Web 2.0 and repositories - have we got our repository architecture right?

Web 2.0 and repositories… … have we got our repository architecture right?

Outline
where are we now?
what’s wrong with where we are now?
what can we do about it?
do we need a new vision?

Where are we now?
where are we now?

What is a repository? 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)

Repository “doing” words
manage
deposit
disclose
make openly available
curate
preserve

Repository content
all sorts… but most “academic” focus currently on
scholarly publications
learning objects
research data

Repository content
all sorts… but most “academic” focus currently on
scholarly publications
learning objects
research data
this talk focuses on the first of these, but with the intention that most of what I say will be generic

Repository architecture
largely institutional focus though some exceptions – arXiv, RePEC, JORUM, etc.
interoperability through centralised aggregators (national and global)
search services (OAIster, Intute, …)
registries (DOAR, ROAR, …)
harvesting metadata about content using OAI-PMH (metadata = simple Dublin Core)
content = PDF
SWORD as deposit API

What’s “wrong” with where we are now?
what’s “ wrong ” with where we are now?

#1 We talk about “repositories”…

…rather than “the Web” a focus on ‘ making content available on the Web’ would be more intuitive to researchers

Whatever happened to the CMS?
a focus on ‘ content management ’ would change our emphasis
OAI-PMH out…
search engine optimisation, usability, accessibility, Web design, tagging, information architecture, cool URIs in…

#2 We don’t emphasise…
Google indexing
RSS feeds
widget technology – embedding functionality into other sites

#3 Our focus is on sharing metadata…
… even though we have full-text to share
worse… the full-text we share tends to be PDF rather than native Web format
the Web equivalent of a cul de sac
and the metadata we share tends to be “simple Dublin Core”
little consistency in approaches to describing ‘files’ vs. ‘documents’
little consistency in naming authors and subjects
ultimately, it is both too simple and too complex!

#4 We ignore the Web Architecture
we have tended to adopt service oriented approaches
in line with long tradition from Z39.50 to SOAP/WSDL
e.g. JISC eFramework
focus is on building “services on content” rather than on the “content”
pbo31 @ flickr

REST is good
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

#5 We are antisocial…
… at least, 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
friends, groups, social tagging, comments, embedding, re-purposing, etc.

But not just about functionality…
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

Wait just a minute…
didn’t we used to have globally “concentrated” repository services?
arXiv – the first Web 2.0 service?
invented before the Web
unfortunately, also invented before Amazon S3
i.e. before we knew how to scale things

Wait just another minute…
… doesn’t the blogsphere successfully layer a set of globally concentrated services over a distributed network of content?
e.g. Technorati
yes… but…
the content is under the control of ‘individuals’ rather than ‘institutions’, and…
the interoperability “glue” (RSS and tagging) is very lightweight and RESTful

Having the conversation is hard
highly political space
strong “open access” voices who, understandably, don’t want their agenda de-railed by discussion about
preservation
search engine optimisation
Web 2.0
social networks
semantic Web
the future of peer review
it can be hard to get the conversation started

What can we do about it?
what can we do about it?

Things can go two ways… I think that things can go two ways… The Web 2.0 Way or The Semantic Web Way … possibly both

Things can go two ways… what would a Web 2.0 repository look like?

Like this?

A Web 2.0 repository?
high-quality browser-based document viewer (not Acrobat!)
tagging, commentary, more-like-this, favorites, …
persistent (cool) URIs to content
ability to form simple social groups
ability to embed documents in other Web sites
high visibility to Google
offer RSS as primary API
use of Amazon S3 to cope with scalability

In short… we go “simple”
we develop simple(ish) repositories
and complex aggregators and search engines
RSS/Atom as primary “glue”
social tagging as “description”
full-text indexing
microformats
Google Sitemaps to guide harvesters to content
complex functional requirements (e.g. author disambiguation) either ignored or met thru complexity in aggregators

Alternatively… we go “complex”
…we look to the Semantic Web
we create and share much richer metadata about scholarly publications than we do currently
we explicitly model complexity (a la FRBR)
and aggregations
we expose resulting metadata thru the SW “graph”

We go “complex”...
SWAP and ORE

We go “complex”…
SWAP – Scholarly Works Application Profile
an application of the Dublin Core Abstract Model and Application Profiles
capturing relationships between works, expressions, manifestations, items and agents
ORE – OAI Object Re-use and Exchange
capturing relationships between aggregations and aggregated resources
note that ORE not tied to specific entity in FRBR
note that ORE implemented as profile of Atom

SWAP application profile model ScholarlyWork Expression 0..∞ isExpressedAs Manifestation isManifestedAs 0..∞ Copy isAvailableAs 0..∞ 0..∞ 0..∞ isCreatedBy isPublishedBy 0..∞ isEditedBy 0..∞ isFundedBy isSupervisedBy AffiliatedInstitution Agent

OAI ORE

Summary
what can we learn from Web 2.0?
user interface design matters
global ‘concentration’ is an enabler of social interaction
simple DC is both too simple and too complex
richer DC application profiles such as SWAP and/or RDF applications like ORE may be a way forward
but need to ensure that their use does not over-complicate user interfaces and workflows

A new vision?
a new vision?

Flickr and digital cameras…
didn’t just take the practice of photography and put it on the Web
they fundamentally changed what photography was about

What’s our vision?
the standards we adopt in the scholarly communication space…
OAI-PMH, OpenURL, DOI, PDF, …
are primarily about replicating in a Web world what we have always done on paper
this is not surprising given the necessary inertia of the scholarly communication life-cycle
but… do we need to re-envision scholarly communication as a true Web process?
if so, what would a repository look like?

thank you

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Web 2.0 and repositories - have we got our repository architecture right?

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Web 2.0 and repositories - have we got our repository architecture right? Presentation Transcript