Science Library Pad

pondering SOA the UK and Aussie way

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is not for the faint of heart, nor for those weak in technology expertise. 
SOA is fundamentally a methodology for systems design, informed by an overall Enterprise Architecture (EA).

If you don't have the scale of organization, or the organizational technical expertise, to sustain an EA and advanced development group, then SOA may not be for you.  You may want to focus more on consuming services and connecting services together.

Or in other words, we just have the latest in a line of IT best practices:

• If you're big enough to have an extensive software development shop, use SOA as your guiding methodology.  If you have a smaller shop, you may use or develop services defined by some other group, in their SOA.
• If you're big enough to have substantial IT infrastructure, use EA to guide the planning for that infrastructure.

Keeping that in mind, the library environment as a whole is clearly of the scale to benefit from an SOA, it's just a matter of how we put it all together.  Who defines the services?  Who will the service providers be?  What will the business model be for service consumers?

All this by way of introducing some recent reports and presentations on SOA, as well as signalling that I will be providing more of my library SOA thoughts in a few upcoming venues.

Firstly the National Library of Australia IT Architecture Project Report (PDF) has gotten some attention for its prominent mention of SOA.  (Thanks to Lorcan for pointing it out to me, DLTJ also mentioned it today.)

Second, via Brian Kelly I see that there were recent JISC conference presentations on EA and SOA.

e-Framework, SOA and EA: Using the e-Framework, Service Orientated and Enterprise architectures to develop more flexible and better aligned ICT infrastructures  Abstract

• Session commentary
• Presentation "The e-Framework, SOA & Enterprise Architecture" - JISC (PowerPoint)
• Presentation "Enterprise Architecture" - Open Group (PowerPoint)

Overall I think both SOA and EA are challenging topics to present simply.  That being said, I think both are typically presented far over to the extreme of complexity.  What was it that the rather inaccurately titled SOA for Dummies said you had to have in your SOA?  ESB, registry, broker, supervisor, BPM, yadda yadda... It's simply not true.  That's what you'll get if you let the kindly vendor hold you by the hand and take you into the twisty SOA maze.  All you actually need for SOA is to make sure you're using some basic software design principles:

autonomous, loosely-coupled and coarse-grained services with well-defined interfaces that support

the flexible reuse of application logic through composition

(The above an extraction from my 2005 presentation "Service-Oriented Architecture Methods to Develop Networked Library Services" which I am uploading to Slideshare... now.)

The same for EA.  Zachman is all well and good, but you need to be a mega-corp to fill in all the Zachman boxes, and even then the methodology doesn't help you much in translating that knowledge into action.  CISTI uses a much simpler and more practical methodology (based on InfoMajic) that focuses on translating business needs into an implementation framework.

There is lots of work and complexity in doing feasible EA and SOA without making it even more complex.

This may be why most of the published outputs available for library SOA are currently at such a very very high framework level.  I have to say, these frameworks don't do much for me.  As a technology person, all I see is some Dewey Decimal system for services, a top-level set of categories.  To actually start doing any service implementation work, you need to go much deeper, with models of how the detailed business functions inter-connect and inter-relate.

I wish I knew how to take the overall library community to that next level.  e-Framework (JISC - DEST - NZ MoE - SURF) is a piece, DLF Services Framework is a piece, Knowledge Exchange (JISC - DEFF - DFG - SURF) http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/ is as well... Maybe it's simply impossible given the scales of organizations involved to go beyond the highest-level conceptions.

All I know is we at CISTI can think of some relatively easy Web Service wins within an overall SOA - copyright / pricing services, query services - there are lots of possibilities.  Until we start getting more service providers and consumers up, we're all sort of stuck.

What do you think?  Is SOA too abstract or unachievable for your organization?  Are the service frameworks too high-level to impact on your development work?  Would you actually consume some library Web Services if more were available (keeping in mind the service interface might be simpler than full SOAP).  Are there services you're already providing that aren't being consumed?  Are the digital library people producing services that aren't being used by the rest of the library?  The Fedora repository already has Web Services, Amazon and Google already do - where do you see libraries fitting in?

Lots of questions... any answers?

I feel that I'm kind of reaching the limits of what I can do in terms of fairly abstract SOA evangelism - and I'm hoping there may be some concrete initiatives around which some services can coalesce...

IATUL 2007 - Google Earth

I have done a Google Earth KMZ of the IATUL 2007 hotel options and venue.

Download IATUL2007.kmz

UPDATE 2007-06-09: I have done a new version that adds the conference halls and the central train station.

Download IATUL2007v2.kmz

Canadian and US incandescent lightbulb ban bills

A Private Members’ Bill that would effectively phase out the sale and use of incandescent bulbs is being drafted by NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre).

NDP News - Dewar bill to end use of incandescent bulbs - March 8, 2007

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would set target dates for certain types of light bulbs to be prohibited for sale in the United States.

Harman calls the bill [H.R. 1547] "an important first step toward making every household, business and public building in America more energy-efficient."

...

An average traditional incandescent bulb based on a filament emits 12-15 lumens per watt (a measurement of the bulb's lighting output.) Harman's bill would require all bulbs to produce 60 lumens-per-watt by January 2012; 90 lumens-per-watt by January 2016; and 120 lumens-per-watt by January 2020.

Currently available compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) are about halfway to the ultimate goal, offering approximately 60 lumens-per-watt.

CNS News.com - Bill to Ban Regular Light Bulbs Introduced in House - March 21, 2007

Harman takes a good approach in regulating lumens-per-watt, as Glen has said, this is better than targeting a specific technology.

Rethinking Resource Sharing 2007 Forum

Creating a new global service framework that allows individuals to obtain what they want based on factors such as cost, time, format, and delivery. This framework will encompass promoting and exposing library services in a variety of environments.

Forum III 2007

April 19-20, 2007
Chicago, IL

http://www.rethinkingresourcesharing.org/

In a comment on "Rethinking Resource Sharing: Get It", Gail Wanner says

We’ll also be looking for testers, interface programmers, and developers to take the [Get It] extension even further should people want an opportunity to assist with this user driven initiative.

US national science data group formed

Bearing the unweildy name of Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD), it is reported it will work on long-term access and preservation for federally-generated research data.

Nature has learned that a draft strategic plan will be drawn up by next autumn by a new Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD). It represents 22 agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services, and other government branches including the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The group's first step is to set up a robust public infrastructure so all researchers have a permanent home for their data. One option is to create a national network of online data repositories, funded by the government and staffed by dedicated computing and archiving professionals. It would extend to all communities a model similar to the Arabidopsis Information Resource, in which 20 staff serve 13,000 registered users and 5,000 labs.

The group then aims to help scientific communities create standards to let databases in one field talk to others in different disciplines. That will be no mean feat.

Agencies join forces to share data, by Declan Butler
Nature 446, 354 (22 March 2007) | doi:10.1038/446354b; Published online 21 March 2007

The Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council has established an Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD). The working group will develop a strategic plan for the US government concerning the long-term preservation and access to federally funded digital data in support of science and engineering. The working group will coordinate policy, programs, and budgets among federal agencies and with other sectors.

ARL News - Interagency Effort on Digital Data Policies Established

Scandinavian SAS airlines optional carbon offset

Scandinavian airline group SAS AB introduced a voluntary greenhouse charge today for passengers who want to offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated by their flights.

The plan, which follows a similar initiative by British Airways in 2005, lets SAS passengers give money to environmental projects that have helped reduce the release of greenhouse gases, the company said.

The money will be funnelled through The CarbonNeutral Co., which specializes in helping companies offset carbon dioxide emissions.

Toronto Star - AP - Airline to let flyers pay carbon tax - March 14, 2007

Also see CarbonNeutral - News Features - SAS Group reaffirms airlines committment to green aviation

Blackwell Publishing carbon neutral

Every organization contributes to carbon dioxide emissions through its day to day operations. The scientific consensus is that increasingly levels of CO2 emissions are causing climate change, and that this is potentially the most serious threat facing the world today.

Blackwell Publishing has decided to take action and become a CarbonNeutral organization. Blackwell is the first major publisher to make the investment to become CarbonNeutral and we hope that we will lead the way for others in the industry.

To begin this project, Blackwell worked with The CarbonNeutral Company to identify our ‘carbon footprint,’ or the approximate volume of CO2 generated by the organization. It is calculated by assessing energy usage, business travel, and all components of the company’s operations that consume power or generate waste and by-products.

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/carbonneutral/

Stephen Downes says Semantic Web will never work

Stephen says it won't work because companies will never open their data and co-operate.
This is interesting, because it is almost diametrically opposed to my reasoning.

I asserted ("why the Semantic Web will never work", June 24, 2006) that the individual SW will fail because individuals will never properly mark up their content.
I believe that, to the extent that the SW will work at all, it will be at a corporate level, because they're the only ones organized enough to do mass markup.

via Slashdot Why the Semantic Web Will Fail /.

eigenfactor journal ranking

Borrowing methods from network theory, eigenfactor.org ranks the influence of journals much as Google’s PageRank algorithm ranks the influence of web pages [2]. By this approach, journals are considered to be influential if they are cited often by other influential journals. Iterative ranking schemes of this type, known as eigenvector centrality methods [3], are notoriously sensitive to “dangling nodes” and “dangling clusters”: nodes or groups of nodes which link seldom if at all to other parts of the network. Eigenfactor modifies the basic eigenvector centrality algorithm to overcome these problems and to better handle certain peculiarities of journal citation data.

Website provides two measures

Article Influence (AI): a measure of a journal's prestige based on per article citations and comparable to Impact Factor.
Eigenfactor (EF): A measure of the overall value provided by all of the articles published in a given journal in a year.

So if I understand it, it's basically a free journal-level impact factor calculated using network analysis.

http://www.eigenfactor.org/

via email from Carl T. Bergstrom

Tufts University consumer travel carbon offset guide

Tufts Climate Initiative (TCI) - Voluntary Carbon Offsets - Consumer Handout "Flying Green"

They liked myclimate best.

Globe on Canadian offset services

The Globe has recently activated one of those "you must register" services, so I have activated my "no linking to sites where you must register" policy.

The article is called "Paying to pollute? It's not that simple", Richard Blackwell, March 20, 2007.  The Globe appears to allow direct referrals from Google News.

When Thomas Homer-Dixon decided to "offset" the carbon emissions generated by the promotional tour for his new book, The Upside of Down, the University of Toronto professor carefully chose where to channel his money.

He selected Toronto green energy retailer Bullfrog Power Inc. to inject electricity from renewable sources into the energy grid to balance the power used in the tour. And he got offset firm Zerofootprint Inc. of Toronto to counteract greenhouse gas emissions from air and ground travel by putting money into the Kettles Hill wind farm in Alberta.

But like others who try to assuage their green guilt by sending money to carbon offset organizations, it was impossible for Prof. Homer-Dixon to ensure that the money was actually going to reduce the world's overall CO₂ emissions.

Sites they list:

* Cleanairpass.com

What it offsets: car travel

Partnered with Tree Canada.ca

http://www.treecanada.ca/cleanairpass/

cleanairpass expense ratio: About 30 per cent goes to expenses and profit.

* Carbonzero.ca

CarbonZero expense ratio: About 25 per cent goes to expenses and profit.

* Zerofootprint.net Offsets

blog: http://www.zerofootprint.net/blog

"BNL to combat CO2 emissions with Zerofootprint Offsets during their Canadian Tour"

Credit sources: Creststeet Kettles Hill wind project in Alberta [same as GreenMyFlight], tree-planting in BC

Zerofootprint expense ratio: undisclosed.

* Offsetters.ca

What it offsets: airplane travel

Offsetters expense ratio: About 20 per cent goes to administration.

* Cooldrivepass.com

What it offsets: car travel

Credit source: same as for Offsetters.  (It is run by the same group based at the University of British Columbia.)

Expense ratio: About 30 per cent goes to administration and profit.

* GreenMyFlight.com

What it offsets: airplane travel

Credit source: Creststreet Kettles Hill wind project in Alberta [same as Zerofootprint]

Expense ratio: 10 per cent goes to administration.

Certification: "Only Baseline's 'Green Flight' program... has met all the [EcoLogo] requirements."

I must say I have to wonder how many credits Creststreet can usefully absorb.  They should call it Creditstreet.

Supplemental for United Statesians: Boston Globe - Carbon confusion - March 13, 2007

Although specialists say some of the money is well spent, it can be difficult for consumers to figure out if they are buying any new environmental benefit.

Google is the new Yahoo

Ah Google, only about search.  Simple clean interface.  Not cluttered like Yahoo.  Not pursuing a portal strategy.  A different kind of company.  Not evil.

Oh wait

Nevermind.

Globe and Mail - AP - Google adds some pizzaz

giant snowflakes

New York Times - Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? - March 20, 2007
Seen reprinted in today's Globe and Mail.

theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated.

...

“There is every reason to suppose that such instances might occur almost every day during winter somewhere in Europe or the maritime fringes of North America and Asia,” [Mr. Pike] said. But, he added, such extraordinary snowfalls “are seldom reported or authenticated.”

In an interview, [he] said he got into the topic partly because he himself watched in amazement one day in Vancouver, British Columbia, as giant snowflakes began to transform the winter landscape. “They were two or three inches across,” he recalled. “So I became a believer, having once witnessed it myself.”

He added that scientists were starting to understand the atmospheric conditions that give rise to big flakes and that this knowledge presented an opportunity for enthusiastic amateurs.

“Any kid with a ruler and a camera can make a contribution,” he said. “If they see something special, it’s worth recording and talking about. After all, records are meant to be broken.”

That has got to be one of the very few scientifically meritorious studies a boy might perform with a ruler and a camera.

I found a few Flickr snowflake groups, but none on this topic, so here's my contribution to science:

Flickr Groups - Giant Snowflakes

Amazon.ca slight delivery delay

I had meticulously accumulated E.E. Doc Smith's Lensmen books at used bookstores and book sales, waiting until I had all of them before reading the series.  My parents, as parents are wont to do with comics, books and any other stuff that's in their way, cheerfully threw them all out.  They are basically impossible to buy new from Amazon.  How impossible?  The current ship date for First Lensman is January 5.  January 5, 2031.

Papers for Mac - article organize and PubMed intregration

Search for papers using PubMed, directly retrieve and archive PDFs, and read and study them all from within Papers

http://mekentosj.com/papers/

Reviewed in ArsTechnica

You have other ways of adding your data in addition to dragging and dropping PDFs.  Endnote, RefMan, BibTex and Connotea libraries can be easily imported. For my sins, I'm an Endnote user (or victim), and it was a moment's work to import my library.  The bibliographic information will show up, but there obviously aren't any PDFs attached.  Simply double-click the paper you want and another tab will open to take you to the relevant html page for that article or it's PubMed page, depending upon whether or not it's available as a PDF.  From here you can download it straight into Papers.  You can also export lists of papers back into Endnote or BibTex.

via Digg

SRU/SRW and library Web Services webibliography

Des Bibliothèques 2.0 blog has an extensive list of SRU/SRW and library Web Services articles, postings and documents (including some from Science Library Pad) with a brief explanation of each item in French:

SRU/SRW : Webographie / Webography

open Canadian geodata

In response to demands from users for no fee access to framework geographic data and the increasing technological shift in the marketplace, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is pleased to announce that starting April 1st 2007, the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) will change the way its Digital Topographic Data (DTD) can be accessed. ESS will initiate a change from a cost recovery environment to an environment providing no fee access to its current DTD products.

via The Map Room - Government of Canada Frees Topo Data

more geobooking from Google

I love these book data visualizations.

Inside Google Book Search - Earth viewed from books

As I've said before, I can imagine such a tremendous discovery power coming from unlocking the data in books and visualising and linking it all.

via Darren Barefoot

Previously:
January 29, 2007  Google geobooking

collaboration workflow for researchers

I think this work could be summarized as "research workflow is complex".

Scott Wilson's Workblog has a presentation and paper on Collaboration workflow for researchers.

via http://del.icio.us/destarrow/collaboration-research-workflow

open attention data event in New York

The Attention Trust has as its mission to

Empower people to exert greater control over their "attention data," i.e. any records reflecting what they have paid attention to and what they have ignored. We accomplish this by promoting the principles of user control, by distributing our Attention Recorder, and by supporting the development of other appropriate tools, standards and practices.

As best I can understand, this is about giving you the choice of which aggregation service(s) you want to explicitly permit to gather and analyze user activity data (e.g. web site and web page popularity).

They're having an invitation-only event next week (March 12-13, 2007) they're calling "Open Data 2007"

On Monday night, March 12 [2007] @ 7p, Reuters CEO Tom Glocer is going to talk with us about the 150-year evolution of Reuters as an Open Data platform.

On Tuesday, March 13 [2007], starting from 8a until 6p, we are going to hear from a number of startups that- despite their seeming differences- have each incorporated Open Data directly into their products.

Open Data... Closed Invitations?

via Paul Miller

article metrics: Faculty of 1000 biology and medicine

Key articles selected and evaluated by a global faculty of top researchers and clinicians.

Faculty of 1000 Biology and Medicine are authoritative online services in which almost 5,000 leading researchers and clinicians share their expert opinions by highlighting and evaluating the most important articles in biology and medicine.

http://www.facultyof1000.com/

It is a subscription service, but you can get a flavour of it from the page of "Hidden Jewels"

http://www.f1000biology.com/top10/jewels

It includes links to full text or to purchase the article.
Articles receive an "F1000 factor", by analogy to classical Impact Factor, as well as additional ratings, e.g. "Must Read", "Exceptional".

Another example of a "soft" peer review system that is yet quite rigourous (one assumes) and, surprisingly, not free.

via a talk by Francis Ouellette, Open Access at the CIHR? (PowerPoint, or available as a PDF)

make your own Galactica vid

It's interesting that as some groups want to prevent you from using their content, others invite you to do so.

Sci-Fi Channel - Battlestar Galactica Videomaker Toolkit

Executive Producer David Eick will choose one [four minute] video that will air on SCI FI during an upcoming episode of Battlestar.

Sort of like BBC Backstage, except with slightly more rocket ships.

via Digg

Euro report: scientific information in the digital age

A remarkably concise (10 pages) report for a commision

scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation (PDF)

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/scientific_information/communication_en.pdf

In order to become an increasingly competitive knowledge-based economy, Europe must improve the production of knowledge through research, its dissemination through education, and its application through innovation. All research builds on former work, and depends on scientists’ possibilities to access and share scientific publications and research data. The rapid and widespread dissemination of research results can help accelerate innovation and avoid duplication of research efforts, although some delay for the first use by researchers or for commercial purposes can be justified.

...

Initiatives leading to wider access to and dissemination of scientific information are necessary, especially with regard to journal articles and research data produced on the basis of public funding. With respect to journal articles, the Commission is observing and considering experiments with open access publishing.

Fully publicly funded research data should in principle be accessible to all, in line with the 2004 OECD Ministerial Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding.

Moreover, the Commission draws particular attention to the need for clear strategies for the digital preservation of scientific information.

via CISTI's Mary Low

UPDATE 2007-03-09: N. Miradon has posted a comment (to a mailing list as we had problems with TypePad comments).

BioMed Central OA event presentations, BMC blog

Slides and audio (MP3) are available for various presentations from the BioMed Central Open Access Colloquium held on February 8, 2007.

I was particularly interested by

UK PubMed Central within the open access movement by Richard Boulderstone, Director of e-Strategy and Programmes, British Library - PowerPoint, MP3 audio

via Francis Ouellette, indirectly

I also notice that BMC has various blogs, which appear to have all launched in January-February of this year.  Lots of interesting info about various tools to explore articles and data.

To keep you up to speed with the latest developments at BioMed Central, and to give you our take on relevant news from elsewhere, we're pleased to launch the BioMed Central blog, along with a Chemistry Central blog and a PhysMath Central blog.

Previously:
January 08, 2007  UK PubMedCentral (UKPMC) launches
September 08, 2006  the concepts of open science and information commons

open data track at XTech 2007

There will be an Open data track at XTech 2007 (May 15-18, 2007 in Paris) including Peter Murray-Rust speaking on "Open Data in Science" and Paul Miller speaking on "Opening the Silos: sustainable models for open data".

There is a Wikipedia entry on Open Data that is a good starting point for this topic.

Planet XTech continues to track discussions for this conference.

Previously:
September 8, 2006  Peter Murray-Rust on open science
February 14, 2006  data-driven design and OA to data
May 25, 2005  XTech 2005 conference coverage using Planet aggregator