the jisc information environment and vles

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a centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk The JISC Information Environment and VLEs Andy Powell [email protected] UKOLN, University of Bath IE Joint Programme Meeting, Nottingham October/November 2002

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IE Joint Programme Meeting, Nottingham- October/November 2002

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Page 1: The JISC Information Environment and VLEs

a centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk

The JISC Information Environment and VLEs

Andy [email protected]

UKOLN, University of Bath

IE Joint Programme Meeting, Nottingham

October/November 2002

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Contents• summary of the technical architecture of

the JISC Information Environment• relationship to eLearning standards (IMS)• snapshot of new JISC DiVLE programme• simple example of link between JISC IE, a

Learning Management System (LMS) and a backend Learning Object (LO) repository

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/jisc-ie/

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Simple scenario

• consider a lecturer searching for materials for a course module covering the development of business in China

• the aim is to construct a ‘hybrid’ reading list that can be given to students to support their coursework

• he or she searches for ‘business china’ using:– the RDN, to discover Internet resources – ZETOC, to discover recent journal articles

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Issues• different user interfaces

– look-and-feel– subject classification, metadata usage

• everything is HTML – human-oriented– difficult to merge results, e.g. combine into

reading lists– difficult to build a reading list to pass on to

students– need to manually copy-and-paste search

results into HTML page, then upload into VLE

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Issues (2)

• difficult to move from discovering journal article to having copy in hand (or on desktop)

• users need to manually join services together

• problem with hardwired links to books and journal articles, e.g.– lecturer links to university library OPAC but

student is distance learner and prefers to buy online at Amazon

– lecturer links to IngentaJournals but student prefers paper copy in library

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The problem space…

• from perspective of ‘data consumer’– need to interact with multiple collections of

stuff - bibliographic, full-text, data, image, video, etc.

– delivered thru multiple Web sites– few cross-collection discovery services (with

exception of big search engines like Google, but lots of stuff is not available to Google, i.e. it is part of the ‘invisible Web’)

• from perspective of ‘data provider’– few agreed mechanisms for disclosing

availability of content

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UK JISC IE context…• 206 collections and counting…

(Hazel Woodward, e-ICOLC, Helsinki, Nov 2001)– Books: 10,000 +– Journals: 5,000 +– Images: 250,000 +– Discovery tools: 50 +

• A & I databases, COPAC, RDN, …

– National mapping data & satellite imagery

• plus institutional content (e-prints, research data, library content, learning resources, etc.)

• plus content made available thru projects – 5/99, FAIR, X4L, …

• plus …

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The problem(s)…

• portal problem– how to provide seamless discovery across multiple

content providers

• appropriate-copy problem– how to provide access to the most appropriate copy

of a resource (given access rights, preferences, cost, speed of delivery, etc.)

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A solution…

• an information environment• framework of machine-oriented services

allowing the end-user to– discover, access, use, publish resources across a

range of content providers

• move away from lots of stand-alone Web sites...

• ...towards more coherent whole• remove need for use to interact with

multiple content providers– note: ‘remove need’ rather than ‘prevent’

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JISC Information Env.• discover

–finding stuff across multiple content providers

• access–streamlining access to appropriate copy

• content providers expose metadata about their content for

–searching–harvesting–alerting

• develop services that bring stuff together–portals (subject portals, media-specific portals,

geospatial portals, institutional portals, VLEs, …)

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A note about ‘portals’• ‘portal’ word possibly slightly misleading• presentation layer will contain lots of

user-focused services…– subject portal– reading list and other tools in VLE– commercial ‘portals’ (ISI Web of

Knowledge, ingenta, Bb Resource Center, etc.)

– library ‘portal’ (e.g. Zportal or MetaLib)– SFX service component– personal desktop reference manager (e.g.

Endnote)

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Discovery

• technologies that allow providers to disclose metadata to portals– searching - Z39.50 (Bath Profile)– harvesting - OAI-PMH– alerting - RDF Site Summary (RSS)

• fusion services may sit between provider and portal– broker (searching)– aggregator (harvesting and alerting)

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Access• in the case of books, journals, journal articles, end-

user wants access to the most appropriate copy• need to join up discovery services with

access/delivery services (local library OPAC, ingentaJournals, Amazon, etc.)

• need localised view of available services• discovery service uses the OpenURL to pass

metadata about the resource to an ‘OpenURL resolver’

• the ‘OpenURL resolver’ provides pointers to the most appropriate copy of the resource, given:– user and institutional preferences, cost, access rights,

location, etc.

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Shared services

• collection/service description service– information about collections (content) and services

(protocol) that make that content available

• authentication and authorisation• resolver services• user preferences and institutional

profiles• terminology services• metadata registries• ...

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JISC Information Env.

Broker/Aggregator

Portal Portal

Content providers

End-user

Portal

Broker/Aggregator

Authentication

Authorisation

Collect’n Desc

Service Desc

Resolver

Inst’n Profile

Shared services

Provisionlayer

Fusionlayer

Presentationlayer

19

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Summary• Z39.50 (Bath Profile), OAI, RSS are key

‘discovery’ technologies...– … and by implication, XML and

simple/unqualified Dublin Core– IEEE LOM doesn’t feature – but anticipate

delivery of rich metadata as part of content packages

• access to resources via OpenURL and resolvers where appropriate

• Z39.50 and OAI not mutually exclusive• general need for all services to know

what other services are available to them

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Common sense• Z, OAI and RSS based on metadata ‘fusion’ -

merging metadata records from multiple content providers

• need shared understanding and metadata practice across DNER

• need to agree ‘cataloguing guidelines’ and terminology

• 4 key areas–subject classification - what is this resource about?–audience level - who is this resource aimed at?– resource type - what kind of resource is this?–certification - who has created this resource?

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A couple of trends…• move towards Web services

– small units of functionality– b2b (m2m) remote procedure call (RPC)– key technologies

• XML, HTTP, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI

• increased awareness of need to manage intellectual output of institutions…– E-print archive (JISC FAIR programme)

– MIT Dspace project– LO repositories (e.g. Intrallect IntraLibrary)

• Grid and Grid services

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IBM Web services model

serviceregistry

serviceprovider

servicerequestor

Find

Publish

Bind

WSDLUDDI

WSDLSOAP

WSDLUDDI

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WSDL, UDDI and SOAP

• Web Service Description Language– XML descriptions of Web services– note: limited scope for describing content of

collections

• Universal Discovery, Description and Integration– technology for building distributed registry

of Web services

• Simple Object Access Protocol– remote procedure calls based on XML and

HTTP

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JISC IE - Web services

serviceregistry

serviceprovider

servicerequestor

Find

Publish

Bind

Collection and Service description service

JISC Inf. Env.Service registry

Contentproviders, aggregators, brokers, shared services

Portals, aggregators, brokers

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JISC Information Env.

Broker/Aggregator

Portal Portal

Content providers

End-user

Portal

Broker/Aggregator

Authentication

Authorisation

Collect’n Desc

Service Desc

Resolver

Inst’n Profile

Shared services

Provisionlayer

Fusionlayer

Presentationlayer

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Broker/Aggregator

Portal Portal

Content providers

End-user

Portal

Broker/Aggregator

Authentication

Authorisation

Resolver

JISC Information Env.

Inst’n Profile

Shared services

Provisionlayer

Fusionlayer

Presentationlayer

Service provider

Service requestor

Service provider

Service requestor

Serviceregistry

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Likely impact…

• increased use of SOAP as carrier protocol

• move distributed search from Z39.50 to something based on SOAP (SRW possibly?)

• potential use of WSDL and UDDI to provide ‘collection’ and ‘service’ discovery services– pilot JISC IE Service Registry at MIMAS

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A shared problem space• problems faced by end-users are shared

across sectors and communities– student looking for information from variety of

bibliographic sources– lecturer searching for e-learning resources from

multiple repositories– researcher working across multiple data-sets and

compute servers on the Grid– researcher looking for e-prints in multiple e-print

archives– school child searching local museums/libraries for

homework project– a.n.other looking to buy or sell a second-hand car…

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IMS

• global consortium defining open standards for delivery of online distributed learning activities: – Accessibility– Competency Definitions

– Content Packaging– Digital Repositories

– Enterprise

– Learner Information Package– Meta-data

– Question & Test

– Simple Sequencing

• http://www.imsproject.org/

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IMS Digital Repositories

• interoperability between VLE and repository– repository of information objects

– learning object repository (LOR)

– ‘metadata only’ and ‘metadata and full-content’ repositories

• integration of VLE with backend LOR• seamless access to information

resources from within VLE• Note: IMS uses Learning Management

System (LMS) rather than VLE

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IMS Digital Repositories

Repositories

Resource Utilizers

DirectoriesVocabularyCompetencyMetadata

Repositories

Organizations Traders

Acc

ess

Man

agem

ent

MA

NA

GE

RIG

HT

S O

BL

IGA

TIO

NS

CO

NT

RO

L A

CC

ESS

AU

TH

EN

TIC

AT

E

AU

TH

OR

ISE

AU

DIT

Pro

curem

ent

NE

GO

TIA

TE

TR

AD

EM

AK

E P

AY

ME

NT

SEARCH

Learner Creator Infoseeker

AssetsMetadata

DISCOVER

REQUEST

USE Presentation

Mediation

Provision

People

Agent

RE

SOL

VE

Registries

STORE

STORE EXPOSEMANAGE STORE EXPOSEMANAGE

DELIVER

(Query, Browse, Follow Path)ACCESS

GATHER

PUBLISH

MANAGE

ALERT

EXPOSE

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Search/Expose

• 2 protocols supported…• XQuery over SOAP (for native Learning

Object Repositories)• Z39.50 (for ‘legacy’ information object

repositories)• both return IEEE LOM metadata

records• ‘IMS’ Z39.50 profile under development

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Gather/Expose

• OAI-PMH• carrying simple DC records (mandated

by OAI) or IEEE LOM metadata• need to agree details for how to carry

IEE LOM records in OAI-PMH

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Alert/Expose

• no recommendations currently• considering use of RSS (but concerns

about conflicts between versions 0.9, 1.0 and 2.0)

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Request/Deliver

• HTTP (and FTP)• use of DOIs and PURLs for persistent

naming• use of OpenURLs to resolve to

‘appropriate copy’ of information (bibliographic) resources

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Publish/Store

• FTP• to upload IMS content packages to

Learning Object Repositories

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JISC IE and eLearning• learning technologist creating learning object

containing embedded links to hybrid external resources (books, journals, Web sites)

• lecturer searching for learning object to add to existing course material

• learning technologist searching for complete existing course to add to their LMS

• lecturer creating reading list containing hybrid resources (books, journals, Web sites)

• lecturer creating EML content package with embedded links to external resources

• student undertaking background research to support learning task

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JISC DiVLE Programme

• short projects (10 months)• Theme A: Practical Exploration of

Linking Digital Libraries and VLEs • Theme B: Learning and Teaching

Implementation Pilots• Theme C: Evaluation and Review

(technical, pedagogical and organisational issues)

• use of IE technologies within VLEs• involvement of commercial partners

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VLEs and Z39.50• Talking Systems

– Lead Partner: University of Wales College, Newport. Partners: IBM, Lancaster University, SIRSI, Percussion

– integrating learning objects and information objects in library catalogues using Z39.50 Bath Profile

• PORTOLE– Lead Partner: University of Leeds. Partners:

University of Oxford, Resource Discovery Network

– integrated searching of library catalogue, RDN and local Leeds gateway

cross-searching information and learning objects using Z39.50

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VLEs and OpenURLs

• EnCoRe - Enriching Courses with Resources– Lead Partner: University of Derby. Partners:

Openly Informatics– OpenURLs, 1Cate, HERON

• OLIVE - Open Linking Implementation in a Virtual Learning Environment– Lead Partner: Royal Holloway, University of

London. Partners: University of Westminster, Ex Libris, Granada Learning, Blackboard

– OpenURLs for learning objects

context-sensitive linking to resources from VLEs

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VLEs and OpenURLs (2)

• DELIVER - Digital Electronic Library Integration within Virtual EnviRonments– Lead Partner: London School of

Economics. Partners: De Montfort University, WebCT, Blackboard, Sirsi (UK) Ltd, Talis

– management of links within learning objects– central storage, distributed maintenance– OpenURLs as one technology

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Reading list example (1)• lecturer creates reading list using Endnote – Z search of

bibliographic services…

RDNResource Centre

OPAC

IngentaJournals

Amazon

EndNote/ReferenceManager

OpenURLresolver

ZETOC

Student

Lecturer

Librarian

RDN

Blackboard VLE

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Reading list example (2)• lecturer uploads reading list thru LMS to backend learning

object repository (RDN resource centre)…

RDNResource Centre

OPAC

IngentaJournals

Amazon

EndNote/ReferenceManager

OpenURLresolver

ZETOC

Student

Lecturer

Librarian

RDN

Blackboard VLE

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Reading list example (3)• student accesses reading list from learning object repository

through LMS…• links in reading list use OpenURLs

RDNResource Centre

OPAC

IngentaJournals

Amazon

EndNote/ReferenceManager

OpenURLresolver

ZETOC

Student

Lecturer

Librarian

RDN

Blackboard VLE

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Reading list example (4)• clicking on OpenURL links in reading list takes student to

appropriate copies of resources via OpenURL resolver (e.g. SFX)…

RDNResource Centre

OPAC

IngentaJournals

Amazon

EndNote/ReferenceManager

OpenURLresolver

ZETOC

Student

Lecturer

Librarian

RDN

Blackboard VLE

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Reading list example (5)• librarian maintains OpenURL resolver configuration to

provide access to appropriate copy based on University licensing arrangements…

RDNResource Centre

OPAC

IngentaJournals

Amazon

EndNote/ReferenceManager

OpenURLresolver

ZETOC

Student

Lecturer

Librarian

RDN

Blackboard VLE

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Questions…

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a centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk