Transcript MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format

A Standards Framework For Digital
Library Development Programmes
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
Email
[email protected]
URL
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
This ‘gong’ gives an overview of work in progress for JISC
UKOLN is supported by:
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
About Me
Brian Kelly:
• UK Web Focus – a Web advisory post for UK HE
and FE and cultural heritage communities
• Involved in Web work since January 1993, when
helped set up UK HE's first (?) institutional Web
service at Leeds University
• JISC representative on W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium)
• Based at UKOLN – a national centre of expertise
in digital information management
• Funding by JISC (Joint Information Systems
Committee) and MLA (Museums, Libraries and
Archives Council)
2
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Background
What do we have in common:
• Involvement in building digital libraries
• Awareness of importance of open
standards??
• Seeking to maximise interoperability
across digital libraries (provided by bodies
with loose affiliations with ourselves)
We may also say we support open standards as
a code for being anti-Microsoft!
3
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Experiences of Supporting DL
Programmes
Background:
• Contributor to Standards Document for JISC’s
eLib DL programme (1995-2000)
• Contributor to Standards Document for JISC’s
DNER (IE) DL programme (2000-)
• Contributor to Standards Document for NOFdigitise DL programme (2001-2004)
Things In Common:
Expectation of use of open standards
Failure to make use of open standards to expected level
4
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Lessons learnt (standards)
Difficulties in defining open standards
Which is an open standard:
• Flash
 PDF
• Java
 MS Office format
Difficulties in deploying open standards:
• Non-compliance HTML & CSS, RSS, XML, …
• Open standards may be flawed; fail to take off; …
• Lack of compliance testing
Flexibility of real-world applications:
• Web browsers, scrapers, indexers, … appear to
do a good job with flawed resources
Users happy with proprietary solutions:
• Flash is popular … and we use PowerPoint, PDF,
…
5
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Lessons learnt (org. issues)
Shortage of technical expertise and understanding in
development community:
• Short term contracts
• Academic salaries
• Technical expertise in wrong areas
Institutional concerns:
• Don’t want to be test bed for Comp Sci. research
interests (e.g. cultural differences between
Comp. Sci and IT Services)
• Want mature, tested solutions – which aren’t of
interest to research community
• …
6
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What do we do?
How do we reconcile tensions between:
• Research community
• Digital library developers and maintainers
• Institutional needs
• Needs of the funders
• And end users
There is a need to recognise contextual differences
across different communities
7
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Framework For Use Of
Standards
External factors: Institutional issues (funds, expertise, policies,
security…)
Digital Library programme
My interests
Context
Community (HE/FE); Funding; resources;
mainstream vs. developmental; …
Policies
Standards; architectures; accessibility;
usability; OSS; project management; finance;
Compliance
External checking; penalty clauses;
self-assessment; developmental; learning
EU
NSF
…
External factors: Legal factors; cultural factors; external bodies
8
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Implications
Implications of this framework:
• DL service providers are keen on open
standards
• There is a need to recognise bigger DL
picture
• There is a need to take a layered
approach to development of policies
• Service deployment has its own problems
Comments welcome
9
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk