CC-interop : COPAC/Clumps Continuing Technical Cooperation. Final Project Report

As far as is known, CC-interop was the first project of its kind anywhere in the world and still is. Its basic aim was to test the feasibility of cross-searching between physical and virtual union catalogues, using COPAC and the three functioning "clumps" or virtual union catalogues (CAIRNS, InforM25, and RIDING), all funded or part-funded by JISC in recent years. The key issues investigated were technical interoperability of catalogues, use of collection level descriptions to search union catalogues dynamically, quality of standards in cataloguing and indexing practices, and usability of union catalogues for real users. The conclusions of the project were expected to, and indeed do, contribute to the development of the JISC Information Environment and to the ongoing debate as to the feasibility and desirability of creating a national UK catalogue. They also inhabit the territory of collection level descriptions (CLDs) and the wider services of JISC's Information Environment Services Registry (IESR). The results of this project will also have applicability for the common information environment, particularly through the landscaping work done via SCONE/CAIRNS. This work is relevant not just to HE and not just to digital materials, but encompasses other sectors and domains and caters for print resources as well. Key findings are thematically grouped as follows: System performance when inter-linking COPAC and the Z39.50 clumps. The various individual Z39.50 configurations permit technical interoperability relatively easily but only limited semantic interoperability is possible. Disparate cataloguing and indexing practices are an impairment to semantic interoperability, not just for catalogues but also for CLDs and descriptions of services (like those constituting JISC's IESR). Creating dynamic landscaping through CLDs: routines can be written to allow collection description databases to be output in formats that other UK users of CLDs, including developers of the JISC information environment. Searching a distributed (virtual) catalogue or clump via Z39.50: use of Z39.50 to Z39.50 middleware permits a distributed catalogue to be searched via Z39.50 from such disparate user services as another virtual union catalogue or clump, a physical union catalogue like COPAC, an individual Z client and other IE services. The breakthrough in this Z39.50 to Z39.50 conundrum came with the discovery that the JISC-funded JAFER software (a result of the 5/99 programme) meets many of the requirements and can be used by the current clumps services. It is technically possible for the user to select all or a sub-set of available end destination Z39.50 servers (we call this "landscaping") within this middleware. Comparing results processing between COPAC and clumps. Most distributed services (clumps) do not bring back complete results sets from associated Z servers (in order to save time for users). COPAC on-the-fly routines could feasibly be applied to the clumps services. An automated search set up to repeat its query of 17 catalogues in a clump (InforM25) hourly over nearly 3 months returned surprisingly good results; for example, over 90% of responses were received in less than one second, and no servers showed slower response times in periods of traditionally heavy OPAC use (mid-morning to early evening). User behaviour when cross-searching catalogues: the importance to users of a number of on-screen features, including the ability to refine a search and clear indication that a search is processing. The importance to users of information about the availability of an item as well as the holdings data. The impact of search tools such as Google and Amazon on user behaviour and the expectations of more information than is normally available from a library catalogue. The distrust of some librarians interviewed of the data sources in virtual union catalogues, thinking that there was not true interoperability

MSUO Information Technology and Geographical Information Systems: Common Protocols & Procedures. Report to the Marine Safety Umbrella Operation

The Marine Safety Umbrella Operation (MSUO) facilitates the cooperation between Interreg funded Marine Safety Projects and maritime stakeholders. The main aim of MSUO is to permit efficient operation of new projects through Project Cooperation Initiatives, these include the review of the common protocols and procedures for Information Technology (IT) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This study carried out by CSA Group and the National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG) reviews current spatial information standards in Europe and the data management methodologies associated with different marine safety projects. International best practice was reviewed based on the combined experience of spatial data research at NCG and initiatives in the US, Canada and the UK relating to marine security service information and acquisition and integration of large marine datasets for ocean management purposes. This report identifies the most appropriate international data management practices that could be adopted for future MSUO projects

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BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

CHORUS Deliverable 3.3: Vision Document - Intermediate version

The goal of the CHORUS vision document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area (in line with the mandate of CHORUS as a Coordination Action). This current intermediate draft of the CHORUS vision document (D3.3) is based on the previous CHORUS vision documents D3.1 to D3.2 and on the results of the six CHORUS Think-Tank meetings held in March, September and November 2007 as well as in April, July and October 2008, and on the feedback from other CHORUS events. The outcome of the six Think-Thank meetings will not just be to the benefit of the participants which are stakeholders and experts from academia and industry – CHORUS, as a coordination action of the EC, will feed back the findings (see Summary) to the projects under its purview and, via its website, to the whole community working in the domain of AV content search. A few subjections of this deliverable are to be completed after the eights (and presumably last) Think-Tank meeting in spring 2009

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

CHORUS Deliverable 4.3: Report from CHORUS workshops on national initiatives and metadata

Minutes of the following Workshops: • National Initiatives on Multimedia Content Description and Retrieval, Geneva, October 10th, 2007. • Metadata in Audio-Visual/Multimedia production and archiving, Munich, IRT, 21st – 22nd November 2007 Workshop in Geneva 10/10/2007 This highly successful workshop was organised in cooperation with the European Commission. The event brought together the technical, administrative and financial representatives of the various national initiatives, which have been established recently in some European countries to support research and technical development in the area of audio-visual content processing, indexing and searching for the next generation Internet using semantic technologies, and which may lead to an internet-based knowledge infrastructure. The objective of this workshop was to provide a platform for mutual information and exchange between these initiatives, the European Commission and the participants. Top speakers were present from each of the national initiatives. There was time for discussions with the audience and amongst the European National Initiatives. The challenges, communalities, difficulties, targeted/expected impact, success criteria, etc. were tackled. This workshop addressed how these national initiatives could work together and benefit from each other. Workshop in Munich 11/21-22/2007 Numerous EU and national research projects are working on the automatic or semi-automatic generation of descriptive and functional metadata derived from analysing audio-visual content. The owners of AV archives and production facilities are eagerly awaiting such methods which would help them to better exploit their assets.Hand in hand with the digitization of analogue archives and the archiving of digital AV material, metadatashould be generated on an as high semantic level as possible, preferably fully automatically. All users of metadata rely on a certain metadata model. All AV/multimedia search engines, developed or under current development, would have to respect some compatibility or compliance with the metadata models in use. The purpose of this workshop is to draw attention to the specific problem of metadata models in the context of (semi)-automatic multimedia search