1. Online Information Conference
November 21, 2012
Open @ FAO
Rachele.Oriente@fao.org Knowledge & Information Officer
Management Officer, David Lubin Memorial Library
Steve Katz. (Twitter: @SteveK1958)
Chief, Knowledge Management and Library Services
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO)
• FAO is a specialized agency of
the United Nations
• Millennium Goals. Goal 1
Eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger
• ≥190 Member Countries
• HQs in Rome, plus ≥5000 staff
in:
• 5 Regional Offices
• 11 Sub-regional Offices
• 82 FAO Representations
• 36 country or liaison offices
• Increasing decentralization

3. Open @ FAO : A Bit of History
 1996 – First appearance of FAO website www.fao.org
and, SGML Repository Proposal; FAOSTAT on-line
 1997 – Corporate Document Repository (XML
Compatible)
 2003 – Document Repository (PDF)
 2007 – Open Archive Proposal (Fedora Commons)
 2013(?) – openarchive.fao.org

4. General Advantages of OS
 Free/low initial  Philosophy of OS-
investment champions at FAO
 Low administration  Stability against
costs, No negotiation vendor withdrawing a
with vendors, no legal product or support
clearances
 Vulnerability to
 Customizable security is diminished
 Standards by quick and large
 Enhanced community response
interoperability

5. Potential Risks with OS
 Time and money wasted  Threshold of patience for
from lack of direction community process expires
 Funding insufficient for  Weak governance
unforeseen costs  Documentation poor—
 Staff capacity insufficient internal & community
 Staff time monopolized with  Potential for forking
OS, and other work suffers  Potential for vulnerabilities
 Trained staff are lost being targeted & attacked
 Lack of collaboration leads  Low
to narrow system produced credibility/trust, reputational
--proprietary systems can risk, legal exposure?
be generic but also well-  Development of Koha
rounded serials module

7. Consequence of the risks

8. Selecting a System:
Goals, Objectives & Requirements
 Discovery & Access:
 Technical
 Multi-lingual interface
 Open Source
 Compliant with OAI-PMH & other
 Scalable standards (external and internal
 Extensible interoperability)
 Modular  mobile access & delivery:
 Interoperable with other FAO developing countries
systems, e.g. Data.fao.org &  Accessible across old
departmental websites platforms, operating systems and
 Administrative software versions: developing
countries
 De-duplication of work (e-pubs &
Library catalogue)  Full-text and advanced search
with Agrovoc subject headings
 Workflow & Content control
and metadata field searching
 Preservation  Advanced & full-text searching
 OAIS model
 Some native basic preservation
actions

9. Fedora’s Features: Advantages
 Open source: Fedora Commons & Creative Commons & open standards
 Modular: flexible & extensible
 Ingests, stores, and manages digital content of any type
 Metadata in any format can be managed and maintained
 Uses a variety of front-and-back ends for user ease
 Access: full-text search (Gsearch); multilingual interfaces; mobile delivery
 Disseminator allows specific types of content to express itself as
needed, egg zoom in on photos; can create specific semantics for
books, images, maps, texts, etc.
 Can repurpose content for specific context
 Interoperable: data accessed by Web APIs
 OAIS & OAI-PMH
 Scaleable—accomodates millions of objects
 Some Preservation actions included—Rebuilder Utility, checksums; virus
checks; format verification & validation

10. Disadvantages of Fedora
 Challenging, difficult & complex to implement.
 Requires significantly more staff resources to
customize than other OS repository software
(e.g.DSpace)
 Necessary staff development process is slow
 Requires significant financial investment to
deploy:
 Requires significantly more finances to customize
than other OS repository software (e.g. DSpace)
 Contracting out expensive
 Limited pool of contractors with Fedora expertise

11. Fedora Commons Community
 Over 300 registered Fedora Repositories
 Active in development and archiving and information sustainability.
 Reputable and prestigious partners, allies & sponsors
 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Arrow, Cornell University
Information Science, DSpace, eSciDoc, FIZ Karlsruhe, Johns
Hopkins University, MediaShelf, Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, Mulgara, NSDL, OhioLink, PLOS One, Rutgers, Sun
Microsystems,DTU Technical University of Denmark, Topaz and
VNS
 Community provides good documentation: DuraSpace provides
documentation, wiki, tutorials, brochures, newsletter, repository of
users, logos and more (www.fedora-commons.org)

12. FAO Open Archive Working
System Interface
 EPM for departmental submissions
 Customized to reflect FAO departmental-
specific workflows—e.g. FI has 3 levels of
control; AG 1 level of approval
 Data producers take & retain responsibility
for content
 Basic metadata at working system level

14. DLML Cataloguing Module
 CM: Enriched metadata added by
cataloguing module
 OA will merge the cataloguing functions
now in an CDS/isis system (late 1960s)—
also OS—but no longer supported and the
current CDR

16. FAO Open Archive User
Interface

20. FAO’s experience
Benefits Challenges
 Staff has moved to another
 Repository completely tailored department but project
to FAO’s particular needs remained—expertise walked
 Inspiration to begin Digital away, tacit knowledge lost
Preservation  Documentation of procedures
 Developing in-house expertise poor—high-level
 Contributions to Fedora documentation
community  Strong capacity required
 Low administrative overhead  More expensive than
 No negotiations with vendors anticipated.
 Standards for exchange  Working silos counter
productive to process
 Lengthy development time— 5
years + ?

21. FAO’s OS Lessons Learned.
OS projects require:
 Adequate staff capacity
 Slow & expensive process to develop staff capacity
 Document every decision , not only general descriptions of what was done
 Adequate funding—can be expensive
 Hidden costs: staff training, time spent in research, hardware, costs of external
maintenance and hosting, and if so consider if there are any costs for repatriating
your own data.
 Clarity of concrete goals and objects
 Know the difference between what you need and what you want
 Know your limits and tolerances—what can you give up?
 Consider what the software can do and not do
 Be realistic about the minimum required to launch repository
 Articulate goals before you start and stick to them, if possible, to avoid wasting
effort and resource

22. Still More OS Lessons Learned.
The Organizational experience
 OS projects require:
 Inter-departmental collaboration to avoid work
silos. One skill set focuses only one aspect. If
only IT is involved, the access end, user
interface, and policies will be neglected
 Solution: Collaborate.
 Cross-fertilize
across work units and staff skill sets for
development, implementation and administration→
develop whole system uniformly.

23. A mixed bag: Advantages &
Disadvantages & vice-versa
 Open source free/ hidden costs can be large
 Independence from vendors/community support may be
limited and/or slow
 Commercial vendors may drop a software / community
may be more stable & invested
 Security—open code means hacking/more solutions to
hacking
 No real marketing by the community; no vested interest /
no one really accountable
 FAO remains a proponent of OS

24. Thank You!
 Questions? Comments? Please get in
touch with us:
 Rachele.Oriente@fao.org
and/or
 Stephen.Katz@fao.org