Enterprise Abstraction

ILS Expo - Koha

George Duimovich asked me to pass this on as it may be of interest to library professionals in and around Ottawa:

As part of an ILS expo, Industry Canada in collaboration with the Council of Federal Libraries Consortium
is presenting a seminar on Koha in Ottawa.  Anyone interested is invited to RSVP with Naomi Haberstock at Industry Canada (haberstock.naomi@ic.gc.ca):

Liblime (Koha open source system): Friday July 27, 2007 9 a.m. to 12:00 noon at
395 Wellington St, Ottawa, Room 156  (LAC Headquarters)
 

Stats Canada IT Conference 2007

John told me about a conference that Statistics Canada is hosting - the IT Conference 2007.  According to the call for papers and programme, it's very much about enterprise architecture and service oriented architecture this year.  I'm sorry I hadn't been aware of it earlier... oh well.

Looks like a good program.  You can register here.

Access 2007

The Access 2007 website is up.  This year the conference is being held in Victoria, BC.  I always highly recommend this conference to library technology practitioners.  As their tagline says, it's "Canada's Premier Library Technology Conference".  Access 2006 was held this past October in Ottawa.

More ILS Symposium and SOA

Robert Fox has posted a very good Windsor ILS Symposium Travelogue (see my previous entry on the ILS Symposium). 

In particular, Robert has provided an excellent report on Peter Murray's SOA talk that succinctly describes some of the potential advantages to a (disintegrated) library system that was based on SOA practices.  He provides a very good example of Amazon's front page simply not being hosted on more than one machine, but by a multitude of applications, all working in (service-oriented) harmony to produce an integrated and satisfying client experience.  Integrating at the back-end, as Integrated Library Systems attempt is simply not the way to go.

Thus, the "ILS" would become a constellation of services such as circulation, resource description, resource discovery, acquisitions services, etc. These services can be housed at one location or many, on one set of machines or many, using heterogeneous technologies all taking advantage of open protocols and standards. It seems as though it would be prudent for libraries to investigate this approach in order to attain the highest levels of flexibility and responsiveness to patron needs.

Exactly.

Interoperable, distributed, each part doing a job and doing its job well... that's the true path to integration.

DLF Services Working Group Workshop

I attended a workshop held by the Digital Library Federation's Services Framework Working Group, held November 7, 2006.  Finally, my kinda initiative.  Libraries, technology, architecture, SOA, all combined into one nifty group working together for the common good of mankind.  I get the warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

The workshop was essentially a pre-conference for the DLF fall forum 2006, that was held last week in Boston. 

My impression was that the working group has done a lot of good work thus far, and I'm very pleased that a group is looking at bringing architecture principles to libraries on a more global scale.

My experience with enterprise architecture and SOA within one library/enterprise -- namely CISTI -- has been quite successful by all accounts.  However, that success has been largely won based on a huge communication and education effort, by accepting risks and uncertainties, and by an unending effort to garner buy-in from both management and staff at all levels.  I'm concerned that the Services Working Group has it's work cut-out for it in attempting to achieve a more universal acceptance of what is essentially a high-level library architecture effort.

The main criticism I would posit is that if you're doing an effort such as this, to capture the common business processes of libraries, then please don't make up a process or methodology.  The skills, training  and methodologies exist to do enterprise architecture (or, perhaps in this case - meta-enterprise architecture). 

Also data flow models are not passé.  Don't make things complex that can be simple.  Most times I find that if you can identify the business process, data, data flow and actors... you've solved your problem.  :)

A framework should be developed at a particularly high level, encompassing only the common and agreed upon elements of library processes.  Whilst you may need to dig deep to collect and confirm processes, the framework itself, I suggest, should remain fairly high -- providing individual enterprises the ability to compare, contrast and build upon that framework in their own context.  That said, libraries have been around for a very long time, I'm certain that libraries have many business processes that they commonly share.

What am I saying?  I'm saying there are at least 2 levels of architecture here.  The high level meta-architecture (framework) thats generally agreed upon amongst libraries, and then there's a true enterprise-level architecture that's needed within an institution to meet specific needs.  The enterprise-level architecture should, ideally, use the framework to guide their architecture development and implementations... but a framework can never fully accommodate the specific business needs, planning and implementation required within an organization.  That said, it was very clear from the paper published in DLib Magazine and during the workshop that the Services Working Group in no way was attempting to delve too deep here.  What I'm saying is that libraries should get some architects on board and within their planning and technology groups, and perhaps the Services Working Group could attract some architects to assist them in their valiant efforts.

Another thought:  Who the client/user is for this architecture.  The client, ultimately, is the patron -- not the librarian, I think.  Is this true?  I always find it easier to attack these questions from the end-user perspective first.  Argue with me.

Overall, I believe that it is a timely, well-needed and important effort.  I'm hoping for its success.

For more information please consult the Digital Library Federations Services Working Group page, and the Education Commons DLF Services Framework site.

Check out some of my photos around Boston that I took during the workshop.  It's a beautiful city to inspire thought.

The Future of the ILS

I've just returned from a symposium hosted by the great folks at the University of Windsor and the Leddy Library entitled "The Future of the ILS".

It was only a one day affair, but was jam packed with quality information, an informal atmosphere, and populated with the most important part -- like-minded people.  Before I ramble on for too long, I'd like to followup on Eric Lease Morgan's suggestion on creating some sort of statement -- a Windsor Manifesto if you will.  I don't think we were able to come to a consensus on all issues, but there are some areas that I think the group would have agreed upon (please correct me if I'm wrong):

• The ILS, as is, does not serve our current nor future needs.
• The vendors are partly to blame, as are ourselves.  In many cases we got exactly what was asked for.
• We'd like to continue this dialogue to seek a good common path forward.
• If the vendors don't provide what we need... we must provide what we need for ourselves.

Now, some things I believe, based in part on my thinking, and the thoughts of others at the symposium:

• Architecture -- SOA in particular -- is a good path forward for libraries.  Let's disintegrate the ILS into it's basic functions.
• The "Integrated" portion of ILS is a large part of the problem.  We don't want an Integrated Library System (ILS), we want a Library System (LS) that works.  That works in general, and for a specific libraries circumstances.
• Most libraries can agree on a basic set of needed library services.  I think Peter Murray suggested a number approaching 80%.  To be determined I would say.
• For these common services, let's have a common framework and standards to move us forward.

As I've said before, the coffee breaks are the best part of a conference.  At this symposium, one thing was clear, the frustration with vendors and ILS systems is universal.  It's old technology, with an old business model thats not serving libraries well at all.  We need these functions, but not only these functions anymore.  Libraries are more than books, yet trying to cram these new functions into an ancient, siloed, title-based database is never going to work without some serious intervention.  We want API's!  We want access to the data.  We want it now!

The day consisted of basically 4 talks, and a panel session including all speakers at the end.  I will not provide a play by play -- attend the next symposium for details -- but I will highlight some of the key issues.

Art Rhyno started the day with one of his classic metaphors on library thought entitled "The Trip So Far - a journey with the ILS".  I love Art's talks, they're always fun and thought provoking.  In particular Art mentioned open source efforts (Koha, Evergreen, Lucene) as a key to moving forward, as well as some of the work being done in Europe. 

Peter Murry gave, much to my personal delight, a really good and comprehensive talk on SOA for Libraries.  SOA is a very new area for libraries, and I'm very glad to see the word starting to spread.  Perhaps a Library SOA symposium would be a reasonable event in the future?

The PINES team spoke about their efforts on the open source and built from scratch ILS software Evergreen, including technical details as to its operation, and a high-level view of how they made this work for the public library system in the state of Georgia.  It's just wonderful.  I usually concentrate on the architecture of things, thinking services and functions... but I must admit, in this case the thing I was ultimately most impressed with was the interface.  It's so simple, and so rich at the same time.

Finally, Alan Darnell provided his thoughts from the OCUL perspective on moving forward with the ILS in future.  Alan provided what I thought was an interested data-oriented perspective on how catalogue data, augmented with all sorts of other data could be used to move our universe forward.

The panel, consisting of all speakers, then managed to successfully answer a barrage of questions from the audience.  A better overview than I could ever produce can be found on Blogwithoutalibrary.

UPDATE:  Peter Binkley and Dan Scott have both posted insightful overviews of the meeting.

SOA for Dummies

I was informed about the new SOA for Dummies book by several sources, including John Glavine, a fellow Enterprise Architect at CISTI.  Soon the whole CISTI EA team will be blogging.  I still think I have the coolest name though. 

John recently attended the LITA 2006 Nation Conference in Nashville, and has a few comments on his blog (aptly named) Over the Hill.  Hehe.

It was also mentioned by a speaker during the "Future of the ILS Symposium" that I just attended in Windsor Ontario.  I'll get to that though in another posting.

Access 2006 - Day 2

Day 2 of the Access 2006 conference started out with the regular talk from Roy Tennant.  I, and it seems everyone else, is a Roy Fanboy.  He's just a smart, well spoken man with some good ideas about libraries and technology direction.  His talk encompassed the question regarding getting our patrons that last mile -- getting them the thing they actually want.  Libraries have done better with description than with delivery.  We need a 2 click solution - one to find, and one to get the item that was sought.  Roy mentioned that libraries have been asking for the wrong things from vendors, and that the result is a shared problem that we all own, and must work together towards solutions.

With regard to books, he reviewed some of the key areas and concepts that enable better access, including:  Google Books, FRBR concepts, Open Worldcat, XISBN, and some of the audience level work being done at OCLC.  With regard to journals he mentioned OpenURL resolution, OpenURL resolver directories, DOI's and other resolvers, and aggregators like arXive.org and oaister.org as being key areas of interest.  I like his idea that intelligent integration is a key concept in moving forward, and that we need to be working together and taking advantage of advances, not fighting against ideas like Google and rebuilding functions that already exist.

Anne Christensen followed with an awesome and funny talk about library chatbots.  The Bibliothek  Hamberg has a chatbot -- Stella -- that seems very adept at guiding users through common issues in an interactive chat session.  Although lacking in any true AI, it's proved to be a marketing boon for the library, and seems to be quite fun.  They seem to have taken a great deal of consideration in Stella's responses, even providing a back story so that Stella seems personable, and gives appropriate answers to even inappropriate questions.

Annette Bailey followed with a great talk on a great tool -- LibX.  I've dabbled myself (poorly) in the area of firefox toolsbars/extensions for libraries, and can really appreciate the great effort these guys made.  LibX is customizable for your library, and provides a very interactive, on the ground, in the client space tool.  Clients no longer have to leave the page they're looking at and go to the library site to receive service... LibX is there and integrating the library services in situ wherever the client may be surfing.  I had a great chat with Annette and her colleague Godmar Back at lunch, and I can tell you that they're very thoughtful and passionate about their work.

Then there were the thunder talks.  Thunder talks, much like lightening talks, are a series of short (10 minute) talks on various subjects.  Included were:  Ross Singer presenting Umlaut, Mark Jordan did Drupal hacks for libraries, and Peter Binkley reviewed his work with Solr for faceted searching... and there were several others.  Dan Chudnov did several talks in 10 minutes, particularly covering Zotero, UnAPI, OpenURL COinS and more.  I like this format alot... it forces compressed information with little noise... as opposed to this blog perhaps.

The afternoon keynote was by former (and current?) CBC broadcaster Nora Young, and covered the impact of information in our postmodern age including such heady issues as truth and meaning given the mob-thought processes that take place, and the information-snippet type of interaction we have with the world.  I can't do her thoughts justice.  It was thought provoking, let's leave it at that.

Richard Akerman, my illustrious colleague at CISTI gave an excellent talk on SOA and BPEL.  I'm not sure that the library community is ready to adopt architecture principles yet, but this was a good attempt at achieving some awareness in the area.  I'm sure he'll be posting some further info on his blog.  He also hosted a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session afterwards on SOA.  At least we know there are a few people interested in the topic.  Those that attended were certainly keen on the subject, and I could tell they were very excited to explore the area.

The day ended with a talk from Paul Miller of Talis, a leader in library technology development and participation.  Paul gave a fantastic presentation about transforming libraries in the Library 2.0 way.  He also engaged with us for a very good meal, and very good discussion afterwards.  Of particular interest to me was the Second Life Library submitted as part of the recent Talis Mashup Competition and their Keystone project (SOA based).  His key points were to disintegrate the library (here here!), open the library, and push the library everywhere.  He also announced and provided a look at the Cenote project.

I've missed or skipped several talks... my apologies to those missed out, there's just too much to cover.  As always, a good, interesting and thought provoking conference.

Access 2006 - Day 1

Apologies for the recent lack of posts, and the fact that this post will have much more to do with library technology thoughts than with architecture proper.

I'm attending Access 2006 this week, at home in Ottawa.  Access is a techie-library conference that I've attended a number of times before.  It's small, always stimulating, and always a lot of fun. 

This morning started off with a keynote from Lesie Weir entitled "Open Access, Open Source, Content Deals:  Who Pays, When and for What?".  Leslie applied her usual frank tone to these issues of importance in the library world.  In particular she illustrated some of the ongoing concerns with the traditional Integrated Library Systems (ILS) that seem to have become recognized as the bane of the library.  Libraries were early adopters of technology several decades back, but seem, in my opinion, to have stalled in the progression beyond what has now become a very closed, siloed and vendor-dependant technology.  The "Integrated" part of the ILS is very integrated with itself, but not with the rest of the modern library's needs.

Art Rhyno and Walter Lewis presented a suite of Ontario focused digital library projects through their Knowledge Ontario project -- a fascination collection and effort to digitize and make available Ontario heritage.  Art told an interesting illustrated story about the connectedness of information through an incident with Ty Cobb, and Walter backed him up with descriptions of some of the technologies used in their effort which include the very popular Lucene search engine and Solr.  Poor Art has quite a cold.  I hope it wasn't due to the recently poor Ottawa weather.

Tito Sierra provided an interesting view on improving a webOPAC (web catalogue for those not in the know) with Endeca. 

Then followed the "lightening talks" where a number of people -- who just signed up that morning -- provide a series of 5 minute talks on recent innovations and happenings of interest.  It was certainly varied, fast paced, and provided a nice pre-noon lift.

A panel on various national digital initiatives followed, which included a member of my organization -- Lucie Molgat of CISTI -- talking about CISTI's Canada scientific infostructure program -- yes, the acronym is CSI much to everyones amusement.  CSI proposes to provide tools, services, content to Canadians in the area of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information, in part through the adept use of SOA.  Library and Archives Canada - on "Toward a Canadian Digital Information Strategy", Allouette Canada and CIDL also described their national initiatives -- but I note that CSI differs in scope and context from these in that they are mostly digital library (proper) initiatives -- more focused on content digitization and preservation. 

Unfortunately, there was not enough time to actually ask the panel questions... which I felt might have helped to distinguish the differing scopes and objectives of the groups.  I feel that most of the groups were headed toward a similar direction -- with surprisingly little overlap -- but perhaps could have benefited from being able to illustrate the differences, and likely areas of complement, between their programs.

Ron Davies provided a very good overview of the, quite advanced work being done on digital libraries in Europe.  Of particular interest to me -- because I have an unfilled architecture box for my organization -- was his description of MACS - a technology that allows mapping between different subject categories for content and even it seems when different languages are involved -- a perennial issue for a Canadian government library.

Clair MacKeigan gave an overview of the specification for a new "Get IT" browser plugin functionality that she's been involved with.  I took it to be an extension above and beyond OpenURL that was focused on providing context based access to document/content providers.  Clair asked that anyone interested in participating in implementation of prototype applications in this area contact John Bodfish at OCLC Pica.

Then finally, the hackfest results.  Yes, I was a wiener again this year and didn't attend.  The hackfest is an Access preconference that involves 30 or so (this year closer to 60) library technology "hackers" spending a day working on suggested problems.  They then present the results -- sometimes working code, but more often whiteboard thoughts, to the conference as a whole.  This years presentation was entertaining as usual, and always provides fodder for thought.  It's amazing what you can do in this field in a day (or a few days).

Well, that's my synopsis of day 1.  A very full day indeed.

Information Management Day(s)

My friend Tammy points me to the Government of Canada IM Conference 2006, which is open to Government of Canada department, agency and crown corporation employees only.

Last year (2005) I was honoured to receive, as part of a fantastic team, the Information Management Community Recognition Award for our work on CISTI's Secure Desktop Delivery service at this event.

This years conference will take place over two days - October 2 and 3, 2006 in Ottawa.