Managing Digital Initiatives
Changing University Landscape
•Personalized; consumer-driven information
culture
•Highly competitive
•Increasingly cooperative
•Continuously innovative
•Blurring roles: instructor, learner, publisher
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University Information Model
Library Collection
Discovery and Evaluation
Private colls
Intellectual Property
Management
Digital Persistence Create Once / Always maintain
Collaborative Sharing
“Gray Lit”
Official docs
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Design Principles
• Scalable - expansion not replacement, build
forward rather than rebuild
•Core integration - common service suite
• Flexible data architecture - support
heterogeneous metadata to support unique
needs of information
• Interoperable - based on open standards for
collaboration and data exchange
• Robust and Secure – 24/7 availability,
maintaining
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Design Principles
•Supports Simple, transparent information use
• Customized for user roles and information
needs
• Secure against misuse; intellectual property
theft
• User-centered - user collaboration
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Creating a “Digital Playground”:
•Boundaries to create an integrated, rich
information space with a multiple common
services
•Within those boundaries - customization,
personalization - “everyone can play.”
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Managing Digital Initiatives
The “Hybrid” Library
Goal: Seamless integration of analog and
digital information
• Building designs that encompass inviting,
immersive stacks and analog materials use
areas; improving circulation workflow
• Core integration of analog and digital
through the metadatabase
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Build a Common Service Suite
• Metasearch engine across collections
•METS structure map for defining parts,
concatenating into collections, linking descriptive
and technical information - database driven design
•Multiple display and export formats from structure
map
•Core intellectual property management collaboration with Internet2, CNI, ViDe and others
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Build an Open-Architecture Repository
• Distributed, managed, secure digital storage
•Centralized metadatabase with data registry
• Security mechanisms for data storage and user
access
• Treat all information resources as mission-critical
with common security infrastructure and peering or
failover procedures
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Rutgers Digital Library Initiative
Open-Architecture Repository
Data
Ingest
Database
Library repository
Data
Export
Digital Object Storage
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Moving Forward
• Extend core services across the university
• Dynamic personalized web spaces to
support information discovery and
collaboration (AMIA Moving Image
Gateway Project)
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Managing Digital Initiatives
“Intelligent Information Portal”
• Simple search interface (“Google” model)
• Blend description with reference evaluation
• Intelligent metadata that “self-describes” by portal
• Partner with other departments for development
• Different results for different user roles (Intenet2
Commons)
• Personal portal : create collections, components,
search strategies, searchable, standardized dynamic site
map
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Managing Digital Initiatives
The Metadata Repository
•Core registry that maps to reference schema –
“RU Core”
•Schema, language and character set
independent
• Enables self-describing of data by portal
identifier (e.g. education data elements for
education portals, etc.
• AMIA MIG model – separate tables for portal
ID and for each data element, with extensive
attributes
(lang,
portalID, etc.)
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University charset,
Libraries
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Managing Digital Initiatives
The Role of Metadata:
Bring intelligence, coherence to digital
collections and the fragmented web
 Selection, organization, preservation,
discovery, interpretation
Enable the creator and the customer to
make sense of digital information.
 Active collaboration with the customer in
this enterprise
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Metadata Repository
Record
Structure
MODEL
Data
Element
Registration
Database
Population
Repository
Design
Dissemination
to Users
Data
interchange
(other
repositories)
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
Z39.50 Application Service Definition and
Protocol Specification
Client/Server computer-to-computer communications protocol that
specifies query and retrieval of information: bibliographic data,
full-text documents; images, and multimedia in a distributed
network environment, across disparate computer systems,
databases and search engines.
Current version: 3
http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/document.html
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
RDF – Resource Description Framework
Enables interoperability among metadata
schemes, including the modular use of
multiple schemes within a metadata record
utilizing the XML namespace facility;
Adds machine-interpretable semantics to
the encoding, exchange and reuse of
structured metadata;
http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-rdf-syntax/
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Archives Initiative
http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm
Service
Provider
OAI Database
ArchiveID
RecordID
CollectionID
DateStamp Access=“open”
Metadatabase
Data mining – repository to repository; user to
repository
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
Combines XML envelope with programming
layers that are stripped off, as appropriate, at
each hop.
Potential application – Digital Rights
Management
www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
XML – Extensible Markup Language
A data exchange and markup language
with
• inherent semantic meaning for elements
• ability to combine programming with
data, particularly with XSLT
• transport and interoperability protocol
www.w3.org/XML/
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
METS – Metadata Encoding & Transmission
Standard
•Enables concatenation of metadata records and
schema for description, administration, rights, etc
• Enables interoperable structuring of complex objects
(multi-page document, sequential video file, etc., for
search and retrieval within structures, across
documents
http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Open Standards for Interoperability; Transport
SCORM – Shareable Content Object Reference
Model
•Provides IMS (instructional metadata standard)
description for educational objects
• Enables SCORM-compliant objects to be imported
and exported into compliant instructional
management systems (WebCT, Blackboard, etc.
• Coming – structuring into lesson plans and syllabi
http://www.adlnet.org/Scorm/scorm.cfm
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Sustainability
• Collections and Services support core mission
and primary strategic goals
• Build a distributed, shared infrastructure with
core standards and technologies – actively
partner across the organization
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Evaluating Sustainability
• Interval and impact of initiative – 1 year, 5
years, 10 years – value to institution as a
whole and to key stakeholder groups
• Project Evolution Path – initiation,
development, maintenance, enhancement,
completion. How do we know when the
useful life has ended?
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Evaluating Sustainability
• Coexistence – dependent, neutral, or
competitive with other initiatives and
ongoing services.1 year, 5 years, 10 years –
value to institution as a whole and to key
stakeholder groups
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Managing Digital Initiatives
The Digital Initiative in Context
• Identify core (mission-critical) activities. What
percentage of effort/time do they require ---should
they require? (workflow analysis
• What percentage of time/effort remains for R&D –
tomorrow’s core?
• Workflow analysis – project development vs.
project management. Commonalities between
core and R&D
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Managing Digital Initiatives
The Digital Initiative in Context
• Strategic training
• Continuous evaluation – stand alone and in-context
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Managing Digital Initiatives
Customer Support is Key
Support for New Roles:
Information Seeker
Information Publisher
Lifelong Learner
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