End user development of digital collection mash-ups: A survey to assess the suitability of current infrastructure

(2012) "End user development of digital collection mash‐ups: A survey to assess the suitability of current infrastructure", Mash‐ups, web applications that combine data from multiple sources to create a new service, have become common fixtures on libraries' web sites. Many libraries feature mash‐ups that display branch information on a Google map or bring in Amazon book cover images into the catalog. As consumers of mashable data, these libraries are capitalizing on mash‐ups to visualize information and create new resources. However, the way they could exploit this trend to greatest advantage is as providers of mashable data, by furnishing programmatic access to their own collections of digitized content and metadata. In " What is a mashup? " (Fichter, 2009), Darlene Fichter describes a few examples of mash‐ups created by patrons using content furnished by libraries, including a new books virtual bookshelf employing data from an online catalog RSS feed and book cover images from Syndetic Solutions, and a Firefox extension called Bookburro that recognizes bibliographic data within a web page and offers related information such as local library holdings. These early efforts only begin to reveal the potential for user‐developed digital collection mash‐ups and highlight the need for services to support such activities. This article will explore why it is advantageous for libraries to provide mashable digital collections for end‐user development and discuss the three essential components of this service – digital content and metadata, programmatic access to the collections, as well as appropriate access controls and policies – which libraries either already offer or are well‐positioned to do so. Providing this service will likely require that libraries retool technical infrastructure and policies to support direct access to the digital content and metadata. How much of an investment is needed? To answer this question, the author surveyed Association of Research Libraries (ARL, n.d.) members' digital libraries and other discovery platforms to determine if current infrastructure and terms of use policies can support user‐developed mash‐ups, and if not, what steps could be taken to fulfill this goal. Benefits of a mashable digital collection service Providing users with programmatic access to digital collections is a departure from libraries' conventional approach to delivering content. As Rich Gazan notes in his article on social annotations in digital libraries (Gazan, 2008): Though designed as systems for knowledge discovery, the majority of digital libraries operate from the traditional expert model. Subject experts create content, digital library experts …