JISC Information Environment Architecture

Glossary

Technical standards | Publications | Presentations

This glossary defines the key terminology used within the JISC Information Environment (IE) technical architecture.

It should be noted that some of the terms below may have wider (or different) meanings when used in contexts other than the JISC IE.

Resources

Item: A physical or digital entity.
Collection: An aggregation of one or more items.
Service: The provision of, or system of supplying, one or more functions of interest to an end-user or software application. 'Informational' services provide access to, or metadata about, items and/or collections. 'Transactional' services are those that do not primarily concern the supply of information, for example photocopying, printing or banking services. Services may be physical or on-line (digital).
Resource: An item, collection or service of interest to the end-user.
Learning Resource: A resource with a learning objective.
Record / Metadata record: Structured data about a resource.
Network Service: A service that is provided on-line (digitally). 'Informational' network services include those that provide access to, or metadata about, items or collections at a digital location. Examples include Web sites, document supply services, abstracting and indexing services, data archives, online catalogues, databases, email archives, etc. 'Transactional' network services are those that are not primarily concerned with the supply of information, for example format conversion, printing, authentication or e-commerce services.
Structured Network Service: A network service that provides structured access to structured resources. Structured network services are intended for use by software applications. Examples of structured network services are those based on Z39.50, the OAI-PMH, RSS/HTTP and SOAP. Note that an HTML-based Web site is not 'structured', in the sense that it does not provide structured access to structured resources. 'Web services', as defined in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1 W3C Note, are examples of structured network services.

Service components

Portal: A network service that provides a personalised, single point of access to a range of heterogeneous network services, local and remote, structured and unstructured. Portal functionality often includes resource discovery, email access and online discussion fora. Portals are intended for (human) end-users using common Web 'standards' such as HTTP, HTML, Java and JavaScript. In the context of the JISC IE, portals interact with brokers, aggregators, indexes, catalogues and content providers using Z39.50, SRW, the OAI-PMH and RSS/HTTP.
Broker: A structured network service that provides (search) access to a range of other, heterogeneous, local or remote structured network services. Brokers are intended for use by software applications. In the context of the JISC IE, brokers interact with indexes, catalogues, aggregators, content providers, other brokers and portals using Z39.50.
Aggregator: A structured network service that gathers metadata from a range of other, heterogeneous, local or remote structured network services. Aggregators are intended for use by software applications. In the context of the JISC IE, aggregators interact with indexes, catalogues, content providers and other aggregators using the OAI-PMH and RSS/HTTP. Aggregators interact with portals using the OAI-PMH. In some cases an aggregator may offer its aggregated metadata as a Z39.50 target.
Catalogue: A network service that provides access to a collection of human-generated metadata records.
Index: A network service that provides access to a machine-generated database of information derived from the content of items in a collection.
Content Provider: A network service that makes a collection available. A content provider may disclose metadata about its resources through a structured network service. In the context of the JISC IE, a content provider interacts with brokers, aggregators and portals using Z39.50, the OAI-PMH and RSS/HTTP. Note that 'content provider' may also refer to the organisation that makes collections available - which may be a JISC-funded service, an HE/FE institution, or some other organisation.
Subject Gateway / Gateway: A network service based on a catalogue of Internet resources. The gateways provided by RDN hubs focus on particular subject areas.
OpenURL Link Servers: A network service that takes metadata about a resource in the form of an OpenURL and supplies links (pointers) to services on, or related to, that resource, for example delivery services.
Infrastructural Services: A range of shared structured network services that are called on by content providers, brokers, aggregators, indexes, catalogues and portals. Infrastructural services include authentication, authorisation, service registry, user preferences, resolver, institutional profile, metadata schema registry and terminology services.
Authentication Service: A structured network service that determines that the digital ID being presented to a network service is being used by the real-world individual who has the rights to use it. This is often achieved through the use of a username/password combination or a digital certificate, depending on the degree of assurance required.
Authorisation Service: A structured network service that indicates whether a particular digital ID has the necessary access-rights to access a particular resource.
Service Registry: A network service that stores and makes available descriptions of (i.e. metadata about) services and the content of collections made available through those services. A service registry is used by portals to determine what collections are available to end-users, and by portals, brokers and aggregators to determine how to interact with available network services.
User Preferences Service: A structured network service that stores and makes available information about the preferences of end-users.
Identifier Service: A network service that maintains and provides an association between an identifier and some metadata about the identified resource. Typically, an identifier service takes an identifier of a resource and returns a locator for it (usually in the form of a URL).
Institutional Profiling Service: A structured network service that stores and makes available information about what licences institutions hold, i.e. their access rights as organisations to particular resources, and other institution-wide preferences, such as prefered content-delivery services.
Metadata Schema Registry: A network service that stores and makes available information about the metadata schemas in use by other services.
Terminology Service: A structured network service that offers terminolgy-related services, for example mapping a term from one controlled vocabulary to another or expanding terms within a thesaurus.
Middleware: Brokers, aggregators and infrastructural services.

Service functions

Provision / Content Provision: The function of making a collection or item available through a network service.
Disclosure: The function of offering metadata records for searching (using Z39.50) or gathering (using the OAI-PMH and/or RSS/HTTP) through a structured network service.
Alert: A disclosure strategy based on issuing information about new or updated resources, typically through a network service or via email.
Fusion: The function of combining metadata records, by searching (using Z39.50), gathering (using the OAI-PMH, RSS/HTTP and/or HTTP) or manual cataloguing.
Presentation: The function of providing a network service intended for (human) end-users.

End-user activities

Survey: The activity of determining which collections and/or services are likely to be of interest for further investigation.
Discover: The activity of finding items and/or services of interest.
Search: A survey or discover strategy based on issuing a query and receiving a set of search results.
Browse: A survey or discover strategy based on following links between resources.
Use Saved Record / Follow Path: A survey or discover strategy based on following the saved results from a previous survey or discover activity. Examples include making use of Web browser bookmarks or a course reading list.
Access: The activity of obtaining the most appropriate copy of a discovered resource.
Use: The activity of doing something with a resource that has been accessed.
Publish: The activity of making a resource available to others.
Deposit: The activity of placing a resource within a repository, typically with the intention of making it available to others.
Assemble: The activity of combining serveral resources (or parts of resources) to create a new resource. Creating an IMS package is an example of assembly.

Protocols and standards

Z39.50: A protocol supporting distributed search and retrieve between structured network services.
OAI-PMH: The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. A protocol supporting the bulk exchange of metadata records between structured network services.
RSS/HTTP: RSS is RDF Site Summary - an RDF/XML application for describing syndicated news feeds. RSS/HTTP is the exchange of RSS files between network services using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
OpenURL: A standard for transporting metadata between network services by encoding it in a URL.
SOAP: The Simple Object Access Protocol. A protocol for issuing a 'remote procedure call' to a structured network service based on XML and HTTP.
WSDL: The Web Services Descrition Language. An XML application for describing Web services.
UDDI: Universal Discovery, Description and Integration. A technology for building distributed registries of Web services.
SRW: A SOAP-based search protocol based on a subset of Z39.50 functionality.
DC: The Dublin Core, a relatively simple set of metadata terms supporting resource discovery.
IEEE LOM: A metadata standard for the description of learning objects.