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Benefits of Using IESR

There are various benefits of using IESR, to resource providers, application developers and end users. Of course there are also disadvantages and hindrances to use, and these need to be addressed by promotions of IESR.

Benefits

  • Single place for discovery of resources in the JISC Information Environment
  • Single place to publish / advertise resources
  • Dynamic use by a portal or similar application:
    • Portal builder doens't need to know beforehand about all resources available
    • More resources come on line as they are registered in IESR
    • Users can potentially discover useful resources that they were unaware of
  • Static use by an application developer (SOAP use has to be static and others will prefer this option because simpler):
    • Discovery of service technical details to access resources
    • A possible enhancement of IESR may be to include more details of how to use a service, eg by encouraging a contributor to augment their 'service help' page
    • Other possible enhancements could be to provide a "developers' corner" where they could share experiences of using particular services
  • Surfaces hidden content - the long tail of Web 2.0
  • Increased use of resources
  • Provides a single 'official' text description (the 'description' part of the resource record) that can be used elsewhere, possibly with some repurposing or augmentation
  • IESR metadata schema is in use internationally and is based on the DCMI Collections Application Profile (as is the NISO Collection Description Schema). Thus IESR metadata is interoperable with similar registries.

Hindrances to Use

  • Concerns about persistency of the data because of the short-term funding of IESR. [Mimas agree that if funding for IESR ceases, they will maintain the IESR website, data and application in a steady state. And data will be supplied back to Contributors on their request.]
  • Concerns about data currency and maintenance - is it up-to-date? [IESR has processes in place to ask Contributors to review and update their data at intervals. This process needs to be further enforced with out-of-date data being marked as 'deprecated'. Contributors need to understand the importance of keeping their records current.]
  • Lack of resources registered. [There are now many more resources registered in IESR, and this is increasing. But it is true that there is a deficiency in machine-to-machine services which prohibits the middleware use of IESR that was initially intended. Possibly there needs to be encouragement by JISC and other funders to provide m2m services to access resources.]
  • Lack of appropriate resources registered. [Interested potential users could suggest to IESR the type or subject of resources they would wish to use.]
  • Lack of m2m interfaces in the JISC Information Environment and hence in IESR. [There needs to be encouragement by JISC and other funders to provide m2m services to access resources.]
  • "Not made here". [This issue needs to be addressed by promotion of IESR by funding bodies as well as IESR staff.]
  • An application already has a local registry, or there is a mismatch between an application's data requirements and what IESR provides (data fields or coverage). [An application could use information from IESR to part-populate its own registry.]
  • Lack of understanding of middleware makes IESR difficult to explain to potential users. People do not think beyond end users clicking on web pages. [IESR is still visionary. Demonstrators are needed to show its potential.]

27 October 2008