Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

A cooperative-relational approach to digital libraries

Copyright @ 2007 Springer-Verlag, Berlin HeidelbergThis paper presents a novel approach to model-driven development of Digital Library (DL) systems. The overall idea is to allow Digital Library systems designers (e.g. information architects, librarians, domain experts) to easily design such systems by using a visual language. We designed a Domain Specific Visual Language for such a purpose and developed a framework supporting it; this framework helps designers by automatically generating code for the defined Digital Library system, so that they do not have to get involved into technical issues concerning its deployment. In our approach, both Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Collaborative Work techniques are exploited when generating interfaces and services for the specific Digital Library domain

Extending Greenstone for Institutional Repositories

We examine the problem of designing a generalized system for building institutional repositories. Widely used schemes such as DSpace are tailored to a particular set of requirements: fixed metadata set; standard view when searching and browsing; pre-determined sequence for depositing items; built-in workflow for vetting new items. In contrast, Fedora builds in flexibility: institutional repositories are just one possible instantiation—however generality incurs a high overhead and uptake has been sluggish. This paper shows how existing components of the Greenstone software can be repurposed to provide a generalized institutional repository that falls between these extremes

Digital Scotland, the relevance of library research and the Glasgow Digital Library Project

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co-ordinated 'virtual Scotland' and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co-operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini-Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co-operation

From Keyword Search to Exploration: How Result Visualization Aids Discovery on the Web

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney). We also consider the both traditional and novel ways in which these strategies have been evaluated. From our review of cognitive processes, browser design, and evaluations, we reflect on the future opportunities and new paradigms for exploring and interacting with Web search results

eSciDoc – a Scholarly Information and Communication Platform for the Max Planck Society

eSciDoc is as a joint project of the Max Planck Society and FIZ Karlsruhe, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), with the aim to realize a next-generation platform for com-munication and publication in research organizations. The result of the entire eSciDoc project is intended to ensure open and persistent access to the research results and materials of the Max Planck Society and to integrate these materials in an emerging e-Science network, to increase the accountability of research and to improve the visibility of the Max Planck Society. At the same time, the project aims to provide effective and comprehensive access to information for Max Planck re-searchers and their work groups. Additionally, eSciDoc will support scientific collaboration and interdisciplinary research in future e-Science scenarios and optimize the exploitation of information avail-able through an interconnected global scientific knowledge space

eSciDoc – a Scholarly Information and Communication Platform for the Max Planck Society

eSciDoc is as a joint project of the Max Planck Society and FIZ Karlsruhe, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), with the aim to realize a next-generation platform for com-munication and publication in research organizations. The result of the entire eSciDoc project is intended to ensure open and persistent access to the research results and materials of the Max Planck Society and to integrate these materials in an emerging e-Science network, to increase the accountability of research and to improve the visibility of the Max Planck Society. At the same time, the project aims to provide effective and comprehensive access to information for Max Planck re-searchers and their work groups. Additionally, eSciDoc will support scientific collaboration and interdisciplinary research in future e-Science scenarios and optimize the exploitation of information avail-able through an interconnected global scientific knowledge space

CELO: A System for Efficiently Building Informatics Solutions to Manage Biomedical Research Data

Traditional data management methods are unable to sufficiently support growing trends in biomedical research such as collection of larger data sets, use of diverse data types, and sharing of data among multiple laboratories. Although many technologies are readily available to help laboratories build data management solutions, many laboratories are not taking advantage of them. This may be due to hardware and software costs, the need for an informaticist to build customized solutions, and long development times. Several systems already exist which attempt to address the informatics needs of biomedical researchers. A review of these systems has revealed the benefits and drawbacks of various system design approaches, and has helped us to identify a set of core requirements for a system that will successfully serve the biomedical research community. In consideration of these requirements, we developed the Customizable Electronic Laboratory Online (CELO) system to help laboratories efficiently build cost-effective informatics solutions. CELO automatically creates a generic database and web interface for laboratories that submit a simple web registration form. Researchers can then build their own customized data management systems using web-based features such as configurable user permissions, customizable user interfaces, support for multimedia files, and templates for defining research data representations. An evaluation of the CELO system has demonstrated its ability to efficiently create customized solutions for research laboratories with basic data management needs. The evaluation has also highlighted areas in which CELO can be improved and has elucidated potential research problems that may be of interest to the biomedical informatics field

Science of Digital Libraries(SciDL)

Our purpose is to ensure that people and institutions better manage information through digital libraries (DLs). Thus we address a fundamental human and social need, which is particularly urgent in the modern Information (and Knowledge) Age. Our goal is to significantly advance both the theory and state-of-theart of DLs (and other advanced information systems) - thoroughly validating our approach using highly visible testbeds. Our research objective is to leverage our formal, theory-based approach to the problems of defining, understanding, modeling, building, personalizing, and evaluating DLs. We will construct models and tools based on that theory so organizations and individuals can easily create and maintain fully functional DLs, whose components can interoperate with corresponding components of related DLs. This research should be highly meritorious intellectually. We bring together a team of senior researchers with expertise in information retrieval, human-computer interaction, scenario-based design, personalization, and componentized system development and expect to make important contributions in each of those areas. Of crucial import, however, is that we will integrate our prior research and experience to achieve breakthrough advances in the field of DLs, regarding theory, methodology, systems, and evaluation. We will extend the 5S theory, which has identified five key dimensions or onstructs underlying effective DLs: Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios, and Societies. We will use that theory to describe and develop metamodels, models, and systems, which can be tailored to disciplines and/or groups, as well as personalized. We will disseminate our findings as well as provide toolkits as open source software, encouraging wide use. We will validate our work using testbeds, ensuring broad impact. We will put powerful tools into the hands of digital librarians so they may easily plan and configure tailored systems, to support an extensible set of services, including publishing, discovery, searching, browsing, recommending, and access control, handling diverse types of collections, and varied genres and classes of digital objects. With these tools, end-users will for be able to design personal DLs. Testbeds are crucial to validate scientific theories and will be thoroughly integrated into SciDL research and evaluation. We will focus on two application domains, which together should allow comprehensive validation and increase the significance of SciDL's impact on scholarly communities. One is education (through CITIDEL); the other is libraries (through DLA and OCKHAM). CITIDEL deals with content from publishers (e.g, ACM Digital Library), corporate research efforts e.g., CiteSeer), volunteer initiatives (e.g., DBLP, based on the database and logic rogramming literature), CS departments (e.g., NCSTRL, mostly technical reports), educational initiatives (e.g., Computer Science Teaching Center), and universities (e.g., theses and dissertations). DLA is a unit of the Virginia Tech library that virtually publishes scholarly communication such as faculty-edited journals and rare and unique resources including image collections and finding aids from Special Collections. The OCKHAM initiative, calling for simplicity in the library world, emphasizes a three-part solution: lightweightprotocols, component-based development, and open reference models. It provides a framework to research the deployment of the SciDL approach in libraries. Thus our choice of testbeds also will nsure that our research will have additional benefit to and impact on the fields of computing and library and information science, supporting transformations in how we learn and deal with information