Kuali OLE: Milestone Release 0.6

Kuali OLE 0.6 is now available, a version loaded with increased functionality including schema to describe and transmit licensing information for electronic resources.

Academic research libraries are invited to test this latest milestone release of software that addresses the needs of academic and research libraries. Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) is a robust, enterprise-wide, easy-to-use system for selecting, acquiring and describing library information resources, which will link with business processes and value-added external resources.

Kuali OLE 0.6 adds the following features/functions, building on the infrastructure provided in the first milestone release 0.3.

● The OLE Instance schema is loosely based on the MARC Format for Holdings
Data (MFHD). OLE Instance documents are used to identify and describe
library resources locally owned/licensed by libraries and as such contain unique
information that can not be captured in bibliographic documents that may be
used/shared by multiple libraries.
● ONIX-PL, a standard used to describe and transmit licensing information for
electronic resources, will be utilized as the central schema for storing data within
Kuali OLE’s licensing module.
● Kuali Financial System (KFS)—underpinning OLE’s Acquire component—has been upgraded.
● With the onset of Rice 2.0, KRAD and KRMS features have been incorporated into part of OLE.
● Kuali Rapid Application Development (KRAD) provides the user interface OLE
needs for inquiries and lookups, transactional and maintenance documents.
● Kuali Rule Management System (KRMS) provides OLE the opportunity to build
its own flexible and easily managed business rule system.
● Code refactoring of the 0.3 Milestone Release to manage software dependencies. Most refactoring was due to KFS and Rice upgrades.
● The Service Registry contains information about all services that have been registered from OLE to the services bus (KSB), designed to allow developers to quickly develop and deploy services for remote and local consumption.

Details are available in the OLE 0.6 Milestone User Documentation.

“By developing version 0.6 on the improvements in Kuali Rice 2.0 middleware application suite, Kuali OLE maintains its commitment to building a flexible environment of services and workflows” says Tim McGeary, Chair of the Kuali OLE Function Council. “This infrastructure investment continues to position Kuali OLE for progressive integration with the upcoming release of Kuali Finance and other strategic enterprise applications used by our universities.”

Kuali OLE is the result of collaboration of higher education research libraries and commercial affiliates including Indiana University, Duke University, Lehigh University, North Carolina State University, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and HTC Global Services, Inc. Kuali OLE has also received generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

All Kuali OLE software and materials are available under the Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees.

The Kuali OLE Project Team is currently focusing its efforts on its Year Two road map for extending OLE functionality. Release 0.8 (October 2012) will focus on key functionality for Deliver and Describe. Release 1.0 (Q1 2013) will be the early adopters release.

About Kuali

The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of colleges and universities to develop and sustain administrative software to meet the needs of all sizes of higher education institutions, from small colleges to large research universities. The Kuali Foundation began in 2004 as a cooperative effort among partners and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Kuali Foundation Contact: Jennifer Foutty, jfoutty@kuali.org, 812-345-3948
Kuali OLE Contacts: Tim McGeary, tmm8@Lehigh.edu, 610-758-4998

Lyrasis KualiOLE session

Mark your calendar for this Lyrasis event:  “Kuali OLE Overview: Collaborative Open Source Library Management (Live Online)”

Date/Time:   June 8, 2012, 12:30-2:00 p.m. EST

Description:   This session is part of the LYRASIS second Friday series, a series of workshops providing information about and sharing new ideas and resources for resource sharing, electronic resources, and cataloging.

Speaker: Tim McGeary from Lehigh University and the Chair of the Kuali OLE Functional Council

Hosted by Peter Murray, LYRASIS

The Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project has been talked about for a number of years. Starting with a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2008, the design team produced a final report a year later and started looking for partners to build the software. In late 2009, the OLE project became “Kuali OLE” in recognition of its new home within the Kuali Foundation’s suite of academic enterprise applications. Since then the build team has been finalizing specifications and working with developers to construct the software. The Kuali OLE 0.3 release of November 2011 was “a stepping-stone towards the full-product that is on track for 2013 implementation.”

To register, visit the Lyrasis site: 

http://www.lyrasis.org/?sc_itemid={F05B68E4-740A-405C-8BCD-3FE089DA5F2E}&RowId=1-NPQAI

Kuali OLE and ONIX-PL

A guest blog post by Emily Lynema:

As of version 0.6, the Kuali OLE project has decided to collaborate closely with EDItEUR, the standards body responsible for the development and maintenance of ONIX-PL. ONIX-PL, a standard used to describe and transmit licensing information for electronic resources, will be utilized as the central schema for storing data within Kuali OLE’s licensing module. With a robust vocabulary for describing a license agreement and its terms, ONIX-PL enables staff to code license information in a format that can be re-purposed for both human and machine interaction.  As an XML based standard, it also fits seamlessly into the existing Kuali OLE docstore architecture. Kuali OLE’s XML based document store is a key strategy to support storing and indexing records across a variety of metadata formats.

By taking advantage of years of effort on the part of EDItEUR, working with partners in the industry supply chain, to develop and maintain ONIX-PL, Kuali OLE is saving a significant investment of time and resources that would be required to design such a complex data standard from scratch. Kuali OLE has evaluated a matrix of over 60 data elements that partner libraries may want to interpret and/or record for licenses; the vast majority of that extensive list is already included in the ONIX-PL schema and vocabulary. For the handful of elements that did not map directly into ONIX-PL, Kuali OLE has been working directly with EDItEUR to define use cases for the development of new vocabulary entries. For example, we anticipate the creation of several new dictionary values that would allow staff to record when licensed content is accessible only via password, as opposed to the more common IP authentication or Shibboleth authentication. In addition, ONIX-PL allows staff to create an unlimited number of free-text notes about a given license.

Utilization of an XML based standard like ONIX-PL for storage of license terms also opens the door to future integration. Although libraries have not historically received ONIX-PL encoded licenses from publishers, utilizing this standard within the Kuali OLE docstore would make this level of integration simple. For this reason, licensing functionality currently scheduled for the first release of Kuali OLE includes the ability to import ONIX-PL encoded licenses. As another example, it might be possible to define a simple ERMI XML schema and a re-usable ERMI to ONIX-PL stylesheet for libraries that have existing ERMI based license data stores utilizing non-standardized formats. This would reduce the burden on libraries migrating license data into OLE to conversion of their ERMI data stores into a simple XML format for ingest.

In partnership with EDItEUR, the Kuali OLE project is excited about the prospect of a future where standardized license data can be efficiently stored, exchanged, and shared with users.

Anonymous asked: Aloha Kauli, I am a LIS student doing a project on Open source software. But I don't have programming skills. I want to try this software. Could you please guide me how to access it? Thank you.

The current release is 0.3.  For documentation see:  https://wiki.kuali.org/display/OLE/OLE+Release+Documentation+-+for+Milestone+0.3

For test drive:  http://tst.ole.kuali.org/ole-tst/portal.jsp

In a few weeks, we will be releasing version 0.6.   So please look for announcements about the new version to try.  

Updated Kuali OLE Road Map

Be sure to check out the most recent version of the Kuali OLE Road Map:

http://kuali.org/OLE/Timeline

The Road Map details the features and updates in each of the upcoming releases of OLE, culminating in the release of Kuali OLE 1.0 in December 2012.  Release dates of note are:

·         Release of Kuali OLE 0.3: November 2011

·         Release of Kuali OLE 0.6: April 2012

·         Release of Kuali OLE 0.8: August 2012

·         Release of Kuali OLE 1.0: December 2012

Kuali OLE @ ALA Midwinter

Looking for Kuali OLE at ALA Midwinter?  Here’s a few events to consider:

Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries [aka Big Heads]
When:  Friday, January 20, 2012 - 9:30am to 12:30pm
Location:  Hyatt Regency, Reunion Ballroom E/F
Agenda will include an update on Kuali OLE and a discussion of how its features might change library workflows:  http://connect.ala.org/node/165750

Electronic Resources Management Interest Group
When:   Friday, January 20, 2012 - 4:00pm to 5:15pm
Hyatt Regency, Reunion Ballroom C

Details: Panelists representing Innovative Interfaces, Ex Libris and Kuali OLE will discuss the latest developments and trends in ERM development while giving special attention to ERM and ILS integration and its impact on electronic resource workflows. Questions covered by the panelists may include the following. What place does ERM functionality have in the development of next-generation ILS systems? How will ERM and ILS integration impact acquisition and management workflows? What are the biggest challenges in integrating ERM functions into the ILS framework?

EDUCAUSE LIVE session on Kuali OLE

Be sure to attend the EDUCAUSE LIVE Event on Wednesday January 18^th at 1pm EST.  The session “Kuali Open Library Environment: Reflections on Our First Year of Collaborative Software Development” will be moderated by Marc Hoit, Vice Chancellor and CIO, North Carolina State University.  The session will offer insight into the OLE design and collaborative methodologies of this significant and groundbreaking project.

Kuali OLE haiku

Starting the New Year on a light note, guest blogger Bob Persing (Kuali OLE core team/UPenn Libraries) shares some Kuali OLE haiku

OLE coming soon!
My New Year’s resolution:
Learn to type faster…

It seems logical:
Let users who know their needs
Design their system

Librarians love
data standards; OLE holds them
in its heart and soul.

User stories tell
what we need to do; OLE
follows their guidance.

Meetings, phone calls; repeat;
Draft, spec, code, test, then revise;
much work, good results

Information wants to
be free?  Open source software
satisfies desire.

Stands alone, but on
strong foundation of other
Kuali software

One million records
Indexed in milliseconds.
Damn, Doc Store is good

Loves MARC, and always
will, but wants to date other
data formats, too.

 “Bibliographic”
is an awfully long word to
fit in a haiku.

Multiple formats —
MODS, EAD, Dublin Core –
Results live as one.

Import and export
Plays nice with other systems
Data moves with ease.

But where’s the OPAC?
Plugs in behind whatever
face you show the world.

“Do you use Excel
to do things your system can’t?
Try OLE instead!”

ILS software
decisions can last ten years
or more.  Choose wisely.

Seem like simple tasks:
buy a book, pay an invoice.
OLE makes them so.

Ingest with fewer
profile problems leads to
less indigestion.

Will OLE print cards? No.
It won’t stamp date-due slips or
whisper “sshh” either.

The idea of a
virtual authority
file is intriguing.

Store your own patron
data, or make use of your
school’s master records.

Web-based interface
means no client software to
frustrate Mac users.

If “patron-driven”
acquisitions are in your
headlights, OLE’s your ride.

Need something unique?
Open source means you can build
extensions at will.

Early releases
let the world see our pieces
as they’re assembled.

Flexible options
for set-up let libraries
have things their own way.

Not first ILS
nor the oldest, but the most
collaborative

Want to join the Kuali OLE haiku fun?   Please add a comment with your haiku, but remember:  five, seven, five (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku)

User Stories for Kuali OLE

Knowing what functions users need to perform underpins any successful software application. Software developers have tried a variety of methods to gather meaningful information from users about requirements. One approach—writing user stories—has proven to be one of the most helpful and has been used by Kuali OLE to define its features and functions.

Generally speaking, a product manager gathers together people who will be users of a proposed new application.  They are given a list of roles roughly corresponding to standard job positions, e.g., “order clerk”, “acquisitions supervisor”, “circ desk clerk”, etc.  Participants can add roles to the list as needed. Individuals are then asked to write as many user stories as they can in the form of a sentence that begins: “As a [role], I need to…”. Anyone may write stories using multiple roles, e.g., an acquisitions unit manager who on occasion also performs clerical tasks could write stories from both viewpoints. The goal is to let users define their needs.

One of the challenges is to strike a balance between the too-broad and the too-specific. For example, consider the story: “As a library cataloger, I need to create metadata”. That is indeed a need, but it is very general. A potentially more useful story might be: “As a library cataloger, I need to create bibliographic, holdings and item-level data for library materials.” But regardless of the detail, each user story forms the basis for the next step: to identify what actions would prove the need has been met. To continue our example, these “acceptance criteria” might include such an action as: “create/update bibliographic data for a title in valid MARC format” which would, in turn, lead to functional and technical requirements describing how this is realized in the system. Acceptance criteria typically emerge from discussions with the users about their stories. The acceptance criteria in turn become the basis for testing.

Kuali OLE’s features and functions are based on approximately 1,200 user stories contributed by library staff from the eight development partners. A mixture of traditional functions—ordering, receiving, circulating, etc.—and new features—ERM, support for multiple record formats, using URIs for authority control, etc.—these user stories are the foundation on which OLE rests.