Silkworm is a new initiative from Talis to make library content more visible and accessible. Since the Silkworm site doesn't explain the service very well, see the Silkworm white paper (June 13, 2005) or Paul Miller's long blog posting (June 16) about it. Excerpt from the white paper: 'Project Silkworm is based on the concept that library vendors must now collaborate in order to begin to deliver better services. This focus on participation (of both
vendors and users) permeates the whole project and is captured in four key values: [1] Sharing and community over duplication and isolation, [2] Reuse over reinvention, [3] Openness and interoperability over exclusivity, [4] Experimentation over certainty....Currently, the library market is structured in a high cost way with many vertical vendors and little horizontal specialisation. It will be too expensive for each player to provide an all-encompassing experience and the market should not have to bear the weight of each vendor duplicating this. Vendors will therefore need to work together. Indeed, it's the sign of any mature market that a horizontal structure is required to lower the total costs for all....The Talis Research Group has spent considerable time investigating possibilities for helping libraries to make content more visible and accessible to all and to give users the same quality experience they currently enjoy elsewhere. Under the banner of Project Silkworm, Talis has begun to create a Web 2.0 service-orientated network platform designed to discover, share and consume content that is currently hidden from the web. The platform can be considered as a coordination and access layer sitting above the hidden web that allows hidden web content to participate in the Web 2.0 paradigm and new applications to be built that have powerful architectures of participation to enhance the experience of users....The key aim of Project Silkworm is to remove the technical and cost barriers to building applications that share and use content....The multiple silos of content in the library and information world, and the potentially high cost of exposing them, is preventing the creativity, value creation and fantastic user experiences that should be possible today. The limitations of the situation are increasingly worrying as it becomes clear that the value that can be unlocked by breaking down the barriers between islands of information and making content work in many new and different ways is enormous.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/16/2005 11:30:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
