Managing access to a distributed library resource

[This is a preprint version of the following article: Dempsey, Lorcan; Russell, Rosemary; Murray, Robin; Heseltine, Richard. Managing access to a distributed library resource: report from the fifth MODELS workshop. Program, Vol 33, No 3, July 1998, pp 265-281]

Lorcan Dempsey, Rosemary Russell, UKOLN, University of Bath
Robin Murray, Fretwell Downing Informatics 
Richard Heseltine, University of Hull

Introduction
This paper explores aspects of managing systems access to a distributed library resource. We focus here on public library developments, but this is not to exclude cross-sectoral cooperation, as we believe that the systems issues are generic even if the information and service focus may vary. The aims of the paper are to explore motivations, and to sketch a systems framework which improves access and supports more effective management of resource sharing. Indeed, a part of our contention is that the systems framework which will support resource sharing has many of the same features as that which will support other aspects of network information management. This emphasis forms part of a natural progression. The emergence of the Internet has provided a transport mechanism. The Web provides a user access and presentation mechanism. However, it provides shallow support for organisation and management of resources, which in turn presents difficulties for information providers and tedium for information users. This is in driving an interest in digital library and network information management issues.
We argue that a major contribution of the library community is to provide organised, well managed services which efficiently connect users to relevant resources. A prerequisite for effective routine management is a consistent, open systems framework which allows libraries and their users to focus on service development and use, without the continual intrusion of specialised technical problems. Current techniques tend to be ad hoc or specialised per resource. Where a library has to manage many thousands of resources, where these are a mixture of local and remote, when they are available under a variety of technical, service and business models, collection management activity needs to be supported by a systems framework.
We are currently formalising a view of what such a framework might look like under the name MODELS Information Architecture and we will be promoting this during 1998. Some components of the architecture are presented below. This article is based on discussions at the fifth MODELS workshop. MODELS (Moving to Distributed Environment for Library Services) is an initiative of UKOLN, supported by JISC and BLRIC, which is working towards a shared view of the future of distributed library services. MODELS is described in Appendix I. Over forty delegates attended, coming from public libraries, academic libraries and information services, and national libraries, as well as from various support services and system vendors. 
An important context for such discussion is provided by the recent appearance of New library: the people’s network, a far reaching report carried out by the Library and Information Commission (LIC) at the request of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Managing access to a distributed library resource – background
‘Resource sharing’ may mean more or less depending on the context. It is often used in the context of existing inter library loan (ILL) agreements but also in the context of more closely coupled service and organisational arrangements. 
It is useful to take a wider perspective. It is common to talk about the ‘public library system’. However, public libraries only minimally operate as a ‘system’: local and individual pressures drive planning and development and the allocation of resources. Nor are they a system in any technical sense: the majority of library management systems do not interwork with each other. From an access point of view, a system-wide framework is in place for ILL, but it is intermittently automated and performs variably across components. Traditional resource sharing is ‘shallow’; it is an activity on the margins. 
To what extent might public and other libraries of the future operate more fully as a system? Some service scenarios suggest a stronger systemic pattern. Direct end-user access to ILL services is being considered by some authorities; it would benefit from closer automated collaboration to satisfy requests in shorter times. Some services make some sense in a collaborative environment - community information, however it is defined, for example. A reader’s information needs in this area are not likely to map neatly onto authority boundaries. An approach which allows sensible navigation between authority systems, or which allows them to be presented as a unit, would confer benefit. 
At the same time public libraries will be part of other ‘systems’ of service provision: within a local authority context, with community networking organisations, with other information providers. 
These factors suggest that ‘resource sharing’ may become more important, a suggestion borne out in recent debate. Recommendations for increased resource sharing between libraries have been emerging from a range of sources, including the ASLIB Review of public libraries, the APT review commissioned by LINC, the Anderson Report, and the Comedia report on London Libraries. A mixture of resource sharing activities, including some newer ones, might include the following:
•	Federated collections
•	Enlarging the resource available to users: these might be collections of their existing stock, of community information, of local or family history, and so on.
•	Effective collection management
•	Interlending, cooperative withdrawals, touring collections, cooperative selection
•	Cooperative service development and resource provision (acknowledging that cooperation may be more or less, or take different forms)
•	Community information, local government information, heritage/local history collections and catalogues, local government information, business information, …
•	Collaborative purchasing/negotiation
•	Again this could take a number of forms and involve more or less activity (ranging from shared agreements to actual shared management of network infrastructure or information service provision). Aims are to achieve economies of scale and purchasing power.
•	Communication, learning and research resources and environments
•	A wide ranging area which is going to present significant challenges.
•	Skills sharing
•	E.g. shared query and enquiry services. Shared technical or development costs.

At the same time, there are several related pressures for change:
•	Political
•	Local government reorganisation, the expected thrust towards regionalisation on several fronts, closer collaboration between further education and higher education: other topics could also be raised. This is alongside a general discussion of Information Society initiatives.
•	Natural convergence of interests
•	Separate from any directive impulse the changing environment is creating a variety of convergences: with archives and museums, with other providers of public and community information, and so on. There is a significant convergence of interests around education and life-long learning. Scenarios such as the proposed National Grid for Learning will be built from the resources of multiple communities.
•	Digital information services
•	Whereas it would be a mistake to suggest that these developments are technologically driven it would also be wrong to underemphasise the influence of networking in providing a material basis for much of what is happening. The networks are creating the ‘space’ in which certain things become possible, in which previously unimagined connections can be made. The ‘logic’ of existing libraries is based on muliple copies of individual items distributed to separate stores. The ‘logic’ of the network is organised around flows of data, around addition at the edges, around collaboration: it provides a basis for thinking about organisations which better support user needs. 
Together, these developments suggest more ‘deep resource sharing’ where there is some realignment of resource and effort around new ways of delivering services (shared cataloguing could be seen as an example of ‘deep resource sharing’). Deep resource sharing involves participation in a wider system of provision. An interesting example was given by John Blunden-Ellis during the workshop. CALIM (the Consortium of Academic Libraries in Manchester) is moving towards a framework for seamless access to its collections. He suggested that the point would soon come when they would have to decide whether to actually manage the collective resource as a single collection. 
At whatever level ‘systems’ of service provision operate (a region, a metropolitan area network, national) and whether they are cross sectoral to include libraries of other types, or other agencies, developments will require political and organisational frameworks in which to develop. However, these are really beyond our scope here. We are interested in some of the technical issues that will be required to support these developments and some discussion of these follows.
Before proceeding, it is helpful to make a couple of more general related points. 
1.	The workshop recognised that a major factor inhibiting development was the fragmentation that existed at policy and coordinating levels. 
2.	The public library ‘system’ currently operates as approximately 200 independent organisations within some weak collaborative frameworks. The current organisational context means that service development and priorities are driven locally, within the broad pattern of expectation set by the legislative requirement. An issue for the future is what type of organisational structures will best deliver new services, services which might best be developed in collaboration. Planning and resource issues need to be addressed at ‘systemic’ level (whatever the reach of any system) as well as at local level. 
New library: the people’s network proposes the setting up of a Public Library Networking Agency which may address these issues. 
The service environment
In this section, we sketch some of the issues surrounding the delivery of services in a distributed environment. This table presents a range of services, loosely arranged on a spectrum moving from well structured, (reasonably) well understood applications (the interconnection of library metadata – catalogues) to more heterogeneous, unstructured, mixed media applications which present interesting management and systems challenges if they are to tackled in a consistent, interconnected way.
	Book and journal stock	Special Collections	‘Internet gateway’	‘Public’/’Citizen’s’/’Community’ information	Local history	Business information	Life Long Learning	
Motivation for distributed access	Interlibrary Loan.	Research uniqueness.	Comprehensive search	Cross boundary user requirements.	Research.
Cross boundary user requirements.	Cross boundary user requirements.
Inward investment.	Shared development.
Distance learning.	
Partners	Discovery services (Table of contents, abstracting and indexing, etc.)
Document supply services.
Location services (union catalogues, etc)
Regional Library Systems.	Education and research.
Professional associations.	Education and research
Commercial	Local authorities. 
Community networking initiatives.
TECs.
CABs.
Local organisations.	Local authorities.
Archives.
Local organisations.
Commercial services	Local authorities.
Local businesses.
Commercial services	Higher and further education.
Local authorities.
Commercial services	
Technical issues								
Content	Largely print literature.
Moving to mixed media.	Largely print literature	Heterogeneous mixed media network resources (services, servers, documents, …)	People; organisations; information systems.
Moving to mixed media.	Largely paper-based archives, image collections, etc.	Heterogeneous mixed media services.	Heterogeneous mixed media services.	
Metadata (‘object’)	Catalogues as source of structured metadata. Various stages of completeness.	Catalogues as source of structured metadata. Various stages of completene ss.	Varying from unstructured indexes to simple structured records (Dublin Core, WHOIS++ templates)	Proprietary. Often unstructured.	Variable catalogues. Often unstructured.	Catalogues as source of structured metadata. Various stages of completeness	Variable according to environment and format.	
Metadata (‘collection’)	No agreed approach. Poorly developed.	No agreed approach. Poorly developed.	As above.	Entirely undeveloped	Entirely undeveloped	Entirely undeveloped	Entirely undeveloped	
‘well-known’ schema	UK MARC	UK MARC	Dublin Core; WHOIS++ templates.	US MARC – not widely used.	None	UK MARC	Traditional resources in UK MARC.
Networked interactive resources undeveloped.	
Search and retrieve protocol support	Z39.50 (not widely implemented)	Z39.50 (not widely implemented)	WHOIS++; Z39.50 (neither widely implemented)	Unstructured. Web based. Z39.50 potential.	None.	Z39.50 potential for network-accessible catalogued resources.	Z39.50 potential for network-accessible catalogued resources.	
Request support	ART; email; ILL protocol; Z39.50 item order.	Email; ILL protocol; Z39.50 item order.	HTTP ‘get’	HTTP ‘get’, email (for Web resources).	None.	Email if available.	Depends on format, eg email if available.	
Controlled vocabulary	Various subject headings and classification systems in operation.	Various subject headings and classification systems in operation.	Various subject headings and classification systems in operation.	Unlikely.	Various subject headings and classification systems in operation (if at all).	Various subject headings and classifications systems in operation (if at all).	Various subject headings and classifications systems in operation (if at all).	

It is apparent that there is considerable heterogeneity in the current delivery methods of these services. They vary in medium and technical delivery platform, in user interface, in conditions of availability. The focus above is on services generated by libraries themselves. We could easily extend the table to include multiple other services: electronic newspapers and online reference materials, reference databases, newswires and discussion lists, emerging collaborative environments and interactive services. This is the context for which libraries need to prepare. We return to some of the management issues below. 
Conduit, content and interconnectedness
A simple view of networked information systems might consider three aspects. The first is ‘conduit’ or the network infrastructure itself. The second is ‘content’, services like the ones described in the last section. ‘Interconnectedness’ is the third and perhaps least easy to explain. It could be taken with content, but its importance at this stage of development means that it deserves separate treatment: it is the means by which that vast diversity is woven into an ‘information landscape’, a service that helpfully connects users and resources. 
The network itself (or ‘conduit’) has provided a material basis for new types of working. Public libraries have variable access to network services , but it is now generally agreed that there should be a general move to IP based services as a general transport. Given, as we suggest above, that the public libraries do not operate as a ‘system’ it could be queried whether a ‘system-wide’ private network or interconnect is required to support activities. It might be that library requirements are best met by multiple individual connections to the Internet, and that ‘system-wide’ energies and funding be invested in other activities, in service development, for example. To answer this question, one needs to start with a view of what applications libraries will want to run and what demands they will place on connections between libraries or between libraries as a group and particular information providers. If such demands turn out to be great, then libraries might benefit from the end-to-end predictable service and managed environment a private network would provide. Additionally, such a private network gives some control over connections to other critical networks. It also gives a more coherent basis for services aimed at the whole of the library sector, whether these are commercial or collaboratively developed services. (Note: ‘private’ does not mean that such a network is not fully part of the Internet or that data and access cannot pass freely over the edges; it is used to describe the business status of the network.) New library makes a case for a dedicated public library network.
New services and resources (‘content’) are emerging which benefit from networking to extend access to resources and services or to exchange data, but ‘interconnected networked services’ are in very early stages of development. We have identified some applicaton areas (community information, business information, local history, remote search and request of books and articles, online reference services, and so on). Local authorities have individual priorities, and some have ambitious plans within various contexts of development. But because system wide coordination is limited, there is little opportunity for shared opportunity planning. How important is distributed seamless access to a wider book and journal resource enabled by a viable discovery and request apparatus of catalogues and other systems? Some think it a central issue; some suggest that it is less important that other developments, the setting up of a shared local history service, for example. The advantages of a ‘vision’ is that, in a climate of uncertainty, it can set a common aspirational level, it can give purpose and direction, it can act as a basis for lobbying and communication activity. Again, this underlines the importance of New library: in its very first chapter (Access to knowledge, imagination and learning), it begins to identify the services of the new library focusing on education and life-long learning, citizen’s information, business and the economy, community, and the national library resource.  
Interconnectedness
Take for example, the project group who wishes to discover journal articles and books about Roman Bath. In a well-stocked library, they can scan the shelves. Say they want to do a more thorough ‘discovery’ of material. They can look in the catalogue. They can look in databases on CD-ROM. They might have access to some remote databases over the Internet. But each of these is delivered through a separate interface, they may have to move between machines, they may have to print out or write down results. 
Once they have discovered a selection of materials, they have to find out where they are. Typically, they will have to return to the catalogue and redo searches for the desired items. Say they are in an authority which has an arrangement for reciprocal borrowing with several neighbouring authorities. They will have to redo searches for unfound items in those libraries. They might bring other items to the Interlibrary Loan department, where they may have to write down the details again. Then the ILL staff may repeat some of the operations already carried out by the users.
Requests may then be sent for materials. Bibliographic details may be rekeyed for transmission.
What happens is that there is a variety of boundaries – between functions, between users and library – which are not interconnected by systems, and across which data does not flow. The ‘connections’ are made by human effort: multiple human visits to different systems and multiple transcriptions which waste time and impose barriers to full use. 
Because the focus has been on automating individual library tasks, this type of consideration has not been addressed. The current state of library automation is one in which existing operations or functions have been automated: circulation, or ILL (often meaning sending requests to the BLDSC), access to reference resources. Such applications have been conceived and developed as functional islands, between which there is intermittent automated communication. This is to miss the the opportunity now posed by the developing technologies, which is not just to automate particular tasks but to automate end-to-end processes in ways that support effective use.
The importance of such integration is becoming clearer as the use of electronic resources increases. The current situation, sketched in the example above, is unsustainable for two reasons: it is wasteful of users’ time and it poses growing management problems for libraries who need to move to routine ways of managing collections of electronic resources. We have mentioned access to books and serials. In fact, however, users will have access to a much wider range of services making the potential problem that much greater. For example, a reader interested in the history of Leeds may wish to look through local printed materials, but also search local history image databases, as well as Internet search services and a range of other resources, within and without library control.
A piecemeal, experimental approach to electronic resources emphasises local individual and partial solutions and is in danger of de-emphasising the real challenge: the need to move to a common managed framework which allows the selection, organisation, and removal of distributed services with predictable procedures and a high-enough level of ‘interconnectedness’ to reduce the overhead on users and on library staff.

Figure 1

It is worthwhile saying a few words about why we believe that the development of ‘interconnectedness’ is central to the future of library services. Consider the three pictures in Figure 1. We can identify three layers: presentation (where the user accesses resources), organisation (a library supplied service), and the resources or content itself. (i) shows the situation up until recently: multiple different services accessed by different terminals: the services exist independently. (ii) shows a recent advance over this where the web provides a unified presentation layer: users access resources through a web browser: however, the organisation of those resources is very shallow, they may be unified at the ‘presentation’ layer by being linked from the same web page, but little more. (iii) shows the introduction of an intermediate layer, a ‘broker’, which provides an organised view of resources, which is the active channel for the flows we spoke of earlier, and which provides ‘collection management’ functions. It will allow the library to present a consistent and organised view of the available resource to users: this resource may be local or remote. An important feature is that it should move to integrate access to the existing collections (through the catalogue) and new electronic resources. A layer of software, or middleware, which hides underlying difference and which allows the transparent addition of services and resources will provide the basis for this service. It will build on metadata (which describes what is available) and protocols (which allow services to interconnect and data to flow between them). The broker will:
•	Allow users to discover the resources which are accessible to them, to support navigation and selection, to provide ‘forward knowledge’ of what is available. To protect the user from difference and the need to have specialist resource-specific knowledge. (So, in our example above: it is important that the project group know what resources are available to them. One scenario might be that there are ‘collection or database-level’ descriptions which can be used to identify which other services are available. These might be manually-created records; they might also include automatically generated indexes or ‘centroids’.)
•	Allow users to interact with these services in apppropriate ways (by delivering the necessary application support: for searching, locating, requesting, or delivery of materials in the variety of ways that is required.). (Again, the project group do not want to be bothered with the different user interfaces between the catalogues, the CD-ROMS, the other services. A broker might provide parallel Z39.50 searching which sends a single user query to several databases, and consolidates the results.)
•	Assist the library control these interactions (authentication, copyright management, charging, management information, etc).
•	Assist the flow of data between applications (e.g. a record returned in a search may form the basis of a record sent in a document request).
•	Save the user’s time.
The aim will be to provide effective systems support for connecting users to the services and resources they require based on need rather than on the constraints of location, mechanics of interaction, or media. 
This ‘organisation layer’ which allows libraries to broker access to resources and services is critical: it is where much of the vital ‘business’ of the library will be implemented. Libraries select, acquire, organise, describe. In the electronic world, to be effective, these services will be brokered by software systems, a possible outline of which we more fully suggest below. The service adds value; it is what distinguishes the library from other service providers. Of course, this is not to suggest that this will be the only way to investigate resources, just as now, the existence of the library does not mean that readers do not have other information delivery and exchange channels.
(A note on authentication: Open distributed control in the digital information space is still a research and development challenge. There are several aspects. The first is that clients need to be able to prove who they are when challenged. This requires an authentication service. The second is that authorisation information – what services does the client have access rights to – needs to be exchanged. The third is to do with the integrity and privacy of exchanged data. The usefulness of an information landscape will be severely mitigated without distributed authentication services which mean that the client need only ‘prove’ themselves once. Multiple challenges (passwords) erect fences in the landscape which inhibit use.)
A service scenario

Service access layer 

 Service Description Layer

User access layer - information landscape

Local 
Library Catalogue

‘Clump’
Entry
Points

Network
CDs

Electronic
Documents

Web
Indexes

ILL 
systems

Other 
resource

Presentation - web browser

Organisation: Broker

Services

Figure 2

In this section, we outline what a broker or trading place might actually look like and describe how it would work in certain service scenarios. This is based on the cumulative experiences of the MODELS workshops which have looked at the issue from a variety of perspectives. This model now actually forms the basis of the AGORA project, being funded under JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme, so we hope that there will soon be some feedback on how well it satisfies the requirements we have identified.
A broker
The schematic presents a somewhat abstract view of required functions.
We adopt the term ‘information landscape’ to refer to the view of resources the broker will present. For some time, this may be limited to links from a web page, or searches in a simple database. However, richer support will emerge in due course. 
The lower layer manages interaction with services. Various services require different modes of interaction. The broker will abstract the mechanics of these interactions. A reader may request an item to be delivered; they should not need to know whether this needs an HTTP ‘get’, an ILL request, or a note saying to go to the reference collection. A reader may wish to discover some items; they should be presented with appropriate available databases and support for effective working across them. And so on …
The middle layer provides the services relating to descriptive data, or ‘metadata’ which allows seamless services to be provided. It might include collection descriptions, centroids (database representations based on indexes), and other information about the resources which are accessible. This would be a mixture of data for human users, to assist in selection and use (to support the creation of the ‘landscape’), and data for programmatic users, to assist clients or agents make best use of the resources. We have little experience of collection description or database representation: existing systems work with more fine-grained objects, individual books, journal articles or images. This support will be valuable for what is sometimes called ‘knowledge navigation’: in certain cases it will be more effective to allow users to browse or search representations of resources rather than expecting them to visit individual resources or have prior advance knowledge of all that is available to them. The current eLib subject services, databases of Internet resource descriptions, are examples of a service that may become more common in various contexts. A further step is to provide fuller representation of database content. For example, ‘centroids’ are inverted index style representations of database content. A search on the centroids provides ‘hints’ or forward knowledge as to which resources to query. Centroids have been implemented by the ROADS project which supports the eLib subject gateways.
This layer might also include facilities to support semantic interoperability, working across databases with different access points and results in different formats. So, for example, a user might want to search across library catalogues and directories of Internet services in a consistent way. The broker would have to mediate in such a way as to formulate and execute queries consistently against these databases. It would also need to present the results sensibly back to the user. Or in the future, the user might wish to access an archival service and a library service through the same query and result interface. Increasingly facilities for conversion between formats and access points will have to be provided. 
We could take an example of a simple broker – one that might be used to provide clumping facilities. ‘Clumps’ are aggregations of catalogues enabled by Z39.50: they arose from MODELS workshop 3 and are briefly described in Appendix 1. Example components that could be integrated in this way are:
•	Local library catalogue – through Z39.50 service.
•	Other catalogues – to form the clump.
•	CD services that support the Z39.50 interface – e.g. Silver Platter’s.
•	Clump entry points that are visible as Z39.50 servers (i.e. a clump represents a virtual database and therefore could be a Z39.50 server). 
•	Other information repositories with Z39.50 or Web interfaces. 

Figure 3

Web Browser

Z39.50 Client(s)

WWW Gateway

Collection description

Record Syntax
Conversion

Dynamic I/f
Definition

Landscape
Definition

Authentication

tiononon

Parallel Query Manager

User
Access
Layer

Service
Description
Layer

Distributed
Access
Layer

In the user access layer we show a web gateway (to take user input and convert it to appropriate format), a landscape definition component, and an authentication component. The dynamic interface component adapts the interface to best manage queries and results in the light of the characteristics of the database being interrogated. The landscape definition component would present the services available to the user.
In the service description layer, we show collection descriptions (for which there is no widely agreed representation) and format conversion services. Streams of returned records may be differently structured. Results would have to be sensibly collated for presentation. In the service access layer, we show a search service based on Z39.50. 
A community information system might want to provide access to web sites and to structured databases.

The service might have the following components:
•	Z39.50 databases
•	Structured databases of community information records created by libraries.
•	Dublin core metadata harvested into databases.
•	Databases accessed through other protocols
•	Unstructured web indexes.
•	‘Subject gateways’ accessible through a directory service protocol.
This gives a mix of services: quality controlled description together with fuller, unstructured access to selected web sites. 

Service
Description
Layer

Distributed
Access
Layer

Web Browser

Web crawler

Z39.50 Client(s)

WWW Gateway

Collection description
centroids

Record Syntax
Conversion/
Collation

Dynamic I/f
Definition

Landscape
Definition

Authentication

Parallel Query 
Manager

User
Access
Layer

Other clients

Figure 5

Fuller examples could be provided. The principle should be clear. Relevant services can be added, and the mechanics hidden from the user.
Notes on implementation and configuration
The discussions has suggested some of the components of a ‘three-tier’ architecture for managing access to distributed resources. It is important to note that in actual implementation various choices can be made about the richness of the functionality provided and the configuration of the components. A ‘broker’ might be an individual, institutional or national service, for example. We do not mean to suggest that it is necessarily a monolithic application; for convenience we have presented it this way. Indeed the emergence of distributed object approaches is likely to encourage separation of the components. The layers we have suggested might be split across machines or sites. The model could be deployed in various business environments. Nor, indeed, is there anything definitive about this particular layering. We believe it is useful: but another approach could be taken to modelling the required components. There are  also other functions we have not discussed. 
Early ‘broker’ applications are appearing, though they may not be very functionally rich. For example, several applications provide  web to Z39.50 gateways which do parallel searching of sources. Within eLib, the EDDIS project will provide a broker with discovery and requesting functions which provides user services transparently over several sources. 
We believe that such services will tend to offer some of the services we have  outlined above: they may be physically assembled in different ways.  
Conclusion
Much of what we have said is prospective. However the need to develop effective frameworks for managing electronic resources, the demands of collaborative services and the incentives provided by New library and other reports make this an opportune time to think about how to put in place an infrastructure for flexible network service development.
For the library, there need to be well-understood ways of making resources visible in an ‘information landscape’. For the user, it needs to be created in such a way as to guide him or her to relevant resources. 
UKOLN is currently preparing a programme which will promote and explain the MODELS Information Architecture. An open approach to ‘interconnectedness’ will provide the basis for moving the focus of attention from the technical challenges to issues of collection development, user needs, and the policy and practice of new libraries.

Appendix 1
An introduction to MODELS (MOving to Distributed Environments for Library Services)

MODELS is a UKOLN initiative supported by the Electronic Libraries Programme and by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre. It is motivated by the recognised need to develop an applications framework to manage the rapidly multiplying range of distributed heterogeneous information resources and services being offered to libraries and their users. Without an appropriate framework, use of networked information will not be as effective as it should be. MODELS is providing a forum within which the UK library and information communities can explore shared concerns, address design and implementation issues, initiate concerted actions, and work towards a shared view of preferred systems and architectural solutions. 
To allow progress to be made, the project has been partitioned into several project lines. A workshop is being held for each line. These inevitably involve overlapping concerns and none will deliver a universal view, but we hope that by progressively working towards a model that incorporates the insights of each, we are helping to contribute to future developments. At the same time, each is of self-standing interest.
It will be seen that the lines have been chosen because they present issues to services and systems developers at the moment and because they provide useful ways of highlighting general issues of moving to distributed library systems. It is not suggested that there are not other application areas demanding attention. The following workshops have been held in Phase I:
Article discovery and request
The first line looked at the discovery, location and request of journal articles. It is especially interesting because of the highly fragmented and variable levels of metadata content (abstracting and indexing services, catalogues, …) and the hierarchical nature of the information resource (title, volume, contribution). Accordingly, many of the necessary issues were raised in this line. This line was useful in that it oriented future discussions and set the scene for the consideration of multiple services. It also introduced the technical architecture which is described above. It directly led to proposals for further studies and meetings, funded by JISC. The findings of the workshop have also influenced the course of several projects. Recommendations from the workshop are available on the UKOLN web server. This workshop was chaired by Richard Heseltine, Director of Academic Services, University of Hull.
Metadata for network information objects 
The second line looked at current approaches to metadata for network information objects. This built on previous work with the Dublin Core, a simple set of metadata elements, and introduced the Warwick Framework, a container architecture for aggregating metadata. The outcome of this work, jointly carried out with OCLC, was reported in D-Lib Magazine. It formed the second of the global Dublin Core workshops, which are a primary focus for international metadata discussion. At the time of writing four of these workshops have been held. 
National resource discovery: organising access to printed scholarly material 
This line examined the problems of providing access to existing catalogue data based on the heterogeneous, fragmented resource that currently exists in the UK. The focus was on discovery, not on request or delivery of materials. A significant outcome was the recommendation for a National Agency for Resource Discovery. The British Library and JISC agreed to fund a scoping study for such an agency and, after a competitive tender, the study was carried out by a consortium of Fretwell Downing Informatics and CERLIM (University of Central Lancashire), with support from Geoffrey Hare (Essex County Librarian) and Index Data (a Danish software company). The report is available on the UKOLN web server. The workshop also introduced the influential notion of ‘clumps’.  A clump is an aggregation of catalogues. A clump may be ‘physical’ where it has a continuous physically aggregated existence. Example of physical clumps are COPAC (the CURL OPAC), the BL OPAC (made up of BL catalogues), the SLS and BLCMP union catalogues, Viscount or Unity. A clump may also be ‘virtual’, where the records from the participating catalogues are not physically brought together, but are assembled in a distributed search. This workshop was also chaired by Richard Heseltine.
Integrating access to resources across multiple domains 
User interests do not naturally fall into neat compartments which are coterminous with existing curatorial or professional sectors. There are user interests which may be satisfied by documentary resources, time-based media resources, geospatial resources, and so on. They may be interested in museum objects, in archival materials, in books, and so on. It quickly became apparent that libraries, museums, archives, galleries, electronic text archives, and others responsible for selecting and organising parts of the intellectual record have shared concerns and this workshop looked at some of these issues. This workshop firmly introduced a ‘cross-domain agenda’. The workshop report is available on the UKOLN web server. This workshop was chaired by Chris Rusbridge, Director of the Electronic Libraries Programme.
Managing access to a distributed library resource 
Recent developments have encouraged renewed attention to resource sharing at various levels. The current library systems environment does not support unified access to a library resource distributed across several libraries with heterogeneous systems. This project line examined some of the applications infrastructure which would support effective resource sharing, with a special focus on public library developments. This workshop was chaired by Richard Heseltine.

MODELS Phase II starts at the beginning of 1998. MODELS is supported by direct funding for seven workshops and consultancy from the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils and for one workshop by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre. Technical consultancy is provided by Robin Murray of Fretwell Downing Informatics. The project manager is Rosemary Russell. 

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the participants of the 5th MODELS workshop for their contribution to these discussions. Sarah Ormes of UKOLN made helpful suggestions. We are pleased to acknowledge the support of the British Library Research and Innovation Centre in supporting this workshop and to JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme for support for the whole MODELS programme. Lorcan Dempsey and Rosemary Russell work for UKOLN, which is supported by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils, and the University of Bath.
References