Records to Go: Building the Humbul Humanities
HubMichaelFraserOxford University, UK 2000University of GlasgowGlasgowALLC/ACH 2000editorJeanAndersonAmalChatterjeeChristianJ.KayMargaretScottencoderSaraA.SchmidtThe Humbul Humanities Hub is a service of the Resource Discovery Network
(RDN), receiving funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC). The RDN comprises a number of hubs each of which offers a range of
services to a broad subject-based community within the UK. A number of the
hubs have evolved from centrally-funded subject gateways (e.g. SOSIG) whilst
at least two of the hubs, including Humbul, are building their services from
the foundations upwards.Humbul has a comparatively long history, commencing life in the mid-1980s as
a bulletin board for humanities scholars interested in information
technology based within the University of Bath's Office for Humanities
Communication. Since 1991 it has been based at and supported by Oxford
University. Humbul evolved into a gateway to Web resources in 1994 and from
static Web pages to a database in 1997 (Stephens, 1997). Humbul became part
of the RDN in August 1999 and has three years' funding to develop both the
service itself and also a business plan for financial viability beyond the
period of central funding. Developing the Humanities Hub more than five
years into the existence of the Web, four years after the launch of
comparable UK subject gateways, surrounded by multi-million pound portals,
is proving to be something of a challenge.The poster session will outline two sides of developing the Hub: the vision
and the diary.The visionThe Humbul Humanities Hub seeks to combine structured metadata with the
scholarly review process. The first milestone for the Hub to reach is the
construction of a database which holds rich descriptions of Web resources
relating to the study of selected humanities disciplines (English, history,
archaeology, classics, European literature and language, religion,
philosophy). Each record consists of fields following qualified Dublin Core
metadata which enables us to record information about both the Web site and
its intellectual content including location, creator, language, coverage
(both temporal and spatial), date created and modified, and relationship to
other resources. The qualifiers to the Dublin Core elements follow those
proposed by the Dublin Core working groups. Each record itself has a set of
metadata describing such things as the creator of the record, date created
and edited, and rights associated with it.It is essential for Humbul to build up a critical mass of data in the
shortest time possible whilst remaining true to its claim to describe only
sites which comply with the Hub's published selection criteria (in summary,
resources fit for higher education teaching and research). Populating a
subject gateway requires substantially more human effort than populating a
Web search engine (which requires substantial computing effort). However,
the key lies in finding a balance that can be struck between automation and
manual work to ensure that labour is distributed in an appropriate
fashion.The process of getting data into the Hub should work something like this: an
automated harvester gathers basic metadata from web sites linked from
'trusted' subject gateways (which in another context were referred to as
'amateur gateways' - see Fraser, 1999). Basic metadata includes title, URL,
date modified, subject area and, where present, further metadata present in
the page header. Records from the harvested metadata are then presented via
a Web interface to the Hub's data providers for review, editing, completion
of the metadata and submission to the Hub's main database. Of course, data
providers may also create records from scratch but at least they may check
that a basic or full record does not already exist for the site. To enable
the delivery of relevant records to data-providers it is necessary to
provide a means of authentication. Data-providers register with the Hub and,
through the use of a username and password, can access their own customised
editing environment. Within this environment records relevant to the
provider's subject expertise may be created, edited, rejected. Records may
also be reviewed and links automatically checked. And the combination of
authentication (which automates the creation of the metadata about the
metadata) and a customised environment allows data-providers to export the
records they have created for use, for example, within their own site or
imported into a library catalogue (exporting will be in the form of HTML,
XML/RDF, and MARC in the first instance).The reuse of records by data-providers also places them within the sphere of
the Hub's users. Indeed, it is an aim of the Hub to market itself as a
'gateway provider' as well as a gateway. The development of systems which
permit the exporting of data and its reuse locally will hopefully assist
individuals and organisations who have the subject expertise to evaluate and
describe resources but have neither the resources nor the desire to maintain
links, develop databases, or code HTML. Eventually, we envisage a user,
whether a researcher, librarian or student, visiting the Hub, searching and
browsing for records relevant to their interests, selecting and saving
records as they proceed through Humbul, and then, on finishing, being
presented with some piece of code for insertion within their own local Web
page. In this manner, a lecturer, for example, can continue to create course
pages but, on pasting a piece of code within the local web page, records
served direct from Humbul can be dynamically inserted within the page each
time the page is accessed. The lecturer need only select the records, create
a basic web page, insert the magic code, and leave the maintenance of the
records (like link checking) to Humbul.The DiaryBy the end of June 2000 the new Humbul will hopefully have been launched
complete with new input and retrieval systems together with enough data to
make it worth visiting. The poster session will show via visual images and
oral discussion a comparison between the partial vision outlined above and
the actual process by which the modules were built and tied together; the
combining of human and automated effort (and the risks inherent with
undertaking either); an outline of how the Hub intends to cut costs and make
money; and a summary of how collaborating with Humbul as an advisor, an
evaluator, a describer, or a cataloguer might result in mutual and tangible
benefits for all parties.ReferencesM.FraserSelecting Resources for a Subject Gateway: Who
Decides?ACH-ALLC Conference 1999. University of
Virginia1999C.StephensHUMBUL Updated: Gateway to Humanities Resources on the
WebComputers & Texts15231997