Sustainability

At these abstract levels it is reasonable that consideration of use is a difficult area to address. It is easier in real and smaller scale situations to investigate use and make appropriate adaptations. And yet in the broader scope of information services the reason for making information available is so it can be used in some way. Establishing a greater understanding of how information and resources are used can inform both the types of end-user services it is of benefit to develop and also the structure of the

underlying repositories themselves so they are better placed to serve the uses required. One way of dealing with potential use is to increase flexibility. CORDRA promotes a high level of flexibility in how it makes metadata available: the aDORe architecture does likewise. Both seek to adapt on the fly to user demands for

information. This flexibility is vital, as it offers the most opportunities to react quickly to moving user requirements. But flexibility in tandem with establishing a greater

understanding of how information will be used offers a potentially even more powerful tool. There can be a conflict between these, insofar that the available effort may need to focus on one or the other, but they can be valuable together. The information chain depicts information workflow. To fully fit into user workflows an appreciation of what happens at the end of the workflow will help that workflow to proceed more smoothly. There is a marked contrast between current treatment of open access research content and learning content in this regard. In the learning and teaching environment re-use of materials once discovered is almost assumed: the purpose of looking for and

discovering learning materials is in order to use what is found. This sense of use influences discovery systems within learning and teaching: the JORUM national learning object repository has been established with the capability of testing re-use as an added value service on top of discovery, for example. Although the detail of use and re-use may not always be known, an appreciation that use will take place has influenced the development of end-user services and add value to them.

It is recommended that development of end-user services include an element of investigation of how information to be surfaced through these services will be used, to help inform the development of the service and feed back to the underlying repositories being exposed through the service.

4.6 Sustainability

In taking forward the development of end-user services across repositories there are a number of factors that can be borne in mind to maximise the chances of these services being technically sustainable in the long-term. The practicalities of implementing

components of the repository/aggregator/end-user chain have been dealt already. This section looks ahead beyond these to see what influences might affect end-user

services in the long run.

It is fair to say that in many ways ‘long-term’ and ‘technical’ don’t go together, as technology change happens rapidly and there is every reason to suspect that new and

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innovative technologies will emerge over the coming years. Technical sustainability is also linked to cost-effectiveness and the influence of non-technical factors: the recent DLF Aquifer Study on Institutional User Services [Halbert, 2005] found that simple lack of time was a major factor in the lack of new end-user service development.

Nevertheless, this model has attempted to consider approaches that can be applied using different underlying technologies as required. It has adopted a number of the aspects of the Information Environment Technical Architecture, which has been in existence for five years and has stood the test of time well. It is also aligned with the emerging e-framework, following a service-oriented approach and using open

standards where relevant. Notwithstanding this, in the context of repositories it is important to remember that web search engines are playing, and are likely to continue to play, a major role in supporting discovery and will continue to act as end-user services onto web crawler aggregations from repositories.

The Information Environment Technical Architecture has stood the test of time because the building blocks with which it was originally conceived are still in place. Many of the open standards promoted, including OAI-PMH, have matured since the Architecture first appeared and the building blocks are still very valid for use in developing end-user services. This study has identified no gaps in the standards required to enable this, but rather has identified gaps where the standards are not being interpreted or

implemented correctly or as extensively as they might be. More focused and practical implementation of the building blocks will allow high value end-user services to emerge. Continued adherence to open standards interfaces will support sustainability if

underlying repository systems themselves change over time.

Having said that it is important not to rest on our laurels. Standards have changed over time to meet changing needs, and there is a need to maintain a watch on where

standards face limits to their capabilities that require attention. This is particularly the case in the field of metadata standards, where existing standards still appear to rely too heavily on bibliographic and physical item origins: important though these are there is a pressing need to identify ways of encompassing these alongside metadata standards for born-digital objects, simple and compound, that will allow digital content to be fully utilised. There is also the issue of cross-domain interoperability, where multiple metadata standards co-exist. How these interact will be vital to how cross-domain digital content can be effectively used. A key way forward in addressing these metadata demands is to model the content and metadata we are trying to describe more rigorously so that we can generate metadata standards that meet the needs of the content being created and the end-users wishing to access this.

The OAI-PMH itself has identified limitations. It is bound to HTTP as its transfer protocol, which potentially limits its use in the future. It can only work with XML files, which gives much flexibility, but may not future-proof it in a possible world of Semantic Web and RDF. RSS and ATOM are likely to continue to evolve and it will be valuable for the academic community to feed into this development to ensure these standards can best serve its needs.

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In the layered and service-oriented architecture proposed within the aggregation model, with components and functions separated out in distinct layers there is a need to offer guarantees that access to and between the different components, and the network itself, will be reliable. Service level agreements may be required, and certainly a level of non-technical communication that currently doesn’t always exist. This is particularly the case where the aggregator and the repository are distinct from each other.

Lastly, sustainability will be affected by the end-users. Will access to repositories meet their expectations? How will repository end-user services fit into their information workflow? Only by meeting these end-user expectations and needs as one service within their wider information landscape will end-user services across repositories truly earn the right to sustainability.