Open, social and linked - what do current Web trends tell us about the future of digital libraries?

Open, social and linked What do current Web trends tell us about the future of digital libraries?

the purpose of this talk is to ask some questions about the future of digital libraries

that’s not because I think current digital library thinking is wrong

but because I think it is healthy to ask those kind of questions every so often

JISC Information Environment

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

linked data, social networks and digital identity

I hope I have something useful to say
but we’ll see!

I’m going to focus on the three words in the title as core themes for this talk

social

linked

digital library content should be not just “on” the Web but “of” the Web

Huh? What does
of the Web
actually, like, mean?

an attitude

an expectation that your content will be re-used in ways you didn’t anticipate

an expectation that people will take your content, your API and URLs and use them to build something different

so let’s take a step back for a minute

where are we coming from?

uk-centric

and specific to higher education

jisc ie diagram

focus on the content

primarily ‘document-like objects’

focus on describing the content (primarily using simple Dublin Core metadata)

and on moving that metadata from providers to consumers

for the purposes of resource discovery , access and use

being ‘open’ is all about enabling re-use

but the cultural conditions for open sharing and re-use don’t necessarily emerge overnight

as we have found with learning objects

and we are likely to find with research data

UKRDS survey of staff representing 700 researchers...
43% expressed need to see other’s research data
most share data in some form (informally with peers)
but only 12% share via existing formal data centres

and even in the case of scholarly publications (where there is an existing heritage of ‘sharing’ for ‘re-use’) cultural change towards deposit is only happening very slowly

I also wonder if there’s a generational attitude to ‘openness’ which tends to assume most things digital are ‘open’?

so even things that are very definitely not open, like most music for example, are often treated as though they are

anyway, I digress...
back to the JISC Information Environment

we tend to talk about the OAI-PMH, Z39.50, SRW/SRU, OpenURL, Dublin Core and so on

much of the content is provided commercially

so there is also a focus on mechanisms to protect content from inappropriate access

in the JISC Information Environment there is an implied flow

jisc ie diagram

the JISC IE says very little about the relationships between people and content

and nothing about relationships between people

it says nothing about the social use that grows around content

it talks about identifiers for stuff

but not about identity (of people)

this is not unusual for ‘digital library’ activities

we talk a lot about content, and data formats, and metadata, and curation, and preservation, and persistent identifiers, and …

and we talk about openness, and Creative Commons, and other open licences

and these things are all very good and important

but we don’t talk much about social networks

which is a shame…

because... “ cultural heritage results from EXCHANGE OF IDEAS about objects - it is not located IN them”
tweeted by @janestevenson from the #soa09 conference, quoting Marc Bouley of the University of St Andrews

and while we have been busy building digital library initiatives like the JISC Information Environment

the Web has changed under our feet

it’s increasingly participatory

it’s increasingly about user-generated content

it’s increasingly open

it’s increasingly social

it’s increasingly linked

all very much open, social and linked

3 other things are also worth noting about these services...

firstly, concentration
Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC
http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001556.html

secondly, they are ‘ of ’ the Web
they support diffusion thru simple and open APIs, the use of RSS, cool URIs for everything of value, a RESTful architectural approach, and so on...

in short... they see being mashed as a virtue

thirdly, identity (in these services) is not just concerned with questions like “who are you and what are you allowed to do?”

but also about “ this is me, this is who I know, and this is what I’ve created ”

digital identity has become user-centric

concentration, diffusion and identity are enablers of social interaction

meanwhile... somewhere in academia
(a alternative case-study)

the open access
movement
and
scholarly repositories

a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution . … An institutional repository is not simply a fixed set of software and hardware (Cliff Lynch, 2003)

scholarly publications
learning objects
research data

manage
deposit
disclose
make openly available
curate
preserve

largely institutional focus
interoperability through centralised aggregators (national and global)
harvesting metadata about content using OAI-PMH (metadata = simple Dublin Core)

jisc ie diagram

we have tended to adopt service oriented approaches in line with long tradition from Z39.50 to SOAP/WSDL

our focus has been on building “services on content” rather than on the “content” itself

we don’t tend to adopt a resource oriented approach

we don’t adopt REST – an architectural style with a focus on resources, their identifiers (e.g. URIs), and a simple uniform set of operations that each resource supports (e.g. GET, PUT, POST, DELETE)

we don’t encourage a Web style “follow your nose” approach

… and we tend to treat “content” in isolation from the “social networks” that need to grow around that content

successful “repositories” (Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare, etc.) promote the social activity that takes place around content as well as the content management and disclosure activity

the institutional approach has fundamental mismatch with the real-life social networks adopted by researchers
subject-based
cross-institutional
global

while institutional approach is good from perspective of institutional management, preservation, etc.
globally “concentrated” repositories might better reflect the social networks that need to arise

the net effect …is that there is no net effect

repositories remain uncompelling places to disclose scholarly publications from POV of the researcher

perceived cost of deposit remains higher than perceived benefits

we resort to institutional or funder mandates, “thou shalt deposit”, to fill what would otherwise remain empty

final thoughts

visitors vs. residents
David White, University of Oxford
http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/

counterpoint to the whole ‘Google generation’, ‘digital native’ meme

resident – “ an individual who lives a percentage of their life online”

visitor – “ an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need arises”

the cultural heritage sector tends to build services aimed at visitors

I think we should be designing with residents in mind

conclusions...

what would I do if I was advising on something like the JISC Information Environment now?

I’d aim to be as like the mainstream Web as possible

I’d ask “How would Google do this?” more often

I’d focus on the basics

I’d focus on the principles of linked data
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

use URIs to name things

use HTTP URIs so that people can look them up

provide useful information when people dereference the URIs

include links to other things as part of that information (so that the recipient can find new things)

I’d promote the principles of cool URIs
(practical persistence)

I’d strongly encourage a RESTful architectural approach

I’d encourage RSS / Atom as essential point of access

I’d focus on the social aspects of the systems being built

implies that the Open Stack (OpenID, OAuth, ...) is increasingly important

I’d focus on building stuff for residents rather than visitors

thank you

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Open, social and linked - what do current Web trends tell us about the future of digital libraries?

by Andy Powell on Oct 14, 2009

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Open, social and linked - what do current Web trends tell us about the future of digital libraries? — Webinar Transcript