A Distributed Catalog for Digitized Cultural Heritage

International audiencePeer-to-peer networks have emerged recently as a flexible decentralized solution to handle large amount of data without the use of high-end servers. In this paper we present a distributed catalog built up on an overlay network called "Synapse". The Synapse protocol allows interconnection of different overlay networks each of them being an abstraction of a "community" of virtual providers. Data storage and data retrieval from different kind of content providers (i.e. libraries, archives, museums, universities, research centers, etc.) can be stored inside one catalog. We illustrate the concept based on the Synapse protocol: a catalog for digitized cultural heritage of Serbia

Libraries and Museums in the Flat World: Are They Becoming Virtual Destinations?

In his recent book, “TheWorld is Flat”, Thomas L. Friedman reviews the impact of networks on globalization. The emergence of the Internet, web browsers, computer applications talking to each other through the Internet, and the open source software, among others, made the world flatter and created an opportunity for individuals to collaborate and compete globally. Friedman predicts that “connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network…could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation”. Networking also is changing the ways by which libraries and museums provide access to information sources and services. In the flat world, libraries and museums are no longer a physical “place” only: they are becoming “virtual destinations”. This paper discusses the implications of this transformation for the digitization and preservation of, and access to, cultural heritage resources

HELIN Consortium LORI Grant United States Online History_Digital Repository Sites

Description of state online history,digital repository sites, repared by: Emily Cuellar and Thomas Evans, Rhode Island State Library, July, 201

Recent Developments in Cultural Heritage Image Databases: Directions for User-Centered Design

published or submitted for publicatio

Becoming the Gothic Archive: From Digital Collection to Digital Humanities

The Gothic Archive is the flagship digital humanities project for the Marquette University library. The project was birthed from a simple digital collection, and through the partnership of faculty and librarians, was transformed into something more. The core tenets of digital collection creation were adhered to in order to create a solid foundation upon which to build the Archive. The expertise of both groups and communication were key in the evolution of the collection, and in discovering and highlighting the relationships between the objects. This case study reviews the steps Marquette took in creating the collection and taking it to the level of digital humanities project

International print and digital repositories initiatives in the United States: CRL, Portico, LOCKSS, Internet Archive : print archives in the United States

A number of pressures on academic libraries imperil the long-term survivability of printed knowledge and heritage materials. Ever-growing volumes of materials, costs of preserving and delivering paper-based research resources, and researchers’ growing demand for source materials in electronic formats all produce strain on our institutions. ..

Accurator: Nichesourcing for Cultural Heritage

With more and more cultural heritage data being published online, their usefulness in this open context depends on the quality and diversity of descriptive metadata for collection objects. In many cases, existing metadata is not adequate for a variety of retrieval and research tasks and more specific annotations are necessary. However, eliciting such annotations is a challenge since it often requires domain-specific knowledge. Where crowdsourcing can be successfully used for eliciting simple annotations, identifying people with the required expertise might prove troublesome for tasks requiring more complex or domain-specific knowledge. Nichesourcing addresses this problem, by tapping into the expert knowledge available in niche communities. This paper presents Accurator, a methodology for conducting nichesourcing campaigns for cultural heritage institutions, by addressing communities, organizing events and tailoring a web-based annotation tool to a domain of choice. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) a nichesourcing methodology, 2) an annotation tool for experts and 3) validation of the methodology and tool in three case studies. The three domains of the case studies are birds on art, bible prints and fashion images. We compare the quality and quantity of obtained annotations in the three case studies, showing that the nichesourcing methodology in combination with the image annotation tool can be used to collect high quality annotations in a variety of domains and annotation tasks. A user evaluation indicates the tool is suited and usable for domain specific annotation tasks

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

Thesauri Design to improve access to Cartographic Heritage in the context of the Spatial Data Infrastructures

Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica, ontologías, Información Geográfica, interoperabilidad. The access of historians and document management specialists to documentary funds and old cartography is at times arduous due to the scattering of maps throughout different map libraries. Thus, it would be of interest to be able to access all available information remotely, following the Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) guidelines. DIGMAP is a cooperative project between six European countries that proposes to develop a solution for indexing, searching and browsing, through a thesaurus, in the European collections of digitized historical maps. It will be possible to match them with the geographic areas covered by each map in the collection and to find it on them, based on standard and open data models. These results will be useful for local digital map libraries, especially if it is of historical – cultural importance, or as interoperable components for wider and distributed systems. This project takes advantage of thesauri technologies to develop three major subsystems: On one hand, the gazetteer for managing and providing access to multilingual information relating to geographic features like geographic coordinates, names of places or areas and historical events related with the geographic points, places or areas (with dates or time intervals); The authority file to maintain and provide easy access to the author’s information and identification and disambiguating from similar and duplicate authors; and on the other hand, the map services for providing access to map information in raster and vector formats. The paper presents an early overview on the DIGMAP project, particularly focusing on the multilingual Thesauri aspects with the aim of providing solutions for the cartographic heritage framework, applying the main Spatial Data Infrastructures guidelines. ISO 19112 (Spatial Reference by Geographic Identifiers) will also be considered and its geographic identifiers issues

Albanian libraries in a changing society

This paper provides an overview of the Albanian library network within the changing context of the past twenty-two years. The first part traces the development of the library system in Albania by giving a brief review of library legislation and library science education and professional training. The second part provides background information about the implementation of new technologies that facilitated free access to information throughout the country. The paper highlights the leadership role of the National Library of Albania (NLA), which functions as the professional body that oversees all libraries in the country, and its leading role nationwide. The NLA’s engagement in various digitization projects that ensure access to the Albanian national cultural heritage and treasures makes it an important contributor to international projects as well.published or submitted for publicatio