Making IT happen: Proving the Common Information Environment

HEIRNET is pleased to announce that its proposal to develop a geospatial demonstrator for the Common Information Environment group has been successful.

The project will be taken forwards in a partnership between HEIRNET, the ADS, EDINA and the RCAHMS and will explore the development of geospatial interfaces to the Historic Environment Information Resources Portal (HEIRPORT) to enable access to distributed content - including content made available by the ADS, RCAHMS, Portable Antiquities Scheme, English Heritage, SCRAN, Durham County Council and others. Brief details of our expression of interest are provided below. Those seeking further information should contact Kate Fernie, HEIRNET Project Officer, at kmf@york.ac.uk.

Making IT happen: Proving the Common Information Environment

This project will prove the concept of a common information environment. Using historic environment information resources as a test bed, it will demonstrate the potential of technology to provide diverse user communities with seamless access to distributed digital content. It will use geographic location to support these search and retrieval operations.

The Problem: islands of information

The historic environment provides an ideal test bed for a common information environment. It draws data from many sectors to serve the needs of diverse users. There is a broad range of organisations that require access to information about the historic environment, some in turn produce information about the historic environment: national agencies and public archives, local government agencies, museums, universities, colleges, schools and others. Users of these information resources are drawn from many backgrounds such as planning and development, museum professionals, university researchers, teachers, continuing education, life long learners and from leisure and tourism. There is also significant under exploited public interest in these data sets. There is a growing relationship between natural and historic environment information resources enabled by use of GIS. Digitisation programmes have created a wide variety of digital content; databases, texts, GIS, scientific data, images, virtual reality, video and sound archives relating to aspects of the landscapes, monuments, buildings and objects which make up the historic environment and relating to the people whose lives touch on it. Historic environment information resources should be among the UK's principal data assets. Yet this wealth of information is fragmented. It resides on many different systems, with diverse standards, interfaces and semantics. Even where access is possible use is hindered by system dependence, under-exposure and abstruse expert dialects.

The Solution: towards a common information environment

The historic environment is a microcosm of wider problems in public information provision. This demonstrator will show how Internet technologies can deliver the e-government agenda to ensure that everyone in this country can participate in the information society.

The project will:

Demonstrate the benefits of the common information environment
Develop a platform-independent system for the discovery and retrieval of digital content that complies with e-government standards for inter-operability
Design a system around the needs of users that will be simple and easy to use
Focus on geographic location as a point of access to information
Use technologies which are stable, robust and extensible to create a prototype as a model for a full system
Show the benefits of collaboration between disparate partners in diverse sectors
Promote inclusive access to currently exclusive content

The project builds on the experience gained by the Archaeology Data Service in the development of HEIRPORT, by EDINA in the geoXwalk project and also by the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in the development of CANMAP and the Scottish Heritage Portal.

Background

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) hosts the AHDS Centre for Archaeology with funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB). It supports research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. Since its establishment in 1996 the ADS has developed significant experience in the use of ICT to provide access to digital resources and distributed digital content with a geo-spatial dimension. The ADS has a track record of leading collaborative projects involving both higher education and other public sector bodies, including JISC funded programmes such as the 'Harvesting the Fitzwilliam' project and the RSLP funded 'OASIS' project. Since 1999 the Archaeology Data Service has been working with members of the HEIRNET consortium (see appendix 1) to explore the uses of ICT to extend access to historic environment information resources, and launched HEIRPORT in January 2002.

HEIRPORT (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/heirport/) is a prototype portal forhistoric environment information resource that was developed in 2000-01 by the Archaeology Data Service on behalf of HEIRNET, with technical support from the Computer Science Department of the University of Kent at Canterbury and Systems Simulation Limited. HEIRPORT enables its users to search simultaneously more than 1.5 million records linked to geographic location held in four national heritage resources, providing users with access to the databases maintained by the ADS, the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and the Scottish Cultural Resource Access Network (SCRAN). A simple and easy to use interface allows users to carry out 'who', 'what', 'when' and 'where' searches to identify resources that are of interest to their research. HEIRPORT is a Z39.50 enabled system that forms a common point of access to remote digital resources that are maintained on different technical platforms by their parent organisation. It is the first portal to allow-cross-searching of JISC and other non-HE services. Tam Dalyell MP launched HEIRPORT at the British Museum in January 2002.

geoXwalk is a gazetteer service that is being developed by EDINA in a current project funded by the JISC. A middleware geoXwalk server and gazetteer tools have been developed to support online geographic searching and also to assist in the geographic indexing of information resources. geoXwalk is derived from the Alexandria Digital Library Content Standard and identities features by name, type and their spatial footprint.

CANMAP is a geo-spatial interface developed by the RCAHMS in ArcIMS to provide a publicly available online geo-spatial interface for their CANMORE database. The RCAHMS is currently developing the Scottish Heritage Portal using web-based GIS to provide access to three heritage databases online.

The project's main objectives are:

To prototype a web-based portal for geographically referenced historic environment information that builds on the development of HEIRPORT and extends its capabilities to accommodate both the Z39.50 communications protocol and the OAI harvesting model
To enhance HEIRPORT by upgrading its capabilities to support multiple views and developing simple and easy to use interfaces that are capable of being tailored to support different user profiles, interests and priorities and which provide effective geographic search mechanisms
To build on the work of the geoXwalk project to improve access to digital content by geographic location exploring the implementation of geoXwalk tools in HEIRPORT
To use XML in customising the presentation of results to reflect user profiles
To extend the range and type of digital resources that are accessible via HEIRPORT illustrating a broad range of information types linked by geographic location.
To explore issues relating to rights management framework and other factors
To build enthusiasm for continued development

Approach

The project will be led by the Archaeology Data Service, working in collaboration with HEIRNET, RCAHMS and EDINA.