Interoperability: The Digital Library Holy Grail Roy Tennant escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/ala2000/exlibris/

An Assumption & an Acknowledgement You have a passing familiarity with common digital library terms I stole some of the following from Paul Miller, Interoperability Focus, UKOLN, see

Why Interoperability? A Brief Look at 3 Digital Library Projects

Why Interoperability?: The Vision query

Why Interoperability? query

Why Interoperability? response

Why Interoperability? processed response

Facets of Interoperability Technical Semantic Political/Human Inter-Community International

Technical Interoperability The ability of technical systems to interoperate Standards are needed in at least these areas: –Communication (e.g., TCP/IP) –Transport (e.g., HTTP) –Representation (e.g., XML) –Linking (e.g., SFX)

Semantic Interoperability Agreement on meaning The problem: –Using different labels for the same thing (e.g., author, creator, composer) –Using the same label to describe different things (e.g., date) Possible solutions: –Thesauri and vocabularies (with crosswalks) –Standardization of terminology See for more info

Political/Human Interoperability Making resources widely available has impacts on people and organizations Possible difficulties of differing goals, clienteles with varying needs, need for staff training, etc. Will require a high degree of communication, cooperation, and political will

Inter-Community Interoperability Ability of differing communities to interoperate Libraries, museums and archives are a prime example Possible difficulties include divergent perspectives on item description, different terminologies, different needs Strategies for success may include focusing on common problems and providing for customization

International Interoperability All of the issues above, but across political, temporal, and geographic barriers Difficulties include differences in professional practices enshrined in age-old precedent, language and script issues, varying degrees of subsidy and support, etc. Mundane but frustrating barriers: –Time zone differences –Differences in communication styles –Our unwillingness to accept international standards

Example Interoperability Initiatives NSF-Funded cooperative digital library project: UCSB, UCB, Stanford, CDL, and SDSC, see / UK Interoperability Focus, see Virtual Canadian Union Catalogue, see ONE - OPAC Network in Europe, see

Methods of Achieving It All use the same systems and infrastructure Not bloody likely! Create a massive union catalog of resources Hmm….kinda sounds like OCLC... All adhere to the same protocols, standards, and guidelines Hey — now you’re talking!

Methods of Achieving It: Standards MARC (with AACR2) Z39.50 (w/ Bib-1, Bath Profile, etc.) XML (w/TEIlite DTD, etc.) Dublin Core SFX, OpCit, CrossRef Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol (SDLIP)? And more...

Methods of Achieving It: Guidelines & Best Practices Guidelines and best practices can help where standards don’t exist or are inappropriate Some areas in which best practices are now available: –Metadata capture and recording –Imaging

Methods of Achieving It: Strategies Develop standards, guidelines, and best practices (cooperatively as much as possible) Establish formal linkages between existing organizations and projects Create cooperative development projects (I’ll see your programmer and raise you a project manager…) Broadly share your ideas and technologies Require vendors to support key standards as a condition of sale

Why Will it Never be Fully Achieved? Market forces The pace of change Complexity of systems and diversity of data, metadata, terminologies, etc. Organizational, political, and cultural realities

But is it Worth the Quest? Certainly! Our users deserve no less. Godspeed!