Beyond the Border Management Programme for Central Asia (BOMCA). EUCAM Policy Brief No. 11, 07 December 2009

Since 2003, the EU has been exporting border management assistance to the Central Asian Republics via the Border Management Programme for Central Asia (BOMCA), which has sought to train border guards, provide key technology and infrastructure at border crossings, and prod states in managing their borders jointly. BOMCA is funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme through a network of five in-country teams wholly dedicated to BOMCA. While the programme’s continued presence in all Central Asian states is itself a success and measures well in comparison to initiatives in the EU’s Central Asia Strategy for a New Partnership, 2007-2013, this policy brief assesses BOMCA’s mission and achievements so far and provides recommendations designed to bolster the EU’s impact on border management assistance

Designing interoperable museum information systems

Museum collections are characterized by heterogeneity, since they usually host a plethora of objects of categories, while each of them requires different description policies and metadata standards. Moreover the museum records, which keep the history and evolution of the hosted collections, request proactive curation in order to preserve this rich and diverse information. In this paper, the architecture of an innovative museum information system, as well as its implementation details is presented. In particular the requirements and the system architecture are presented along with the problems that were encountered. The main directions of the system design are (a) to increase interoperability levels and therefore assist proactive curation and (b) to enhance navigation by the usage of handheld devices. The first direction is satisfied by the design of a rich metadata schema based on the CIDOC/CRM standard. The second direction is fulfilled by the implementation of a module, which integrates the museum database with a subsystem appropriate to support user navigation into the museum floors and rooms. The module is expressed as a navigation functionality, which is accessed through handheld devices and peripherals, such as PDAs and RFID tags. The proposed system is functional and operates into the Solomos Museum, situated in Zakynthos island, Greece

A Conceptual Model for Scholarly Research Activity

This paper presents a conceptual model for scholarly research activity, developed as part of the conceptual modelling work within the ???Preparing DARIAH??? European e-Infrastructures project. It is inspired by cultural-historical activity theory, and is expressed in terms of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, extending its notion of activity so as to also account, apart from historical practice, for scholarly research planning. It is intended as a framework for structuring and analyzing the results of empirical research on scholarly practice and information requirements, encompassing the full research lifecycle of information work and involving both primary evidence and scholarly objects; also, as a framework for producing clear and pertinent information requirements, and specifications of digital infrastructures, tools and services for scholarly research. We plan to use the model to tag interview transcripts from an empirical study on scholarly information work, and thus validate its soundness and fitness for purpose

Achieving interoperability between the CARARE schema for monuments and sites and the Europeana Data Model

Mapping between different data models in a data aggregation context always presents significant interoperability challenges. In this paper, we describe the challenges faced and solutions developed when mapping the CARARE schema designed for archaeological and architectural monuments and sites to the Europeana Data Model (EDM), a model based on Linked Data principles, for the purpose of integrating more than two million metadata records from national monument collections and databases across Europe into the Europeana digital library.Comment: The final version of this paper is openly published in the proceedings of the Dublin Core 2013 conference, see http://dcevents.dublincore.org/IntConf/dc-2013/paper/view/17

On the Ground in Afghanistan

The book includes 15 vignettes about different units from the U.S. Marines, U.S. Army, and U.S. Army Special Forces; the British army and marines; the Dutch army and marines; and the Canadian army. The case studies cover 10 provinces in the south and east of Afghanistan. They describe the diverse conditions the units faced in these provinces, how they responded to these conditions, what worked and what did not, and the successes involved in these operations

Designing interoperable museum information systems

Museum collections are characterized by heterogeneity, since they usually host a plethora of objects of categories, while each of them requires different description policies and metadata standards. Moreover the museum records, which keep the history and evolution of the hosted collections, request proactive curation in order to preserve this rich and diverse information. In this paper, the architecture of an innovative museum information system, as well as its implementation details is presented. In particular the requirements and the system architecture are presented along with the problems that were encountered. The main directions of the system design are (a) to increase interoperability levels and therefore assist proactive curation and (b) to enhance navigation by the usage of handheld devices. The first direction is satisfied by the design of a rich metadata schema based on the CIDOC/CRM standard. The second direction is fulfilled by the implementation of a module, which integrates the museum database with a subsystem appropriate to support user navigation into the museum floors and rooms. The module is expressed as a navigation functionality, which is accessed through handheld devices and peripherals, such as PDAs and RFID tags. The proposed system is functional and operates into the Solomos Museum, situated in Zakynthos island, Greece

State Failure and Regional Containment: The Case of Afghanistan

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.George Gavrilis is assistant professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and an International Affairs Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. He has previously held the positions of Director of Research for the Council on Foreign Relations Oral History Project (Columbia University), Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (Columbia University), and National Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies (Harvard University). During his lecture on "State Failure and Regional Containment: The Case of Afghanistan" Gavrilis will explore the strategic role that states play towards the recovery of a failed neighbor. The talk is based on the author’s recent work in the field and with international organizations. It will focus on the case of Afghanistan as a way to explore broader hypotheses on state failure and regional containment. Gavrilis's research and teaching interests include border management, judicial politics, strategies of conflict, and state failure and international cooperation. His field experience includes the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe. Gavrilis's first book, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (Cambridge University Press, 2008), explains why some borders deter insurgents, smugglers, bandits and militants while most suffer from infiltration and crisis. He has also published articles in Foreign Affairs and The Washington Quarterly. Gavrilis has received research awards and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Social & Economic Research and Policy, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute for Turkish Studies, the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. with distinction in political science from Columbia University. He graduated with honors in the joint B.A./M.A. program in the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. He is fluent in seven languages including Greek, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Uzbek, French, Spanish, and English.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photos, articl

Preparing DARIAH

In this paper, a preparatory project for an integrated European research infrastructure in the humanities is presented. This project, Preparing for the construction of the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities - or Preparing DARIAH for short, is part of the ESFRI e-infrastructures programme and supports the emergence of a new collaborative framework in which researchers are able to maximise the impact of their work on the international stage and aims at providing the foundations for the timely construction of the infrastructure requisite for the arts, humanities and cultural heritage communities in the digital age. DARIAH uses an interdisciplinary approach and involves tackling a number of interrelated issues such as strategic, organisational, financial, technical and conceptual in order to facilitate long-term access to and use of all European humanities and cultural heritage information for the purposes of enhancing and expanding research, thereby increasing our knowledge and understanding of our histories, heritage, languages and cultures. The DARIAH network will act as a place where the incubation of new ideas and ways of working can be facilitated and developed, and then transitioned into established organisations thus ensuring long-term sustainability and stability and the integration of these methods and techniques into everyday research practice. DARIAH will support research practitioners at all stages in the research process, and at differing levels of sophistication, from beginners through to those employing advanced techniques and methodologies

Міжнародна наукова конференція «Українська мова серед інших слов'янських: етнологічні та граматичні параметри»

5–6 листопада 2009 року у Кривому Розі відбулася Міжнародна наукова конференція «Українська мова серед інших слов’янських: етнологічні та граматичні параметри», присвячена світлій пам’яті видатного українського мовознавця Олександра Васильовича Царука