Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of the systems, procedures and culture of an organisation to be managed in such a way as to maximise opportunities for exchange and re-use of information, whether internally or externally. When organizations use the same set of rules for a certain activity, they can inter-operate or work together more efficiently (e.g. for creating mutual information systems such as online catalogues).

Paul Miller further divides interoperability into 6 types:

1: Technical interoperability – Facilitated by using common technical standards (e.g. file types, metadata, etc.).

2: Semantic interoperability – Facilitated by using common vocabularies for the terminologies used in data (e.g. thesauri).

3: Political/Human interoperability – Facilitated by understanding and overcoming the barrierscaused by the different experiences and agendas of users and information providers

4: Inter-community interoperability – Facilitated by recognising differences between discipline communities and overcoming them by working together (e.g. Museums, archives and libraries)

5: Legal interoperability – Facilitated by following the legal restraints imposed on informationproviders (e.g. Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation)

6: International Interoperability – Facilitated by recognising and overcoming the barriers caused by cultural and linguistic differences.

Source: Helen Ashby – Gordon McKenna – Matthew Stiff. SPECTRUM Knowledge. London: MDA, 2001, p. 63 in ATHENA WP3 (2011), Digitisation: standards landscape for european museums, archives, libraries, p. 13.

See also: ISO, ISO norm, Standard

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