1. The Agora hybrid library project Rosemary Russell, UKOLN (UK Office for Library and Information Networking) Agora Communications Coordinator

2. UKOLN: a national focus of expertise in network information management policy, research, awareness digital libraries web technologies public library networking funded by: Higher Education Funding Councils The British Library Projects

3. Today’s presentation: background - eLib what Agora’s about information landscapes architecture some issues the future

4. Agora is funded by eLib... The Electronic Libraries Programme higher education c.70 projects (1994- ) development rather than research phases 1 and 2 - £15 million phase 3 (1998-2000) clumps (4 projects) digital preservation (1 project) hybrid libraries (5 projects)

5. What is a hybrid library? a library… provides managed access to: local and remote resources print and electronic mixed media (images, video...) seamless integration user-centred

6. Agora = a place of assembly or market place libraries will continue to organise the places (physical or virtual) where users and information products are brought together

7. Agora’s aim: “To explore issues of distributed, mixed media information management based on an open standards-based platform. This includes developing the scalability, enabling infrastructure and change- management tools for successful widespread dissemination and implementation throughout the community”

8. Agora consortium members University of East Anglia UKOLN CERLIM, Manchester Metropolitan University Fretwell-Downing Informatics

9. Agora associates libraries University of East Anglia University of Hull Heriot Watt University Bath Spa University College service providers systems developers

10. Agora development developing a Hybrid Library Management System (HLMS) to integrate: discovery location requesting delivery

11. Agora framework based on MODELS concepts a layer of services or ‘middleware’ which will shield the user from complexity, heterogeneity and repetitive processes open standards - Z39.50, ISO ILL, HTTP [Whois++, RDF, XML…] metadata

12. ‘Broker’ architecture Local library catalogue Network CDs Subject gateways Electronic documents ILL systems User access Applications framework Service description and mapping Distributed service access User access points (web browsers) Hybrid Library Management System Hybrid library system component examples

13. Information landscapes a way of presenting different views of information resources to users, according to interests and needs simple - set of web links to resources sophisticated - matching: user profiles collection/service descriptions access privileges

14. Progress to date prototype (August 98) evaluation system specification requirements catalogue prioritisation developing integrated communications environment

15. Some issues... hybrid datasets no common attributes no common data structures multi-level records (archives) ‘implementors agreement’ needed? agreed subset of attribute mappings sorting and deduplication non-Z39.50 searchable resources collection description

16. The future Agora Release 1 (Aug 1999) installation and evaluation support material dissemination expansion of library associate group refine specification Agora Release 2 (Aug 2000)

17. Further info: Agora web pages: email: r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk subscribe to agora-project@mailbase.ac.uk to receive monthly bulletins