Interoperability Focus: AboutSince January 1999 UKOLN has hosted Interoperability Focus, jointly funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK's Further and Higher Education Funding Councils and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
Interoperability Focus was initially a one person post held by Paul Miller. Since late 2004 Interoperability Focus has become a team of people responsible for exploring, publicising and mobilising the benefits and practice of effective interoperability across diverse information sectors, including libraries and the cultural heritage and archival communities. A key aspect of this work is the identification and exploitation of synergies with existing UKOLN and external projects, with a view to maximising returns on the ongoing work of projects such as MODELS and other initiatives.
A leaflet entitled Looking at Interoperability was first published in April 2005.
Across information providers as diverse as public libraries, museums and data archives, access to related resources beyond the physical holdings of a single institution is becoming increasingly important. Under initiatives from the National Grid for Learning to the Higher Education community's Information Environment, attention is focusing upon enabling users — wherever they may be — to discover and access resources drawn from different sources. The importance of seamlessly querying information from multiple repositories at the same time has also been recognised, with effort expended upon distributed query protocols such as Z39.50, and continued development of local solutions like the ROADS software employed by a number of Hubs within the Resource Discovery Network.
Within the context of information 'clumps' and the emerging Hybrid Libraries, too, interoperability is a core requirement for effective service delivery.
'Interoperability' is a broad term, encompassing many of the issues impinging upon the effectiveness with which diverse information resources might fruitfully co-exist. These issues are many and varied, but a key set may usefully be identified as;
In many ways the most straightforward aspect of maintaining interoperability, consideration of technical issues includes ensuring an involvement in the continued development of communication, transport, storage and representation standards such as Z39.50, ISO-ILL, XML, etc. Work is required both to ensure that these individual standards move forward to the benefit of the community, and to facilitate where possible their convergence, such that systems may effectively make use of more than one standards-based approach.
Semantic interoperability presents a host of issues, all of which become more pronounced as individual resources — each internally constructed in their own semantically consistent fashion — are made available through 'gateways' such as that from the Arts & Humanities Data Service or union catalogues like COPAC. Almost inevitably, these discrete resources use different terms to describe similar concepts ('Author', 'Creator', and 'Composer', for example), or even use identical terms to mean very different things, introducing confusion and error into their use. Ongoing work on the development and distributed use of thesauri such as those from the Getty is one important aid in this area, and worthy of further exploration.
Apart from issues related to the manner in which information is described and disseminated, the decision to make resources more widely available has implications for the organisations concerned (who may see this as a loss of control or ownership), their staff (who may not possess the skills required to support more complex systems and a newly distributed user community), and the end users. Process change, and extensive staff and user training are rarely considered when deciding whether or not to release a given resource, but are crucial to ensuring the effective long-term use of any service.
As traditional boundaries between institutions and disciplines begin to blur, researchers increasingly require access to information from a wide range of sources, both within and without their own subject area. Complementing work in the library sector, important initiatives are also underway in related information providing communities such as museums and archives. In many cases, both goals and problems are similar, and there is much to be gained through adopting common solutions wherever feasible.
This synergy has been recognised, too, by the European Commission, and a significant number of projects may well be funded under their Fifth Framework Programme which will be required to demonstrate such inter-community interoperability in practice.
Each of the key issues identified, above, is magnified when considered on an international scale, where differences in technical approach, working practice and organisation have been enshrined over many years.
Although already a factor in some areas of the United Kingdom, issues related to the language in which resources are provided and described become increasingly significant when dealing with those delivered from or provided for other countries.
Nevertheless, the UK Higher Education community stands to make significant gains from involvement in the design, provision, and dissemination of world-class resources, and representation of this community's needs and expertise on the international stage is an important aspect of ensuring effective interoperability, whether within the UK alone, or between the UK and more remote resources.
These issues, and more, fall within the remit of Interoperability Focus.
The activities of Interoperability Focus include a significant degree of information dissemination, both to advertise Interoperability Focus activities and to promote cross-fertilisation of ideas and knowledge within the community. Regular articles in Ariadne serve to deliver accessible introductions on a number of topics to a wide readership, supported by more in-depth discussions through this and other channels.
The Interoperability Focus Web site will be frequently updated, keeping visitors abreast of work in the United Kingdom and beyond, and providing pointers to examples of Interoperability in action.
The landscape within which Interoperability Focus moves is both extensive and constantly evolving. It is clearly impossible to apply significant effort across all regions of this landscape simultaneously, making it imperative to quickly establish communications with other focal points so that information may be more effectively shared, and to prioritise activity to maximise community benefit.
Projects and individuals with experiences to share, working implementations to show, or core issues to resolve which might usefully be addressed by Interoperability Focus, are invited to get in touch.
For a lighthearted view of interoperability have a look at the Interoperability Focus Cartoon.
For further information on Interoperability Focus, please contact:
Marieke Guy
UK Interoperability Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
BA2 7AY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1225 385105
Fax: +44 (0)1225 386838
E-mail: m.guy@ukoln.ac.uk
Web site: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/>
UKOLN is funded by MLA: the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.
[UKOLN] [Interoperability Focus]
Web page by
Marieke Guy of UKOLN.
Last updated on 05-Jun-2013
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