Table of Contents
The purpose of this manual is to outline the principles and processes necessary to implement digital library collections and services. It uses MyLibrary as an example.
The manual is intended to be read by library administrators who need to know what and how many resources to allocate to a digital library. It is intended to be read by librarians who are responsible for collecting and organizing content as well as ensuring the system's usability. The manual is intended to be read by systems administrators who are in charge of providing the technical infrastructure for the system. Last but not least, it is intended for programers who will use the underlying Perl API to provide services against the collection.
In a library setting, especially an academic library setting, these four groups of people -- library administrators, librarians, systems administrators, and programmers -- have more things in common than differences. They all have ultimate goals surrounding the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of data and information for the purposes of facilitating learning, teaching, and research. This set of common goals binds the group and provides a sense of direction. The group's complementary sets of skills, knowledge, and expertise ensure the system's functionality and usability. Everybody has something to offer, and everybody's talents are required to make the implementation of a digital library a success.
The implementation of a digital library, including a MyLibrary implementation, can be distilled into a number of tasks:
Create a group of people who have the necessary skills, outlined above.
Create an information architecture for the system - This "blueprint" will answer difficult questions regarding the system's users, content, and context. By the end of this process you will have articulated the expressed needs of the primary audience, a collection development policy, and a mission statement for the system. This process is described in more detail in the Chapter 3.
Decide on an ontology for logically organizing your content - MyLibrary employs a facet/term approach to classification. Facets are broad headings and terms are specific. Example facet/term combinations might include Subjects/Astronomy, Formats/Books, or Audiences/Freshman. Any number of combinations can be created in MyLibrary, and any number of them can be associated with any particular information resource. This is described in more detail in Chapter 4.
Collect and organize your content - MyLibrary uses Dublin Core elements combined with the facets and terms for this purpose. You might acquire your content programatically by importing MARC records or harvesting content from OAI-PMH repositories. You will probably want to supplement the collection/organization process with manual data entry techniques. In either case, MyLibrary comes with example scripts illustrating how to accomplish these goals.
Create services against the collection - At the very least you will want to provide browsable and/or searchable interfaces to your collection. Your browsable interface will almost undoubtedly mirror your facet/term classification system. Your searchable interface may query the underlying MyLibrary database directly or access indexes created against the system. If your content is dynamic, then you might want to provide a What's New service. You may want to provide a user-driven, customizable interface. The services you implement will be guided by the blueprints you outlined in your information architecture. Programs/scripts demonstrating these sorts of services are described in Chapter 19.
Do usability testing - While your implementation may very well be functional, it might not be usable. List six or seven tasks your digital library is intended to allow users to accomplish. Randomly ask users to do the tasks and watch what happens. If the users accomplish the tasks successfully then you are a winner, if not, then you must redesign and re-implement. Various techniques for doing usability testing are described in Chapter 6.
Communicate - Throughout this entire process you need share your progress with everybody around you. Consider creating a Digital Library Advisory Group whose membership consists of a minority of librarians. These people can serve as an ongoing focus group, and they continually answer the question, "Is the system headed in the right direction?" Inside the library ask questions such as, "Does this system solve more problems than it creates?" Marketing and promotion are essential before, during, and after the system's implementation. Creating your digital library should not be a well-kept secret.
Repeat - Libraries are not about books, and digital libraries are not about websites. Instead, libraries to one degree or another are about the never-ending processes of collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating data and information. Audiences, content, and contexts continually evolve, necessitating constant re-examination and revision. Go to Step #1.
Open source software is about community. It is about creating computing solutions to problems, sharing those solutions, improving upon them, and giving these solutions back to the community. Open source software is about pooling resources, building relationships, and improving the way things are done. These processes are very similar to the processes of librarianship. Consequently open source software and librarianship have direct relationships to each other, and MyLibrary is a particular example of that relationship. Because of this relationship the implementation of digital libraries using open source software, specifically with MyLibrary, allows librarians to have direct control over their hardware and software as opposed to the other way around. No vendors. No contracts. No annual fees. No scapegoats.
This does not mean open source software is without expenses. The largest expense will be time. Time spent answering the questions of information architecture, communicating the ongoing development of the system, and the maintenance of the content. The second largest expense will be the development of services against the collection -- the writing of computer programs against the system by computer programmers. This "expense" is really an investment, an investment in the personnel necessary to implement and maintain digital library collections and services. Comparatively, the final expense is almost trivial, the expense of purchasing a computer to host the system.
MyLibrary is written in and distributed as open source software. This means the software is free -- free as a "free" kitten. Not only are there no monetary costs to acquire the software, but it also means you are free to modify the software in any way you desire. You are just not allowed to redistribute the software or anything based on it under a license that is more limiting than the original GNU Public License.
For more information about MyLibrary visit the website at http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mylibrary/, and consider participating in the MyLibrary community by subscribing to the mailing list.
See you on the 'Net.