Visualising Interoperability: ARH, Aggregation, Rationalisation and Harmonisation

Michael Currie, Meigan Geileskey, Liddy Nevil and Richard Woodman

International Conference " DC-2002: Metadata for e-Communities: Supporting Diversity and Convergence" Florence, October, 13-17, 2002 / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze ( web site)
(ReLIS:dcm:dcflor:p:21)

Abstract:

This paper proposes a visualisation of interoperability. For some time, resource managers in many organisations have been acting on faith, creating 'standards compliant' metadata with the aim of exposing their resources in discovery activities. In some cases, their faith has led them to miss the very essence of the work they are doing, and they have not got what they worked for. The authors report a case study where significant work has been done over a number of years by government agencies in Victoria, Australia. A number of agencies have implemented, more or less, the DC-based Australian Government Locator Service application profile, at least for their local use. They have always intended to do this with as much precision as possible, with the long-term aim of developing a fully interoperable system. In the case study, typical would-be records for seven government departments were studied and it was shown that the tiniest, and typical, variation in use of the standard can be expected to thwart the aims of interoperability in significant ways. The authors make visible how the creep can be shown to lead away from interoperability and how it might be contained in the future. To do this, they use a 3-step approach of 'aggregation, rationalisation and harmonisation' to expose the problems with 'nearly good enough' interoperability and the benefits of good interoperability.

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