1. Building a large-scale digital library for education
Carl Lagoze
Common Solutions Group
January 16, 2003

2. What is the NSDL?
A library of exemplary collections and services with practical educational value
A center of innovation in digital libraries applied to education
A community center, focused on digital-library-enabled science education
A network of NSDL-funded projects

3. Building service, collaboration, and knowledge layers over a variety of resources for a variety of users
browsing
searching
annotating
curriculum building
filtering
quality rating
Open Access Web
Publishers
NSF-funded Collections

4. Short History of the NSDL
Vision articulated by NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education
National Research Council workshop
Preliminary grants through Digital Libraries Initiative 2
SMETE-Lib workshop
NSDL Solicitation
Core Integration demonstration projects + 23 others funded
large Core Integration System project funded
More than 80 independent projects funded
Core Integration funding fixed until 2006

5. NSF Grant Structure http://www. nsf. gov/pubs/2002/nsf02054/nsf02054
Collections
Develop and maintain content
Services
For users, collection providers, core integration
Targeted research
Core Integration
Organizational, economic, technical
$US5M of total $US25M total budget

6. NSDL CI Technical Organization
A collaborative project
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research - Dave Fulker
Cornell University - William Arms
Columbia University - Kate Wittenberg
With additional partners
Eastern Michigan University
Syracuse University
U Mass-Amherst
UC-Santa Barbara
San Diego Supercomputer Center
Director of Technology - Carl Lagoze

7. Core Integration Philosophy
It is possible to build a very large digital library with a small staff.
But ...
Every aspect of the library must be planned with scalability in mind.
Some compromises will be made.
Automation is key.

8. Perspective on the Budget

9. Resources for Core Integration
Budget $4-6 million
Staff
Management Diffuse
How can a small team, without direct management control, create a very large-scale digital library?

10. NSDL technical mantras
Aggregation rather than collection
Core integration team will not manage any collections
Spectrum of interoperability
Accommodate diversity of participation models
Open interfaces and standards permitting plug in of array of value-added services
One library many portals
Accommodate multiple quality and selection metrics
Tailor presentation of content and nature of services to audience needs
Open toolkit of software and services for library building

11. Spectrum of interoperability
Level Agreements Example
Federation Strict use of standards AACR, MARC
(syntax, semantic, Z 39.50
and business)
Harvesting Digital libraries expose Open Archives
metadata; simple metadata harvesting
protocol and registry
Gathering Digital libraries do not Web crawlers
cooperate; services must and search engines
seek out information

12. Translating to first release goals
This is a big task that no one has done before!
Work on the priorities
Focus on one point on spectrum of interoperability
Metadata harvesting
Incorporate NSF funded collections and selected other collections
Leverage existing (or at least emerging) technologies and protocols
OAI, uPortal, Shibboleth, SDLIP, InQuery
Provide reliable base level services
Search and Discovery, Access Management, User Profiles, Exemplary Portals, Persistence
Plant some seeds for the future
Machine-assisted metadata generation
Automated collection aggregation
Web gathering strategies

13. Metadata Repository
Central storage of all metadata about all resources in the NSDL
Defines the extent of NSDL collection
Metadata includes collections, items, annotations, etc.
MR main functions
Aggregation
Normalization
redistribution
Ingest of metadata by various means
Harvesting, manual, automatic, cross-walking
Open access to MR contents for service builders via OAI-PMH

14. Metadata Strategy
Collect and redistribute any native (XML) metadata format
Provide crosswalks to Dublin Core from eight standard formats
Dublin Core, DC-GEM, LTSC (IMS), ADL (SCORM), MARC, FGCD, EAD
Concentrate on collection-level metadata
Use automatic generation to augment item-level metadata

15. Importing metadata into the MR
Collections
Harvest
Staging area
Cleanup and crosswalks
Database load
Metadata Repository

16. Exporting metadata from the MR

17. Metadata Triage

18. Searching What to Index? What Architecture to Use?
When possible, full text indexing is excellent, but full text indexing is not possible for all materials (non-textual, no access for indexing).
Comprehensive metadata is an alternative, but available for very few of the materials.
What Architecture to Use?
Few collections support an established search protocol (e.g., Z39.50)

19. Search system general features
Implement a query language that includes most features that are common in commercial and Web search engines.
Periodically harvest the MR (via OAI-PMH) to incorporate the latest changes in the library.
Allow search on resources’ metadata as well as textual content, when available.
Communication with portals is done via the Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol (SDLIP).

20. Search Architecture Metadata Repository Search and Discovery Server
OAI
OAI
Harvester
Portal
“Document”
generator
Content
SDLIP
Wrapper
http/ftp
Harvester
Search
Engine
SDLIP
http/ftp

21. Persistent Archive for the NSDL
Provide a persistent copy of the resources identified in the NSDL repository
Provide a mechanism to retrieve prior versions of resources
Verify availability of on-line digital resources that have presence in MR

22. Persistent Archive Approach
Use data grid technology to:
Implement a persistent logical name space for registering resources
Manage archiving of modules on distributed storage systems
Use OAI harvesting to extract metadata from the NSDL repository
Crawl the web to retrieve resources
Provide OAI interface for reporting validation results
Manage the persistent archive through a separate information repository

23. Access Management
Authentication: user identity established by origin servers at home institution—NSDL central will run an origin if no other home available
Authorization: access classes of users, collections, & services established by NSDL community
anonymous and pseudo-anonymous access available
Internet2 “Shibboleth” framework satisfies these requirements

24. Access Management Flow
1. attempt to access collection
browser
2. redirected back to local login
collection
4. attempt access again
3. login to local jurisdiction
organizational boundary
institution’s
authentication
and
authorization
service
(e.g., Kerberos
& LDAP)
5. confirm request valid

25. User Interfaces The Problem The Solution
Cannot handcraft every web page
Must be usable on a very wide range of equipment and with a very diverse group of users
The Solution
Data driven portals using channels (components that encapsulate a library function).
Current NSDL portal technology is uPortal, a free, shareable portal being developed by a college and university consortium.
Initial NSDL channels will include simple and advanced Search, Browse, News, Exhibits, Help, and Login/Registration.

26. Demonstration

27. We have only just begun…
Funding through 2006
Provide infrastructure that both:
Advances state-of-the-art of digital libraries
Reliably delivers services and resources to targeted users
Making this possible through
Integration of work of partners (NSDL and external)
Co-development with partners
Internal development

28. Long-term technical capabilities: Facilities for Collaboration
All users can contribute resources to the library
Collections (favorites), value added enhancements (curricula), original contributions
Community formation, long and short term
Persistence of results of community formation

29. Long-term technical capabilities: Management of Entities
Resources
Services
Relationships
Users

30. Long-term technical capabilities: Discovery of Entities
Capabilities for humans and agents
Searching through structured queries
Browsing of indexes, vocabularies, classifications

31. Long-term technical capabilities: Relationship Management
Relationships are first-class objects
Annotations, collections, equivalence, inclusion
Facilities
Identification
Discovery
Persistence
Evolution
Relationships of relationships

32. Long-term technical capabilities: Knowledge layered on data
Ontologies, classification schemes, taxonomies, standards, and authority lists
Organize resources within concept spaces
Cross-walk and establish relationships among concept spaces

33. Long-term technical capabilities: Control of entities
Access management for controlling the dissemination of intellectual property.
Mechanisms controlling disclosure of information with the goal of protecting privacy (i.e. COPPA)
Mechanisms for limiting inappropriate actions and entities

34. Long-term technical capabilities: Customization and Personalization
Portals that provide specialized user interfaces and aggregation of collections and services in the library.
Mechanisms for users and communities to specialize their library experience.
Mechanisms to automatically adapt library behavior to user needs and abilities.

35. Long-term technical capabilities: Accessibility
Platform
Connectivity
Physical Ability
Language

36. Long-term technical capabilities: Measurement
Usage of the main NSDL portal and supported portals.
Performance of core services and network connections.
Popularity of various resources.
Reliability of access to various resources.
Data and metadata quality.
User demographics (where possible)

37. Realizing Goals and Capabilities: Building & supporting infrastructure
Maintain and evolve the metadata repository
Maintain and evolve the main portal
Define, disseminate and support a service integration architecture
Develop, integrate, support core services:
Search and discovery
Persistence
Metadata and data normalization & enhancement
Authentication
Annotation
Resource access

38. Realizing Goals and Capabilities: Defining and building exemplars
General theme: collaborative spaces for specialized communities, disciplines, resources
Motivations:
Develop real products meeting needs of real audiences
Extrapolate from special cases to general infrastructure
Build essential partnerships

39. Realizing Goals and Capabilities: Defining and building exemplars
Primary life science education
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
Undergraduate math education
Math Forum
Secondary geospatial education
Alexandria digital library

40. How do we do this: Constructing targeted portals/libraries
Primary life science education
Undergraduate mathematics education
Secondary geospatial education
To build generalized architecture
Collaborative spaces
Knowledge management
Automatic data and metadata management

41. Some Closing Thoughts
Difficulty of building stability on shifting sands
What is low-barrier infrastructure?
Barriers to ‘simple’ OAI and Dublin Core have been relatively high
Multiple problems with metadata from distributed sources
Correctness
Trust
Information content
Resource granularity and identity
Automation is the key to success