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http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
A centre of expertise in digital information management
Metadata-based Discovery:
Experience in Crystallography
Monica Duke
m.duke@ukoln.ac.uk
UKOLN, University of Bath, UK
UKOLN is supported by:
Discovery in the curation life-cycle
“Digital Curation itself is the active management
of data over the life-cycle of scholarly and
scientific interest; it is the key to reproducibility
and re-use. Metadata for resource discovery
and retrieval are important, with mark-up on
time/place referencing as well as subject
description and linkage to discipline based
ontologies providing key research foci.”
Chris Rusbridge et al.
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/docs/publications/DCC_Sardinia_paper_final.pdf
Digital Library Infrastructures

Historically, cross-search and discovery
protocols an area of interest and research
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Z39.50 perceived to have barriers/limitations
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OAI-PMH developed using a harvesting model
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http://www.openarchives.org/
The OAI-PMH
Data providers
Harvesting
based on
OAI-PMH
Service providers
The OAI-PMH

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
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OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
simple protocol for sharing metadata records between
applications
currently at version 2.0
based on HTTP, XML, XML Schema and XML
namespaces
allows a harvester to ask a remote repository for some
or all of its metadata records

where ‘some’ is based on date-stamps, sets, metadata
formats
Metadata in the eBank UK project

Simple Dublin Core www.dublincore.org
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Intended for resource discovery
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Compatible with OAI-PMH
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Qualified to specify ‘vocabularies’
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Refinements: aid interpretation of element value
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E.g. <dc:subject
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“Dumbing-down” principle applies
xml:lang="en">seafood</dc:subject>
Metadata terms
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Creator
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Rights
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Date
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Type

Identifier

Subject
InChI
ChemicalFormula
<dc:subject
xsi:type="ebankterms:CompoundClass">
Organic</dc:subject>
Specified using XML schema and documented using an
Application Profile
http://www.rdn.ac.uk/oai/ebank/20060310/ebank_dc.xsd
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/ebank-uk/schemas/profile/
Information sources for Crystallography
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Cross-discipline sources
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OAIster
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DAREnet
Discipline-specific
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ChemRefer
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Chemistry Central
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Crystallography Open Database

Reciprocal Net
Texts/publications,
chemistry general
Data,
crystallography
The discovery landscape

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Some within OAI-PMH infrastructure (metadatabased)
Variety of (human) search interfaces (simple to
advanced)
Well established sources
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Cambridge Structural Database

Protein Data Bank
OAIster
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An OAI-PMH aggregator
Wide-ranging and inclusive: Any repository, all
content types
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Metadata from 675 institutions
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Limit by resource type inc. datasets (5 results)
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Pointers to collections of data
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2000+ records for ‘crystallography’
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Results spread across several sources
OAIster
http://www.oaister.org/
DAREnet

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www.darenet.nl
Worldwide access to Dutch academic research
results
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Simple search: “crystallography” (40 results)
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General advanced search (author, year)
DAREnet
DAREnet
ChemRefer
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http://www.chemrefer.com
Access to full text chemical, pharmaceutical
literature Index
Simple search interface
ChemRefer
ChemRefer display of results
Chemistry Central
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No search feature (through Biomed central)
Crystallography Open Database (COD)
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www.crystallography.net
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Promotes open data
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Allows submission
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‘REF’ format also used
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40K entries
COD
Reciprocal Net
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A distributed crystallography network for
researchers, students and the general public
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Search engine http://www.reciprocalnet.org/recipnet/search.jsp
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Crystallography-specific search interface
Reciprocal Net Search Interface
Dataset result in Reciprocal Net
Joining up the landscape
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Technical infrastructure differences can be
overcome
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Agreement on common APIs, metadata sets
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Hide API differences from user
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Survey in one application area – how similar are
other disciplines?
Issues with cross-search
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Audiences
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Who are the user groups?
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What are their information needs?
Selection
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Identifying subsets of interest
Human Interface design
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Search options
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Presentation of heterogenous information