STELLAR (Semantic Technologies Enhancing the Lifecycle of Learning Resources): Jisc Final Report

[Project Summary] As one of the earliest distance learning providers The Open University (OU) has a rich heritage of archived learning materials. An ever increasing amount of that is in digital form and is being deposited with the University Archive. This growth has been driven by digitisation activity from projects such as AVA (Access to Video Assets) and the Fedora-based Open University Digital Library ‘a place to discover digital and digitised archival content from the OU Library, from videos and images to digitised documents’. Other digital content is being captured from web archiving activities, such as work to preserve Moodle Virtual Learning Environment course websites. An evidence based understanding is required to inform digital preservation policies, curation strategy and investment in digital library development. Following the Pre-enhancement, Enhancement and Post-enhancement methodology set out by Jisc, STELLAR adopted the model of a balanced scorecard to ascertain the value ascribed to the non-current learning materials. Four aspects were considered: Personal and professional perspectives of value; Value to the Higher Educational and academic communities; Value to internal processes and cultures; Financial perspectives of value. The outcomes of the survey indicated that stakeholders place a high value on the materials, and that they perceived them to have value in all areas evaluated. Three OU courses were chosen from the digital library for the transformation stage. These materials were enhanced and transformed into RDF, a process that required more extensive metadata expertise and effort than was expected. Following enhancement the RDF was accessed through a tool called DiscOU, created by a member of the project team from the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute. DiscOU uses both linked data and a semantic meaning engine to analyse the meaning of the text in a search query. This is matched against the meaning of the content derived from an index of the full-text of the digital library content. In the final stage stakeholders were asked through a survey and series of workshops to use the DiscOU proof-of-concept tool to assess their perception of the value of this transformation. This has revealed that overall, academics and other stakeholders in the university do believe that the value of the selected materials was positively impacted by the application of semantic technologies

Linked Data based video annotation and browsing for distance learning

We present a pair of prototype tools that enable users to mark up video with annotations and later explore related materials using Semantic Web and Linked Data approaches. The �first tool helps academics preparing Open University course materials to mark up videos with information about the subject matter and audio-visual content. The second tool enables users, such as students or academics, to find video and other materials relevant to their study

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

SPEIR: Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research. Final Project Report: Elements and Future Development Requirements of a Common Information Environment for Scotland

The SPEIR (Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research) project was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). It ran from February 2003 to September 2004, slightly longer than the 18 months originally scheduled and was managed by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR). With SLIC's agreement, community stakeholders were represented in the project by the Confederation of Scottish Mini-Cooperatives (CoSMiC), an organisation whose members include SLIC, the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the Scottish Further Education Unit (SFEU), the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), regional cooperatives such as the Ayrshire Libraries Forum (ALF)1, and representatives from the Museums and Archives communities in Scotland. Aims; A Common Information Environment For Scotland The aims of the project were to: o Conduct basic research into the distributed information infrastructure requirements of the Scottish Cultural Portal pilot and the public library CAIRNS integration proposal; o Develop associated pilot facilities by enhancing existing facilities or developing new ones; o Ensure that both infrastructure proposals and pilot facilities were sufficiently generic to be utilised in support of other portals developed by the Scottish information community; o Ensure the interoperability of infrastructural elements beyond Scotland through adherence to established or developing national and international standards. Since the Scottish information landscape is taken by CoSMiC members to encompass relevant activities in Archives, Libraries, Museums, and related domains, the project was, in essence, concerned with identifying, researching, and developing the elements of an internationally interoperable common information environment for Scotland, and of determining the best path for future progress

Interoperable subject retrieval in a distributed multi-scheme environment : new developments in the HILT project

The HILT (HIgh-Level Thesaurus) project (http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/), based primarily at the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) (http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/) at Strathclyde University in Glasgow is entering its fourth stage following the completion of Phases I (http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/index1.html) and II (http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/index2.html) and the Machine to Machine (M2M) Feasibility Study (http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/hiltm2mfs/). HILT is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom (UK) to examine an issue of global significance - facilitating interoperability of subject descriptions in a distributed, cross-service retrieval environment where different services use different subject and classification schemes to describe content, making cross-searching by subject difficult. HILT Phase I determined that there was a community consensus in the UK in favour of using inter-scheme mapping to achieve interoperability between services using different schemes, an approach followed by several recent projects (Heery et al, 2001; Koch et al, 2001; MACS, 2005; Saeed and Chaudhury 2002). HILT Phase II chose a spine-based approach to mapping and chose the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) as the central scheme to which all other schemes would be mapped. It also built an illustrative pilot mapping service, based on an adaptation of the Wordmap (http://www.wordmap.com/) terminology-handling software and made a range of recommendations on issues requiring further research and ongoing development requirements

Representing Dataset Quality Metadata using Multi-Dimensional Views

Data quality is commonly defined as fitness for use. The problem of identifying quality of data is faced by many data consumers. Data publishers often do not have the means to identify quality problems in their data. To make the task for both stakeholders easier, we have developed the Dataset Quality Ontology (daQ). daQ is a core vocabulary for representing the results of quality benchmarking of a linked dataset. It represents quality metadata as multi-dimensional and statistical observations using the Data Cube vocabulary. Quality metadata are organised as a self-contained graph, which can, e.g., be embedded into linked open datasets. We discuss the design considerations, give examples for extending daQ by custom quality metrics, and present use cases such as analysing data versions, browsing datasets by quality, and link identification. We finally discuss how data cube visualisation tools enable data publishers and consumers to analyse better the quality of their data.Comment: Preprint of a paper submitted to the forthcoming SEMANTiCS 2014, 4-5 September 2014, Leipzig, German

Library systems: the trends, the developments, the future

This article introduces some of the latest developments and trends taking place with respect to library systems, and makes some informed judgements on what the future holds

OntoBrowse: A World of Knowledge

This paper describes the creation and function of OntoBrowse, a domain-independent ontology browser system that was developed to provide generic access to any triplestore ontology without the need to create a bespoke interface. It features support for accessing multiple triplestores in one query session, bookmarks, Rendezvous sharing of bookmarks, multiple tabs, multiple windows, namespace caching and automatic generation of RDQL queries. OntoBrowse automatically loads images when referenced by URI and has a fully customisable user interface. In addition, the CIA World Factbook was asserted into a triplestore in order to gain a conceptual understanding of knowledge systems and for use as a controllable testing ground for the ontology browser