70 research outputs found

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

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    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

    Building and Using Digital Libraries for ETDs

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    Despite the high value of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), the global collection has seen limited use. To extend such use, a new approach to building digital libraries (DLs) is needed. Fortunately, recent decades have seen that a vast amount of “gray literature” has become available through a diverse set of institutional repositories as well as regional and national libraries and archives. Most of the works in those collections include ETDs and are often freely available in keeping with the open-access movement, but such access is limited by the services of supporting information systems. As explained through a set of scenarios, ETDs can better meet the needs of diverse stakeholders if customer discovery methods are used to identify personas and user roles as well as their goals and tasks. Hence, DLs, with a rich collection of services, as well as newer, more advanced ones, can be organized so that those services, and expanded workflows building on them, can be adapted to meet personalized goals as well as traditional ones, such as discovery and exploration

    Extending the 5S Framework of Digital Libraries to support Complex Objects, Superimposed Information, and Content-Based Image Retrieval Services

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    Advanced services in digital libraries (DLs) have been developed and widely used to address the required capabilities of an assortment of systems as DLs expand into diverse application domains. These systems may require support for images (e.g., Content-Based Image Retrieval), Complex (information) Objects, and use of content at fine grain (e.g., Superimposed Information). Due to the lack of consensus on precise theoretical definitions for those services, implementation efforts often involve ad hoc development, leading to duplication and interoperability problems. This article presents a methodology to address those problems by extending a precisely specified minimal digital library (in the 5S framework) with formal definitions of aforementioned services. The theoretical extensions of digital library functionality presented here are reinforced with practical case studies as well as scenarios for the individual and integrative use of services to balance theory and practice. This methodology has implications that other advanced services can be continuously integrated into our current extended framework whenever they are identified. The theoretical definitions and case study we present may impact future development efforts and a wide range of digital library researchers, designers, and developers

    A digital library content metadata generator for e-print

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    A Digital Library is normally consisting of or made upon a collection of digital objects plus the information and services for storing, accessing and retrieving them. Digital Libraries by nature is a very complex information system. Despite efforts being made to streamline its creation and content population into an out of the box experience, there is still room for automation. For the creation of Digital Library or Online Repositories as it also known, the availability of free open source software such as EPrints developed at University of Southampton, United Kingdom is has simplified the creation process. While the Digital Library software packages such as EPrints have made it easier to create and run Digital Libraries, optimization and customization still needs to be done in order to achieve an optimally usable solution. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a Digital Library is populating these repositories. This can be a very manual task that consumes a large amount of time without automation. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a the content or collections of Digital Library is the data entry that provides detailed information on the available resources which is usually made up of metadata elements that provide information on the content stored. The Digital Library Content Metadata Generator (COMGEN) developed as a part of this project is designed to reduce the workload, time consumption and error prone manual data entry that are being done the traditional way in populating Digital Libraries. COMGEN is built to demonstrate the feasibility of automatic content generation by extracting existing metadata from the source file and transforming it into a usable format for use with the EPrints Import Tool to automatically add new content and populate the Digital Library/Repository. (Abstract by author

    Simple Digital Libraries

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    The design of Digital Library Systems (DLSes) has evolved overtime, both in sophistication and complexity, to complement the complex nature and sheer size of digital content being curated. However, there is also a growing demand from content curators, with relatively small-size collections, for simpler and more manageable tools and services to manage their content. The reasons for this particular need are driven by the assumption that simplicity and manageability might ultimately translate to lower costs of maintenance of such systems. This research proposes and advocates for a minimalist and simplistic approach to the overall design of DLSes. It is hypothesised that Digital Library (DL) tools and services based on such designs could potentially be easy to use and manage. A meta-analysis of existing DL and non-DL tools was conducted to aid the derivation of design principles for simple DLSes. The desig n principles were then mapped to design decisions applied to the design of a prototype simple repository. In order to assess the effectiveness of the simple repository design, two real-world case study collections were implemented based on the design. In addition, a developer-oriented study was conducted using one of the case study collections to evaluate the simplicity and ease of use of the prototype system. Furthermore, performance experiments were conducted to establish the extent to which such a simple design approach would scale and also establish comparative advantages to existing designs. In general, the study outlined some possible implications of simplifying DLS design; specifically the results from the developer-oriented user study indicate that simplicity in the design of the DLS repository sub-layer does not severely impact the interaction between the service sub-layer and the repository sub-layer. Furthermore, the scalability experiments indicate that desirable performance results for small- and medium-sized collections are attainable. The practical implication of the proposed design approach is two-fold: firstly the minimalistic design has the potential to be used to design simple and yet easy to use tools with comparable features to those exhibited by well-established DL tools; and secondly, the principled design approach has the potential to be applied to the design of non-DL application domains

    Specification of digital libraries of digital complex objects

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    Orientador: Ricardo da Silva TorresDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Bibliotecas digitais são avançados e complexos sistemas de informação que armazenam, agregam e gerenciam informações correlatas para que comunidades específicas possam ter acesso a objetos digitais de interesse. Grandes volumes de dados de diferentes tipos e formatos vêm sendo gerados. Muitos desses dados são organizados em objetos digitais que podem ser objetos complexos, ou seja, objetos compostos de outros objetos digitais. Como a especificação e a implementação de uma biblioteca digital são tarefas cruciais para um gerenciamento eficaz de documentos, ferramentas vêm sendo criadas para auxiliar na especificação e na implementação de bibliotecas digitais. Entretanto, poucas ferramentas existentes permitem a especificação de objetos complexos em bibliotecas digitais. Além disso, dificuldades são encontradas na especificação, na modelagem e no reuso desse tipo complexo de dado. O objetivo desta dissertação foi propor um metamodelo de bibliotecas digitais de objetos complexos para especificar instâncias de bibliotecas digitais que gerenciem objetos complexos. O novo metamodelo foi incluído na ferramenta 5SGraph, ferramenta gráfica baseada no formalismo 5S (Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios e Societies) que permite a especificação formal de bibliotecas digitais. A validação do novo metamodelo foi realizada por estudos de caso, por uma avaliação com usuários potenciais da ferramenta 5SGraph e pela implementação de um protótipo de uma biblioteca digital de documentos legais. Com os resultados obtidos, comprovou-se que a ferramenta 5SGraph estendida pode ser usada para especificar bibliotecas digitais de objetos complexos. As principais contribuições deste trabalho são: a caracterização de documentos legais como objetos complexos; a especificação de um metamodelo para especificação de bibliotecas digitais de objetos complexos; a implementação de um metamodelo para uso na ferramenta 5SGraph com o objetivo de especificar e instanciar bibliotecas digitais contendo objetos complexos; uma apresentação de estudos de casos para especificar objetos complexos de bibliotecas digitais na ferramenta 5SGraph; a validação do uso do novo metamodelo na ferramenta 5SGraph por usuários potenciais; e a especificação e a implementação de um protótipo de biblioteca digital de objetos complexos do tipo documento legalAbstract: Digital libraries are advanced and complex information systems that store, aggregate, and manage correlated information. These systems are used by specific communities to access digital objects of interest. Due to the creation of huge collections of heterogeneous data (in terms of type and format), some of these data are organized in digital complex objects, in the sense that they are composed by other digital objects. Since specification and implementation of digital libraries are decisive tasks to achieve an effective management of documents, specific software tools have been created to help and facilitate the specification and implementation of digital libraries. However, few existing tools used to model digital libraries allow the specification of complex objects. Besides, this kind of complex data make more difficult the tasks of specification, modeling, and reusing of complex objects. The objective of this dissertation was to propose a digital library metamodel in order to specify instances of digital libraries that manage complex objects. The new metamodel was included in the 5SGraph tool. 5SGraph is a software tool based on the 5S theory (Streams, Structures, Spaces, Scenarios, and Societies) and provides a visual environment for the formal specification of digital libraries. The new metamodel was validated through: case studies, an evaluation with potential users, and the implementation of a digital library prototype containing legal documents. According to the results, the extended 5SGraph tool can be used to specify digital libraries of complex objects. The main contributions of this work are: the characterization of legal documents as complex objects; the specification of a metamodel to be used in the specification of digital libraries of complex objects; the implementation of a metamodel in the 5SGraph tool, making the tool capable of specifying digital libraries of complex objects; the presentation of some case studies using the 5SGraph tool to specify complex objects of digital libraries; validation of the new metamodel in the 5SGraph with potential users; and the specification and implementation of a digital library prototype containing complex objects related to legal documentsMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

    Virtual digital libraries

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    Digital libraries represent the meeting places for knowledge providers and knowledge consumers supporting and enhancing the process through which knowledge is created, used, and discovered. The demand for digital libraries is worldwide strong. These complex systems can offer a richer set of functionality than that initially expected and are able to transform the way in which joint research is conducted, thus responding to the requirements of a great number of research communities. In fact, nowadays research is a collaborative and multidisciplinary effort conducted by virtual research organisations whose components are spread worldwide. Despite this large and innovative demand the current digital library development models remain unchanged and so they are not able to match the emerging requirements. In this dissertation we propose a novel approach based on virtual digital libraries, i. e. digital libraries built by dynamically aggregating and appropriately presenting the pool of shared resources needed to fulfil the requirements of digital library communities. To support such an approach we introduced (i ) a reference model for understanding significant relationships among the components of digital libraries and for developing consistent services that support them and (ii ) a set of approaches and services able to provide virtual views over the heterogeneous information space resulting from reusing shared information sources. In particular, three approaches to information space virtualization are presented that provide profitable usage of the shared resources: information objects virtualization, collections virtualization, and distributed semantic search

    Design Architecture: An Introduction and Overview

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    Digital libraries evolved in response to the need to manage the vast quantities of electronic information that we produce, collect, and consume. Architects of such systems have adopted a variety of design approaches, which are summarized and illustrated in this chapter. We also introduce the following three chapters, and provide suitable background. From a historical perspective, we note that early systems were designed independently to afford services to specific communities. Since then, systems that store and mediate access to information have become commonplace and are scattered all over the Internet. Consequently, information retrieval also has to contend with distributed/networked systems, in a transparent and scalable fashion. In this context, digital library architects have adopted various interoperability standards and practices to provide users with seamless access to highly distributed information sources. This chapter looks at current research and emerging best practices adopted in designing digital libraries, whether individual or distributed

    Accessing and using complex multimedia documents in a digital library

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    Dans le cadre de trois projets européens, notre équipe a mis au point un modèle de données et un langage de requête pour bibliothèques numériques supportant l'identification, la structuration, les métadonnées, la réutilisation, et la découverte des ressources numériques. Le modèle proposé est inspiré par le Web et il est formalisé comme une théorie du premier ordre, dont certains modèles correspondent à la notion de bibliothèque numérique. En outre, une traduction complète du modèle en RDF et du langage de requêtes en SPARQL a également été proposée pour démontrer son adéquation à des applications pratiques. Le choix de RDF est dû au fait qu il est un langage de représentation généralement accepté dans le cadre des bibliothèques numériques et du Web sémantique. L objectif de cette thèse était double: concevoir et mettre en œuvre une forme simplifiée de système de gestion de bibliothèques numériques, d une part, et contribuer à l enrichissement du modèle, d autre part. Pour atteindre cet objectif nous avons développé un prototype d un système de bibliothèque numérique utilisant un stockage RDF pour faciliter la gestion interne des métadonnées. Le prototype permet aux utilisateurs de gérer et d interroger les métadonnées des ressources numériques ou non-numériques dans le système en utilisant des URIs pour identifier les ressources, un ensemble de prédicats pour la description de ressources, et des requêtes conjonctives simples pour la découverte de connaissances dans le système. Le prototype est mis en œuvre en utilisant les technologies Java et l environnement de Google Web Toolkit dont l'architecture du système se compose d'une couche de stockage, d une couche de métier logique, d une couche de service, et d une interface utilisateur. Pendant la thèse, le prototype a été construit, testé et débogué localement, puis déployé sur Google App Engine. Dans l avenir, il peut être étendu pour devenir un système complet de gestion de bibliothèques numériques. Par ailleurs, la thèse présente également notre contribution à la génération de contenu par réutilisation de ressources. Il s agit d un travail théorique dont le but est d enrichir le modèle en lui ajoutant un service important, à savoir la possibilité de création de nouvelles ressources à partir de celles stockées dans le système. L incorporation de ce service dans le système sera effectuée ultérieurement.In the context of three European projects, our research team has developed a data model and query language for digital libraries supporting identification, structuring, metadata, and discovery and reuse of digital resources. The model is inspired by the Web and it is formalized as a first-order theory, certain models of which correspond to the notion of digital library. In addition, a full translation of the model to RDF and of the query language to SPARQL has been proposed to demonstrate the feasibility of the model and its suitability for practical applications. The choice of RDF is due to the fact that it is a generally accepted representation language in the context of digital libraries and the Semantic Web. One of the major aims of the thesis was to design and actually implement a simplified form of a digital library management system based on the theoretical model. To obtain this, we have developed a prototype based on RDF and SPARQL, which uses a RDF store to facilitate internal management of metadata. The prototype allows users to manage and query metadata of digital or non-digital resources in the system, using URIs as resource identifiers, a set of predicates to model descriptions of resources, and simple conjunctive queries to discover knowledge in the system. The prototype is implemented by using Java technologies and the Google Web Toolkit framework whose system architecture consists of a storage layer, a business logic layer, a service layer and a user interface. During the thesis work, the prototype was built, tested, and debugged locally and then deployed on Google App Engine. In the future, it will be expanded to become a full fledged digital library management system. Moreover, the thesis also presents our contribution to content generation by reuse. This is mostly theoretical work whose purpose is to enrich the model and query language by providing an important community service. The incorporation of this service in the implemented system is left to future work.PARIS11-SCD-Bib. électronique (914719901) / SudocSudocFranceF
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