Projects

Re-imagining Discovery Services

Workshop To Be Held February 4, 2008

Objective

The Re-imagining Discovery Services Reference Group (formerly the Information Access Plan Reference Group) is planning a full day workshop, entitled "Re-imagining Discovery Services", to be held at the State Library of Victoria on 4 February 2008. The Reference Group expects that about 30 staff from NSLA members will attend.

The aim of this paper is to define the objectives for this workshop and to identify the inputs and outputs that will be needed to achieve these objectives.

Background

Following a workshop held in Adelaide in October 2004, National & State Libraries Australasia established an "Information Access Plan" activity. While this activity was not assigned formal terms of reference, the following objectives were implied in a report provided to CASL (as it then was) in March 2005:

examine the information access services currently provided by NSLA members, together with those provided by others that are available to the general public;
consider technological developments affecting integrated information discovery;
identify barriers to effective information access;
propose actions to reduce those barriers and to achieve more streamlined access; and
develop a collaborative framework for an improved infrastructure that can be shared by NSLA members

A letter sent to public libraries in November 2005 commented:

Over the last year, the Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL) has recognised that there is a need to bring together the Australian library presence on the web to form a more accessible, cohesive and easy-to-navigate service for the community. The digital library services across the sector are growing rapidly and the cooperative infrastructure to support easy access for library users must also continue to develop.

The Information Access Plan has grown from these discussions, though it represents only the first step towards a long-term goal. It includes two elements - 1) promoting the vision of an integrated digital library service, and 2) developing projects that CASL Libraries will undertake ... to support the objectives of the Plan.

The objectives of the Information Access Plan are to break down the barriers to effective digital library services for the community - through improving access, simplifying interfaces, and integrating searching.

Since January 2007, the Information Access Plan agenda has been steered by a Reference Group with the following membership:

Convenor: Warwick Cathro (National Library of Australia)
Northern Territory Library: Diana Richards
State Library of New South Wales: Lynne Billington
State Library of Queensland: Anna Raunik
State Library of South Australia: Lesley Sharp, Sue Lewis, Andrew Piper
State Library of Tasmania: Lloyd Sokvitne, Jane Coatman
State Library of Victoria: Leneve Jamieson, Anne Beaumont
State Library of Western Australia: Alison Sutherland
National Library of Australia: Susanne Bruhn, Judith Pearce

The Big Bang

The objectives above can be related to the statement entitled "The Big Bang" which was released by NSLA in June 2007. In particular, the Big Bang emphasises that:

access is our primary driver;
resources should be "universally discoverable and immediately available";
services should be "welcoming and easy to use" without mediation;
we need more effective access by users to online library content;
we need to build organisational structures that can support "rapid response projects"; and
the core content needing to be discoverable and available online is the content that makes our collections unique

While the "Big Bang" statement promotes a vision of universal unmediated discoverability and access through integrated digital library services, it does not identify the barriers which are preventing us from delivering such services now and how to break these down.

Objectives of the workshop

The Workshop has the following objectives:

To gain a common understanding of what we all mean by integrated digital library services and what usage scenarios these services will need to support
To develop a "roadmap" which describes how the national and state libraries can work together to advance a shared digital library service framework based on this understanding

Assumptions

The Workshop will:

be driven by its assessment of user needs (including needs for unmediated discovery, for commencing discovery in a broader context than an institutional catalogue, and for access to a wide range of content both local and national, in library collections and otherwise);
work within the context of a service-oriented architecture supporting the delivery of online library services;
take account of the full range of existing and emergent technological capabilities now available in the digital world, including highly scalable and consolidated data stores, search engines, network interfaces, and social interactivity; and
take account of existing and newly developed standards, from data description to data interchange, many specifically designed for collaborative collection development activities and discovery focused outcomes

Outputs from the workshop

The Workshop will facilitate the development of:

a list of the key factors that differentiate our shared vision of integrated digital library services from what we currently deliver;
a roadmap that maps out strategies for making each factor a reality and the key steps and deliverables along the way;
a development plan that identifies a set of practical and achievable tasks that the National and State Libraries can begin work on during 2008; and
a cooperation plan that enables various institutions and sectors to participate according to their needs and abilities, and to benefit by delivering local outcomes

Inputs to the workshop

The workshop will be informed by papers that cover:

the need for an overarching service framework that enables a shared understanding of the digital library functions needing to be supported by our systems and existing and proposed standards and protocols;
the need for a common approach to enabling access to journal and full text content that encourages greater use of Electronic Resources Australia (ERA) content;
the need for a common approach to authentication and authorisation that will support easy access by users of the national, state and public libraries to subscribed electronic resources;
the need to enable access to resources in the collections of Australian archives, galleries and museums in addition to libraries;
the need to support seamless discovery and delivery workflows regardless of where users start their search and whether the wanted resource is freely available online or needs to be requested from a resource provider;
the need to enable users to annotate content they find and to discover and access user-contributed content regardless of where it was created
the need for a common approach to rights management including the recording of rights holder details and identification of orphan works; and
the need for a common approach to collaborative content development, including collaborative metadata creation, authority control and digitisation of Australian content

The Reference Group will establish contact with the "Re-imagining Library Services" (RLS) Project to ensure that the agenda for the Workshop complements the process adopted by that Project. The RLS Project is aiming to develop "a high-level staged model for library services over the next 3 years" that will "consider opportunities for transforming onsite and online services to library clients in the digital environment". According to a paper considered at the October 2007 NSLA meeting, it is likely that the RLS Project will focus on user needs and a collaborative model to deliver transformative services, while the IAP Project addresses the IT, resource-sharing and discovery challenges.

Background reading

New frameworks for resource discovery and delivery / by Judith Pearce.

Report of the NLA IT Architecture Project

[Other planning documents of NSLA libraries to be identified]