CAUL Meeting 2004/2Hobart

13 September 2004

Roadmap Recap

Partners Extent and Intent Activity and Operational Structures

APSR Developments Digital Sustainability Program (NLA) Practices and Testbeds Program

ANU USyd UQ

National Services Program International Linkages Program External Involvement

Partners

The Australian National University (Lead institution) The National Library of Australia The University of Queensland The University of Sydney Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing

Recap

Extent and Intent

In responding to the call to develop national research infrastructure through the creation of a broad repository-based architecture, the APSR proposal had at its core

an overall focus on critical issues of access continuity to and sustainability of digital collections

a determination to build on a base of demonstrators for digital continuity and sustainability embedded in developmental repository facilities within partner institutions

an aspiration to contribute to national strength by encouraging development of skills and expertise and providing coordination throughout the sector via a platform of national services and international linkages

Recap

An open partnership both in its manner of working and its ultimate manifestation within a national centre

- predicated on a belief that -

the higher education sector needs catalysts to encourage and enable institutions to take action based on best practice that will ensure continuity of access to key information resources over time

Recap

Such resources not simply text-centric in nature. Real challenge lies in coping with huge volume of research data and resources in varying formats and configurations emerging from the eScience and eHumanities movements

Within APSR, role of APAC to carry these eResearch links, beyond their direct involvement in University of Sydney testbed project

Recap

Recap

Activity Structure

Recap

Operational Structure

APSR Developments

Tom Ruthven appointed as Executive Officer July 2004

Website established <www.apsr.edu.au>www.apsr.edu.au University of Queensland <www.library.uq.edu.au/escholarship> University of Sydney <sorrt.library.usyd.edu.au>

Presentations Questnet 2004, Cairns, 6 July

Robin Stanton - APSR and the national information infrastructure IAML Biennial Conference, Canberra, 13 September

Tom Ruthven - The brave new world of libraries and repositories

Digital Sustainability (Core Program) Led by NLA program will support and work with demonstrator or testbed projects and

also feed directly into National Services and International Linkages programs (notably in its links with the recently established Digital Curation Centre in Edinburgh)

Primary objective to provide mechanisms and expertise to ensure digital information resources remain

available usable understandable

findable trustworthy re-usable

‘for as long as they are needed’ Seeks to develop national centre of excellence, providing such services as best

practice documentation, software frameworks and archives, generic tools, format registries, planning strategies, and technology watch services

Progress

Project Officer appointed from 1 September Strategy paper developed in consultation with ANU, USyd, UQ testbed

projects Work continuing on

partner expertise registry sustainability analysis of testbed repositories sustainability assurance for testbed repositories

Consultation with Digital Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) about digital preservation tools

Digital Sustainability

Practices and Testbeds Program(1)

Implementation of Repository Technology in a Standards Framework(ANU)

Objectives

Develop an open source repository infrastructure that addresses the needs of Australian universities for the management of digital assets

Develop mechanisms for building effective partnerships with academic community for the management of their digital assets

Participate in federation services with APSR partners and other SII projects

Key Tasks

Develop repository system based on needs analysis from a broad set of representative collections

Become major contributor to DSpace open source development Contribute to international standards and best practice for the management of digital

repositories Populate ANU repository Develop policy framework for partnerships with academic staff Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability

program Evaluate success of software and policy development

ANU

Progress ANU DSpace <dspace.anu.edu.au>

Production environment Development area

4 communities 13 communities

105 collections 108 collections Participating repository in PictureAustralia

Staff appointments 2 additional project officers about to be appointed to join 2 existing project staff members

DSpace development

ANU contribution image derivative/thumbnail generation integrating Apache Cocoon with DSpace

Presentation OpenPublish 2004, Sydney, 30 July Peter Raftos – DSpace and ANU

ANU

Practices and Testbeds Program(2)

Sustainability and Interoperability in a Complex Distributed Environment(University of Sydney)

Objectives

Develop a sustainable model for large complex object repositories

within a distributed research environment Document a set of supporting protocols and standards Develop appropriate enabling middleware and tools

Key Tasks

Establish a project methodology for the testbed facilities Develop protocols within the common XML environment of the testbed facilities Cooperate with other testbed projects and the MAMS project to meet the objectives of

the Digital Sustainability program Scope prototype demonstrator projects (cultural, health, historical) Develop and implement appropriate middleware and tools to enable demonstrators Develop and implement testing and evaluation methods Undertake evaluation of protocols within partner and other facilities nationally and

internationally

USyd

Progress

Sustainability framework Requirements and specifications, primarily in CIPHE image banks and PARADISEC, under development

Interoperability middleware Framework under development for internal testing in November (ACL)

APAC Extensible storage space provided to USyd testbeds to investigate storage processes

Staff appointments 1.5 programmers appointed

SORRT Project branded as SORRT (Sustainable Object Repositories for Research and Teaching)

USyd

Practices and Testbeds Program(3)

eScholarship Australia(University of Queensland)

Objectives

Develop an integrated entry point to a range of repositories of research output

Encourage better reporting of academic research outputs Facilitate access to information about Australian research

Key Tasks

Identify existing repositories at UQ to be used in project Investigate and adopt appropriate standards to be used, with emphasis on open standards Test a range of harvesting protocols, including OAI-PMH Examine subject mapping techniques to ensure metadata conform to appropriate thesaurus

descriptors. (Existing institutional subject classification schemes will be mapped to the Australian Standard Research Classification. Where metadata lack appropriate thesaurus descriptors, automatic and semi-automatic subject mapping techniques will be used.)

Investigate and implement mechanisms to identify, capture, organise and manage non-text, non-OAI compliant resources

Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program Extend demonstrator application to other institutions

UQ

Progress

Data and service provider models Keystone and Fedora software under evaluation

Test repositories identified UQ Research Quantum

ePrints@UQ

Australian Digital Theses Program

Standards Series of open standards identified for adoption

Staff appointments Programmer appointed

UQ

National Services ProgramObjectiveProvide services to national higher education and researchsector Technical advisory services Knowledge transfer and educational services Consultation and collaboration services

Timeframe 2005-2006

Progress

Program to begin formally in 2005

Commitment to make ANU version of DSpace available to Australian higher education sector Q4 2004

‘DSpace in a box’ on CD or DVD

National Services

International Linkages ProgramObjectives Participate in and contribute to the development of international standards

applicable to digital access and sustainability Participate in selected international programs in the digital access and

sustainability area Maintain a technology watching brief across a wide range of international programs

in the digital access and sustainability area

Timeframe 2005-2006

Progress Program to begin formally in 2005 Existing or prospective partnerships

Digital Curation Centre (DCC), Edinburgh Thomson Scientific (ISI) Web Citation Index Project

(ANU, CalTech, Cornell, Max Planck Society, Monash, NASA/Langley, University of Rochester) DSpace/Google/OCLC IR Search Project

(ANU, Cornell, Cranfield, European University Institute, HKUST, IUPUL, MIT, Minho University, Ohio State, Univ Arizona, Calgary, Oregon, Parma, Rochester, Toronto, Washington, Wisconsin)

Digital Publishing System (DPubS) – Cornell and Penn State

(ANU investigating involvement) University of Sydney

SETIS (Michigan, Oxford and Virginia), PARADISEC (AILLA and DELAMAN),

ACL/SSIU/TimeMap (UCLA and Unesco)

International Linkages

External Involvement

Potential for involvement in APSR by others than immediate project partners

National Services Program (starting in 2005) Occasional open workshops and forums

Also potential opportunity for others to participate as project partners (specifiedin both original proposal and agreement between ANU and existing project partners)

Such participation would require Strategic commitment to the development of institutional digital repositories Significant implementation program involving repository technology and a collection

program focused on research materials having sector-wide relevance Commitment to sector-wide cooperation in the development of institutional repositories Commitment to APSR objectives and willingness to contribute to APSR processes Acceptance that partner responsibilities include participation in APSR core activities such

as standards setting, evaluation and adoption, expertise network, skills pool, international linkages and benchmarking

New partners would bring own resources to APSRThere would be no access to DEST funding unless additional monies were granted

External Involvement

Thank you

Vic Elliott13 September 2004