DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

Theory and Practice of Data Citation

Citations are the cornerstone of knowledge propagation and the primary means of assessing the quality of research, as well as directing investments in science. Science is increasingly becoming "data-intensive", where large volumes of data are collected and analyzed to discover complex patterns through simulations and experiments, and most scientific reference works have been replaced by online curated datasets. Yet, given a dataset, there is no quantitative, consistent and established way of knowing how it has been used over time, who contributed to its curation, what results have been yielded or what value it has. The development of a theory and practice of data citation is fundamental for considering data as first-class research objects with the same relevance and centrality of traditional scientific products. Many works in recent years have discussed data citation from different viewpoints: illustrating why data citation is needed, defining the principles and outlining recommendations for data citation systems, and providing computational methods for addressing specific issues of data citation. The current panorama is many-faceted and an overall view that brings together diverse aspects of this topic is still missing. Therefore, this paper aims to describe the lay of the land for data citation, both from the theoretical (the why and what) and the practical (the how) angle.Comment: 24 pages, 2 tables, pre-print accepted in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 201

A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management and Processing

Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases. We then provide comprehensive taxonomies that cover various aspects of architecture, data transportation, data replication and resource allocation and scheduling. Finally, we map the proposed taxonomy to various Data Grid systems not only to validate the taxonomy but also to identify areas for future exploration. Through this taxonomy, we aim to categorise existing systems to better understand their goals and their methodology. This would help evaluate their applicability for solving similar problems. This taxonomy also provides a "gap analysis" of this area through which researchers can potentially identify new issues for investigation. Finally, we hope that the proposed taxonomy and mapping also helps to provide an easy way for new practitioners to understand this complex area of research.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, Technical Repor

Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library

This report updates and expands on A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services, originally commissioned by the DLF as an internal report in summer 2003, and released to the public later that year. It highlights major developments affecting the ecosystem of scholarly communications and digital libraries since the last survey and provides an analysis of OAI implementation demographics, based on a comparative review of repository registries and cross-archive search services. Secondly, it reviews the state-of-practice for a cohort of digital library aggregation services, grouping them in the context of the problem space to which they most closely adhere. Based in part on responses collected in fall 2005 from an online survey distributed to the original core services, the report investigates the purpose, function and challenges of next-generation aggregation services. On a case-by-case basis, the advances in each service are of interest in isolation from each other, but the report also attempts to situate these services in a larger context and to understand how they fit into a multi-dimensional and interdependent ecosystem supporting the worldwide community of scholars. Finally, the report summarizes the contributions of these services thus far and identifies obstacles requiring further attention to realize the goal of an open, distributed digital library system

Characterizing Service Level Objectives for Cloud Services: Motivation of Short-Term Cache Allocation Performance Modeling

Service level objectives (SLOs) stipulate performance goals for cloud applications, microservices, and infrastructure. SLOs are widely used, in part, because system managers can tailor goals to their products, companies, and workloads. Systems research intended to support strong SLOs should target realistic performance goals used by system managers in the field. Evaluations conducted with uncommon SLO goals may not translate to real systems. Some textbooks discuss the structure of SLOs but (1) they only sketch SLO goals and (2) they use outdated examples. We mined real SLOs published on the web, extracted their goals and characterized them. Many web documents discuss SLOs loosely but few provide details and reflect real settings. Systematic literature review (SLR) prunes results and reduces bias by (1) modeling expected SLO structure and (2) detecting and removing outliers. We collected 75 SLOs where response time, query percentile and reporting period were specified. We used these SLOs to confirm and refute common perceptions. For example, we found few SLOs with response time guarantees below 10 ms for 90% or more queries. This reality bolsters perceptions that single digit SLOs face fundamental research challenges.This work was funded by NSF Grants 1749501 and 1350941.No embargoAcademic Major: Computer Science and EngineeringAcademic Major: Financ

Content and services issues for digital libraries

Describes the neglected area of e-collection building, on the taxonomy of e-collections and on the possible range of online services

Library purchasing consortia in the UK: activity, benefits and good practice.

Following a brief introduction in Section 1, Section 2 sets out the operational context of library purchasing consortia. A range of key factors have shaped recent developments in the four LIS sectors under consideration (FE, HE, health and public libraries); some have exerted a common influence over all (e.g. information technology, European Commission purchasing directives, new central government, decline in bookfunds); some are sector-specific (e.g. purchasing arrangements, regional administrative frameworks, collaborative partnerships). The structure and markets of the book and periodical publishing industry in the UK are reviewed, with attention paid to historical as well as more recent practice that has had an impact on library supply. Although each component of the LIS purchasing consortia jigsaw displays individual characteristics that have evolved as a response to its own environment, the thread that links them together is constant change. Section 3 presents the results of a survey of identified library purchasing consortia in the four library sectors. It treats common themes of relevance to all consortia arising from information gathered by seminar input, questionnaire and interview. These include models of consortium operation, membership and governance, ‘typical’ composition of consortia in each sector, and links to analogous practice in other library sectors. Common features of the tendering and contract management process are elicited and attention paid to any contribution of procurement professionals. Finally, levels of consortium expenditure and cost savings are estimated from the published statistical record, which readily demonstrate in financial terms the efficiency of the consortial purchase model for all types of library in the United Kingdom. Section 4 presents the results of a survey of suppliers to libraries in the United Kingdom of books and periodicals, the two sectors most commonly represented in current contracts of library purchasing consortia. It sets out in some detail the operating context governing the highly segmented activities of library booksellers, as well as that pertaining to periodicals suppliers (also known as subscription agents). Detailed responses to questions on the effects of library purchasing consortia on suppliers of both materials have been gathered by questionnaire survey and selected follow-up interviews. Results are presented and analysed according to supply sector with attention given to the tendering process, current contracts under way, cross-sectoral clientele, and advantages and inhibitors of consortia supply. Further responses are reported on issues of how consortia have affected suppliers’ volume of trade, operating margins and market stability as perceived in their own business, the library supply sector and the publishing industry. Finally, overall conclusions are drawn and projections made as to future implications for both types of library suppliers. Section 5 synthesises findings, details enabling and inhibiting factors for consortia formation and models of best practice amongst consortia. The scope for cross-sectoral collaboration is discussed and found to be limited at present. Pointers are given for future activity

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services

This report provides an overview of a diverse set of more than thirty digital library aggregation services, organizes them into functional clusters, and then evaluates them more fully from the perspective of an informed user. Most of the services under review rely wholly or partially on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), although some of them predate its inception and a few use predominantly Z39.50 protocols. In the opening section of this report, each service is annotated with its organizational affiliation, subject coverage, function, audience, status, and size. Critical issues surrounding each of these elements are presented in order to provide the reader with an appreciation of the nuances inherent in seemingly straightforward factual information, such as audience or size. Each service is then grouped into one of five functional clusters: • open access e-print archives and servers; • cross-archive search services and aggregators; • from digital collections to digital library environments; • from peer-reviewed referratories to portal services; • specialized search engines