Draft Report on Aquifer meeting, October 25, 2004

1. Report on director search

2. Overview of progress with complimentary projects

2.1. American West

2.2. American South

2.3. IMLS collection registry and metadata repository and

2.4. CIC OAI repository

3. Follow up on and progress with action items from August 5, 2004 meeting

The group reviewed the numerous pieces of work contributed by members in response to actions taken at the August 5, 2004 meeting. In so doing, they framed and focused Aquifer’s as a development initiative by:

• Filling gaps in our understanding users’ information needs as essential to informing our collection, service, and technology development efforts

• Focusing collection initial development effort in a manner that will ensure early progress and also to develop collection building processes, approaches, and technologies that will generalize and scale, and become a pervasive part of an emerging digital library

• Focusing initial technology development effort on tool suites that will enable development of high-quality curated collections from the numerous online collections that are currently on offer from Aquifer and DLF member institutions – notably tools that enable essential metadata capture, analysis, normalization, enrichment/transformation

• Enhancing Aquifer’s organizational structure through the addition of an Architecture Design and Integration Group (the group’s development likely anticipates longer term, the development of a Collection Development Group, and a User Services and Assessment Group) and by recommending employment on a full time basis of a Digital Library architect and Program Manager

• Securing Aquifer’s future through the development (for January) of a business plan that addresses organizational, governance, as well as funding issues

This section captures the group’s discussions and records its actions in a manner that follows the structure implied by the foregoing

3.1. User needs

Aquifer members have an evolving understanding of their users’ online information and service needs. That understanding is developed with reference to numerous studies conducted from the perspective of libraries and other organizations as information suppliers, as well as those that are conducted from the perspective of end users in specific user communities.  Before launching off on highly specific and intensive user-based investigation, Aquifer will consolidate our evolving understanding by commissioning a survey of relevant existing needs assessment research conducted both from supplier and user perspectives. The survey will:

· inform our work developing specific curated collections (see below) and the tools that will support their assembly, presentation, and use

· will focus on university-level research and teaching and draw extensively but by no means exclusively upon) the needs assessment research conducted and/or used by Aquifer partners in their own work (in this way

· look across all disciplines (this is crucial since some lessons learned from disciplines with fully articulated and well-developed senses of online information needs may be influential in our thinking about how best to serve disciplines with less well-developed understanding of their online information needs, etc)

· identify opportunities for as well as obstacles to the creative use of online information in research and teaching

· comprise as its first deliverable, a detailed specification for the, survey including detailed statement of aims, objectives, methods, and desired outcomes, as well as an initial list of studies to be consulted as well as any survey instrument (e.g. as may be used to interview experts in the field who have conducted relevant pieces of research) will be developed by the commissioned consultant through one-on-one discussion with relevant staff at Aquifer member institutions, and with selected other individuals;

· provide a framework for organizing and understanding inter-relationship between highly focused pieces of user needs research, and a means for Aquifer members to jointly develop and maintain an online registry of such research

Action: Aquifer members to recommend possible consultants to DG; DG/MK/Aq Dir to identify and contract with an appropriate consultant

3.2. Collection development

The American South and American West projects are making substantial progress building curated collections that bear on history, culture, and society in these two regions of the United States. Cumulatively, they are working with over xxx distributed online collections, offered by xxx institutions and comprising xxx digital items. In shaping the collections and determining how best to present them (e.g. topically, thematically, etc) they have worked extensively with a variety of end-user communities. Through this process, the projects have developed detailed collection planning and development strategies and processes and early instantiations of the tools required to implement them. They have also identified significant gaps in the online content that has been offered to them.

In consideration of:

· the progress these initiatives have made already;

· the extent to which their subject focus (on American history, culture, and society) plays to the strength of Aquifer and DLF members’ online digital collections (as evident through review of the DLF collection registry at xxx);

· the importance to our progress of closely defining one or more specific collecting areas as an essential starting point in all aspects of our work (technical, user-based, collection based), and

· our interest in leveraging this early work to develop the strategies, tools, and organizational and other mechanisms that will support and cost-effectively enable the prolific development by libraries and other information organizations of other, differently focused, high quality and well curated collections

The group agreed to adopt as its collection orientation the enhancement, enrichment, and extension of efforts underway at the American South and American West projects.

In particular, Aquifer will surface additional content bearing on aspects of American history, culture, and society, ensuring that such additional collection content is used to enrich existing American South and American West virtual collections as currently being defined by those projects (and taking on various chronological, regional, as well as thematic complexions). It will also ensure that additional collection content will be used in the development of new virtual collections not now being considered by either the American West or American South projects, for example, on other regions of the United States and/or addressing selected topics and/or themes on a national basis

The group agreed as well to explore how to fill in two significant gaps identified by both the American West and American South projects in their collection development efforts, notably in American literature and American music (including audio, sheet music, and scores)

Action: Am West and Am South projects (DG/MH) to consult in order to create an integrated collection development strategy and implementation guidelines that will enable Aquifer and other DLF member institutions to enhance, enrich, and extend existing collection building on the efforts of these two groups. Detailed statements of collection aims and of guidelines for prospective contributors to be made available via the Aquifer website.

Action: PW/JPW/DG to develop costed scenarios for building an openly accessible scholarly collection of American literature (1776-1921), presenting these to Aquifer for consideration at its next meeting

Action: Aquifer to commission from a suitable expert a wide-ranging review of openly accessible sheet music, music scores, and audio files pertaining to American music, and to surface form that review, costed strategies for building collections of American music that at a minimum embrace these three kinds of materials. The strategy document should identify prospective information sources, mechanisms for integrating distributed information content that will suitably ensure persistent access to it (although persistence isn’t likely to be an issue for materials available from libraries, public television and radio stations, and/or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it may be an issue for suitable content located on more transient sites that are set up to host and encourage peer-to-peer file sharing of openly accessible audio recordings) as well as initial assessment of the rights management implications bound up with Aquifer’s use of any prospective collection (may be an issue with some content sourced from sites established to encourage audio file sharing). Aquifer members to recommend possible experts to DG; DG/MK/Aq Dir to identify and contract with an appropriate expert.

Action: ST/BS to develop a high-level collection policy for Aquifer including collection development principles and criteria that can guide Aquifer collection development decisions. The collection policy to be made available from the Aquifer website

3.3. Aquifer communication infrastructure

DS reported on four related developments: of the Aquifer Wiki, the Aquifer listserv, and on two Aquifer registries necessary to identify and keep track of (a) collections contributed by Aquifer and DLF members and (b) user needs research that may guide and inform Aquifer and other digital library development effort. The following actions were agreed:

Action: DS to work with EC (Minnesota is a possible Wiki host), TC (Illinois is a possible collection registry host) and Michigan (Michigan hosts the existing DLF collection registry) to identify and formalize a client/data-center relationship with one or more information services capable of hosting and sustaining its basic communications tools as 24x7 operational services (CLIR/DLF information services are provided by a commercial ISP not capable economically of managing the Wiki or the registries).

Action: TC, in consultation with DS and others to develop a strategy for building and rolling out the collection registry. The registry will adopt a collection schema based upon the Collection Application Profile (CAP) that is currently under development by the DLF.

Action: MK/DG/Aq Dir/ Aquifer needs to notify DLF member institutions about Aquifer’s collection development interests and to urge them to offer collections. In that solicitation, DLF member institutions need to be fully briefed about the level of commitment required from those contributing to Aquifer collections , for example, with regard to collection scope and focus, but also with regard to basic persistent, standards, and interoperability requirements that Aquifer will make.

3.4. Tools development

The group reviewed several pieces of work contributed by members framing follow up work in key technical areas including:

• development of tools and strategies for metadata capture, analysis, normalization enrichment (CDL; Stanford);
• use and integration of existing taxonomies (e.g. as web services) for organizing collection content (Stanford)
• environmental scan of tool suites and approaches available in the proximate IMS community that may be relevant to the Aquifer effort (Stanford)

It concluded that Aquifer lacked the mechanism necessary to progress and co-ordinate the substantial and complex technology development effort and alignment that it would require. Accordingly, it recommended the establishment of an Architecture Design and Integration Group and the full-time employment by Aquifer of a digital library architect and program manger. It also recommended a commissioned review of existing approaches to and tools becoming available for metadata capture, analysis, normalization, transformation/enrichment, and subsetting. These action items are described below

Architecture, Design, and Integration Group. Aquifer will convene a small (6 or so people) group that will, with initiative’s broader aims in view, advise and guide:

• the development if possible of a common architectural framework or reference model that may act as a common vocabulary for Aquifer in discussing, developing, sharing, and where appropriate, integrating members’ distributed systems, applications, and tool suites
• the specification for and development/acquisition of tool suites essential to Aquifer’s collection-building and service aims giving priority attention to:

• tools that enable and support metadata harvesting, analysis, normalization, and enrichment as appropriate
• evaluating and making development recommendations with regard to repository replication and interoperability
• other areas as deemed appropriate by members of the group

The group will also play a key role ensuring that Aquifer’s efforts leverage those ongoing in the broader digital library community and proximate information communities (e.g. IMS). It will also help ensure that Aquifer digital library content and services can be made available for delivery into evolving and likely very different information environments (information management systems, Internet search engines, etc)

Action: the ADIG to be established by DG/MK through consultation

Digital Library Architect and Program Manager. Review of and recommendation pertaining to acquisition/development of tools capable of capturing, analyzing, normalizing, and enriching item-level metadata that is supplied with collection content as contributed by Aquifer and DLF members to Aquifer collections. Substantial experience with these tools is available at several Aquifer member sites and within the broader community (e.g. the NSDL’s core integration service, OCLC, etc).  To ensure greatest possible leverage of existing technologies and technology expertise, Aquifer will commission a consultant to:

· review and describe approaches to metadata capture, analysis, normalization, transformation/enrichment that are currently being used by Aquifer members (e.g. in the American South, American West, Michigan, Illinois, and other projects), and by selected other projects with comparable aims (e.g. NSDL, OCLC, etc);

· document and where possible review tools that are currently being used by those initiatives, focusing on their strengths, weaknesses, future development paths and potential, as well as on their possible generalizabilty/re-usability;

· gather information about tools being developed and/or used for these purposes, adding that information to the tools registry, and in so doing helping to develop and refine our understanding of how the registry might be used and how information recorded by it might be organized

A detailed specification for the review, including aims, objectives, and methodologies, as well as an initial list informants who will be consulted and a survey instrument will be an early deliverable and will be developed in consultation with members of the ADIG and selected other informants they may identify.

Action: Aquifer members to recommend possible consultants to DG; DG/MK/Aq Dir to identify and contract with an appropriate consultant

Digital Library Architect and Program Manager. The group discussed the fundamental constraints that exist and have existed upon DLF working groups (whether looking at technical or other issues) that are staffed on a volunteer basis. It agreed that volunteer groups have considerable capacity to surface good ideas through discussion, to focus attention on particular issues, even to establish priorities for action. It was also agreed that it was possible for such groups to surface or contribute from their own institution, programming effort that might be required in any co-development initiative to which they might give route. Such groups, however, lacked the capacity necessary to bridge the evolution and prioritization of good ideas on the one hand, and co-development effort on the other. Accordingly, the Aquifer initiative recommends and arguably requires a full-time specialist to provide staffing support for the ADIG. The DLAP will not only administer and provide facilitated leadership for the group but also follow up for it on actions that required investigative and other efforts over and above those which volunteer members might be expected to contribute. The review of metadata capture, analysis, normalization, and enrichment tools described above is one example, of this kind of effort. In addition, the DLAP would provide the coordination necessary in any co-development effort that the Aquifer partners might undertake, ensuring that programming and other technical effort located at distributed partner sites was appropriate aligned, etc. Finally, the DLAP would help communicate Aquifer’s technical and architectural agenda and perspectives to those working on complementary and similar problems in other information communities.

3.5. Standards for data providers and three approaches to metadata enrichment

The group reviewed work to date by the DLF OAI Best Practices working group and that conducted on proximate issues at  Illinois, Michigan, and in the American South (Emory et al) and American West (CDL et al) projects. After discussion it agreed to adopt a range of standards for those contributing data content to the Aquifer virtual uniform collections as a commitment to those collections. The standards adopted were considered to be 1) in development and 2) an initial layer of standards anticipating others to be developed and refined and potentially addressing other issues (viz data formats, data quality, etc). Standards agreed are as follows:

Aquifer endorses and adopts the evolving recommendations being made by the DLF OAI best practices working group as pertaining to data providers and including:

In addition, the group agreed that data providers should:

· provide data for harvesting according to a range of preferences to be listed in descending order of preference from MODS, to MARC-XML, etc

· commit to implementing sets and set descriptions

· adopt and encourage the use of RLG guides to good practice as pertaining to metadata creation

· submit metadata for data validation and analysis by a trusted third party

· encourage community specific metadata practices appropriate for the development of specific virtual collections (thus, contributors to the American West collection have agreed to a specific implementation of data and coverage elements to support development of virtual collections organized minimally by chronological period and by region)

The group agreed that encouraging “good practice” amongst metadata providers was one of three strategies it would adopt in developing aggregated collection with sufficiently rich item-level information to enable flexible and refined approaches to collection organization (ontology), and etc. It agreed that two other approaches would be explored in successive phases of Aquifer’s development, notably those involving:

· Data mining

· the development of services that encourage metadata enrichment by [selected] users (supporting an incremental approach to metadata enrichment and collection development

The tripartite approach to metadata enrichment was determined in part to assure a relatively low-barrier to participation in (data contribution to) Aquifer, and also as a means of providing a range of incentives to data providers to contribute metadata, notably: third party analysis and validation of their metadata and enrichment (and ultimate return) of their collection metadata

4. Next steps

The group agreed to convene again in January to review:

· progress with the user needs and metadata tools surveys

· costed collection development options (e.g. for American literature and American music) and

· a business plan that assess the likely costs of the Aquifer initiative over the next 24 months, reviews the entire range of possible revenues (DLF operating and capital budgets, new member cash and in-kind contributions, external funding opportunities), and outlining scenarios (and making a recommendation for) means of meeting Aquifer’s requirements including:

o essential technology infrastructure (e.g. as appropriate for sustaining key utilities such as the Wiki, the collection, tools, and other registries, etc)

o Aquifer staff (including a director, a digital library architect and program manager, and potentially collection development and user services officers

o essential research and development funds

o research and development

· a proposal regarding the organization and governance of Aquifer

Action: MK/DG to develop a business plan including recommendations for organization and governance

Action: DG to work with DS to find a time and venue for the next Aquifer meeting

Action: all to encourage director-level participation in the next meeting given its focus on organization, governance, and business planning