IU will lead the Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project, a partnership of research libraries dedicated to managing increasingly digital resources and collections. Together, these libraries will develop “community source” software that will be made available to libraries worldwide.Kuali OLE (pronounced Oh-LAY) partners include Indiana University; Florida Consortium (University of Florida representing Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida and the Florida Center for Library Automation); Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network (represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University); University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

See the full press release at:  http://kuali.org/node/268

The University of Kansas Libraries hosted the OLE Project group meeting that took place  March 15 – 20, 2009. During that meeting, the group completed a number of significant tasks, described below. All those interested in the OLE Project are encouraged to provide feedback on the group’s work, by joining in the webcast on March 31, 2009 or by commenting at the end of this page.

Completed at the University of Kansas meeting:

Revised the Frequently Asked Questions on the OLE Website to reflect questions raised in a variety of settings.

Published a set of assumptions underlying the design of OLE.

Developed the agenda for the March 31, 2009 webcast and updated the abstract to use in inviting people to register for that webcast.

Updated the public OLE website to include maps of the home institutions for our workshop attendees and webcast participants.

Revised and expanded the Project Scope document.

Created a set of talking points to use in inviting institutions to participate in the upcoming software development phase of the OLE Project.

Started formulating the cost factors for the software development project which will follow the current planning project.

Reviewed the four lists of processes for compilation to a single document of 60+ processes.

Revised the OLE Reference Model based on the changes to the list of processes.

Developed a template as a model to enhance the inventory of the processes.

Created a spreadsheet of the processes provided for assignments to various individuals/groups who will complete a draft of functional specifications by May 1st.

Added a data dictionary and a symbol dictionary to the list of additional documents for completion by the May 1st deadline.

Photos of the meeting are available on the OLE Flickr site.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 10:00am – 3:00pm

The Open Library Environment Project invites you to a 1 day workshop at the IUPUI University Libraries in Indianapolis, IN sponsored by the Indiana University System Libraries, Purdue University Libraries, and the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for representatives of Indiana and Midwest regional academic and research libraries and related institutions to discuss and provide feedback on the current state of the OLE Project Planning Document. The OLE Project will provide a fully vetted planning document for a community sourced information management system to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by June 2009 and this workshop intends to solicit feedback from peer libraries in the Indiana region on this plan and to seek institutions who are interested in becoming part of a build out component of the OLE information management environment.

Participation is open to any members of the research library community who work with current Integrated Library Systems or other workflow management systems for electronic resources management either on a day to day basis or from a higher level. OLE will be developed as an open source library environment that meets the needs of research libraries. While care will be taken to design an open and flexible system that is useful for other types of libraries, such as public libraries, the focus of the project in this early stage is on research libraries.

Due to space limitations, registration is limited to 40 participants. There is no cost for attendance other than your travel related expenses. Participants will be notified with further details.

Registration is now closed

Contact: Robert H. McDonald, Associate Dean for Library Technologies, Indiana University, robert@indiana.edu

The reference model is the working structure of the overall OLE concept.  Consider this the highest level view of the system we are beginning to design.  The bubbles which contain further information are clickable.  We will continue to revise this as we change the reference model and underlying information.  We invite you to comment on the high level reference model as well as the areas and processes below which have been posted.

The reference model can be found at: http://oleproject.org/overview/ole-reference-model/

1. February Web Conference / Process Planning

Based on results of analyzing a single area, we will create a workplan for how to complete the rest of the areas for our design with a goal of having a list of action items completed for a web conference with Kyle as a mid-way checkpoint in February

Three key areas:

Buy / Describe / Deliver

For each – find appropriate bubble or make one; describe in a few sentences, list processes and model one or more process

Sources: NLA, BPM workshops data

Blue sky areas ( we will focus on 3, 4 and 6 below):

1. Integrate with curricular process – True integration with course management system and curricular process

2. Integrate with collaboration space – Integration into collaboration spaces such as course related and research related workgroup tools

3. Sophisticated collection management – True collection management (collaborative purchasing, etc.)

4. Integrate print and electronic processes – True integration of how we deal with print and electronic materials

5. Full integration of special collection materials

6. Offer functionality back to other organizational systems (e.g. expert systems that connect people, let people find each other – research networking)Same task as above

List which of the above each person will work on.

Have this done by next online meeting

We will use phone conferencing instead of web/voip

Clarify what we want to accomplish at each of next 3 online meetings

2. Strategic Planning for Presentations and Outreach

We discussion of presentations and other methods of outreach for project scheduled for the Spring to include what to convey

Talking points for key stakeholders /audiences

Proposed conf call for our library directors

Future workshops engaging new libraries:

- what are the key things we want to discuss

- what the main ways we want to work with these new groups?

- focus on testing emerging process models with them and getting feedback on revised scope

3. Meeting Wrap Up

Reviewed action items and assignments leading up to March meeting

- Clarify main agenda items and scheduling

Online meeting tech strategy

Plus / Delta for January meeting

Meeting ends

1. Workshop feedback

People in our workshops said:

1. They want to know how the process modeling they did will be used in the OLE design process.
2. Don’t reinvent the current system! (But some groups struggled to describe the vision of the new models/framework. Some felt they needed more time with this part.)
3. Workflow management needed.
4. Desire to curate digital information and make that seamless with the rest of our library system, not separate.
5. Desire to improve how we we identify and verify objects. Needs to be streamlined. Needs to be customizeable. “Yes, this is the version of Mark Twain I was looking for.”
6. Treat people as information sources.
7. Collaboration among institutions is critical. OLE must enable this.
8. Would like a global bibliographic registry that enables shared cataloging but has more expandable records and allows more data sharing across institutions. Open access is a key part of this.
9. People want all formats – very important to have a single system that allows all formats. This means full text, audio as well as records.
10. Support for digital objects. Ability to manage all types of resources.
11. Ensure that special collections are fully integrated. Need to be able to manage special collections so that access is integrated with existing discovery mechanisms.
12. Tension between those who want a better ILS and those who want something transformational.
13. Better data gathering and analysis tools. “We want the big red ARL button that you push and all the statistics required come out.” Also want to be able to get information easily for making decisions.
14. Large amount of acquisitions work is not captured in our current system. It’s out in email, faxes, invoice copies, license agreements – shorthand for “paperwork” or business correspondence. More of the kind of thing that you have in a Customer Relationship Management system in businesses.
15. Managing documents in an event driven manner.
16. Capture, manage and leverage relationships between objects and people. People should be able to build their own personal views.
17. Is this a full replacement or yet another system I have to run indefinitely?
18. Be sure that all core processes are captured.
19. Need better collection management tools that let you do assessment against other institutions. This could be an important new piece.
20. Ability to integrate things you are just trying out into your system so you can evaluate its potential value for purchase. Lehigh did detailed analysis of the “resource evaluation” process in their workshop.
21. Circulation folks don’t want us to break anything that works well. Ability to attach communication to items as they pass through different stages of materials lifecycle process.
22. Need auditing measures for acquisitions process. (Legal requirements partly driving this.)
23. Come up with alternative to Z39.50.
24. Ability to import statistics into the system as well as to get them out.
25. Many requests to bring ERM and ILS closer together.
26. Any new system will require us to help all of our staff to understand what we think libraries will be doing in 3 – 5 years. This will help with worries about how people do their current work. This goes beyond training, although training also required.
27. Small colleges may need things beyond the scope of what they currently have at their institutions, e.g., identify management systems.
28. Need consensus around terminology and concepts in OLE – need to expand our current glossary.
29. Smaller libraries, where people have multiple roles, actually have more flexible views of work than those where people are in very specialized roles.
30. Capture bibliographic info in a wiki (version history).
31. Multilingual support. Assume that the architecture has to be there to allow translation into multiple languages. Support for localization would be the more general term.
32. Need to do all sorts of operations in a bulk way, not one by one. E.g., loading records.
33. All collections data is accessible, exposed, indexed so it is discoverable.
34. Provide clear data relationships.
35. Project management components within the ILS. E.g., if you are moving large numbers of books to a new location, being able to keep track of that from within the ILS.
36. Stop serials check in.
37. Stop binding.
38. We have an opportunity to do something collaboratively because in this economy, we are much more amenable to finding collaborative ways to do things. Financial crisis eliminates sacred cows, institutional idiosyncrasies.

2. NLA framework (Carmel)

Last revised Sept 2008.

There are 45 pages that expand the “brick wall” diagram.

Size of boxes not significant.

Does not address some academic things like course reserves or course related materials.

Meant to be dynamic, evolving.

NLA uses a lot of E-Framework terminology.

Bamboo looking at E-Framework to consider if it is useful to them.

NLA does not de-accession anything; that’s why it does not appear.

What’s missing?

Under repository services, need “versioning”

Maybe better to put it under common services, since it is a factor in other areas, too.

Bottom dark blue box that says Archives & Mss (etc.):

Information set that is common across all processes.

These are the nouns that the verbs act on.
“Party” could mean a person, a buyer ….

Look at Search in “Collection Services” 5^th item down. See page 28 in the NLA document.

You can go to the e-Framework document to see how they define the process and service.

The Strategies gives general schema.

The process of someone doing a search goes from left to right.

Boxes hanging down are the composition of that process.

During each step, you could go out and do other more specialized activities depending on how a library wants its system to work.

Look at 7.9 Request

The colored words in the narrative in the workflow box refer back to the services in the bring wall.

See 6.8 Preserve

No E-framework equivalent

Beth Warner:

Put up digram of OASIS functional areas/ digital preservation services

Blue boxes show services

Yellow boxes (p 2 – detailed model of digital preservation services) show policies and standards that would go against the services

Green boxes show components that may already be out there that can be used (shown in black) and where the gaps are (shown in red)

Perhaps next step is to take NLA entities and map relationships among them

User profiles could pull in different roles

Goes from left to right, from more general to concrete

3. Clarify components of design document

Kyle:

By end of this meeting, we will have a starting point for each of these:

1) Reference Model [the Visio diagram he put up]

2) Analytical framework

3) Core processes (a list of what they are)

4) One sample business model

Review of Core Engine concept as related to other Mellon RIT supported projects. (He calls it a substrate rather than an engine)

Possibilities:

Kuali Rice – messaging, workflow, business rules, events management. Does not have repository/ DSpace and Fedora tend to provide those layers. Scalable, has load balancing, handles large number of transactions.

CollectionSpace – building on OSGI. OSGI an international project, mostly from Business world, uses Eclipse. Will start producing code in May. May eventually move back to Kuali

Fluid – is the user experience layer, the layer through which core processes are used. Not a user interface but more of a data interface. Has a large international community of designers. Deals with usability and accessibililty.

We might well be able to use Kuali Rice as core layer, and Fluid as top layer. Part of our build project could be personnel to interface with these groups. Could reduce our need to re-invent or build this layer from scratch.

We ought to be able to come to quick conclusion about this.

We discussed what would be OLE Modules, 3^rd party modules

OLE modules:
Resource delivery

Collections

Acquisitions

Identify Mangement (light)

Resource Management

3^rd party modules:

Report management

Discovery tools

Repository management

Identify management

Licensing

4. E-resources workflow BPM diagram

Is this the kind of thing that would work within the OLE framework?
Why or why not?

Trying to decide whether the modeling process works and whether the services described can be matched to NLA framework.

At lunchtime – Each group analyze one page / process and try to extract the services represented in the process.

- - – - – - -

General issue across processes: a lot of things get done in batch vs individual

Are vendors sending us stuff that can be automatically acted upon

Need to keep things flexible enough to accommodate different workflows

If we can describe basic set of services we can orchestrate, the community will be self-correcting in finding if there are mistakes or additional services needed.

There are a lot of steps shown in the workflow, but the total number of services is not that large.

Need to be really clear about difference between service and workflow.

Follow up action item: More detailed review of the NLA service descriptions to see if they are adequate, need to be described in more detail; are services missing and thus need to have descriptions developed.

We will take the work done in the BPM workshops and follow up with those models.

5. Practice modeling out one process

Name of Process: Resource delivery

Definition of Process (modified from NLA): Supply an appropriate resource subject to conditions or constraints on use. This applies to print and electronic. Both returnable and consumable. May be local, consortial, purchased on demand or external to institutional ownership. Can be an original or a copy.

Processes in Resource Delivery =

- Deliver Resource

- Resource Return

- Request Return

- Identify Resource

- Renew Resources

Detailed model for the process “Deliver Resource”

Requirements for what we need to do with each process:

- Needs to be verb, noun (“deliver resource” or “resource delivery”)

- Keep it brief

- Needs to be multi-staged in nature, or multi-step

Assume:

- Business Rules are set and applied throughout

- Notifications happen throughout

References in these notes:

E-Framework: http://www.e-framework.org/

NLA Framework document: https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/3.+Service+framework

Kuali Rice – http://rice.kuali.org/

CollectionSpace – http://www.collectionspace.org/

Fluid – http://www.fluidproject.org/

]]> http://oleproject.org/2009/01/27/ole-project-meeting-4-at-lehigh-notes-from-day-2/feed/ 0 http://oleproject.org/2009/01/27/ole-project-meeting-4-at-lehigh-notes-from-day-1/ http://oleproject.org/2009/01/27/ole-project-meeting-4-at-lehigh-notes-from-day-1/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:37:39 +0000 Lynne O'Brien http://oleproject.org/?p=2021

The OLE Project group met at Lehigh University from Jan. 20 – 22, 2009.

We met in the lovely Lehigh University Linderman Library.

Additional photos are on our Flickr site.

Notes from the first day, Jan. 20, 2009, are below. Notes from the others days are in separate posts, in the category “Project Information.”

1. Intro to the meeting

Lynne reviewed the project goals and activities and described goals for the meeting

• Review project goals and activities

• Goals for the meeting

• Meeting logistics

2. SOA and OLE

Kyle Gabhart led a discussion of what we see as the value of SOA for our project

What are the pain points we hope to address with SOA:

• We want better integration with enterprise IT.
• We want better integration with multiple software programs and segments of library business.
• We want better integration across library consortia (e.g., through authentication that crosses multiple systems)
• Rapidly changing patron behavior requires more flexibility in how we respond to those needs than we currently have
• The complexities of licensing, acquiring and holding materials in different formats is not easy to accommodate in our current systems (Special collections especially illustrates this. In the future we’d like all of these collections to be available easily in digital formats)
• We have too many hierarchical, non-integrated systems (and staff associated with each) and the overhead of managing all that hurts libraries’ ability to innovate. Link resolvers, reserves modules, etc. We have all these things because each specializes in one thing. But they don’t work well together. Managing and integrating these things are expensive.
• For those libraries that are doing development work, there is not yet a clear framework that ensures those newly designed things will work together; people are working in isolation. It is not cost effective for us to work in isolation.

Discussion

Does the financial crisis increase some pain points and also create opportunities?

e.g., reduced budget for acquisitions increase demand on ILL. Does that increase create pressure to a point that institutions will look for new and better ways to do things?

We know that we have redundant activities. Can we reduce those inefficiencies?

Cooperative efforts that haven’t gone anywhere in the past may now be more likely because of the economy. E.g., cooperative collections development, shared cataloging. We require a system that allows us to do this cooperation.

Economic problems are likely to be long term, at least 3 – 4 years. Thus, cost savings, reduction of waste, more ability to redeploy staff can be a case for innovation.

OLE needs to support consortia; current systems hinder consortial efforts.

A desire for shared services across institutions is a connection point with IT interests. This may be an area where we have common interests with IT – CSG also talked about idea of sharing services across institutions.

Economic situation also is making it easier to do some things we know we want to do but for which we have faced resistance up until now. E.g., easier to reduce purchasing things in print formats.

Even in times of tight budgets, several of our libraries or consortia have stated that they will support things that move us in a strategic direction. They don’t just want to do business as usual, and will find a way to bring resources toward a solution to current problems.

Maybe we need to move away from the hub and spoke model of cataloging and move more toward a peer to peer shared model.

Identify management and security protocols seem like an obvious place to start – universities have made great progress here, reducing the need for libraries to run patron management systems. Who has access to what – this is what identity management projects are already working on. Library could be a player within this system.

NJ doing statewide Shibboleth for video sharing which opens up great potential.

Some themes in the conversation:

• consortial approaches and institutional sharing key (Not just consortia of libraries but of other kinds of organizations as well)
• adopting systems developed outside the library to improve efficiencies is desirable
• reduce system’s reliance on MARC
• need new and better ways to display our data (NOT the same as developing new discovery tools)

Some existing projects and activities which could have synergy with OLE: DLF work on discovery, eXtensible catalog’s work with discovery.

What is it absolutely that we need for bibliographic control in a new system? Could a new system leave behind some of that bibliographic / cataloging work? There are a lot of tools to help us manage our collections – how can we leverage these tools? Iliad, open URL.

We’re interested in the idea of moving more services to the network. We would like to know more about what OCLC is developing and what their future plans are.

Rethinking workflows and improving them is a key part of our project, perhaps as much or more important than the technology

Where does SOA help in our project?

• Federated identify management would have a SOA aspect.
• SOA can help with reducing the constraints imposed by a monolithic system.
• SOA can help with liberating our data
• SOA can help with integration goals (cost of integration kept low; interoperability).
• SOA can help with making things more configurable
• SOA can help with agility.
• SOA can help with governance of interoperability – helps us measure, monitor and enforce policies and SLAs around consortial activities.

3. Build project considerations

Mike Winkler gave a presentation about build project planning and different options we are considering. Instead of picking one, think of us moving along a continuing, and using different approaches at different times. There may be some role for revising or integrating work already under development, while also specifying a framework that allows us to snap in new modules. Having a framework that developers can write to gives them more viability because their code will be more likely to last, be adopted and supported.

Considerations throughout

- high priority = reducing redundancy

- promote sharing and inter-institutional work

- retaining control of ability to innovate and do future development

- take into account rapidly-changing user behavior. Suggests that orchestration layer has to accommodate changing presentation layer. Back end can not pre-suppose the front end. (e.g. allow for users to enter our systems in multiple ways)

NLA Services framework document is a good starting point. Needs additional work to be ready to use in guiding software development.

https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/3.+Service+framework

4. Scope considerations

Mike Winkler gave a presentation on scope considerations.

Discussion:
* Is this project incremental or evolutionary; evolutionary is transformational by its nature.
* Suggestion: propose the value propositions and let others decide whether they are incremental or evolutionary.
* An open source project that reproduces functionality is still transformative by the nature of the community it builds.
* Value proposition:  As we revised our scope document, we not only need to include descriptive information about OLE as a design document, but also need to communicate the value proposition to different audiences.

5. Value proposition discussion

Kyle led a discussion on describing the business proposition to different kind of libraries and institutions

Resources we discussed or referenced during the day:

Collaboration Space Management diagram
http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/NISOTLElearnDraft.doc Go to Appendix A, pg 6

NLA Services framework document:

https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/3.+Service+framework

XMind (free) Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping tool

http://www.xmind.net/

Visual Understanding Environment – an Open Source project based at Tufts University.

http://vue.tufts.edu/

]]> http://oleproject.org/2009/01/27/ole-project-meeting-4-at-lehigh-notes-from-day-1/feed/ 0 http://oleproject.org/2009/01/19/notes-from-the-lehigh-university-regional-design-workshop-now-posted/ http://oleproject.org/2009/01/19/notes-from-the-lehigh-university-regional-design-workshop-now-posted/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:43:07 +0000 Doreen Herold http://oleproject.org/?p=2011 Meeting information, notes and photos from the library workflow design workshop held Dec. 15-16, 2008 at Lehigh University are now online.

http://oleproject.org/workshops/regional-design-workshop-notes-lehigh-university/

We welcome your comments on the ideas discussed at this workshop.