JISC

Start date: 1 August 2003

End date: 31 July 2004

Funding programme: Portals programme

JISC theme(s): Information environment

Introduction  

The Xgrain I project, which ended in July 2003, aimed to enhance and promote the use and usability of Abstracting and Indexing, and electronic Tables of Contents services across the JISC Information Environment in learning, teaching, and research. 

The aim of Xgrain II is to make the technology developed in Xgrain I available to the emerging portal services developed within the JISC Information Environment, so as to provide them with a cross-searching capability adapted to their specific requirements. 

The main objectives of Xgrain I have been completed, and are as follows:

1. To provide a broker for use by JISC Information Environment portals and local institutions that will enable cross-searching of abstracting & indexing services, tables of contents services, and library catalogues.
2. To provide a simple, general-purpose cross-searching L&T portal to enable the end-user to carry out ‘shallow’ cross-searching of A&I and electronic tables of contents services, with the option of linking to the native interfaces for ‘in-depth’ searching.
3. To work with ten Learning and Teaching Associate Sites to undertake a user requirements analysis for development of learning and teaching materials to support the use of the cross-search portal in the classroom.

The JISC IE currently offers a range of high quality, specialised A&I database and electronic tables of contents services providing key discovery facilities for references to journal articles and other information objects that can be accessed from the desktop. However, there is evidence that they are under used, especially in learning and teaching. This is attributed to a lack of interconnectivity between the services and a perception that they are complex to use. 

The focus of Xgrain I, therefore, was to demonstrate the use of cross-searching for the‘discovery’ of journal articles and related services, so as to promote best use of these services in the JISC IE. With Xgrain II, the task is to integrate this technology with the range of subject and institutional portal services. 

Aims and Objectives  

The aim of Xgrain II is to extend and integrate the technical service capability developed in Xgrain I with the emerging portal services of the JISC Information Environment. The main objectives are:

1. Integration with SPP portals
2. Customisation for institutional portals
3. Software maintenance and service support.

A number of secondary objectives have been indicated: investigation of strategies for results ranking; development of SRW toolkits; support for institutional portal L&T services. 

Overall Approach  

The following activities are planned:

• SPP portal integration
  • It was envisaged from the outset that the Xgrain broker (the back-end cross-searching engine) would be of use to portals other than the Xgrain L&T portal. In particular, it was anticipated that the Subject Portals Project (SPP) would form the main client community for Xgrain, and discussions have been held to agree the specification of the interface presented and other technical details (such as dynamic selection of targets). As specialist portals remain a key client community for Xgrain, the integration of SPP with Xgrain is the main priority for Xgrain II.
• Customisation for institutional portals
  • A further goal of Xgrain II is promotion of the technology for use within institutional (Library) portals. Already, a number of Libraries are considering investing in commercial cross-searching products, which demonstrates that a demand for this technology exists. The advantage of Xgrain over these, besides its zero cost to institutions, is that it has as a specific goal the integration and promotion of services in the JISC Information Environment.
  • A strong argument for deploying Xgrain in local portals is that it enables an institution to get best value for money from its existing investment in A&I subscription services. Xgrain automatically determines those A&I services that users of the institution are entitled to access; changes in subscription arrangements are also tracked automatically.
  • Xgrain II will support institutional customisation for use when incorporated in institutional portals. This will enable institutions to specify aspects of the look-and-feel of the interface, and to configure access to relevant local machine-to-machine services, such as the OPAC and any OpenURL resolver service.
• Software maintenance and service support
  • Xgrain will make the transition from project mode to service mode. This entails a more rigorous regime for software change control, service availability, and service stability, as well as helpdesk and other support arrangements common to all EDINA services.

Project Consortium  

IMRI School of Information Studies University of Northumbria at Newcastle 

RDNC King’s College London 

UKOLN University of Bath