Title: Emerging Information Technologies: The Role of XML, DOIs, OpenURL, and Federated Search

ABSTRACT

Libraries and information providers are engaged in the design and development of custom portal and gateway software to provide improved access to distributed information resources. These portals are attempting to provide seamless access services within the hybrid distributed information environment in which we work. This distributed resources environment includes: discrete publisher and vendor full-text repositories; locally mounted and remote Abstracting and Indexing (A & I) services; Web search engines and vertical portals; local collections of digital metadata, digital objects, and finding aids; preprint and other hidden Web sites and services; and local, regional, and national online catalogs and shared resource bibliographic databases. The challenge is to provide effective search and discovery services within this environment of discrete distributed information resources.

This presentation will focus on the issues surrounding improved access services within the distributed information environment. Portal designers operating within this distributed environment are focusing on providing mechanisms to improve user resource selection and enhance search navigation and resource linking. The technologies being investigated to provide these services are (1) simultaneous searching of multiple information resources, and (2) dynamic reference linking of e-resources using standards such as the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), OpenURL, and the CrossRef publisher initiative.

There are a number of vendor, library, and information providers that are investigating systems for simultaneous search and retrieval over multiple resources. From the overarching design standpoint, there are several complementary approaches to simultaneous search implementation. One approach, centered on the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) provider and harvesting technologies, typically employs central federated search services operating over harvested metadata from a number of provider sites. The other approach utilizes broadcast or asynchronous searching that centrally collects search results from distributed search services. These two approaches are certainly not mutually exclusive. In fact, one could build a robust broadcast search service that operates over several federated OAI-based services and, in addition, A & I services and publisher sites.

We now have at our disposal a set of standards and best practices that allow us to create integrated digital libraries and address some of these classic problems of information retrieval. We have a standard retrieval environment (Web) and interface/client (Web Browser), standard transport mechanisms to connect heterogeneous content (HTTP, OAI, SOAP, WebHTTP), standard metalanguages and tools for describing and transforming content and metadata (XML, DTDs & Schemas, XSLT, DC/DCQ, RDF, METS), standardized search/retrieval mechanisms (HTTP Post/Get, SQL, Z39.50), and standard linking tools and infrastructure (DOI, OpenURL, CrossRef). These tools will be discussed in this presentation.