IntegraL: Building NSDL Community Infrastructure

Libraries have large collections of online resources both locally and through subscriptions. We describe an approach for automatically linking related information and services throughout and across these online repositories. This “lightweight” integration approach is called IntLib (Integrating Library Collections and Services). IntLib also includes federated search across all repositories. Most libraries should be able to implement IntLib with some technical assistance.

With IntLib’s “virtual integration”, users interact with their library system just as before. But in addition, they see extra link anchors. Upon selecting one, IntLib automatically generates a list of links to relevant documents, services and metadata.

In our lecture we will demonstrate IntLib, explain how it works at a high-level, and describe how libraries can use IntLib to integrate their collections and services. We hope that an IntLib community will result from this and similar presentations.

Library users face several key impediments to completing tasks because library resources are not integrated adequately. Users often need to know which resources exist and relate to their task. They may have difficulty finding related information located outside the current system being searched. IntLib brings the relevant resources directly to the user.