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Supporting Further and Higher Education
Collection description as Collection description as MiddlewareMiddleware
The Information Environment Service Registry (IESR)The Information Environment Service Registry (IESR)
Rachel Bruce, Information Environment, Team LeaderRachel Bruce, Information Environment, Team Leader
CDF, Showcase,25 March, 2003CDF, Showcase,25 March, 2003
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Talk overview
• The JISC Information Environment (IE) & middleware/shared services
• Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) – pilot
• Challenges & why
Supporting Further and Higher Education
What is Middleware• Middleware, or "glue", is a layer of software
between the network and the applications. This software provides services such as identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security. In today's Internet, applications usually have to provide these services themselves, which leads to competing and incompatible standards. By promoting standardization and interoperability, middleware will make advanced network
applications much easier to use.
Internet2 Middleware Initiative
Supporting Further and Higher Education
What is the JISC Information Environment?
• to build an on-line information environment providing secure and convenient access to a comprehensive collection of scholarly and educational material
JISC 5-year strategy
Supporting Further and Higher Education
JISC IE Architecture• Provides a set of standards & protocols that
support the development & delivery of integrated network services – allows the user to discover, access,use and publish digital & physical resources for their learning & research [teaching]
Andy Powell, UKOLN
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Web Web Web Web
Content(local andremote)
End-user
End-user needs to join services together manually - as well as learning multiple user interfaces
Current situation-difficult to find
Authentication
Authorisation
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Future - easier to find
Content
End-user
Portals
Authentication
Authorisation
Collection Description
User Profiles
End-user is “automatically” presented with relevant resources through relevant channels
Thesauri
Service Desc.
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Shared Services
• What are they?= machine readable services between the presentation layer and the content layer of the IE (middleware)
• User profiling – so the right services can be delivered to the user
• Collection description – high level description so portals, VLEs can locate relevant resources
• Service description- technical metadata – to allow machines to know if they can interoperate with services
• Other types of high level description- subject, educational levels, rights – high level finding aids for machines
• Authentication & authorisation- right user, access rights • Terminology services-subject, place, help find the appropriate
resource
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Portals• What are they?=’doorways’ to diverse content –
provide cross-searching of distributed and otherwise discrete resources.
• All experimental –how well do they address the discovery mechanism?
• User centred discovery – for Learning & Teaching• Subject centred –humanities, engineering,leisure and tourism • Format & media type - Image • Building ‘portlet’ technology –plug it in to an institutional VLE?
Supporting Further and Higher Education
IESR-pilot
• Service Registry – machine readable catalogue of high-quality resources
• MIMAS, Cheshire, UKOLN
• Completes end December 2003
Supporting Further and Higher Education
• Descriptive metadata- derived from RSLP schema
• Technical metadata- being finalised – does a collection have a Z target, is the associated metadata available via OAI etc.
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Descriptions from who?
Initially:
• AHDS, EDINA,Essex Data Archive etc.
• Some publishers
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Pilot stages
• Consultation with stakeholders(Content providers,shared services,end users etc.)
• Development of software
• Development of schema
• Develop Interfaces
• Populate
• Evaluate
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Challenges • Keeping it economic and sustainable
• Building, while still designing and researching
• Cultural & organisational change
• Granularity of collection
• Integrating the IE with learning environments, the Research Grid and
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Why?
• Portal (aggregator) surveys the environment
• Seamless & integrated access
• Awareness of collections
• More use
• Improved learning, teaching & research
Supporting Further and Higher Education
Further information
• http://jisc.ac.uk/ie• http://www.mimas.ac.uk/iesr/
- JISC IE: [email protected] IESR, Project Manager:
