Transcript Re-imagining the national data store Warwick Cathro Assistant Director-General, Innovation Outline • How does the National Library view the future of the national discovery services? •

Re-imagining the national data
store
Warwick Cathro
Assistant Director-General, Innovation
Outline
• How does the National Library view the
future of the national discovery services?
• What factors are driving our plans?
• What are the key issues and challenges?
Background
• The NLA’s current portfolio of national discovery
services:
– Libraries Australia, Picture Australia, Music Australia,
ARROW Discovery Service, RAAM
• New projects
– Newspaper Digitisation
– People Australia
• The need to consolidate and integrate services
The imperatives
• For users:
– make major improvements in “rapid and easy access”
to information resources (ranking, navigation,
clustering, annotation)
– give users access to a wider and better integrated
national data store
• For the NLA as service manager:
– manage and maintain discovery services more
effectively
– IT Architecture Group report:
• http://www.nla.gov.au/dsp/documents/itag.pdf
Newspapers
Music Australia
Pandora
ARROW
People Australia
Journals
Picture Australia
RAAM
NBD
NLA Catalogue
The problem: silos
Our new approach
• Service Oriented Architecture
– based on small, loosely coupled, shareable,
functional service components
• Single Business approach
–
–
–
–
integrated national data store
“collection views” of that store
manage the discovery service in an integrated way
recognise unique requirements of each collection
view
• Use Lucene as preferred platform
High level model
National data store
Newspapers
View
Journals View
Pictures
View
Music
View
Discovery
Service
Authentication
Service
Search
Service
Annotation
Service
Request
Service
What it might look like
TM
All
Newspapers Journals Pictures Maps more >>
Advanced search
Preferences
In Australian libraries
In my libraries
Australian
Online
You searched on “percy grainger”
Summary of hits:
Topics:
Hits from Music View:
1. Grainger, George Percy,
1882-1961 – Australian
Dictionary of Biography Online
2. Percy Grainger – Wikipedia
entry
3. Percy Aldridge Grainger,
1882-1961 – Australian
composer biography,
Australian Music Centre
1. Country gardens. 1930.
2. Irish tune from County
Derry. 1921.
3. Colonial song. 1921.
4. Anchor song. 1922.
5. Australian up-country song.
More …
1930.
More …
Refine your search:
More …
Hits from National Film and
Sound Archive:
Scores (242)
Sounds (378)
Published 1921-1930 (114)
Published 1931-1940 (99)
Published 1941-1950 (74)
1. Arrival platform Humlet.
2. Blithe bells
3. Cradle song
More …
Music View (939)
Books View (335)
Journals View (589)
Pictures View (63)
Newspapers View (7644)
Oral History View (468)
More …
What makes it unique
• A place for Australians to start a search
that:
– enables Australians to understand ourselves
and our place in the world
– gives prominence to information in Australia’s
collecting institutions
– is authoritative, impartial, non-commercial
– is wide-ranging in scope
– is easy to use
Collection views: issues
• What collection views and filters to promote?
• What data to be aggregated by the NLA and
what to search as external targets?
• How to ensure that users find what they need
regardless of the collection view they choose to
start their search?
• How to navigate from one collection view to
another?
Filters
• For all views there may be “filters” such as
those allowing the user to limit a search to:
– in Australian libraries
– in my libraries
– Australian
– online
Content of the national data store
• National Bibliographic Database
• National digital newspaper collection
• The national web archives
– PANDORA
– Whole Domain Harvest
• Finding aids, journal indexes, oral history
transcripts, biographical information,
pictures metadata
Books
• Nation’s library collections
– represented in the ANBD
• External targets:
– WorldCat
– Google Book Search [etc.]
• Potential for incorporating digitised text
from out-of-copyright books
Journals
• Information about all Australian journals
– including library holdings
• External targets
– Google Scholar
– Informit indexes and full text
– ERA (Electronic Resources Australia) targets
• APAIS and AMI indexing data
– business model transition
• Potential for incorporating digitised text from outof-copyright journals
Newspapers
• Information about all Australian
newspapers whether digitised or not
– including library holdings
• External target possibilities
– Factiva
– Sydney Morning Herald 1955-1990
• Full text of all digitised newspaper issues
Research
• Scope cuts across potential collection views:
– books, journal articles, pre-prints, theses, data sets
• Includes metadata harvested from university
repositories for the ARROW Discovery Service
• External targets:
– Australian Bureau of Statistics (NDN)
– Future Australian National Data Service
• Facilitation of harvesting by Google Scholar and
other aggregators (OAI target)
Further examples
• Pictures
– all known pictures whether digitised or not
– external targets: Flickr, Google Images
• Archives and manuscripts
– include finding aids harvested from partners
– external targets: major institutional collections that
have implemented OpenSearch
• Oral history
– summaries and transcripts from the NLA and other
oral history collections
Implications
• NLA is envisaging replacing its ILMS
catalogue with an “in my library” view of
the future national data store
• Possibility of other libraries leveraging off
the national data store for local purposes
• Discussions within NSLA about
collaboration on the service framework
Where are we up to?
• Formed an internal “Business Integration
Taskforce” to drive this forward
• Will develop a prototype of new service
(September to November 2007)
• Functional service components are being
developed:
– Newspaper Digitisation Project
– People Australia Project
• We envisage a staged transition to the new
model