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The IMesh Toolkit
[ Work In Hand > Components > Reading Lists]
Reading lists - Use Cases
In this section we describe the inclusion of subject gateway records in reading lists from the point of view of a user who is creating a reading list. UML is used to model the interactions of the user from from the time when the material to include in the reading list is located to the presentation of the reading list. Other actors (such as external systems) are also identified. A short description of the use cases follows the diagram. A different view is provided by the domain model which models the subsystems (i.e. the software tools that support the process) and identifies their relations.
Uses Case Descriptions
Locate Resources
The first step in the process of creating a reading list is to identify the items to go into the list. The resources chosen may be available on-line (but not necessarily) and their descriptions may vary, from a simple URL that links to a web page, to a full bibliographic entry. The owner may have prior knowledge of the resource (e.g. a book on their bookshelf). Alternatively a process of discovery may be involved, and the Reading List Owner could use discovery services such as an OPAC or a Subject Gateway to search for suitable items.
View and Edit Resource List to Create Reading List
The Reading List Owner edits the reading list, adding or removing resources, changing the resource descriptions, adding or changing the detail of the descriptions and perhaps making his or her own comments on the resource, or highlighting relevance to a course (e.g. a specific topic in the module to which the item is relevant). The reading list owner may have different methods for managing a reading list. The tools may vary from a reference management package (such as EndNote or Reference Manager), a text editor (such as Word) to an HTML editor if the list is stored as an HTML document.
Store Reading List
A version of the list is stored (usually locally) in some format, for example the native format of the tool being used, although other formats are also available, and exchange between formats is possible. A copy of the list may also be stored or made available in a different location.
Present List
Finally, the list is made available to the Reading List User, through a presentation system. This could vary from a print-out of the list, but increasingly this could also be an on-line system within which the user is learning, such as the library portal, the institutional portal or a managed learning environment (MLE).
Relation to the JISC Information Environment (IE)
The JISC Information Environment (IE) Architecture Functional model provides a high-level overview of functionality, through a number of use-cases described in UML, pictured below. As stated by the authors, more detailed analysis of areas of functionality is required. It is hoped that the work on reading lists carried out in the IMesh toolkit project contributes to the understanding of the Information Environment, and to this purpose the reading list use cases are related to the Information Environment use cases and architecture.
The JISC IE indicates a distinction between resources and resource descriptions, where a resource description is a metadata record describing a resource. The description may vary in detail from very minimal to very rich. The resource description acts as a "surrogate" for the resource, and the description may be an end in its own right, but it can also provide a link to the resource itself.
In the reading list scenarios, we refer to resource collections and but these are in fact resource description collections in the JISC IE sense. The 'locate' use case in the reading list scenario is an extension of the 'discover' use case of the JISC IE. The reading list use case does not address the whole of the discover usecase (which is too wide for our purposes). It addresses the location of resource descriptions for re-use in a reading list. In the case of a book that the lecturer has already 'discovered' in the sense that s/he has knowledge of the book (i.e. the resource itself), what the lecturer requires is to locate (or discover) a suitable description and location of that resource, for example in the library OPAC. An element of searching and browsing may also be involved if the resource descriptions are found in a subject gateway. In other words, the 'locate' reading list use case is akin to the 'discover' JISC IE use case, but is narrower in that it does not encompass the 'survey' use case, and some aspects of discovery (such as alert or assistQuery in the JISC IE) are outside the scope of the IMesh Toolkit reading list work.
The reading list use cases provide several extensions of the 'useRecord' JISC
IE use case. First of all, the view and edit resource list is an example
of how the record can be used within a variety of tools which
enable the modification and annotation of the record. The choice of tool
may depend on the format in which the record is available. There are
also links with the discover use case, since an integrated tool may support
both searching and editing of a result set (e.g. EndNote).
'saveRecord' is shown in the JISC IE as a specific extension of useRecord.
Once again the save record feature will depend on the formats of the tools
being used in other use cases (such as discover). The interchange between
formats could be needed so that the user can move the record between systems,
e.g. between an editing system and a presentation system.
We have thus identified another use case, 'transformRecord', that could feature in the JISC IE
as an extension of the useRecord use case. 'transformRecord' code happen
transparently to the user, or as an extension of saveRecord or share.
The 'presentList' use case in the reading list study maps to the 'share'
scenario of the JISC IE 'useRecord' use cases. In the case of
reading lists, we are considering 'presentList' as being an instance in
which the list was presented electronically through a protal or VLE.
However other modes of share occur, for example print-outs of the list
may be handed out. As noted previously, share may require a transformation
of the record format. As the JISC IE documentation points out, typically
the resource description (record) that is shared will be the basis for obtaining the resource itself. In the case of subject gateway records, the link
with the resource will be a URL. For other resources the link may be an
openURL. For the purposes of this study (on the creation of reading lists,
and specifically looking at the inclusion of subject gateway records in lists),
we do not consider the JISC IE 'access' use case,
beyond providing the link between the presentation of the list
and the access by the user, since subject gateway records typically describe
on-line resources, i.e resources that are available at a URL.
Related Work
The Deliver project has carried out a detailed User Needs Analysis taking into account
other points of view, such as the librarians within institutions who manage resources
that are recommended in reading lists.
DELIVER User Needs Analysis Report