DL.org Blog

Some pointers to start with:

Policy permeates the digital library from conceptualisation through to operation, so it needs to be represented at these various levels. A DL.org achievement has been shedding light on what is unexplored territory at global organisational (rather than only technical) level & interdisciplinary research. Two points to bear in mind:

1. Lack of policy formalisation and representation methods in current DLs
2. Time dimension: Handling policy drift over time.

Survey focus

Evaluate policies, strategies, frameworks, programmes, plans, or statements that have been prepared to guide how to develop and exploit aspects of their digital library/digital repository’s information management, exchanging experiences with Open Access Repository community in Europe, including EU initiatives, and in the U.S. The survey focus highlights a number of issues that are shared by experts in both DL.org Working Groups on Policy and Quality.

Sample of respondents – showcasing excellence

California Digital Library (CDL) – Calisphere; Data Archiving & Networked Services (DANS – Netherlands); DRIVER; ELis; Europeana; Liber Liber; Nemertes; National Science Digital Library (NSDL);
Padua@Research; UK Data Archive; University of Chicago Digital Repository; USGS Digital Library.

Questions

Questions focused on Access, Preservation, Metadata, Networks, Collection development, Intellectual property, Authentication, Service level agreements.

Outcomes
Most of the organisations have a written strategy or plan, either as part of a library strategic plan or as independent entity within their organisation. Existing policies have been amended and matched to the policies of other organisations with regard to policy exchange and reuse only in the areas of Preservation, Access, Collection Development and Metadata. All respondents indicated an interest or need to interoperate with peer and smaller/larger organisations, both in the public and private sector. But interestingly few
written policies have been stated as available to regulate this interaction.

Issues to be addressed

• Lack of policy formalisation & representation.
• Limited formal specifications are supported, e.g. for network management, security and privacy.
• Some technical interoperability of policy is possible, but only for very specific and technical cases (e.g.access control via Shibboleth).

Looking ahead
It might make more sense to talk about a “future” status as opposed to ‘solutions’ for policy interoperability.
Active areas for policy interoperability are related to access, authentication and licensing policies. Research should focus on human-machine interaction, e.g. how licensing policy interoperability might be achieved automatically in the near future. Making policies machine-readable would make them easier to manage.

The talk is available on the dedicated web page.

The talk is available on the dedicated workshop page on the DL.org website.

Tags: interoperability survey, policy, policy strategies

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Event Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.