IESR Progress Report, July 2004
Summary
- Title of project: Information Environment Service Registry
- Project Manager: Amanda Hill
- Lead Institution: University of Manchester
- Project Partners: UKOLN, University of Liverpool
- Duration of Award: Jan 2004-Feb 2005
- Period of Report: Feb 2004-Jul 2004
1. Grant Statement
I confirm that the project development is being conducted under the terms agreed in the initial contract with JISC.
2. Aims and Objectives
There have been no changes to the overall aims and objectives outlined in the project plan. These were the following:
- a. Software development
- b. Content expansion
- c. Evaluation
- d. Dissemination
The aims of the project remain the same, but there has been a delay in the area of software development, which means that some of the targets for this reporting period have not been met. This was due to the unavoidable absence of the project's principal developer for a period of two months. A further consequence of this delay was that the expansion of content has not yet been possible (as the data entry/editing interface is not yet available). The development timetable has had to be adjusted, with two tasks being postponed into any future phase. These are the proposed alerting service when new records are added and the automatic supply and updating of IESR descriptions.
3. Overall Approach
There have not been any changes to the overall approach of the project.
4. Project Outputs
The IESR has been populated with the all the data received in the pilot phase of the project. This has involved developing software to convert some supplied data from Excel files into XML. At 31 July 2004 there were 258 collection descriptions in the registry, 307 service descriptions and 172 agent descriptions, giving information about the owners and administrators of the services.
A prototype Meta-Registry has been developed to control data entry and update of the IESR. This has enabled improvements to the registry's web interface to provide browsing of the descriptions.
Processing of the logging of all web and Z39.50 access to the registry to generate monthly statistics, displayed as web pages, has been implemented. These allow the project team to analyse use of the service.
Procedures for checking the availability of Z39.50 targets and OAI repositories have been introduced.
The metadata for the project has undergone a thorough review. The IESR-specific metadata properties are now defined within an IESR terms namespace, these definitions no longer being part of the Application Profile. All the documentation has been updated to reflect the changes that have been made. The application and data entry software have also been updated. The review included updating the mapping from the IESR metadata to the simple Dublin Core generated by the Z39.50 interface, and this has been implemented. A preliminary mapping from IESR metadata to simple Dublin Core for the OAI-PMH interface has been defined in preparation for its development.
The project has been assigned its own internet domain name: iesr.ac.uk. This ensures uniqueness of all identifiers assigned by IESR based on that domain name, and all metadata terms defined in the IESR namespace. All software and web links have been updated to use this domain name.
Contact has been made with a variety of potential users of the IESR, and work will begin in the next few months on testing machine access to the system.
Work on dissemination has been an important aspect of work in this reporting period, as the IESR has entered a more mature phase. This is covered in more detail in section 18 below.
5. Project Outcomes
The main outcomes for this project will be demonstrating use of the IESR by other systems, which will be an important part of the work of the team in the next reporting period. Interest in the progress of the project has been strong. The project team has co-operated with a number of other studies. These include the NISO Metasearch Initiative (http://www.niso.org/committees/MS_initiative.html), which is investigating standards for cross-searching. The Institutional Profiling and Terms and Conditions Study, funded by the JISC, has recommended that the IESR would be a suitable repository for information about some institutional services, such as library OPACs and OpenURL resolvers.
There has also been IESR involvement with the JISC-funded Sustainability Study, which has been looking at business models for the IESR and Join-Up projects, and with the CC-Interop project, which has investigated mapping collection-level descriptions from the Scone database into IESR form and has made some recommendations in regard to the IESR metadata. Leigh Morris has also been collaborating with the Frameworks Scoping Study, also funded by the JISC, which is developing a model of activities across the teaching, learning and research arenas. Ann Apps has been involved in the creation of a JISC-funded report into Digital Object Identifiers for the publishing and e-learning communities (http://dx.doi.org/10.1786/430153514841).
Ann Apps has provided input to the JISC Technical Standards Guidelines project, particularly in the areas of identifiers and reference linking. Some UKOLN staff have also been involved in this project. These guidelines will recommend that all significant collections and services made available by JISC funded activities should de described according to IESR specifications. (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=stds_gd_top).
There is an increasing interest in the use of web services, particularly in the area of e-learning. It is probable that the IESR will have a role to play in describing these services.
6. Stakeholder Analysis
Stakeholders of the IESR have been kept up to date with progress on the project via the iesr-stakeholders list at JISCmail. Contact has been maintained with contributors of data, and the project team have established links with a number of potential users of the service. These include the Subject Portals Project; the EEVL news feed service; Metalib by Ex Libris; Talis; and the Economic and Social Research Council Information Centre team. The Joint Programme meeting at Brighton in July 2004 was a useful event for raising awareness of potential users in the JISC community.
Rob Sanderson and Pete Johnston are both involved in the NISO Metasearch Initiative work (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/niso-mi), on the task groups investigating collection description and search and retrieval. Pete and Andy Powell have also been discussing service registries with members of the UK Grid Engineering Task Force (http://tyne.dl.ac.uk/ETF/public/Registry/index.shtml), who are interested in integrating their efforts with the work funded by the JISC.
Several project staff attended the Collection Description Schema Forum in February. A presentation by the Collection Description Focus staff from UKOLN surveyed the use of RSLP Collection Description terms within various projects including IESR. Pete Johnston gave a progress report on the work of the Dublin Core Collection Description Working Group. Ann Apps has been an active participant in this group and has been feeding some of the IESR experience into their discussions.
Ann Apps and Leigh Morris attended the Pan-European Portals Conference (PEPC2004) in Nottingham in July, including a presentation (see section 18) and exhibition of IESR, again raising awareness of potential users internationally.
7. Risk Analysis
As mentioned above, the main problem with progress in this phase of the project has been the absence of a key team member. This has meant that some software development tasks have been removed from this phase of the project.
Another factor which will affect the project in the next reporting period is the transfer of the IESR, and many other MIMAS services, to new hardware platforms. This will take a proportion of the time of project team members at MIMAS.
8. Standards
There have been no large scale changes in the standards to be used.
Following the metadata review, a few collection description terms were changed to bring them in line with terms from Dublin Core Collections Application Profile that have been endorsed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Also it was decided that Vcard was not appropriate for describing agent organisations. Thus IESR now describes agents according to a bespoke scheme, mainly based on Dublin Core.
The OAI-PMH interface under development will support OAI-PMH version 2.0. As part of that development an OpenURL 'link-to' resolver interface will be implemented for retrieval of single IESR entities. This will support a subset of OpenURL version 1.0, including the experimental simple Dublin Core metadata format.
Because IESR is a research and development project it is proving standards in some areas. For example IESR had to use application specific metadata properties for some items because there were not suitable standard terms available. The JISC Technical Standards Guidelines will recommend that all significant collections and services made available by JISC funded activities should de described according to IESR specifications.
9. Technical Development
The underlying software platform, Cheshire II, and the development approach remain unchanged.
Future software will be developed using C++, with XML parsing by OpenSP. Previously software was developed using OmniMark, which is XML aware, to expedite rapid development, because of existing expertise and the availability of a historical free licence. Use of a costly proprietary language no longer seems appropriate.
10. Intellectual Property Rights
All descriptions held within the IESR are subject to a Creative Commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/. Data providers implicitly agree to this licence when supplying the data.
11. Project Partners
The project partners remain the same.
12. Project Management
Pete Dowell has joined the team to undertake the UKOLN research package on using UDDI as a mechanism for delivering IESR information.
As detailed above in section 2, the absence of the project developer for two months has delayed some of the planned work.
13. Programme Support
The Joint Programme meeting at Brighton in July 2004 was a very useful event in bringing the project team together with potential users of the IESR. However, it might be useful to hold a technical forum or a separate technical track to such meetings, to address some of the technical issues involved in providing services within the JISC IE.
One area in which the project would benefit from more guidance from the programme is in the development of an inclusion policy for the IESR. This would help define the scope of the registry more precisely, and would assist the team in expanding the range of content held within the registry. This will be increasingly important in the next reporting period.
14. Budget
There has been no significant overspend or underspend in this reporting period.
15. Workpackages
The tasks scheduled for this reporting period are listed below. Those that have not yet been completed have been affected by the two-month delay in the project's development timetable. Task 5.4 is an area which requires further discussion with the JISC.
| Task Number | Task | Complete |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | Metadata review | Yes |
| 2.2 | Devise XML Schema | No |
| 3.1 | Populate IESR | Yes |
| 3.2 | Provision of OAI interface | No |
| 3.3 | Provision of editing interface | No |
| 5.1 | Data checking | Yes |
| 5.2 | Maintain data creation guidelines | Yes |
| 5.3 | Contact potential content providers | No |
| 5.4 | Devise data inclusion policies | No |
| 6.1 | Liaise with potential users | Yes |
| 6.2 | Test the IESR | No |
| 6.3 | Produce guidelines for users | No |
| 8 | Dissemination | Yes (see section 18 below) |
Objectives for the next reporting period (in addition to those carried over from the table above) are listed below:
| Task Number | Task |
|---|---|
| 2.3 | Further metadata review |
| 4.2 | Cheshire documentation |
| 4.3 | Availability checking |
| 7.1 | Research into UDDI |
| 8.4 | Run workshops for stakeholders |
| 9.2 | Report on stakeholders' requirements |
| 9.3 | Evaluate IESR against project proposal |
16. Evaluation Plan
Phase two of the IESR will be evaluated by UKOLN against the project's plan in the next reporting period.
17. Quality Assurance Plan
Procedures for checking the descriptions in the IESR are being implemented. Some are automated as part of the data loading procedure (making sure that mandatory fields are completed, for example). The descriptions within the IESR are also manually checked for their compliance with the data creation guidelines.
All XML data generated, both before input to the registry and as output from the registry, is parsed for correctness against an XML DTD. This currently uses the OmniMark XML parser but will be migrated to use the OpenSP XML parser (see section 9).
No formal software development process or software verification method is used at any stage (design, coding, testing). But best efforts are made to ensure the software performs to requirements before release. The IESR testing module (task 6.2) will effectively provide acceptance testing of the software.
18. Dissemination Plan
Dissemination has formed an important area of activity for the project team in this reporting period. In terms of its web presence, the IESR has a new URL. The website can now be found at http://iesr.ac.uk. In the next reporting period the IESR website will be re-designed using cascading style sheets, to present a more streamlined appearance to users of the website.
The list below details the dissemination activities of the project team in this reporting period. Ann Apps's paper for DC2004 was one of only ten full papers to be accepted for this high-profile conference.
- 'The JISC Information Environment Service Registry', June 2004 briefing paper by Pete Johnston for the Collection Description Focus (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/briefings/bp3/)
- Demonstration at the JISC Joint Programme Meeting in Brighton, 7 July 2004
- 'The JISC Information Environment Service Registry: Providing a Catalogue of Resources for Portals' : a presentation by Ann Apps at the Pan-European Portals Conference in Nottingham, 18-19 July 2004 (extended abstract and PowerPoint slides available at http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/papers/appspepc2004.html)
- 'The Information Environment Service Registry: promoting the use of electronic resources': article by Amanda Hill in Ariadne, issue 40, July 2004 (http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue40/hill/)
Forthcoming:
- 'Developing an invisible service: the Information Environment Service Registry' : a presentation by Amanda Hill at Digital Resources in the Humanities, September 2004 (abstract available at http://drh2004.ncl.ac.uk/abstract.php?abstract=94)
- 'A Registry of Collections and their Services: from Metadata to Implementation' : a paper by Ann Apps, to be presented at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications - DC2004, Shanghai, China, 11-14 October 2004 (self-archived version of full paper available from http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/papers/appsdc2004.html)
- Workshops for potential users and contributors to the IESR will be held during the next reporting period for the project.
19. Sustainability Plan
The project team have been involved in the JISC's Sustainability Study, which focused on the IESR and the Join-Up projects. As a 'proof-of-concept' project, the IESR has not yet developed a sustainability plan.
Amanda Hill, July 2004