BL JISC UKOLN Workshop

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Digital Libraries and the business process
reflections on a theme Dr Liz Lyon,
Director UKOLN, University of Bath,
UK BL/JISC/UKOLN Workshop, British Library
March 2006.
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UKOLN is supported by
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
a centre of expertise in digital information
management
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Overview

• Mapping the business process the intricate mix
  of humans and machines
• Some thoughts about workflow
• Social networks and service development
• Summary take home message

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What do we mean by business process???
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• A business process is a collection of related
  structural activities that produce something of
  value to the organization, its stake holders or
  its customers. It is, for example, the process
  through which an organization realizes its
  services to its customers.

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• The linkage of business process with value
  generation leads some practitioners to view
  business processes as the workflows which realize
  an organization's use cases.
• ..Workflows???

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• Workflow at its simplest is the movement of
  documents and/or tasks through a work process.
• More specifically, workflow is the operational
  aspect of a work procedure how tasks are
  structured, who performs them, what their
  relative order is, how they are synchronized, how
  information flows to support the tasks and how
  tasks are being tracked.

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Distinction can be made between "scientific" and
"business" workflow paradigms. While the former
is mostly concerned with throughput of data
through various algorithms, applications and
services, .the latter concentrates on
scheduling task executions, including
dependencies which are not necessarily
data-driven and may include human agents.
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Comparing workflow Tom Oinn 2003 http//twiki.mygr
id.org.uk/
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OK - so in the context of our institutions
(and digital libraries)..what exactly do
we mean by business process and workflow ???
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(Very simple) e-Research Cycle
(New) knowledge extraction data mining,
modelling, analysis, synthesis
Formulate hypothesis / ideas, test, experiment,
observe data creation, collection capture
Data processing
Data processing
Data processing
Data management storage validation
description, deposit, self-archiving,
preservation, certification
e-Infrastructure Open access Collaboration
Adding value Data linking, annotation,
visualisation, simulation
Data processing
Data processing
Scholarly communications data disclosure,
publication, citation, discovery, re-use
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Gathering information about (e-)research

• Project StORe Source-to-Output Repositories
  (Edinburgh)
• primary data research publications
• Survey questionnaire
• RepoMMan Repository Metadata and Management
  (Hull)
• Survey questionnaire and interviews
• Activity diagram

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JISC Digital Repository Programme DigiRep
wiki http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/i
ndex/JISC_Digital_Repository_Wiki
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Data capture

• R4L Repository for the Laboratory Project
  (JISC-funded) automated data capture from
  instrumentation, deposit of results (chemistry)
  at Univ. Southampton
• SMART TEA electronic Laboratory notebook
  annotations
• R4L deposit scenario

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User scenario (part of.)

• Produce strategy for synthesis (idea)
• Submit plan to SmartTea system (incl.
  identifiers)
• Retrieve and follow instructions (sub-workflow?)
• Experimental synthesis metadata automatically
  recorded on instruments (Smart Lab)
• Create record for synthesised sample ( proposed
  chemical identifier) in R4L laboratory data
  management system
• Run spectral analyses on sample capturing further
  analysis metadata (incl. time-stamp, analysis
  software version, researcher details etc.)
• Save spectrum in native and common formats
• Invoke R4L data capture service and deposit files
  metadata in laboratory repository.

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Services for simple rapid deposit
Data manipulation toolbox
Associated Metadata
Value added
Format conversion
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Crystallography workflow

• Initialisation mount new sample set up data
  collection
• Collection collect data
• Processing process and correct images
• Solution solve structures
• Refinement refine structure
• CIF produce CIF (Crystallographic Information
  File)
• Validation chemical crystallographic checks
• Report generate Crystal Structure Report

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A data repository entry
ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk
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Access to the underlying data
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Laboratory Repositories R4L
Slide Simon Coles, Univ. Southampton
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• eBank UK Project
• Aggregator service harvests metadata from
  institutional repository (e-crystals archive)
• eBank service embedded in PSIgate portal for 3rd
  party search
• Service linking from data to derived research
  publication
• Embedding eBank service in learning workflows
• UKOLN (lead), University of Southampton,
  University of Manchester

http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/ebank-uk/
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But..how should we be formalising workflows?
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Workflow systems standards

• YAWL
• METEOR-S
• BPEL
• OpenWFE
• RADRunner
• BPSS (ebXML)
• PSL
• Geo-Opera
• JDF
• XLANG

• Taverna
• Kepler
• Pegasus
• Triana
• SPA
• ICENI
• BioOpera
• Wildfire
• BPML
• WS-CDL

Is workflow standard an oxymoron?
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Kepler Project http//kepler-project.org/Wiki.jsp
?pageKeplerProject
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http//taverna.sourceforge.net/
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Slide Carole Goble
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DL workflows a complex picture

• Workflows for data capture, deposit,
  preservation, citation, discovery, mining .
• Multiple workflows interacting together
• Workflows may call on each other, in a defined
  order
• Multiple workflows may use common services e.g.
  Assign (identifier)
• Require sequential or parallel execution, have
  dependencies, be time-limited, repetitive
• Have an owner (control)
• Include essential human interventions
• ? ? ?

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Workflowthe answers to Who? What? When? in a
business process. A workflow is only as good
as the business process beneath it.Margie
Virdell, IBM developerWorks
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Some observations.

• We dont know enough about institutional business
  process
• Learning teaching, research, admin, enterprise
• How to analyse, express and model processes
• What types of models?
• At what levels of granularity strategic (for a
  manager) vs detailed mathematical specifications
  (for a developer)
• Which workflow tools standards should we use?
• Learn from e-Science projects
• Which processes are best driven by machines and
  which by humans?
• How do human-directed processes interact with
  machine-driven ones?
• What are the digital library touch points in
  these processes?

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Service-oriented architectures for Digital
Libraries

• Produce process models (DLF?)
• Experience of VRE projects
• Integrative Biology user scenarios
• Service typology (e-Framework?)
• Identify services service definitions
• Service interactions service patterns
• Orchestration of Web services
• Choreography of Web services
• Workflow interoperability. (another oxymoron?)

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• Orchestrating the knitting
• Integration trumps re-invention
• We work in
• a services ecosystem
• new social models for DLs
• Polygamous recombination

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Discovering data

• Domain identifier International Chemical
  Identifier (INChI) code
• Google molecule using INChI
• Slide from Simon Coles

Coles, S.J., Day, N.E., Murray-Rust, P., Rzepa,
H.S., Zhang, Y., Org. Biomol. Chem., 2005, (10),1
832-1834. DOI 10.1039/b502828k
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Avian flu outbreaks mashup - Nature January 2006
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New prototype services
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Take home messages

• Need to understand more about institutional
  business process cultural heritage, learning
  teaching, research, admin, enterprise
• Assessment of the value of workflow studies
• Evaluation of workflow systems, tools standards
  
• How best to analyse, express and model processes
• Types of models
• At what levels of granularity
• Interactions between human-directed processes
  machine-driven ones implications for services
• Social development of Digital Library services
  creation, interaction, recombination and
  integration
• .an intricate mix of humans machines

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Thank you.
More information UKOLN http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/

• UKOLN receives core funding from the Joint
  Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the
  Museums, Libraries Archives Council (MLA) and
  is based at the University of Bath, UK.