CAUL Meeting 2004/2 Hobart 13 September 2004

Roadmap  Recap  Partners  Extent and Intent  Activity and Operational Structures  APSR Developments  Digital Sustainability Program (NLA)  Practices and Testbeds Program  ANU  USyd  UQ  National Services Program  International Linkages Program  External Involvement

Partners  The Australian National University (Lead institution)  The National Library of Australia  The University of Queensland  The University of Sydney  Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing Recap

Extent and Intent In responding to the call to develop national research infrastructure through the creation of a broad repository-based architecture, the APSR proposal had at its core  an overall focus on critical issues of access continuity to and sustainability of digital collections  a determination to build on a base of demonstrators for digital continuity and sustainability embedded in developmental repository facilities within partner institutions  an aspiration to contribute to national strength by encouraging development of skills and expertise and providing coordination throughout the sector via a platform of national services and international linkages Recap

An open partnership both in its manner of working and its ultimate manifestation within a national centre - predicated on a belief that - the higher education sector needs catalysts to encourage and enable institutions to take action based on best practice that will ensure continuity of access to key information resources over time Recap

Such resources not simply text-centric in nature. Real challenge lies in coping with huge volume of research data and resources in varying formats and configurations emerging from the eScience and eHumanities movements Within APSR, role of APAC to carry these eResearch links, beyond their direct involvement in University of Sydney testbed project Recap

Activity Structure

Recap Operational Structure

APSR Developments  Tom Ruthven appointed as Executive Officer July 2004  Website established  University of Queensland  University of Sydney  Presentations  Questnet 2004, Cairns, 6 July Robin Stanton - APSR and the national information infrastructure  IAML Biennial Conference, Canberra, 13 September Tom Ruthven - The brave new world of libraries and repositories

Digital Sustainability (Core Program)  Led by NLA program will support and work with demonstrator or testbed projects and also feed directly into National Services and International Linkages programs (notably in its links with the recently established Digital Curation Centre in Edinburgh)  Primary objective to provide mechanisms and expertise to ensure digital information resources remain available usable understandable findabletrustworthy re-usable ‘for as long as they are needed’  Seeks to develop national centre of excellence, providing such services as best practice documentation, software frameworks and archives, generic tools, format registries, planning strategies, and technology watch services

Progress  Project Officer appointed from 1 September  Strategy paper developed in consultation with ANU, USyd, UQ testbed projects  Work continuing on  partner expertise registry  sustainability analysis of testbed repositories  sustainability assurance for testbed repositories  Consultation with Digital Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) about digital preservation tools Digital Sustainability

Practices and Testbeds Program (1) Implementation of Repository Technology in a Standards Framework (ANU) Objectives  Develop an open source repository infrastructure that addresses the needs of Australian universities for the management of digital assets  Develop mechanisms for building effective partnerships with academic community for the management of their digital assets  Participate in federation services with APSR partners and other SII projects

Key Tasks  Develop repository system based on needs analysis from a broad set of representative collections  Become major contributor to DSpace open source development  Contribute to international standards and best practice for the management of digital repositories  Populate ANU repository  Develop policy framework for partnerships with academic staff  Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program  Evaluate success of software and policy development ANU

Progress  ANU DSpace  Production environmentDevelopment area 4 communities 13 communities 105 collections 108 collections  Participating repository in PictureAustralia  Staff appointments  2 additional project officers about to be appointed to join 2 existing project staff members  DSpace development ANU contribution  image derivative/thumbnail generation  integrating Apache Cocoon with DSpace  Presentation  OpenPublish 2004, Sydney, 30 July Peter Raftos – DSpace and ANU ANU

Practices and Testbeds Program (2) Sustainability and Interoperability in a Complex Distributed Environment (University of Sydney) Objectives  Develop a sustainable model for large complex object repositories within a distributed research environment  Document a set of supporting protocols and standards  Develop appropriate enabling middleware and tools

Key Tasks  Establish a project methodology for the testbed facilities  Develop protocols within the common XML environment of the testbed facilities  Cooperate with other testbed projects and the MAMS project to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program  Scope prototype demonstrator projects (cultural, health, historical)  Develop and implement appropriate middleware and tools to enable demonstrators  Develop and implement testing and evaluation methods  Undertake evaluation of protocols within partner and other facilities nationally and internationally USyd

Progress  Sustainability framework  Requirements and specifications, primarily in CIPHE image banks and PARADISEC, under development  Interoperability middleware  Framework under development for internal testing in November (ACL)  APAC  Extensible storage space provided to USyd testbeds to investigate storage processes  Staff appointments  1.5 programmers appointed  SORRT  Project branded as SORRT (Sustainable Object Repositories for Research and Teaching) USyd

Practices and Testbeds Program (3) eScholarship Australia (University of Queensland) Objectives  Develop an integrated entry point to a range of repositories of research output  Encourage better reporting of academic research outputs  Facilitate access to information about Australian research

Key Tasks  Identify existing repositories at UQ to be used in project  Investigate and adopt appropriate standards to be used, with emphasis on open standards  Test a range of harvesting protocols, including OAI-PMH  Examine subject mapping techniques to ensure metadata conform to appropriate thesaurus descriptors. (Existing institutional subject classification schemes will be mapped to the Australian Standard Research Classification. Where metadata lack appropriate thesaurus descriptors, automatic and semi-automatic subject mapping techniques will be used.)  Investigate and implement mechanisms to identify, capture, organise and manage non-text, non-OAI compliant resources  Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program  Extend demonstrator application to other institutions UQ

Progress  Data and service provider models  Keystone and Fedora software under evaluation  Test repositories identified  UQ Research Quantum Australian Digital Theses Program  Standards  Series of open standards identified for adoption  Staff appointments  Programmer appointed UQ

National Services Program Objective Provide services to national higher education and research sector  Technical advisory services  Knowledge transfer and educational services  Consultation and collaboration services Timeframe

Progress  Program to begin formally in 2005  Commitment to make ANU version of DSpace available to Australian higher education sector Q ‘DSpace in a box’ on CD or DVD National Services

International Linkages Program Objectives  Participate in and contribute to the development of international standards applicable to digital access and sustainability  Participate in selected international programs in the digital access and sustainability area  Maintain a technology watching brief across a wide range of international programs in the digital access and sustainability area Timeframe

Progress  Program to begin formally in 2005  Existing or prospective partnerships  Digital Curation Centre (DCC), Edinburgh  Thomson Scientific (ISI) Web Citation Index Project (ANU, CalTech, Cornell, Max Planck Society, Monash, NASA/Langley, University of Rochester)  DSpace/Google/OCLC IR Search Project (ANU, Cornell, Cranfield, European University Institute, HKUST, IUPUL, MIT, Minho University, Ohio State, Univ Arizona, Calgary, Oregon, Parma, Rochester, Toronto, Washington, Wisconsin)  Digital Publishing System (DPubS) – Cornell and Penn State (ANU investigating involvement)  University of Sydney SETIS (Michigan, Oxford and Virginia), PARADISEC (AILLA and DELAMAN), ACL/SSIU/TimeMap (UCLA and Unesco) International Linkages

External Involvement Potential for involvement in APSR by others than immediate project partners  National Services Program (starting in 2005)  Occasional open workshops and forums

Also potential opportunity for others to participate as project partners (specified in both original proposal and agreement between ANU and existing project partners) Such participation would require  Strategic commitment to the development of institutional digital repositories  Significant implementation program involving repository technology and a collection program focused on research materials having sector-wide relevance  Commitment to sector-wide cooperation in the development of institutional repositories  Commitment to APSR objectives and willingness to contribute to APSR processes  Acceptance that partner responsibilities include participation in APSR core activities such as standards setting, evaluation and adoption, expertise network, skills pool, international linkages and benchmarking New partners would bring own resources to APSR There would be no access to DEST funding unless additional monies were granted External Involvement

Thank you Vic Elliott 13 September 2004