A centre of expertise in digital information management Ideology Or Pragmatism? Open Standards And Cultural Heritage Web Sites Author & Presenter Brian.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

Ideology Or Pragmatism? Open Standards And Cultural Heritage Web Sites Author & PresenterBrian KellyUKOLNUniversity of BathBath

Email: [email protected]: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/>

UKOLN is supported by:

Co-AuthorsMarieke Guy, UKOLNAlastair Dunning, AHDSLawrie Phipps, TechDis


Contents

• Background• Why Use Standards?• What Are Open Standards?• Surveying Our Communities• The Difficulties With Open Standards• An Open Standards Culture • The QA Focus Project• Conclusions


Background

Cultural heritage digitisation programmes normally insist on use of open standards

But it would appear that there is little policing of compliance with open standards

Many argue for more rigourous policing

But issues are not always clear-cut:• Uncertainty of the meaning of open standards• Immaturity of standards• Lack of support from tools• Flexibility of marketplace solutions• Costs

This paper seeks to address these challenges and provide an achievable approach


Examples

JISC & UK HE Digital Library Programmes• Standards document produced for eLib

programme (1994) and updated to support recent digital library programmes

The NOF-digitise Programme• Standards document written to support the NOF-

digitise programme for providing access to UK cultural heritage resources

UK e-Government• Standards framework developed to support e-

Government work within central and local government


Why Use Standards?In many digital library programmes there has been a philosophy based on use of open standards to:

• Avoid application lock-in and platform dependencies• Minimise migration costs• Provide long-term access to scholarly resources

But in eLib programme (~1994-2000):• Little policing of compliance with open standards• Adoption of "let a thousand flowers bloom"

This approach:• Probably sensible approach in mid-1990s (Gopher?)• Not desirable now:

Web is the killer application; XML is killer format Need to maximise access; support M2M apps; ... Need to protect investment from public funding


What Are Open Standards?

But what are Standards and Open Standards?

Do Adobe PDF format and Sun's Java language count?

Can we agree on the following characteristics:• Standard ratified by recognised neutral standards

body.• An open standards-making process.• Documentation is freely available on the Web.• Use of the standard is uninhibited by licensing or

patenting issues.

Note that not all open standards bodies will comply with all of these features. The standards-making process within the W3C, for example, is initially restricted to organisations which are members of the W3C and a small number of invited experts.

Note that not all open standards bodies will comply with all of these features. The standards-making process within the W3C, for example, is initially restricted to organisations which are members of the W3C and a small number of invited experts.


A Spectrum For Standards

If we have defined open standards do we treat everything else (proprietary formats) equally bad? (And how should we regard PowerPoint users!)

A Spectrum For Ownership:• Is there a community process for standard

development?• Has the standard has been published openly • Has the standard been reverse-engineered

Java: Owned by Sun (open standardisation attempts aborted by Sun). However Community Process for development to language.

PDF: Owned by Adobe. However specification has been published.Word: Owned by Microsoft. Specification has been reverse engineered.

Java: Owned by Sun (open standardisation attempts aborted by Sun). However Community Process for development to language.

PDF: Owned by Adobe. However specification has been published.Word: Owned by Microsoft. Specification has been reverse engineered.


Surveying Our Communities

Various surveys of Web sites have been carried out in order to monitor compliance with standards:

Survey Of W3C Member Organisations• The majority of W3C member home pages do not

pass the W3C's test for compliance with W3C recommendations (Survey in Feb 2003)

• See <http://news.com.com/2100-1032-985941.html>

Survey Of Digital Library Programme Project Web Sites

• A survey of 50+ home pages for JISC's 5/99 programme was carried out in Oct 2002


Surveying Our CommunitiesInitial set of findings available from <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/surveys/web-10-2002/>


Difficulties With Open Standards

Why do bodies which seek to use open standards experience such difficulties?

• Lack of awareness of importance of standards• Difficulties in implementing standards• Difficulties in checking compliance• Immaturity of the standards• Limitations of the standards• Lack of support from tools• …


Can We Trust The Standards Guys?

RSS• A light-weight syndication standard?• Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary or Real

Simple Syndication?• XML or RDF?

XHTML 2.0• Two years ago XHTML 1.0 was promoted by W3C

as the killer format: an XML application which was backwards compatible with browsers and similar to HTML

• Now W3C have acknowledged the problems will XHTML 1.0 and are promoting XHTML 2.0 as the answer


Standards Or Guidelines

W3C WAI• Are W3C's Web Accessibility guidelines

guidelines (which help to inform us on best practices) or standards which we must implement (with accompanying legal threat)

• How relevant are the guidelines to (say) e-learning resources (in which we may wish to make the answer difficult to find?)

• Is universal design a realistic goal?


What Do We Do?

What approaches should we be taking?

Surrender To The Proprietary World• Should we allow our cultural heritage resources to

be developed in proprietary formats?

Stronger Promotion/Enforcement Of Standards?

• Groups such as W3C's QA activity and the Web Standards projects, … feel we should be promoting standards-compliance work more forcefully

• But such bodies seem to be very single-minded and ignore complexities of the real world


An Open Standards Culture

There is a third way!

The development of an open standards culture: • Promote the benefits of open standards• Promote exemplars showing best practices in use

of open standards

But:• Recognise difficulties of compliance• Recognise challenges of resourcing, technical

expertise, …


QA Focus

JISC has funded QA Focus project to:• Support its Information Environment digital library

programmes• Develop a QA (quality assurance) methodology

which can be applied to future programmesQA Focus takes a developmental approach:

• Explains reasons for standards & best practices• Provides lightweight methodology for supporting

use of standards and best practices• Encourages community to share its approaches• Seeks to encourages uptake of its methodology

within institutions as well as by projects

An important aspect of QA Focus's work is to make recommendations on the approach to standards taken with the programme

An important aspect of QA Focus's work is to make recommendations on the approach to standards taken with the programme


Developmental Culture

Possible approaches towards QA and compliance with standards:

• Policing approach• Developmental approach

QA Focus takes a developmental approach:• Explains reasons for standards & best practices• Provides lightweight methodology for supporting

use of standards and best practices• Encourages community to share its approaches• Seeks to encourages uptake of its methodology

within institutions as well as by projects


Policies

How do you know what you should do if you don't have documented polices?

Policy: Web StandardsStandard: XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0Architecture: Use of SSIs and text editorExceptions: Automatically-derived filesOwnership: The project manager is responsible for this policyChecking: Use ,validate after updateAudit Trail: Use ,rvalidate monthly and document findings

Policy example

You may find it useful to develop similar policies yourself – for example, a policy of the accessibility of your Web site


A Broad Spectrum Of Choice (1)

As part of the broad spectrum we have the following factors:

• Ownership and openness of standard (open, neutral body; proprietary but community process; community but spec publish; proprietary and reverse engineered; proprietary and closed)

• Availability of viewers (multiple platforms; available for free; available as open source)

• Availability of authoring tools (multiple platforms; available for free; available as open source)


A Broad Spectrum Of Choice (2)• Architectural Integrity (developed as part of

broader framework – cf W3C specs)• Fitness For Purpose (is the standard designed

for the purpose envisaged)• Expertise (does the organisation have the

necessary expertise available in-house)• Maturity of Standard (is the standard mature and

well-proven)• Local Culture (does the organisation seek to

make use of emerging standards or prefer to use proven technologies)

• User Needs (does the standard satisfy the requirements of the user)

• Preservation Needs (is the standard appropriate for long-term preservation)


Bidding Process

We will recommend that projects bidding for funding should demonstrate their acceptance of the open standards culture by describing :

• The standards they expect to use in their work• The technical architecture which will be used• The technical expertise they have to support this• The QA procedures they will use in order to

assess their compliance• Their justification for use of proprietary solutions


Reporting Procedures

We will recommend that projects which have been funded should demonstrate their use of open standards by providing the following information in their periodic reports:

• The standards they have implemented• Use of proprietary formats• The QA procedures they have implemented• Audit trails showing compliance with standards• Explanations of changes to original proposals


Conclusions

To conclude:• Open standards are important for the

cultural heritage community• However use of open standards is not

necessarily easy and may be costly• Rather than abandoning open standards

there is a need to adopt an open standards culture, which is tolerant towards use of proprietary solutions

A centre of expertise in digital information management Ideology Or Pragmatism? Open Standards And Cultural Heritage Web Sites Author & Presenter Brian.

Documents

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use of open standards

open standards bodies

open standards adoption

standards limitations

standards guys

programme standards

neutral standards body