An analysis of Digital Repository Scenarios Use Cases

An analysis of Digital Repository Scenarios, Use Cases and Workflows Preliminary Findings Plenary Session 5: Interoperability Thursday 25 th January 2007, Open Repositories Conference 2007, San Antonio, Texas UKOLN is supported by: Mahendra Mahey Repositories Research Team Julie Allinson, Rachel Heery and Robert John Robertson UKOLN and CETIS www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management www. bath. ac. uk

Overview • • Background Methodology – Preliminary Findings Other approaches Extracting internal functions and interactions with external services, flow of information between systems • Ecology • E-framework • Conclusions www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Joint Information Systems Committee – UK government funding organisation promoting and implementing IT technology in Further (Community College) and Higher Education (Universities) Funded the Digital Repositories Programme in the UK (2005 – 2008) Phase 1 http: //www. jisc. ac. uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories. aspx 27 Projects research, learning, information services, institutional policy, management and administration, records management www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Project Priorities • • • Metadata standards Metadata quality Persistent identifiers Version control Quality assurance Benchmarking Images Data Repositories – (Building trusted repositories) • Provenance/Ownership • Legal issues • User requirements Legal and Policy Issues E-learning Integrating E-theses infrastructure Preservation Most of the projects can be grouped into these broad areas www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management Clusters

CLADDIER ASK PERX Rights Rewards SHERPA Plus Repositories Research Team User Needs PROWE: IRS IRIScotlan d CDLOR MIDESS UK Collab GRADE R 4 L Repo. MMan Repository Bridge SPIRE SPECTRa VERSIONS Community Image Archive IRRA Trust DR STORE ETh. OS Open DOAR Framework For Medical Images www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management GNU Eprints

Achieving Interoperability in an Open World of Repositories? Different People Open Access to Research Papers Researchers Learning and Teaching Librarians Departmental Learning Objects Research Output Data Teachers Scientists Difficult to identify when and IF interoperability should occur Open Access to Research Data School Different Domains Universities (Higher Education) Government Community Colleges (Further Education) www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management Contexts

Many projects needed to gather requirements… Where to begin…? www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Some projects had already started… • ASK project was working following John’s Hopkins • A Technology Analysis of Repository Services • More on this later. . . www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Projects needed to collect and document requirements • Research Team provided TRAINING to Projects • Main aims: – Learn how to write and use Scenarios, Use Cases, UML, Workflows – Can be collected across projects using common templates and notation, for future analysis • Scenarios and Use Cases • UML (Universal Modelling Language) • Workflows (some projects already started, but training to be given in BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation – Phase 1 and 2, in March) www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Writing effective scenarios and use cases • Many approaches out there! ISBN: 0201702258 Alistair Cockburn • Decided on Alistair Cockburn’s work 4. 5 Stars on Amazon! – Writing Effective Scenarios and Use Cases – Approach seemed simple and well respected – Used trainers that had implemented a repository system using this approach • Intrallect • LADIE (JISC Project) – Experiences both good and bad of using scenarios and use cases for gathering requirements www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Training Materials available on our Wiki http: //www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories/digirep/index/Useful_Resources • Please feel free to use www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Example templates Scenarios Use Cases www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Who were the authors of the Scenarios and Use Cases? • Mainly project staff who had received the training • Some of the scenarios based on surveys and interviews with staff in institutions www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

How Features and Interactions extracted • • Long laborious process, very time consuming Implicit process – • • • Not always clear to establish explicit connection between scenarios, use cases (even after training!!) Writing a use case is much more difficult 4 times more scenarios than use cases collected Not finished yet, more to be collected analysed Need to go back to many authors to get agreement – • Still ongoing Scenarios can be ‘hit and miss’, even if they are controlled, yet appealing because they are the easiest to get – – – • • • Read, Interpret, Agree Two way process – they communicate an idea and sometimes it is necessary to make sure you have understood There are better story tellers out there than others Some loose the plot (not mentioning any names) Not always about repositories!! Can be difficult to analyse Similar problems found with John Hopkin’s work www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Features www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Create Retrieve CRUD is a Delete Update GIVEN www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Features Identified – similar to previous work • Storage – Add, Access, Remove Data and Manage Metadata • Aggregations – Create and Remove, Change membership and Find • Management – Bulk ingest and export • Security – Authentication and Access control, User Management, Policy Management • • • Locking Virtual Object Representation Transactions (e. g. updating objects) Versioning Searching www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

A snap shot of features… www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Versions Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Version 4 ferret_behaviour_02_03_05. pdf Finding the treasure in versions ferret_behaviour_02_07_05. pdf Enough metadata to distinguish between versions In search results without opening file Publisher Version Ferret Behaviour (includes graphic images) Open Access Version Closest to Publisher Version Ferret Behaviour (just images missing) www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories Version labelling simple and easy Permanence of file location A centre of expertise in digital information management

Interactions with other systems Updates One click publish from Repository To VLE (CMS) Bulk import Links to Full text via ID VLE IMS SCORM Content Repository ? ? QTI Systems Research Expertise Database PDA IMS QTI Repository Content Not full functionality, too complex! www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management Repository VLE Repository

Learning and Teaching Repositories Learning Objects Bulk Import Seamless Extra security For sensitive Materials and Specific Groups Shibboleth Delayed feedback Repository RSS E-mail Open Access in Learning and Teaching Materials Repositories (Internal/External), Peer Review (Anonymous) OAIPMH compliant Learning Object Repositories Harvest Metadata regularly from other repositories © Identify modifiable content License on reuse Disaggregating Learning Objects Into Assets for reuse In a repository www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories About resource Resource Changed Links to Materials via E-mail, RSS Star Ratings Comments ! Moderation Communities of Practice Assess Materials A centre of expertise in digital information management

Geospatial data Search using GUI Links to other services Gazetteer – for keyword searching Geo referencing 80% of all data has Geo Component in it So why not put it in? www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Repositories in the Laboratory www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Lab equipment feeds data directly Into a Lab Repository DEPOSIT Dataset Probity service maintains priority of discovery Time Stamping, The Researcher Web OAI Dissemination of data metadata (E-bank) Data and analysis integrated into article and linked back to data archive. Paper www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories Paper OAI dissemination of document metadata (EPrints UK) plus data citations. A centre of expertise in digital information management From R 4 L project website

Others Leaving Institution? Download all your files Into a single Zip Assign different levels Of Metadata which can be viewed by Different groups e. g. school, university Digital Resource Aggregator www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Deposit – see Deposit API work • Mediated deposit – one page eazi deposit into mediated deposit queue • Deposit clone using arxiv –easi deposit script • Make deposit of final theses into repository a condition of graduation www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Ecology • Identified features will provide • More evidence for Ecology • Potential interactions www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

E-framework http: //www. e-framework. org/ • E-framework, SOA approach to building systems with small components • Deposit or ‘Add’ will feature in this – see previous presentation • Possibly more www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Conclusions • Scenarios, use cases and workflows are very useful for gathering requirements • Scenarios are perhaps the easiest to get from non specialists • For Scenarios to be useful you need to know what you need the story for, otherwise you may not get a particularly useful story • Go back to the authors and show them what implicit assumptions you have made and see if you interpreted it correctly • A scenario is meant to communicate with the user, and communication is a two way process after all • Useful for lots of projects to get a focus of what you need something for, or what you would like. www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Telling a story – Scenarios • People don’t always tell you the right stories – – Interesting – yes Not always relevant Imprecise Need to go back and ask what they meant • Lowering the barrier to get stories from users is good but then there is ‘drift’ • Users need to know what story they are supposed to tell • Keep them on focus! www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Further work • Go back to many authors • Communicate functionality with developers of repositories • Ecology and E-framework • More to collect!! • More workflows to Analyse • Paper to be written at end of project www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

The moral… A well told story is always better to analyse than a badly told one. www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management

Thanks … Presentation available from: http: //www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories/digirep/index/Useful_ Resources <m. mahey@ukoln. ac. uk> <j. allinson@ukoln. ac. uk> <r. heery@ukoln. ac. uk> <robertson@cis. strath. ac. uk> www. ukoln. ac. uk/repositories A centre of expertise in digital information management