About OCRIS
Crucial questions about how and why we should achieve interoperability between Institutional Repositories (IRs) and Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) have been overshadowed, to some extent, by the rich but fractured discourse around repository and catalogue building, which appears to have split into two distinct threads. Given that all University libraries in the UK possess OPACS, and that around 80 currently have at least one Institutional Repository (with others doubtless planned within some, if not most, of the remainder), it is time that clear, solid recommendations on how to marry the in-scope content of the IR with the functionality of the traditional library OPAC, be formulated and disseminated to relevant stakeholders. This is why JISC's Scholarly Communications Group have commissioned the "Online Catalogue and Repository Interoperability Study" (OCRIS), a 3 month project incorporating a survey of HEIs and a close analysis of the technical implementations and workflows involved in running and "linking" OPACs and IRs. The project has a strong focus on "future-proofing"; exploring how interoperability of systems might assist with the preservation, visibility and utility of institutions' intellectual outputs.
Background
Although there may be confusion over what exactly an IR is and what its scope should be, the OPAC is well-established; logic dictates that many OPACs will already hold metadata related to in-scope repository content, and in practice both systems have many common functionalities. IRs should theoretically supplement the library OPAC, traditionally used for the dissemination of publications associated with the library's parent institution. A 2004 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report said a "secure central archive for digital publications [is] essential to ensuring that today's research findings are not lost to the future"; the OPAC can clearly play a part. However, links must exist between them and IRs if this is to be achieved and if useful services are to stem from such an archive. Issues of metadata quality and standardisation are vital here, as is the development of clearly focussed technical and managerial guidelines and workflows, at the prior-to-development stages of IR building.
Potential impact
There are a number of services which might stem from allowing OPACs and IRs to interoperate. For example, an internal auditor or an external assessment agency might find out about an institution's research output; a member of staff might use the institution's various catalogues to compile RAE/REF returns or to answer a query from a research funder concerning access to publications resulting from research funded by them; comprehensive publications list for a particular author or subject area, for use within a taught course, could be compiled, as could a range of other datasets such as statistics. However, if items are essentially "siloed" in separate systems that do not "communicate" with one another, such outcomes could not be expected or achieved. Application and information integration must be guaranteed, with syntactic, semantic, and numeric interoperability, secured.
The development of useful services should be undertaken with a clear understanding of the technical, economic, socio-political and strategic issues involved in any given HEI and across HEIs as a group. It should advance in consulation with the relevant range of stakeholders with an interest in the present and future of the institution. This includes teaching staff, researchers, Systems Librarians, Repository Managers, Human Resources and other administrative personnel and departments.
It is likely that there will be a role in the "interoperable HEI" for emergent "Web 2" tools and technologies such as "vertical search" services, "add-ons" which help users enter metadata consistently and correctly, and for Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), which can improve system communication and thus resource discovery. Such impact will inevitably inform debate about wider ramifications of interoperability in an online world, a world where end-users increasingly expect on-demand, distributed resources integrated with the promised functionalities of the "Semantic Web" and "Web 3".
