UK Repository SearchProject

Phase II Project Overview

Phil CrossVic LyteSeptember 2006

Phase II Proposal- Vision / Mission

Vision

• Expose the outputs of research, learning and teaching so that it is discoverable, visible and usable to the benefit of future UK research / Learning & Teaching Communities.

Mission

• To link repositories by the exploitation (and exploration) of available search / and discovery technologies in compliment with structured metadata approaches.

• Will be achieved over a 3-year period through three negotiated and planned iterations focussing on desired end-user and stakeholder benefits.

Phase II Proposal- Goals

To identify and develop:

• cross repository search, discovery, aggregation and retrieval from all HE and relevant UK repositories;

• exploration and resolution of issues relating to achieve full-text searching, discovery;

• achievable synergies between research and learning object repositories;

• opportunities from international and commercial collaboration in this area (UK / EU);

• scalable, flexible and secure search & discovery infrastructure / service supporting a number of stakeholder constituencies;

• agreed value-added personalisation features (JISC);

• ways in which the service can support / compliment allied programmes in achieving cultural acceptance and embedding into day-to-day Research Desktop environment;

• tools to develop metrics for cross-searching / support for research appraisal process;

• ‘Showcase’ for collective and collaborative UK research output.

Phase II Proposal- The Challenge & Complexities

Knowledge Management Context for Teaching / Researchers

KMS

• Where can I find…?

• What can help me?

• Who can help me?

• What do we know?

• What do I / we don’t know?

Simple Search Full-text Search Subject Classification Automated aggregation Concept matching Personalisation

Search paradigm Discovery Paradigm Meaning-based computing

Structured information Unstructured information

Phase II Proposal- Approach / 3 iterations

Iteration #1 will focus on:

• Detailed capture, analysis and management of scenario-based requirements (3/12);

– Teaching & Learning

– Research lifecycle support

– Supporting Teaching in Research

• Modelling and design activity;– Service in development

– Critical use cases

Scaling and deploying simple search functionality across the range of repositories;

Identify an approach to subject searching;

New web interface;

Upgrading technical architecture (?Cheshire III)

Phase II Proposal- Approach / 3 iterations

Iteration #2 will focus on:

• Agreeing prioritised requirements to implement in this iteration (critical use cases);

– L&T– Research lifecycle– Teaching in Research

• Elaborate / build activities to meet achievable requirements for extended functionality such as:

– personalisation and embedding features (i.e. SOA).

This will be constrained by dependencies on related technologies, projects and initiatives.

Phase II Proposal- Approach / 3 iterations

Iteration #3 will focus on:

• Elaboration of scenario-based requirements related to areas such as discovery, text-mining, aggregation dynamic taxonomies / ontology's and profiling (MBC);

• Establishing a feature mapping between all technologies available to the Project at that time against extended requirements derived from agreed critical use cases;

– Mature open source;

– Autonomy (IDOL), Google, Microsoft, BEA, Benchmarked cross-sector deployments;

– IBM Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA)

• Development of a Gap Analysis;

• Fully-costed Options Appraisal and recommendations for next-stage development priorities.

Phase II Proposal- Work Packages

Phase II Proposal- Interworking

Suggested areas:

• Subject searching - requirements gathering and exploration of feasible approaches at appropriate stage in the deposit to discovery lifecycle

• Links with international projects/initiatives - joint information gathering and setting up strategic alliances

• Advocacy - including sharing plans and approaches and findings, also joint events, conference papers, publicity materials i.e. very practical efficiency savings

• Standards - development and advocacy

• Repository landscape - making sense of it together in order to prioritize strategically and identify quick wins (e.g. prioritizing search targets)

• Lobbying repository search software suppliers for any changes to enhance the output of our projects e.g. adopting standards

• Sharing links and experiences of related work e.g. UK PubMed, DRIVER and sharing experience outputs relevant to other projects in the programme

Phase II Proposal- Stakeholders

• Next slides are hyperlinked annexes if needed as required - Vic

WP1 Extend demonstrator and specify optimal candidate architecture Lead Partner: Intute

This work package will follow on from the demonstrator work with the aim of consolidating what has been achieved in this phase in relation to evaluation and initial requirements. It will:

•establish the scope of the subsequent iterations/phases;•specify the technical development plan;•agree and detail the optimal physical and application development environment to support the Project;•identifying an approach to subject searching;•developing a new web interface;•extend the number of repositories searched;•upgrade the demonstrator technical architecture i.e. Cheshire 3 and new harvester.

Tasks: Obtain handover from demonstrator team - acceptance testing of demonstrator - planning events with partners to define above - set-up development server - establish development environment and tools.

Deliverables: Project website – updated project iteration plans - progress reports – technical headline report – scoping report – extended demonstrator.