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By Lesly Huxley - July 2000
Lesly Huxley reports on work in progress on the Renardus project, funded under the European Union's 'User-friendly Information Society' programme. Between January 2000-June 2002, Renardus partners aim to build an academic subject gateway service in Europe offering a single point of access on the Web ‘brokering’ to records held in existing national and subject-specific gateway initiatives Europe-wide. Read on to follow the fox’s progress.
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Many libraries and related organisations across Europe have been developing quality-controlled subject gateways for some years, with the aim of helping users in their target communities (mainly higher education learning and research) to find relevant, high quality resources on the Internet. Scalability is becoming a problem as the growth of the Internet increases. With continuing Internet expansion it is becoming clear that no single, publicly-funded subject gateway or national gateway initiative can hope to identify, evaluate, catalogue and organise all the Internet resources available to support the academic and research communities of Europe. The need to investigate different approaches is pressing.
The Renardus project’s aim is to build an academic subject gateway service for Europe by developing a system that will ‘broker’ data from a range of existing distributed gateways and other Internet-accessible collections across Europe. The broker service will offer a single point of access on the Web, allowing users to search and browse consistent views of data from the many existing, distributed quality-controlled and subject-based sources and then to ‘follow the fox’ to resources to support their learning and research.
The EU-funded DESIRE [1] project’s Information Gateways Handbook [2] addresses many technical, information and organisational issues relevant to single subject gateway services. The issues of bibliographic control on the Internet and the development of directories of national networked resources have been discussed in the COBRA [3] (COmputerised Bibliographic Record Actions) forum and the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL). In 1998, the Chair of CENL asked members to review approaches to information discovery provision within their own countries. To date, gateway services and initiatives have approached the issues of scalability within public funding in several ways. Services such as the DutchESS [4] subject guide, developed originally at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek [5] in The Netherlands (Renardus’ coordinating partner), have expanded with the collaborative commitment of seven university libraries. Nationally-funded subject gateways in the UK have come together within a collaborative framework (the Resource Discovery Network [6]): each gateway within the network has developed partnerships with others in similar subject areas to form ‘hubs’ [7], each comprising between two and four gateways.
However, despite these collaborations, the burden of maintaining high quality services becomes heavier as services grow, the resources 'pointed to' continue to change and users’ expectations are frustrated by the number of options available.
The Renardus project is a result of these shared experiences. The potential benefits from the proposed collaboration between participating subject and national gateways include scale economies in the areas of metadata creation, abstracting and indexing by service providers and a more sustainable level of quality in mediated resource discovery. Overall, access to scientific and cultural resources in Europe should be improved through aggregation and improved consistency of collections and a common understanding of academic users' needs. Participating services should also benefit from the collaborative framework in terms of improved sustainability and a stronger position against international competition.
The workplan of the project is scheduled to be carried out within a two and a half year time frame (1 January 2000-30 June 2002). The schedule is deliberately short to recognise the fast-changing developments in the work area and potential results from many related, parallel projects in the field. The work of the project is structured in two main strands: access to content and content sharing and building. Work in these strands is arranged in three main phases: Data Gathering and Research; Analysis and Design and Implementation. A third, complementary strand of Dissemination and Promotion runs through all three phases. The latter is intended to ensure full exploitation of - and continuing collaboration in - the fully-operational service and to facilitate information exchange between Renardus and related initiatives. The work is further divided into ten 'workpackages' with 18 public deliverables (six during the first six months of the project). The workpackages and their lead partners are listed in the table below:
Table 1: Renardus workpackages and lead partners
|
No: |
Title: |
Lead partner: |
|
1 |
Functional Model |
UK Office of Library and Information Networking (UKOLN), University of Bath, UK |
|
2 |
Design and Implementation |
Technical Knowledge Centre and Library of Denmark (DTV) |
|
3 |
Organisational Infrastructure |
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) - National Library of the Netherlands |
|
4 |
Service Provision |
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) - National Library of the Netherlands |
|
5 |
Verification and Evaluation |
Finnish Virtual Library Project/Jyväskylä University Library (JyU) |
|
6 |
Data Model and Data Flow |
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB) |
|
7 |
Data Interoperability |
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB) |
|
8 |
Business Issues |
UK Office of Library and Information Networking (UKOLN), University of Bath, UK |
|
9 |
Dissemination and Support |
Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), Bristol, UK |
|
10 |
Project Management |
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) - National Library of the Netherlands |
Further details of the project partners and the participating gateways represented are available from the Renardus Web site [8] where you can also access full reports of all the completed deliverable work described in this paper.
Work in this phase of Renardus started in January 2000 and continues roughly for the first 12 months of the project in parallel with other phases. The first tasks for Renardus project partners were to:
The results of these tasks form the basis of the scoping document for the pilot service, the first draft of which is already available [9]. These tasks also feed into the Analysis and Design phase, particularly development of the functional specification, data model and architectural model.
The functional specification for the service to be developed during the Analysis and Design phase is based on user requirements collected at various levels. These include an investigation of potential participating services’ requirements in the areas of interoperability, interface and 'branding', led by the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN [10]), University of Bath, UK.
The conclusion from the first part of the User Requirements for the Broker System [11] (a questionnaire completed by participating services early in 2000) concerns the architectural model. The respondents favoured a distributed model over a centralised solution. The concept of a central repository to which all metadata is routinely copied was rejected in favour of a centralised subject index that would forward the queries to relevant gateways. They also wanted Renardus to support Dublin Core [12] semantics and RDF [13] and XML [14] syntax for metadata records, with Z39.50 [15] and WHOIS++ [16] used as protocols for communication between Renardus and the brokered gateways. Support for both browse and search functions was high and providers also felt a need for mappings between metadata formats to support at least a consistent presentation of search results. Mappings between classification schemes are also needed so that the cross-browsing functionality can be implemented in the pilot system.
The second element of data gathering relating to user requirements focused on the collation of end users' evaluations of existing subject gateway services provided by project partners. Use case scenarios and activity diagrams have also been developed as part of the analysis work towards creation of a functional specification for the system.
Many existing gateways participating in the project had undertaken end user surveys in the past. To avoid duplication, the Renardus team led by the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen [17]: (SUB) collated results from these for an internal deliverable, Survey of End User Surveys [18] some of the material was provided by project partners, some was taken from publications produced by other projects. As different methods have been used to survey users, the results are by no means homogeneous. Also the numbers of respondents to each survey differed greatly (from about 10 to more than two hundred) and some of the surveys date back to 1996/1997 so that some of the results may possibly be outdated. Nevertheless, the results of the different user surveys provide basic information on user needs. Generally, these showed that users are more at ease with finding their way around in gateways and using the services they have to offer than is the case with the ‘rest’ of the Internet.
Users were found to appreciate quality resources: the evaluation and categorization of resources given by the subject gateways is of great importance to them. The currency of electronic data is also important. Searching is preferred to browsing. Generally, most people prefer the search option when looking for specific information and the browse option when looking for a wider range of information. A simple search is preferred to an advanced search option: searches with more than one keyword or with Boolean operators are rarely undertaken. Amongst the favourite search categories are keyword, author, title, and description.
The Renardus Evaluation of Existing Data Models [19] led by SUB provides an overview of the structures of Renardus partners' subject gateways. In response to questionnaires[20], the gateways provided details about their services, such as collection description, target group, resource categories, quality criteria, controlled vocabularies etc., as well as descriptions of their respective metadata sets. Based on these responses, a metadata mapping [21] has been drawn up in order to produce a first draft minimum common set of metadata elements (an overview of the usage of vocabularies [22] in Renardus gateways is also available). A first draft data model will inform design of and participation in the pilot service. A revised metadata set to be developed during the Analysis and Design phase will ultimately underpin requirements on services wanting to participate in the fully operational Renardus broker.
The review found that four of the participating gateways have metadata schemes based on IAFA/ROADS templates, two use individual schemes, and two use schemes based on Dublin Core [11]. As most of the partners use IAFA/ROADS as an exchange format there seems to be the possibility for a simple exchange of metadata. The data model will continue to be developed and refined as the pilot system is built and tested. The following elements currently form the basis of thinking on the minimum set: DC.Title; DC.Creator, DC.Description, DC.Identifier, DC.Subject, DC.Publisher, DC.Language, DC.Type, with further refinement based on DC qualifiers.
A range of ‘broker’ systems and models have come into existence in recent years, partly as a result of existing gateway services’ and other initiatives’ attempts to address issues of scalability without detriment to quality and usability. The challenge is to provide a service that integrates access to the diverse and distributed range of resources that may be valuable to users. The success of this integration is seen as beneficial both to digital libraries and their end users. Dempsey, Russell and Murray (1999, p.35) [23] recognise that users may often have to interact with a number of quite different information systems and interfaces in order to complete a full search. They suggest the development of an additional service layer - described as 'middleware' – which in the Renardus case is the broker service. Renardus partners, led by UKOLN, have undertaken a comprehensive Review of Existing Broker Models in Related Projects and Services [24], mapping these against the generic model known as the MODELS Information Architecture (MIA) [25]. At the same time as the review for Renardus was being compiled, a similar review was being undertaken for a project funded by the NSF/JISC International Digital Libraries Initiative - the IMesh [26] Toolkit project Some of these reviews have, with kind permission, been adapted and included in the Renardus review.
The data gathering and research phase of work has begun to inform the development of a functional specification for the Renardus broker and first drafts of the data model and data flow to inform its design. The Analysis and Design phase of the Renardus project started in May 2000 and continues throughout the project lifetime, firstly in development of the pilot service and subsequently the building of the fully operational Renardus broker.
Early tasks in this phase include an architectural model and data model for the pilot service.
The architectural design and technical implementation of the pilot system will be based on existing and emerging standards and technologies to ensure that the functionality of the operational broker service is extensible. Interaction of the broker with existing resource collections is to be carried out according to open standards, for example Z39.50. A range of existing models will be accommodated within the broker service: discussions have started on a first draft architectural model. A report on the proposed model is expected to be available on the Renardus Web site by July 2001.
Work on the data model is ongoing. The reports currently available from the Renardus Web site will be added to as discussions progress.
There are several ways you can ‘follow the fox’ and keep in touch with project progress and opportunities for participation in the fully-operational Renardus service. The task of disseminating project results is led by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology [27] and is being undertaken alongside the research and development work. The two main routes of dissemination are the Renardus Web site [8] and the Renardus News Digest [28], a regular email newsletter. Full reports of project findings are offered at the Web site as soon as they are available, together with descriptions of related projects and services [29]. You can also ‘follow the fox’ to conferences, workshops and other events.
Renardus partners are particularly keen to enter dialogue with other initiatives who may want to participate in the verification of the pilot service (through addition of at least one other service) or in the fully-operational broker service. Existing or emerging gateways and related initiatives interested in participating in the fully-operational Renardus service and/or in keeping up-to-date with the project’s work can sign up to receive a copy of the News Digest and visit the Web site. A workshop for potential participating services is to be held in September 2001. Identification of potential participants is underway and interested parties are asked to register an interest by submitting a message through the feedback form [30] on the Web site. User guidelines on data interoperability will be developed to facilitate participation in the Renardus broker service. These requirements will be drawn up during the Analysis and Design and Implementation phases based on some of the early work of the project described above and continuing work on technical standards and solutions, business and organisational issues.
Our work so far has supported our initial view that collaboration at a European level is both feasible and potentially beneficial both to service providers and end users alike. The collaborative framework emerging from the Renardus project will increase expertise in the provision of quality and sustainable subject-services within the many participating services. Strong collaborative impulses are already coming from the United States and Australia, trying to extend collaborative projects to Europe. Within the Renardus collaborative framework there is potential for positioning European participants more strongly on the international scene and putting them in an advantageous position to seek partners for international collaboration.
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Lesly Huxley
Manager: Renardus Dissemination and Support
Institute for Learning and Research Technology
University of Bristol
8-10 Berkeley Square
BRISTOL
BS8 1HH
United Kingdom
lesly.huxley@bristol.ac.uk
http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk
Phone: +44 117 928 7196
Lesly Huxley leads the ILRT Renardus team responsible for dissemination and support for the project. Her other roles in the Institute include Training Manager for the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG), Development Officer for Bized Virtual Worlds, Project Director for the Resource Guide for the Social Sciences and Staff Development Coordinator for the ILRT.
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For citation purposes:
Huxley, L "Renardus: follow the fox!", Cultivate Interactive, issue
1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/renardus/>
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