    UDT Series on Data Communication Technologies and Standards for Libraries OSI for Libraries: Standards to Services (1992)8. PRODUCTS AND IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIESOnce a community of libraries and the individual institutions within the community are organized to begin implementation of OSI application standards for a specific function, the first step is to look at ways of acquiring systems that implement the chosen standards. The primary concern of most bibliographic institutions will not be the various OSI-related issues such as conformance testing and profile development. More important will be the availability of systems that meet their operational requirements and permit them to interwork effectively with the systems of other libraries. The options available to libraries include:
Although a number of OSI standards have been available for several years, it has only been in the past year that the ILL and SR protocols have been formally adopted as international standards. In general, it is rare for a library or any bibliographic institutions to commit scarce resources to the development of new technology based on standards that have not achieved wide recognition and usage. In addition, for libraries to realize the benefits of open systems communication, a large community of users is required. As already described, this implies a regional or national strategy for resource sharing that provides an organizational framework for systems development. Therefore, it is understandable that few libraries, bibliographic utilities or library software developers have yet to fully commit themselves to the development of OSI-based systems. Those that have, such as National Library of Canada, did so as part of a broader program to encourage and promote the implementation of bibliographic standards to enhance library services. To date, the development of systems that incorporate bibliographic application standards has initially been limited. This will change through greater understanding of OSI standards and the benefits that can be realized through their use, the identification of communication requirements that cannot be met by proprietary standards, the economic pressures to participate in resource sharing arrangements, and the widespread use by libraries of research networks. A number of implementation strategies to promote the use of OSI were initiated prior to the standardization of the ILL and SR protocols by organizations that recognized early on the merits of OSI communications for libraries. In Canada, the National Library of Canada initiated a networking program in the early 1980's that focussed on the development and implementation of a range of OSI-based protocols for library applications, the promotion of OSI within the bibliographic sector, and the creation of a program to foster the development and adoption of systems based on the ILL protocol. In the United States, efforts centered around the Linked Systems Project which involved linking the cataloguing operations of the Library of Congress, the Research Libraries Group and OCLC. In Europe, the Directorate General for Telecommunications, Information Industries and Innovation (DG XIII) of the Commission of European Communities (CEC) recognized the potential of OSI-based communications for libraries and developed an Action Plan for Libraries. The Action Plan recognizes libraries as providers of the information needed to support commerce, education and international trade in Europe (Iljon and Manson, 1990). The Action Plan also promotes the use of new technologies to support library operations and the harmonization of national library policies and standards. The Action Plan contains five Action Lines of which Action Line #2 focuses on establishing links between systems across national boundaries. It focuses on the development of technical standards, pilot links between systems, and the provision of test-beds for OSI-based services. Coupled with a significant funding base available to libraries through the CEC, the CEC Action Plan promises to provide a considerable impetus towards the development and use of OSI-based services by libraries in Europe (Law, 1990). What follows are descriptions of existing programs and projects that involve the implementation of OSI protocols by libraries and software developers. The list is not exhaustive, but serves to illustrate the variety of strategies that can be adopted to make OSI a reality for the library community. The strategy that an organization selects will be determined by the partnerships it forms with other similarly interested organizations, its operational priorities and available funding and resources.
The characteristic common to all these programs and projects is the importance of alliances for the application of open systems communication to bibliographic resource sharing. The participants in these alliances share a commitment to the implementation of a particular OSI standard or group of standards to meet an operational requirement and are willing to bear the cost of being innovators in the area of new technology.
The project was one of the first efforts to implement a common protocol suite based on emerging OSI standards rather than on proprietary ones. While the OSI Reference Model was complete at this point, the standards to support the Model were immature. Standards for the application and presentation layers were not yet available and the participants had to develop their own software for the transport and session layers from Draft International Standards and working documents. The X.25 network standard was selected for the three bottom layers. The participants developed two application protocols the Record Transfer protocol to support record exchange, and the Information Retrieval protocol for intersystem searching. The Information Retrieval protocol used in the project was approved as an American standard in 1988 and is commonly referred to as NISO Z39.50. This protocol was used as the basis of the ISO Search and Retrieve (SR) standard, which can be viewed as a compatible subset of Z39.50. The LSP Record Transfer protocol is seen as interim solution and it is expected at some stage to be replaced by FTAM.
Within the Linked Systems Project, applications based on the information retrieval protocol and the record transfer protocol are used to support coordinated cataloguing and authorities functions through two national programs described below:
NACO participants create records on OCLC or RLIN (RLG's bibliographic system); they are then placed in a contribution queue. LC pulls records from the contribution queue every four hours, performs some automatic verification and adds successful records to the distribution queue. LC-created records are also added to the distribution file. LC sends these records to the utilities where all members of the utilities can use them.
Current plans for LSP include moving to a standard OSI stack. The Information Retrieval protocol will be replaced by Z39.50 (version 2) which affords greater compatibility with ISO SR, and the Record Transfer protocol will be replaced by FTAM in the long term.
The focus of the Z39.50 Implementors' Group is to promote the use of the protocol, establish a functional profile to define the implementation options adopted by the group, and contribute to the standardization process. It provides a forum for those implementing this protocol to voice their concerns and develop solutions that will help to ensure that the various implementation will be able to interwork. The group has also worked on revisions to the 1992 version of Z39.50 and on proposed enhancements for future versions. Members of the group include: major U.S. bibliographic utilities such as OCLC and RLG; a number of U.S. academic libraries such as the University of California; software developers such as NOTIS Systems and Digital Research Associates; computer and workstation manufacturers such as Apple Computer and Thinking Machines; and both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada (Software Kinetics Limited, 1992). The systems that are being developed by members are not restricted for use with bibliographic databases but are intended to support general purpose database searching and information retrieval. A number of developers intend to use the standard as the basis of "wide area information server" (WAIS) systems, that will permit the retrieval of many different kinds of information, including images and sound, from a wide variety of sources. One implementation of Z39.50 that has been completed is between the MELVYL system at the University of California (Berkeley) and the database at the Pennsylvania State University. The project, in which Z39.50 runs over a TCP/IP network, represents the first implementation of the protocol in a high-volume public access environment. Another Z39.50 member, Digital Research Associates (DRA), is notable among library system vendors for its commitment to Z39.50. An implementation of the protocol was completed by DRA in 1992.
Protocol implementors' groups such as ZIG are very useful in providing a focal point for reviewing implementation issues, sharing ideas and accelerating the development of software products. Such groups also tend to attract other software developers and generate interest among the user community for the standards that are the particular focus of the group as well as for OSI in general. The synergy of an implementors' group can do more to promote a standard than individual implementors working in relative isolation.
To meet these objectives NLC contracted with five commercial firms and one library to produce systems based on the ILL protocol. The ILL Protocol Implementation Program initially promoted the implementation of a preliminary Canadian version of the protocol. However, when the ISO version of the protocol became relatively stable in 1989, the contracts were amended to require implementation of the ISO ILL protocol. That same year NLC endorsed the ISO ILL protocol as the standard for ILL communications in Canada. The National Library of Canada provides software developers with a variety of technical support, such as the interpretation of ILL protocol rules, and requires that systems developed by the software developers undergo both conformance testing and interoperability testing. Because conformance testing is viewed as an essential component to the development of protocol-based systems, NLC developed an ILL conformance-testing facility to ensure that the systems produced by the implementors conform to the specifications of the protocol. Interoperability testing provides further assurance that these systems will be able to interwork.
Commercial products that incorporate the ILL protocol will be available in 1992 from the participants in the ILL Protocol Implementation Program. It is anticipated that the availability of these systems will accelerate the adoption of the ILL protocol as the standard for ILL communications in Canada. These systems will also enable computer-to-computer communications with NLC's in-house ILL system which conforms to the ISO ILL standard. The system uses both X.400 and TCP/IP electronic mail services and was designed to manage NLC's large lending volume.
Due to the client-server nature of the SR application, this project is comprised of two parts. The first is the development of a portable SR kernel for the Origin (client) role which is associated with the remote user. This development will include an interface to TCP/IP and an Origin application to mediate between the user and the SR Origin kernel. The second part of the project involves the development of generic kernel software for the Target (server) role which is associated with one or more databases. This effort will be coordinated with the development of an operational system-specific implementation of the Target for Acadia University's library system which will also serve as a demonstration site.
An SR Implementors' Group (SIG) is being formed to oversee the development of the kernel software.
The second of the project's seven phases was completed in April 1992. Thus far, the project's accomplishments include the preparation of a draft SR profile, examination of testing requirements, definition of an Application Program Interface (API), testing of the publicly available ISO Development Environment (ISODE) software, and an examination of which protocols of the ISO and TCP/IP suites to use. Implementations of SR at several participating sites are expected to be completed in late 1992 (Holm, 1992).
An acquisitions software product, BOSI (Getting Books Through Open Systems Interconnection) was developed. It supported four messages: Quote, Order, Order-Response and Invoice. These messages were based on EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport), a United Nations standard for the electronic exchange of trade data and messages. Additional bibliographic data elements were derived from UNIMARC and MAB, the German MARC format. The book orders were sent from the library to the booksellers via X.400 using the EDIFACT transfer syntax.
The project ended in 1991 with a successful live presentation of BOSI at the Deutsche Bibliothek. Future activities will focus on encouraging other booksellers and acquisition software vendors to interface their systems with BOSI (IFOBS, 1992).
The major objectives of the project are:
As each of the three bibliographic centers uses an automated ILL system based on different hardware, software and message formats, the focus of the project is to interconnect their ILL systems in order to exchange international ILL messages. The approach being used to interconnect the three centers is to build an OSI-based front-end processor for each of the three focal points, using both generic and library-specific OSI protocols. A subset of the ISO ILL protocol will be used to support the international interlending service and the X.400 standard will be used to support ILL messaging over X.25-based networks. Also, LASER and Pica will use the SR protocol standard to support the search of each other's union catalogue to determine item locations. This approach provides OSI-based communications while minimizing the changes required to the existing computer systems. The communications interface provided by the front-end processors may also be transported to other similar library networks in Europe in the future.
The specification phase which mapped out technical and service requirements was completed in October 1990. The implementation phase to establish operational protocol-based systems in each of the three countries is well underway. The final phase which involves the use and evaluation of the system by forty-six libraries in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and France is to begin by 4th quarter 1992.
The ILIAD project is the result of the recommendations of the UDT ILL Demonstration Project Feasibility Study sponsored by the IFLA Universal Dataflow and Telecommunications (UDT) Core Programme in 1988 (MacKinnon, 1989). This study determined the feasibility of a demonstration project between the BLDSC and NLC and also examined issues related to implementing the ILL protocol for the benefit of the entire community of libraries. In August 1992, participants completed Phase 1, Project Planning, which included the preparation of a detailed project plan for subsequent stages of the project; operational impact analysis reports; assessment of commercially available ILL systems; a business case; telecommunication interface specifications and a final report on the detailed planning phase. The final report concluded that, while all three institutions fully support the objectives of the project and recognize the merits of the ILL protocol, they could not proceed with the project because it did not meet a true business case. The major stumbling block is the fact that the existing ILL traffic among the three institutions is not sufficiently high to justify the project on economic grounds. The participants may consider a revised ILIAD project in the future if interest in an international ILL project is expressed by other institutions that can contribute to the required ILL volume.
| ||
 |
||
|
| ||
| Latest Revision: April 27, 1995 |
Copyright © 1995-2000
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions www.ifla.org | |