1. Alexandria Digital Library Project Building a Distributed Geospatial Library Greg Janée gjanee@alexandria.ucsb.edu where we are now where we’re going what we’re facing Additional text in “Notes” view

2. Alexandria Digital Library Project 2 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Goals o Digital library for georeferenced information  distributed, autonomous nodes  heterogeneous  rich services  scalable –many providers –collections, large and small o Standard components, interfaces

3. Alexandria Digital Library Project 3 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 The big picture map background imagery, layering capability gazetteer maps placenames to locations item collection collection registry collection-level search library item-level search, metadata management content data access thesaurus shared vocabularies *many interconnections between services* collection item

4. Alexandria Digital Library Project 4 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Library server middleware access control; query fan-out; query result caching & ranking collection referencing & registration client interface (XML / Java,HTTP,RMI) collection interface (XML / Java) harvest loader metadata mapper item tracker internal collections generic database driver Z39.50 driver proxy driver collection aggregator user interface

5. Alexandria Digital Library Project 5 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Issues 1. Finding the right participation model I have a collection o’ stuff, how do I join ADL? 2. Providing a complete solution I’m a map library, I want a library-in-a-box 3. Gaining adoption How do I add spatial searching to my DL? 4. Simple, effective spatial searching I want spatial search but I’m cheap and lazy

6. Alexandria Digital Library Project 6 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Participation via database mapping o Assumes a relational database of metadata o Collection described as a view of the database o ADL provides  template-based report generator  mapping language  extensible library of composable mapping components (“paradigms”)  offline software package to generate collection statistics ADL node RDBMS provider view config

7. Alexandria Digital Library Project 7 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Sample paradigms o Spatial  Informix Geodetic blade  4 box coordinates o Temporal  begin, end dates  single integer year o Hierarchical  integer codes w/ code ancestor relationships  constant o Textual  SQL LIKE substring matching  Verity text engine  IIT SIRE o Numeric, Identification,... o Field adaptors  qualification  union  concatenation  constant

8. Alexandria Digital Library Project 8 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 A bucket mapping "subject-related-text" : UT.Bucket("textual", UT.standardTextualOperators, P.Adaptor_Concatenation( { "tag:sio.ucsd.edu:sioexplorer/nsdl_mif_dbc/subject" : P.Textual_LikeSubstring( "nsdl.nsdl_mif_dbc", "identifier", "subject", UT.Cardinality("1"), P.TextUtils.mappings. uppercaseAlphanumericOthersToWhitespace, P.TextUtils.deleteLists.keepAll, "UPPER"), "tag:sio.ucsd.edu:sioexplorer/subject-keywords" : P.Textual_Constant( "nsdl.nsdl_mif_dbc", "identifier", UT.Cardinality("1"), ["oceanographic data", "Stephen’s baby"])...

9. Alexandria Digital Library Project 9 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 A bucket mapping "subject-related-text" : UT.Bucket("textual", UT.standardTextualOperators, P.Adaptor_Concatenation( { "tag:sio.ucsd.edu:sioexplorer/nsdl_mif_dbc/subject" : P.Textual_LikeSubstring( "nsdl.nsdl_mif_dbc", "identifier", "subject", UT.Cardinality("1"), P.TextUtils.mappings. uppercaseAlphanumericOthersToWhitespace, P.TextUtils.deleteLists.keepAll, "UPPER"), "tag:sio.ucsd.edu:sioexplorer/subject-keywords" : P.Textual_Constant( "nsdl.nsdl_mif_dbc", "identifier", UT.Cardinality("1"), ["oceanographic data", "Stephen’s baby"])...

10. Alexandria Digital Library Project 10 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Database mapping: an assessment o What’s good  data stays close to provider  collection-as-DB-view parallels real-world funding situation –nobody is paid to be an ADL node o What’s bad  high bar –must have database, good metadata, reasonable data modeling, appropriate indexes  complex configuration –multiple, different representations of same info –requires superhuman diligence  complex software –generic query translator  compiler

11. Alexandria Digital Library Project 11 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Participation via metadata transfer o Database is internal to ADL o “Universal” schema  supports all buckets, bucket types  automates all indexing, bucket mappings, collection statistics  enforces collection policies o Provider supplies metadata  entire XML documents  via OAI or otherwise o Mapping to ADL metadata views (bucket, browse, access) still required, but...  simpler, higher-level  no duplication metadata provider config ADL node RDBMS mapper

12. Alexandria Digital Library Project 12 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Issue 2: providing a complete solution o ADL provides:  discovery o Missing:  ingest, editing tools  management of... –metadata –data –data services ...and synchronization of the above  workflow o A reasonable goal (?):  ADL provides complete map library solution

13. Alexandria Digital Library Project 13 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Issue 3: gaining adoption o Adoption by other DLs has been difficult  features (spatial search, buckets) not separable from architecture  nobody understands buckets anyway o The world speaks Dublin Core  we don’t  close doesn’t count

14. Alexandria Digital Library Project 14 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Adoption strategies o New, compelling reasons to use ADL!  harvesting automates collection building  metadata mapping will support qualified Dublin Core o Our proposal to NSDL/CI:  “search semantics” profile for qualified DC  generic search framework that supports –typed searches –over federated search services

15. Alexandria Digital Library Project 15 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Issue 4: design philosophy o “The right thing”  1 : interface simplicity, correctness, consistency  2 : implementation simplicity, completeness o “Worse is better”  1 : implementation simplicity  2 : interface simplicity  3 : correctness, consistency  4 : completeness  exemplified by Unix, C (Richard Gabriel, early ‘90s)

16. Alexandria Digital Library Project 16 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Our approach o We have the “right” interfaces  searching based on continuous geodetic coordinates  complex spatial representations (polygons, polylines,...)  gazetteer (content & protocol) provides mapping to names  simple! o But... implementation is very difficult  polygons, etc. make life difficult at all levels  polygons require $$$ 3 rd -party software  client integration with gazetteer is difficult  still don’t have a usable gazetteer

17. Alexandria Digital Library Project 17 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Other approaches o We pay a big price for our approach  spatial search was motivator for typed metadata  typed metadata is responsible for much of complexity o Might other approaches be equally effective?  simplified spatial models, e.g., boxes only  other coordinate systems (discrete, coded,...)  cataloging against fixed gazetteer w/ topological relationships

18. Alexandria Digital Library Project 18 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Summary o Future directions  simpler participation model  collection-level discovery  remote deployment  NSDL/CI o Legacy  production-quality software –copiously documented –no known bugs, omissions, or bottlenecks  in step with MIL

19. Alexandria Digital Library Project 19 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Cast of characters o Dave Valentine  client, databases, testing, deployment o Catherine Masi  MIL collection development o Rudolf Nottrott  outreach, software development o Greg Janée  overall design, core software development o Jim Frew  guru

20. Alexandria Digital Library Project 20 Greg Janée ADEPT retreat November 8, 2002 Issues 1. Finding the right participation model I have a collection o’ stuff, how do I join ADL? 2. Providing a complete solution I’m a map library, I want a library-in-a-box 3. Gaining adoption How do I add spatial searching to my DL? 4. Simple, effective spatial searching I want spatial search but I’m cheap and lazy