Achieving Together What None Can Do Alone: Interoperability & Standards

1. Achieving Together What None Can Do Alone:Interoperability & Standards • Roy Tennant • California Digital Library • escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/2003cil/

2. Why I’m Talking About This • We are in the Golden Age of interoperability • Meanwhile, we have yet to tap its full potential • If we are about the free exchange of information and ideas, we should be interoperability experts • We should know how to do unique things while still being team players • We should understand that being interoperable does not mean cramping our style • We should understand the consequences of not being interoperable

3. The Power of Interoperability • The Internet could be the “poster child” for interoperability • Can you imagine a world without the Internet? • Can you imagine a world where anyone can find and gain access to any information they wish?

4. Interoperability • “The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged” — IEEE Computer Dictionary • The ability of disparate systems to work together • Think “components” or “building blocks” • Interoperability can be a way to achieve the benefits of centralization when centralization is not an option

5. Standards • The foundation of interoperability is standards • Prime example: The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) • Typical standard lifecycle: • Early draft • Early adopters/inescapably apparent • Solidification • Wide adoption/transparent • Eventual death or replacement

6. Actual vs. De Facto Standards • Actual standards are typically characterized by: • Open or semi-closed process • Organizational sponsorship • Formal agreements • Open documentation • Examples: MARC, HTTP • De facto standards are typically characterized by: • Closed process • Pervasive market share • Either proprietary or open documentation • Examples: PDF, Zip disks

7. Ways to Develop Standards • By Fiat/Market Share • MS Windows • Coooperatively, loosely managed • Dublin Core • Cooperatively, tightly managed • MARC • By Organizational Membership • HTML

8. Standards: When They’re Good • When they enable interoperability • When they enable efficiency (anecdote: sending email from ALA bus) • When they allow for useful flexibility without unduly harming interoperability • When they can be implemented with a minimum amount of pain • When they are codified at the right time

9. Standards: When They’re Bad • Too soon — stifles innovation • Too entrenched — stifles innovation • Example: MARC • When the wrong one wins • Example: VHS, MS Windows

10. Standards & Flexibility • An inflexible information standard is doomed to an early death • Flexibility is a tightrope — harm can come from being both too flexible as well as too inflexible • There must be a strategy and/or infrastructure to broker changes

11. Ways to Kill a Standard • Make it too complex (can you say “RDF”?) • Make a better one (can you say “Gopher”?) • Achieve greater market share (can you say “ISO’s OSI”?)

12. Principles of Standards • Know when to comply and when to deny • Standards compliance should not be misconstrued to be standards slavishness; i.e., internal compliance is not always important • Meant to be enabling and prescriptive, not prohibitive

13. MARC MODS METS Dublin Core ONIX XML HTML HTTP OAI TEI EAD Web Services The Librarian’s Repertoire

14. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/

15. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text

17. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

18. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile Userqueries MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

19. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile Search Results MODS record User requests book UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

20. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Javaservlet Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored User requestsbook segment Project Profile MODS record METS record in XML UC Press record XSLT Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

21. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Javaservlet Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored XSLT Project Profile Booksegmentreturned MODS record UC Press record Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

22. File System Encodedin TEIXML Stored Search Index Full Text Structure Search Index SelectedFieldsExtracted METSRepository RecordsCreated Stored Project Profile MODS record RecordsHarvested UC Press record ExternalSearch Servicee.g., OAIster Library Catalog UC PressDatabase

23. Standards Used & Supported Extensible Markup Language (XML)www.w3.org/xml/ Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) www.tei-org.org Archival Resource Key (ARK)www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-ark-05.txt Metadata Object Description Schema(MODS) www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ Metadata Encoding and Transfer Syntax (METS)www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ Dublin Corewww.dublincore.org Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)www.openarchives.org

24. Take Aways • Interoperability is good, even essential for libraries • Interoperability is built on standards • Standards compliance means external compliance, not necessarily internal • Modern information services must be more interoperable than they are now • Librarians are the right professionals to lead the way!