBooks

Google

Open Web

DigitalRepositories

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Exposing/Finding Option 2

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New resources and tools

Repository applications Metadata harvesting and building collections Metasearch to reduce access barriers

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What are repositories?

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Repository types

Digital repository (sort of a generic term) Image repository

(e.g., http://pro.corbis.com/) Learning objects repository

(e.g., http://careo.ucalgary.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CAREO.woa?theme=careo)

Data repository (e.g.,http://www.public.asu.edu/~huanliu/DHub/bioinformatics.html)

Institutional repository (e.g., http://txspace.tamu.edu/)

Differentiated by Types of objects Types of metadata Purpose …

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Repositories – The technical side

Database component Metadata component Search and browsing component Web interface component Submission component Administration component …

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Institutional repositories

A repository application: Preserve and provide access to the intellectual output of

an institutionCrow, Raym. The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC

Position Paper. 2002 A set of services that a university offers to the members

of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members

Lynch Clifford A. Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age. 2003

Characterized by: Organizational commitment to long-term

stewardship Open access

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Characteristics of IRs

Institutionally defined rather than subject-based repository

Web-based system for storage of and access to scholarly material

Long-term stewardship of intellectual assets Support the process of scholarly

communication Open and interoperable

Mark Ware Consulting Ltd. Pathfinder Research on Web-based Repositories: Final Report.2004

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Potential contents for IRs

Pre-prints and post-prints Technical reports, working papers Theses & dissertations Books or chapters of books Conference proceedings Presentations Sound and video files Digital research materials( e.g. simulations,

code) …

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Cornell Repository

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Texas A&M Repository

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Texas A&M

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Texas A&M

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Metadata – The key

Boundaries between information communities are porous

The world will not be made up of MARC Many metadata schemes:

To describe and manage resources Provide structured representations of the resources that

can be processed by machines Serving needs of different information communities

Typically using Extended Markup Language (XML) Syntax for encoding metadata for exchange and reuse

“I've often said librarians should like any metadata they see.” (R. Tennant)

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Dempsey’s acronymic density or

Metadata schemes: DC, MODS, CDWA, VRA, etc.

Metadata content standards AACR, CCO, DACS, etc.

Metadata encoding standards: MARC, XML, RDF, etc.

Metadata container/wrapper standards: METS, MPEG, etc.

Discipline specific metadata schemes: GILS, CSDGMI, GEM, IEEE-LOM, etc.

Other schemes of interest: TEI, EAD, etc.

…this is the present future!!

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Extending the visibility – OAI-PMH

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

http://www.openarchives.org/

http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html

Defines a protocol for harvesting metadata from repositories

Partitions the world into: Data providers Service providers

Uses Dublin Core Metadata Element Set as standard metadata representation for exchange

Uses XML for exchanging the metadata records

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OAI architecture

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Harvesting metadata

From: http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/

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OAIster

A union catalog of digital resources Contains nearly 11,000,000 records

describing freely-available and restricted-access digital resources

Uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

Harvests the descriptive metadata (records) and makes those searchable

Currently harvesting from over 700 digital repositories

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OAIster results: library reference services

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Metasearch (or federated search)

Single search interface Concurrent searching of two or more

resources Uses various technologies

Standards such as Z39.50 information retrieval protocol; Search and Retrieve Web Service

Proprietary Connectors (e.g., WebFeat, Muse Global)

Screen scraping (not a good idea!) Helps users get started discovering

resources

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Exposing/Finding Option 3

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Exposing/Finding Option 4

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Exposing/Finding Option 5

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Index Data Master Key (prototype)

Enables efficient metasearching of hundreds of databases at the same time

Uses Z39.50, SRU/W, or proprietary protocols Open-source-based alternative to proprietary, closed-source

metasearch alternatives. Supports:

on-the-fly merging relevance-ranking sorting by arbitrary data elements facets for limiting result sets by subject, author, etc.

Current demo searches open web resources OAIster Open Directory Wikipedia Open Content Alliance

Can be used for metasearching of catalogs, commercial dbs, etc.

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MasterKey

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Challenges and opportunities

A good reference librarian: Assesses resources Knows how to access the resources Understands how the resources are organized Helps users understand information needs Helps users learn to assess and access

And now needs to: Understand new technologies underlying important new

resources Understand new organizational schemes (i.e., metadata

beyond MARC) Provide new value-added services to use new resources Help build new virtual collections to serve users

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References Institutional Repositories. Roy Tennant. 2002

http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA242297&publication=libraryjournal

Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age. Clifford A. Lynch. 2003

http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html OAI-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

http://www.openarchives.org/http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html

OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum online tutorialhttp://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/

OAIster.org http://www.oaister.org/

Index Data Master Key http://mkey.indexdata.com/demo/

Z39.50 and Search and Retrieve Web Service (SRU/SRW) http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/ http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/

For a copy of this presentation, go to: http://www.unt.edu/wmoen