ETH Library as one of the leading scientific libraries in the world is up to date not only concerning methodology and the library’s business processes but also with regards to technology. To be and to stay state of the art, ETH Library takes part early in new technological developments that may affect information science, such as Blockchain. Actually, nobody really knows, if Blockchain is useful for libraries or just a hyped, very power-consuming technology for one special purpose. To maybe answer this, to deal constructively with the influence Blockchain has on information science, and to shape this development, ETH Library started several activities: — Under the leadership of its ETH Library Lab, workshops were performed to identify and analyse possible use cases for Blockchain. — Early this year on the initiative of the Max Planck Digital Library (MDPL), leading institutions from ten different countries, including ETH Library, have founded the global Blockchain Consortium for Science. — This summer, ETH Library started an experiment to build a tool to validate data and to see, if this tool can usefully run on a Blockchain. The talk will give an overview of data storage and Blockchain, as well as ETH Library’s activities.

1. ||ETH Library
10 Years DOI Desk at ETH Zurich
Blockchain and the ETH Library
take part, watch and learn

4. ||ETH Library
 Modern scripting technologies to customize the discovery experience for our
customers
 Modern web frameworks to build the first identity provider for non-academic
customers in Europe
 Modern data science methods to analyze and transform data e.g. for SLSP
 Modern distributed data bases to build up a datalake for meta data
 Modern technology’s research in the ETH Library Lab
 Modern container technologies to drive microservices, but also to host a
blockchain node
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always on track

5. ||ETH Library
 Text files
 Databases
 Distributed Databases
 Blockchain?
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how to store data

6. ||ETH Library
 A fraud resistant distributed database
 A chain, where every link depends on its predecessor
 Bulletproof: one cannot change a bit of information without making the
following chain invalid
 No need for intermediates anymore (though I’d consider the blockchain itself
as an intermediate)
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A broad overview

7. ||ETH Library
Whom do we distrust?
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Focussing on libraries:

8. ||ETH Library
 Search and analyze possible use cases of blockchain under Leadership of the
ETH Library Lab
 Become a founding member of the bloxberg consortium
 Start a first project with the following constraints
 Always be aware of the customers benefit
 Keep an eye on the resources
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What we do (concerning blockchain)

9. ||ETH Library
Can we support science and research
with blockchain technologies?
And if so, how?
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Our question

10. ||ETH Library 13.09.19Sven Koesling 10
Bloxberg

11. ||ETH Library
 International consortium of actually 50 members
 permissioned, public blockchain
 Proof of Authority  No mining! (resources)
 Goal: deliver a trusted research infrastructure, empowering researchers with
robust, autonomous services that transcend institutional boundaries
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bloxberg
read the bloxberg whitepaper

12. ||ETH Library
 Explorer: See, who‘s on the network
 Voting: on chain voting for new candidates
 Certifying documents on „keeper“
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Actually three dApps

13. ||ETH Library 13.09.19Sven Koesling 13

14. ||ETH Library 13.09.19Sven Koesling 14
Seal of Trust

15. ||ETH Library
 Processes worked out
 System architecture roughly designed
 Actually in negotiations with a developer team
 Start with a distributed database
 Prototype: Do we meet the requirements?
 Test on blockchain
 Advantages / disadvantages
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Early development

16. ||ETH Library 13.09.19Sven Koesling 16
Power consumption – first impression
distributed DB (in production)
bloxberg
Seal of Trust
?

17. ||ETH Library
10 Years DOI Desk at ETH Zurich
Sven Koesling
sven.Koesling@library.ethz.ch
Thank you for your attention