Hi Jeremy,
I think there is an important principle wrapped up in the idea of 'pushing
content to the EDL'. In my view, it shouldn't be about pushing content
directly to *any* specific service. It should be about exposing a
well-structured, self-describing dataset to the network such that an
automated service can identify, interrogate and aggregate from it on a
machine-to-machine (ie. without constructive intervention) basis.
In principle, the 'layers' should be neutral in respect of each other. In
other words, the base information should be constructed according to
appropriate (and proportionate) standards and capable of identifying the
standards to which it conforms. Nothing about the technical infrastructure
of the aggregating service (whether EDL, IAP or anything else for that
matter) should really have an impact on that structure.
Equally, the systems used to expose the data to the network (such as
Collections Management Systems) have to be both agnostic about things like
domains and they have to be multilingual - capable of 'speaking' SOAP, OAI,
SRW, SRU, Z or anything else the boffins care to invent in the future.
It shouldn't be the responsibility of the museum to prepare content for
specific services. The museum has enough of a job on its hands creating
object records that are internally consistent, semantically valid and
human-readable. The burden of responsibility has to be shifted onto the
services themselves to ensure that they capture and preserve as much of the
value in the underlying datasets as possible.
The real difficulty (and one which I imagine you are looking at in your
thesis) is that the conceptual *purity* of the information modelling is
always clouded by politics and money. While the development of stable,
consistent, standardised data and the aggregation of this data into services
should be two entirely separate issues, in reality it is almost always the
same money which pays for them.
The real question, to my mind, is whether museums perceive enough value in
participating in something like the EDL to be worth the time it takes to get
involved. People have been burned in the past by services such as Cornucopia
which have tended to be relatively resource-intensive, but with little
direct payoff for individual museums - I'm not surprised people are
sceptical. It is absolutely the responsibility of people like me, and Jane
Finnis and David to make an articulate case for why it's worth the
investment of time it takes to get involved in these things.
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
MDA
www.mda.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
Tel: 01223 316028
Fax: 01223 364658
MDA (Europe) Ltd: Company Registration No: 1300565
Reg. Office: 22 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP.
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Ottevanger, Jeremy
Sent: 08 February 2008 09:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: APIs and EDL
Hi John,
Plenty of good points, and though I don't really want to cross over into
whether or not the EDL project is a good thing over all these are
obviously factors that will influence our decisions on whether to
participate or not.
<quote>
Hmm - I think this depends on what you mean by "putting online". The
technical issues associated with tools and infrastructure to
automatically and sustainably feed updated content to content
aggregators etc, would seem very similar to those of "putting online" by
having access to a webserver somewhere.
</quote>
It looks from this and other parts of your post that your chief concern
relates to pushing content to the EDL. This is very understandable, I
know little about that side but it's true that even for institutions
like yours and mine, that have solid foundations for this process of
content provision, a fair amount of work would still be involved to get
to a position of "sustainably feeding updated content to content
aggregators".
That is one side, the content management side, and it's an important
factor in whether institutions will be inclined to join in. My API
question was asked with the "output" side at the top of my mind, though.
I'm thinking of the process of embedding a Google Custom Search Engine
on your site - a snippet of HTML and javascript - and dreaming that a
museum could do this with the EDL search engine just as simply.
<quote>
I think a model which depends on manual gathering, polishing and
delivery of data sets to central hosts, who then tweak it by hand some
more, is more or less doomed before it starts. The challenge (and I
don't think it's impossible (!??!)) is to develop an infrastructure
which allows this process to be automated and sustained, for a diverse
range of museums.
I'm not aware of much effort having gone into this so far. It seems a
potentially really useful area to develop.
</quote>
David or Nick may be the ones to tell you more about current ideas on
harvesting. Yes, it will doubtless be tricky. I'm hoping that at least
it will mean that, nationally, we have one dominant protocol for this
sort of operation.
<quote>
All our computerised records have been online for several years, and all
online content updating is fully automated and hence sustainable. While
our service could undoubtedly be improved, we can do this ourselves, or
get project funding to do so.
</quote>
Our services here could certainly be improved, and I'm not too proud to
say that if EDL's search engine was more powerful that my own then I'd
use it to search our data. Similarly, I'd be only too pleased to see our
content held in one place with that belonging to many other institutions
- haven't we all (as museum users, if not practitioners) wanted to see
cross-collections search, like, for ever? And if it happens, why would
you want to be left out? And if you're not left out, how would we
squeeze even more value from it? Why, by making sure that the power of
it - the data, the services, the user communities - wasn't tied to one
website but employed where people need it, just as good API-presenting
services are right now.
<quote>
It's quite enough work for museums to maintain their own collections
managment data. Having to keep an eye on maintainence of separated
chunks of external data would simply not be feasible. Hence the need for
the links to be automated.
Maintain data once, in one place, and automate re-use as much as
possible. I have a dream...
</quote>
Indeed, absolutely right. Building those services to keep the data
synchronised is going to be a necessary step to do this well.
Thanks again,
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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