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Resource Discovery Request for Information (RFI) DRAFT
Background: The Resource Discovery Experimentation Task Force (RDETF) is developing a Request for Information (RFI) that will be issued later this summer to vendors and developers of library resource discovery products. Information gathered via the RFI process, along with knowledge of products gained through several experimental implementations, will be used to inform the direction that CUWL takes to improve the tools that we provide to our users so that they can more readily discover and access our resources. With input from the four CUWL Coordinating Committees, the RDETF has developed the following draft environmental scan and questions that will be included in the official RFI document.
Definition Resource Discovery encompasses the tools that we provide to our users so that they can search for and discover resources provided in and through our campus libraries. “Resources” can include a variety of different types of materials, including but not limited to content currently accessed via our online public access catalogs, databases and journals licensed from vendors and journal publishers, institutional repository and digital collections, and open external collections.
University of Wisconsin Libraries Environmental Scan The University of Wisconsin System (UW-System) is comprised of 14 institutions, including 13 four-year universities and the UW-Colleges, which includes 13 freshman-sophomore campuses. The UW-System is one of the largest systems of public higher education in the country, serving more than 178,000 students each year. Collectively the libraries serve a variety of user groups, from community users and freshman students to graduate students and faculty researchers, representing a vast range of research skills.
The libraries provide user assistance in-person, via phone, email, online chat and through other technological means, including Desire2learn (D2L) course management system used System-wide and LibGuides content management system (used on 9 campuses). In keeping with their educational mission, UW-System libraries place emphasis on instructing students in effectively finding, identifying and evaluating information from a variety of sources, including scholarly and academic resources.
The UW-System libraries’ “one system, one library” philosophy promotes an integration of services across all System libraries. The technical environment seeks to support this goal by fostering integrated discovery and delivery across all collections of the consortium. Underlying much of the UW libraries’ technical infrastructure is the Ex Libris Voyager ILS. Characterized by 14 separate instances of the Voyager ILS and OPAC, the primary means of intercampus resource sharing and delivery is through the Voyager Universal Borrowing module. All institutions also use ILLiad for interlibrary loan and Odyssey for desktop document delivery. SFX and MetaLib are used by most schools for Open URL linking and the management/delivery of database content. Many of the UW-System schools share a single Sun server for the hosting of their individual Voyager instances along with a separate shared server for SFX/Metalib hosting. Patron authentication is managed by each institution using a variety of methods. However, the UW-System has a central authentication hub and Shibboleth architecture to support greater integration of authentication and authorization services. Each institution has its own IP range and proxy server, with EZproxy being the standard.
All institutions provide access to large set of electronic resources obtained through a variety of programs:
§ All 14 institutions have access to a Shared Electronic Collection of 22 databases from various vendors including the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, BioOne, Congressional Quarterly, EBSCO, Gale, the Institute of Physics, JSTOR, LexisNexis, Oxford University Press, Project Muse, ProQuest, and Thompson Reuters.
§ All institutions also have access to 24 journals and 22 databases obtained through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) via UW-Madison’s institutional membership. This collection is from various vendors including Alexander Street Press, BREPOLS, Gale, Nature Publishing, ProQuest, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
§ The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s BadgerLink project provides access to more than 16 databases from Access NewspaperArchive, EBSCO, ECB VideoLink, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Gale, ProQuest, and Teaching Books.
§ Each institution also licenses electronic databases and e-journal packages locally. These materials are accessible only to students, faculty and staff from the licensing institution. Currently all resources, both those purchased centrally and those purchased locally, are administered locally.
Since its foundation in early 2000, the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection Center (UWDCC) has worked collaboratively with UW-System faculty, staff, and librarians to create and provide access to digital resources that support the teaching and research needs of the UW community, uniquely document the university and State of Wisconsin, and provide access to rare or fragile items of broad research value. The UWDCC uses several software platforms, based primarily on the viewing and navigational needs of different content types. They include:
§ Electronic Texts. Content consists of page images and, where possible, uncorrected OCR text, structured using TEI P4 (SGML or XML). Texts may be accessed and navigated by volume, article/chapter, or page. UWDCC currently hosts over 2 million pages of text comprising nearly 14,000 volumes. A smaller number of text are fully corrected and encoded, also using TEI. The texts are indexed by OpenText LiveLink Search, using middleware developed originally at the University of Michigan, but redeveloped by UWDCC. Examples: Book ; encoded journal issue
§ Archival Finding Aids. The collection Archival Resources in Wisconsin contains over 4700 archival finding aids encoded using EAD XML. The finding aids are indexed and navigated using DLXS developed by the University of Michigan and modified by UWDCC. Example: Aldo Leopold Papers
§ Images and Multimedia. The UW Digital Collections contain over 92,000 digital images (excluding page images) and 1200 audio files. Much of this multimedia content is structured into composite objects such as image series. Multimedia content is indexed and displayed using Open SiteSearch, with an user interface developed by UWDCC. Metadata is encoded as modified Dublin Core XML, and is syndicated using OAI-PMH. Examples: Single image; composite object
§ Institutional Repository. Nearly 9600 documents and other objects have been uploaded by users into UW's institutional repository. The self-submit infrastructure is provided by the DSpace platform, developed originally at MIT. Its content is also made available through OAI-PMH.
§ Other content. UW-Milwaukee hosts over 20 digital collections using CONTENTdm, which provides Dublin Core metadata via OAI harvesting. UWDCC also includes more specialized content of various kinds, including an online Icelandic-English dictionary, and the original Surveyors' Field Notes for Wisconsin, accessed through a geographic interface. Such projects leverage existing infrastructure wherever possible, adapting it to accommodate special content types or user needs.
UWDCC is currently migrating its collections and content to a new, more unified infrastructure, based on the Fedora Commons repository software. Descriptive metadata will be encoded using MODS XML. It is hoped that all access will be provided by a single resource discovery platform, and viewers will be invoked as necessary to handle specific types of digital objects.
QUESTIONS for the RFI
API Questions
Product Implementation and Management Questions
Acronyms used in this document:
MODS—Metadata Object Description Schema
API—Application Programming Interface
CAB—an index to worldwide applied life science literature
EAD—Encoded Archival Description INSPEC—an index to engineering and technology literature
MARC—Machine Readable Cataloging
METS—Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
MLA—Modern Language Association index to worldwide literature dealing with languages and literature
OPAC—Online Public Access Catalog
RILM-- Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale index to worldwide literature dealing with music
TEI—Text Encoding Initiative
Definition Resource Discovery encompasses the tools that we provide to our users so that they can search for and discover resources provided in and through our campus libraries. “Resources” can include a variety of different types of materials, including but not limited to content currently accessed via our online public access catalogs, databases and journals licensed from vendors and journal publishers, institutional repository and digital collections, and open external collections.
University of Wisconsin Libraries Environmental Scan The University of Wisconsin System (UW-System) is comprised of 14 institutions, including 13 four-year universities and the UW-Colleges, which includes 13 freshman-sophomore campuses. The UW-System is one of the largest systems of public higher education in the country, serving more than 178,000 students each year. Collectively the libraries serve a variety of user groups, from community users and freshman students to graduate students and faculty researchers, representing a vast range of research skills.
The libraries provide user assistance in-person, via phone, email, online chat and through other technological means, including Desire2learn (D2L) course management system used System-wide and LibGuides content management system (used on 9 campuses). In keeping with their educational mission, UW-System libraries place emphasis on instructing students in effectively finding, identifying and evaluating information from a variety of sources, including scholarly and academic resources.
The UW-System libraries’ “one system, one library” philosophy promotes an integration of services across all System libraries. The technical environment seeks to support this goal by fostering integrated discovery and delivery across all collections of the consortium. Underlying much of the UW libraries’ technical infrastructure is the Ex Libris Voyager ILS. Characterized by 14 separate instances of the Voyager ILS and OPAC, the primary means of intercampus resource sharing and delivery is through the Voyager Universal Borrowing module. All institutions also use ILLiad for interlibrary loan and Odyssey for desktop document delivery. SFX and MetaLib are used by most schools for Open URL linking and the management/delivery of database content. Many of the UW-System schools share a single Sun server for the hosting of their individual Voyager instances along with a separate shared server for SFX/Metalib hosting. Patron authentication is managed by each institution using a variety of methods. However, the UW-System has a central authentication hub and Shibboleth architecture to support greater integration of authentication and authorization services. Each institution has its own IP range and proxy server, with EZproxy being the standard.
All institutions provide access to large set of electronic resources obtained through a variety of programs:
§ All 14 institutions have access to a Shared Electronic Collection of 22 databases from various vendors including the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, BioOne, Congressional Quarterly, EBSCO, Gale, the Institute of Physics, JSTOR, LexisNexis, Oxford University Press, Project Muse, ProQuest, and Thompson Reuters.
§ All institutions also have access to 24 journals and 22 databases obtained through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) via UW-Madison’s institutional membership. This collection is from various vendors including Alexander Street Press, BREPOLS, Gale, Nature Publishing, ProQuest, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
§ The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s BadgerLink project provides access to more than 16 databases from Access NewspaperArchive, EBSCO, ECB VideoLink, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Gale, ProQuest, and Teaching Books.
§ Each institution also licenses electronic databases and e-journal packages locally. These materials are accessible only to students, faculty and staff from the licensing institution. Currently all resources, both those purchased centrally and those purchased locally, are administered locally.
Since its foundation in early 2000, the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection Center (UWDCC) has worked collaboratively with UW-System faculty, staff, and librarians to create and provide access to digital resources that support the teaching and research needs of the UW community, uniquely document the university and State of Wisconsin, and provide access to rare or fragile items of broad research value. The UWDCC uses several software platforms, based primarily on the viewing and navigational needs of different content types. They include:
§ Electronic Texts. Content consists of page images and, where possible, uncorrected OCR text, structured using TEI P4 (SGML or XML). Texts may be accessed and navigated by volume, article/chapter, or page. UWDCC currently hosts over 2 million pages of text comprising nearly 14,000 volumes. A smaller number of text are fully corrected and encoded, also using TEI. The texts are indexed by OpenText LiveLink Search, using middleware developed originally at the University of Michigan, but redeveloped by UWDCC. Examples: Book ; encoded journal issue
§ Archival Finding Aids. The collection Archival Resources in Wisconsin contains over 4700 archival finding aids encoded using EAD XML. The finding aids are indexed and navigated using DLXS developed by the University of Michigan and modified by UWDCC. Example: Aldo Leopold Papers
§ Images and Multimedia. The UW Digital Collections contain over 92,000 digital images (excluding page images) and 1200 audio files. Much of this multimedia content is structured into composite objects such as image series. Multimedia content is indexed and displayed using Open SiteSearch, with an user interface developed by UWDCC. Metadata is encoded as modified Dublin Core XML, and is syndicated using OAI-PMH. Examples: Single image; composite object
§ Institutional Repository. Nearly 9600 documents and other objects have been uploaded by users into UW's institutional repository. The self-submit infrastructure is provided by the DSpace platform, developed originally at MIT. Its content is also made available through OAI-PMH.
§ Other content. UW-Milwaukee hosts over 20 digital collections using CONTENTdm, which provides Dublin Core metadata via OAI harvesting. UWDCC also includes more specialized content of various kinds, including an online Icelandic-English dictionary, and the original Surveyors' Field Notes for Wisconsin, accessed through a geographic interface. Such projects leverage existing infrastructure wherever possible, adapting it to accommodate special content types or user needs.
UWDCC is currently migrating its collections and content to a new, more unified infrastructure, based on the Fedora Commons repository software. Descriptive metadata will be encoded using MODS XML. It is hoped that all access will be provided by a single resource discovery platform, and viewers will be invoked as necessary to handle specific types of digital objects.
QUESTIONS for the RFI
API Questions
- Describe the APIs that are available. Are they available for evaluation? Please provide any examples of institutions that are employing your APIs.
- Describe how your product might integrate the use of other vendor APIs? For example, how might your product integrate Voyager APIs that cover patron actions such as renew item, check fines, and request delivery, without directing the user to the Voyager OPAC?
- Your Content (meaning licensed data that you include in your index)
- For journal content, please include the dates of coverage. For all content, please include the breadth of coverage. (i.e. Is everything within a particular journal covered in your index – including letters to the editor, all article content, etc.)
- What content from Indexing/Abstracting products or services do you cover--i.e. things like CAB, INSPEC, Compendex, Agricola, Web of Knowledge, RILM, etc.? Include the breadth of coverage. (e.g. Our product includes 100% of the content found in MLA; Our product includes 42% of the content found in Compendex, etc.)
- For remote article databases, do you present metadata as you receive it or do you add metadata? If you add metadata, what metadata elements do you enhance? (e.g. keywords, abstracts, peer reviewed, others?)
- Describe how your content is kept up-to-date, including how often content is ingested. (e.g. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
- Our Content (meaning our BibData, UWDCC data, and other local collection data)
- How would your product display and group BibData for the same item from separate catalogs?
- Briefly explain the process of ingesting our content, including any pre-processing requirements, etc.
- What data formats and schemas can you index? (MARC, EAD, MODS, METS, TEI, Dublin Core, others)
- What digital objects can your product display? (e.g. audio files, images, finding aids, etc.)
- How often is our content ingested into your index? (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
- Third Party Content (meaning content that we purchase or license that has not been ingested into your index)
- How does your product integrate the discovery of content that we purchase or license that is not ingested into your index?
- What are the different pricing options? Is there a different pricing structure if we choose to search only your content (i.e. we exclude our bibdata, etc. from your index) or if we use a locally developed or third-party interface via your API? What are the hosted vs. hosting possibilities and the different cost models associated with each?
Product Implementation and Management Questions
- Describe or provide an overview of how we would implement your product.
- Describe or provide an overview of how we would manage your product following implementation.
- Do libraries have the ability to modify indexing parameters, algorithms, or facets?
- Does your product allow for boosting or lowering the ranking of certain content within relevancy ranked results following a search? (e.g. local print holdings, local digital collections including full-text digital objects, format types, date scope, etc.)
- Describe what level of consortial (UW System) or local (individual campus) customization is possible.
- How would your product accomplish the request and delivery of physical objects (books, etc.) across the consortium and outside of the consortium?
- Describe general architecture and design and identify platform issues and options (including operating system(s) and system requirements).
- Address scalability potential and performance issues given the size and complexity of the UW-System.
- What training do you provide for library staff, including objectives, methods used, locations, and frequency of offerings?
- What ongoing support is available to staff, including methods used to contact support, availability, and any restrictions?
Acronyms used in this document:
MODS—Metadata Object Description Schema
API—Application Programming Interface
CAB—an index to worldwide applied life science literature
EAD—Encoded Archival Description INSPEC—an index to engineering and technology literature
MARC—Machine Readable Cataloging
METS—Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
MLA—Modern Language Association index to worldwide literature dealing with languages and literature
OPAC—Online Public Access Catalog
RILM-- Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale index to worldwide literature dealing with music
TEI—Text Encoding Initiative
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