No Longer Under Our Control? The Nature and Role of Standards in the 21 st Century Library William E. Moen School of Library and Information Sciences Texas Center for Digital Knowledge University of North Texas Denton, TX Library of Congress Luminary Lecture, December 3, 2003

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Losing control? Nature of technology standards New levels of collaboration Venues for standards development Increasing number of standards

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, What is a standard? A standard represents an agreed upon response to a recurring problem—perceived, anticipated, or “real,” and codifies the response for the purpose of communication. The standard is the result of a problem– solving process. It involves agreements among stakeholders who have an interest in adopting specific responses to the problem. Conformant use of the standard leads to predictable results and a reduction of uncertainty.

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, What is a standard? An agreement among people to do certain things in certain ways to achieve desired and expected ends. A standard represents an agreement by a community to do things in a specified way to address a common problem. Standards are community agreements.

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Activities in creating a standard Brainstorming Collaborative Authoring Competitive Collaboration Compromising Consensus Building Disagreeing Editing Environmental Scanning Information Sharing / Transfer Modeling Negotiation Planning Problem Defining Problem Solving Proposal Developing Requirements Clarification Requirements Setting Resolving Conflicts Socializing Strategizing Visioning Writing

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, A library is… A collection of resources Services and activities related to the resources Tools that assist users in resource discovery and access Services that help users answer questions, learn about the collection, learn about the bibliographic tools, and generally connect users to appropriate resources An administrative structure that allocates resources A place

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, A library in the networked environment… Collections of resources – local and distributed Collaborative services and activities Tools that assist users in networked information resource discovery and access A management structure that allocates resources and policies for inter- organization collaboration Extends the reach and range of users

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Characterizing the networked library Virtual library components An environment for provision of Services Resources Not a digital library Not all resources available are in digital/electronic form An evolving product that responds to Users’ needs Available resources Current and emerging technologies

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Service-centric networked library User Groups Resources Technology Management SERVICES

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, User-driven services LIBRARY SERVICES User Group User Group Library Resources Library Technology Library Management User Group User Group

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Networked library services Resource discovery services Access services Reference services Instruction services Recommender services Others?

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Interoperability Systems and organizations will interoperate! One should actively be engaged in the ongoing process of ensuring that the systems, procedures and culture of an organisation are managed in such a way as to maximise opportunities for exchange and re-use of information, whether internally or externally. Paul Miller, 2000

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Defining interoperability System-oriented definition The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and use the exchanged information without special effort on either system

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Types of interoperability Technical Semantic Political/Human Inter-community Legal International (From Paul Miller, 2000)

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Defining interoperability User-oriented definition User’s ability to successfully search and retrieve information in a meaningful way and have confidence in the results The condition achieved when two or more technical systems can exchange information directly in a way that is satisfactory to users of the systems (AAP)

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Changing nature of the standards Abstract or framework standards Application profiles Subsets of the framework standards Additional specification to improve use and interoperability MARC syntax – MARC format specifications Z39.50 standard – Application profiles Dublin Core – Application profiles XML – XML schemas

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Information communities Type of data and information resources Practices Technologies and standards Values and assumptions Services Primary audiences/clients Libraries as Information Community  Relative homogeneity of data and systems  Standards-based MARC records  Content and structure prescribed by AACR  Commonly understood access points  Use of controlled vocabularies

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Interacting information communities Library Community Archival Community Museum Community Interacting Communities (e.g., Cultural Heritage) Geospatial Community Natural History Museum Community

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Standards for the networked library  Z39.50 Protocol  Interlibrary Loan Protocol  Circulation Interchange Protocol  OpenURL  Dublin Core Metadata  Digital Object Identifiers  …  ONIX Metadata  Open Archives Initiative  HTTP  HTML  The suite of XML standards  Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)  … The problem with standards – too many of them? Or, understanding how to make them work together?

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, From stovepipes to services Stovepipe standards Z39.50 protocol Interlibrary loan protocol Circulation interchange protocol Services to inform standards NISO’s metasearch initiative Access management Resource identification Search and retrieval Statistics

Moen Luminary Lecture -- Library of Congress -- December 3, Final thoughts More and different kinds of standards Libraries as one information community among many Standards are community agreements Standards development need support No single institution to advocate or enforce standards Services need to drive standards development and adoption New balance between local and community needs