JISC IE Terms access management services Network services that store, manage and make available information that govern the authentication and/or authorisation of sign-on credentials to determine a user's right to use a requested resource. Authentication is the process whereby a digital ID is determined to relate to the real life individual who has the rights to use it. Authorisation is the process whereby a digital ID is determined to have the necessary rights to access a given resource. Authentication is often achieved via the use of a username/password combination or a digital certificate, depending on the degree of assurance required. A conflation of two conceptually distinct though interrelated network services, these services have traditionally been married in the JISC IE due to the fact that the Athens Access Management System has provided a single, shared authentication and authorisation service for the UK higher and further education community since 1996. Research is currently underway to replace this system with one based on Shibboleth federated access technology. access management, federated authentication authentication mechanisms, federated authentication services authorisation authorisation services federated access management federated authentication mechanisms federation federation services aggregators Network services that gather metadata records from a range of other, heterogeneous, local or remote network services and offer them for searching or harvesting by others or as an aggregated news channel. Aggregators are intended for use by software applications. In the context of the JISC IE, aggregators interact with indexes, catalogues, content providers and other aggregators using the OAI-PMH and/or RSS/HTTP. aggregation brokers Network services that accept a search query from a presentation layer service, transfer it federally (and in parallel) to one or more provision layer service, before combining the results and returning them to the requester. Brokers are intended for use by software applications. In the context of the JISC IE, brokers interact with indexes, catalogues, aggregators, content providers, other brokers and portals using Z39.50. Results from multiple content providers are usually merged and ranked before being passed back to the presentation layer service. catalogues Network services that provide access to collections of (typically human-generated) metadata records about content held elsewhere. catalogue cataloguing catalogs fusion layer services Stratum of the JISC Information Environment encompassing middleware responsible for combining metadata records for one or more provision layer services via means of cross-searching, harvesting, alerting and/or manual cataloguing. The positioning of some services within the fusion layer might be seen to be ambiguous, as it is possible for that activity defined as ""fusion"" activity to be undertaken directly by services more readily identified as belonging in either the provision or presentation layers. To take an example, commercial abstracting and indexing services, such as ISI Web of Science, are hard to place within the JISC IE architecture. While they might be thought an ""index"", based in part on the generic name of the type of service that they offer, their interfaces are made directly available to the user, and as such might be thought to be a ""portal"", thus placing them in the presentation layer. In other cases, stand-alone fusion services may be developed. In the case of cross-searching, such stand-alone services are typically referred to as brokers. In the case of harvesting and alerting, such services are referred to as aggregators. Services in the fusion layer may combine the harvesting and distributed searching approaches. For example, a fusion service may gather metadata records from content providers using the OAI-PMH, and make the combined database of gathered records available for searching using Z39.50. cross-searching services fusion fusion services identifier services Network services that store, manage and make available an association between an identifier and some metadata about the identified resource, with the intention of supplying pointers to services that relate to the identified resource. In the JISC IE, metadata is passed to a resolver service encoded in an OpenURL. Typically, such services take an identifier encoded as a URI and return an HTTP redirect to the current location of the resource being identified. Such a service can provide extended functionality, which may include redirection to document delivery services, redirection to online bookshops, redirection to local library services and further "discovery" activities. Further, it is anticipated that resolver services may make use of institutional profiling services to determine institutional resolution preferences. identifier resolution services identifier resolver services resolvers indexes Network services that provide access to machine-generated databases of information derived, by Web robots or other techniques, from the content of items in a collection. automatic indexing index indexing search engines web crawlers web robots web search engines web spiders institutional portals Network interface services that provide members of the host institution with a single, personalised interface to institutionally-selected resources relevant to programmes of study. portals, institutional institutional profiling services Network services that store, manage and make available machine-readable information about the preferences and profiles of institutions operating within the JISC IE. The primary intention of this service is to allow resolver services to automatically determine institutional preferences and holdings information when resolving OpenURLs by making available information such as preferred e-content suppliers and existing licensing agreements. institutional preference services licensing services learning management systems Network interface services that provide a single, integrated evironment for a range of functionality that supports teaching, learning and research activities. library portals Network interface services that extends the functionality offered by the library catalogue, typically including cross-searching of local and remote collections. portals, library media-specific portals Network interface services that provide a single point of access to resources of a particular type. portals, media specific metadata harvesting The process whereby the metadata descriptions of records in heterogeneous archives are collected (harvested) to build a central metadata aggregation. harvesting harvesting (metadata) metadata schema registries Network services that store, manage and make available machine-readable and human-readable information about the metadata schemas in use by other service components. The primary intention of such a service is to allow portals, brokers and aggregators to automatically determine information about appropriate search terms and the structure of metadata records that will be returned to them. Metadata registries, however, also provide a useful human-oriented service, allowing people to see what metadata schemas are in use by which services - providing a basis for metadata schema sharing and re-use. Typically some combination of metadata semantics and syntax will be described. news-feed aggregation The process whereby client software or Web applications collect together syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for viewing by the user. In addition to a human-oriented Web interface, such services also typically offer machine interfaces in the form of aggregated RSS channels. alert services news feed services online public access catalogues Computerised collection of bibliographic metadata that describes the holdings of a library and is available, locally or remotely, to users. library catalogue library catalogues online public access catalogue OPAC OPACs Open-URL link servers Network services that take metadata about an item, encoded in the form of an OpenURL, and provide the end-user with a set of links to delivery services where the item can be obtained and to value-added services associated with the item. OpenURL resolver services are usually offered within the institution, typically by the library, using proprietary software. openURL resolvers presentation layer services Stratum of the JISC Information Environment encompassing all potential interfaces with which end-users can interact. Includes all Graphic User Interfaces, whether hosted locally (on a user's desktop/browser) or remotely (on the web.) In the context of the JISC IE, presentation layer services interact with fusion and provision layer services via the following protocols and standards: Z39.50, SRW, the OAI-PMH and RSS/HTTP. Presentation layer services are sometimes synonymised with portals; portals, however, should be understood more narrowly, as discrete network services that provide a personalised, single point of access to a range of heterogeneous network services, local and remote. Thus, portals can be seen to be a type of presentation layer service; to synonymise portals with all possible human-computer interfaces can broaden the term beyond meaningful use. interface services interfaces portals presentation presentation services provision layer services Stratum of the JISC Information Environment encompassing all services responsible for the storage, management and making available of content. Such content includes all resources made available by content providers, including JISC-funded data services and e-journal providers. Content is the material that end-users want to access and use - scholarly journals, monographs, textbooks, learning objects, abstracts, manuscripts, maps, music scores, still images, geospatial images and other kinds of vector and numeric data, as well as moving picture and sound collections. content content management content management systems content providers content provision provision provision, content service registries Network services that store, manage and make available machine-readable descriptive metadata about the services offered within the JISC IE by other service components, and the content of collections made available via such services. Instantiated as the JISC IE Service Registry (IESR), the term "service registry" actually refers to two conceptually distinct, though complementary, network services: "collection description" and "service description". A collection description service provides machine-readable descriptions of the content of collections that are available as part of the JISC IE. The primary intention of the service is to allow portals, brokers and aggregators to automatically determine what collections are available to end-users of the JISC IE. A service description service provides detailed technical information in machine-readable form about JISC IE services. The primary intention of the service is to allow portals, brokers and aggregators to automatically determine how they should interact with content providers and other brokers and aggregators. IESR JISC IE service registry shared infrastructure services Common set of foundational services that support the activities of all other services within the JISC IE by providing standardized, machine-readable information about services, content, rights and users via machine-to-machine (m2m) interfaces. control services infrastructural services shared infrastructure shared services subject portals Network interface services that provide a single point of access to personalised, non-media-specific, discovery services across multiple, heterogeneous content providers within a specific subject area. gateways, subject portals, subject subject gateways terminology services Network services that store, manage and make available controlled vocabularies used by other services within the JISC IE and provide automated, machine-readable mappings between terms in one or more thesauri or classification schema. Includes ontologies, classification schemes, thesauri and any other scheme used to manage the use of language. The intention of mapping terms is to allow the user to use one terminological set and for their terms to be automatically mapped to alternative or additional terms in thesauri or classification schemes used by target services. Terminology is not limited only to subject but also includes audience level, resource type and certification. controlled vocabularies name authority files name authority records ontologies thesauri vocabularies, controlled union catalogues Collection of physically or virtually centralised bibliographic metadata records sourced from two or more heterogeneous online public access catalogues. online union catalogue online union catalogues union catalogue online union catalog online union catalogs union catalog union catalogs virtual learning environments Network interface services that aggregate integrated tools to provide a single framework of resources and tools to support online learning and teaching. Examples of such resources and tools are: learning delivery mechanisms; student tracking and assessment; and applications to control access to resources.These integrated tools may be one product (e.g. BlackBoard, WebCT) or an integrated set of individual, perhaps open-source, tools. managed learning environments virtual research environments Network interface services that aggregate integrated tools to provide a single framework of resources and tools to support the underlying processes of research. The purpose of a virtual research environment (VRE) is to help researchers in all disciplines manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research. VREs add value to the research process across all disciplines by complementing and inter-working with existing resources and by being flexible and adaptable to changing requirements. virtual organisations