D6.1 – Ecosystem Software Platform with Underlying Software Repository, Digital Library and Media Archive

The objective of D6.1 is to make the Ecosystem software platform with underlying Software Repository, Digital Library and Media Archive available to the degree, that the RAGE project can start collecting content in the form of software assets, and documents of various media types. This paper describes the current state of the Ecosystem as of month 12 of the project, and documents the structure of the Ecosystem, individual components, integration strategies, and overall approach. The deliverable itself is the deployment of the described components, which is now available to collect and curate content. Whilst this version is not yet feature complete, full realization is expected within the next few months. Following this development, WP6 will continue to add features driven by the business models to be defined by WP7 later on in the project.

Puget Sound’s MARS (Media Asset Retrieval System) Digital Library

The MARS (Media Asset Retrieval System) Project is a collaboration between public broadcasters, libraries and schools in the Puget Sound region to assess the needs of their constituents and pool resources to develop solutions to meet those needs. The Project’s ultimate goal is to create a digital online resource that will provide access to content produced by public broadcasters and libraries. The MARS Project is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Television Future Fund. Convergence ConsortiumThe Convergence Consortium is a model for community collaboration, including representatives from public broadcasting, libraries and schools in the Puget Sound region. They meet regularly to consider collaborative efforts that will be mutually beneficial to their institutions and constituents. Specifically, the archives of public broadcasters have been identified as significant resources that can be accessed through libraries and used by schools, and integrated with text and photographic archives from other partners.Using the work-centered framework, we collected data through interviews with nine engineers and observation of their searching while they performed their regular, job-related searches on the Web. The framework was used to analyze the data on two levels: 1) the activities and organizational relationships and constrains of work domains, and 2) users’ cognitive and social activities and their subjective preferences during searching.

Towards Content-Sensitive Access to the Artefacts of the Bulgarian Iconography

his paper presents an ontological model of the knowledge about Bulgarian iconographical artefacts. It also describes content-sensitive services for access, browse, search and group iconographical objects, based on the presented ontology that will be implemented in the multimedia digital library “Virtual encyclopedia of Bulgarian iconography”.

Ontological Presentation of East-Christian Iconographical Art Domain

In the recent years the East-Christian iconographical art works have been digitized providing a large volume of data. The need for effective classification, indexing and retrieval of iconography repositories was the motivation of the design and development of a systemized ontological structure for description of iconographical art objects. This paper presents the ontology of the East-Christian iconographical art, developed to provide content annotation in the Virtual encyclopedia of Bulgarian iconography multimedia digital library. The ontology’s main classes, relations, facts, rules, and problems appearing during the design and development are described. The paper also presents an application of the ontology for learning analysis on an iconography domain implemented during the SINUS project “Semantic Technologies for Web Services and Technology Enhanced Learning”.

Perceptions of Usability and Usefulness in Digital Libraries

This paper provides an overview of a case study research that investigated the use of Digital Library (DL) resources in two undergraduate classes and explored faculty and students’ perceptions of educational digital libraries. This study found that students and faculty use academic DLs primarily for textual resources, but turn to the open Web for visual and multimedia resources. The study participants did not perceive academic libraries as a useful source of digital images and used search engines when searching for visual resources. The limited use of digital library resources for teaching and learning is associated with perceptions of usefulness and ease of use, especially if considered in a broader information landscape, in conjunction with other library information systems, and in the context of Web resources. The limited use of digital libraries is related to the following perceptions: 1) Library systems are not viewed as user-friendly, which in turn discourages potential users from trying DLs provided by academic libraries; 2) Academic libraries are perceived as places of primarily textual resources; perceptions of usefulness, especially in regard to relevance of content, coverage, and currency, seem to have a negative effect on user intention to use DLs, especially when searching for visual materials.

Digital Curation Program of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a digital library that strives to serve the public through digital collections accumulated from a wide variety of partners. Our chosen topic for the DPLA exhibit project is Perspectives on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War remains a controversial topic of national interest, making it a topic of depth and of many perspectives. Our goals with this exhibit were to gather different perspectives of the war through personal stories, the media, presidential administrations of the war, military personnel, and the general public, including famous figures. We strove to demonstrate the variety of perspectives on the Vietnam War through a variation of digital objects and content that will be engaging for users: both black and white and color photos, videos, and audio files. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that our digital materials are of high quality, properly documented, and easy to search and find thus all of our objects are from DPLA and are from usable original sources. This poster will describe our processes for organizational, object selection, building our exhibit, attainment of our goals, and detailed steps of our overall operation. The poster will also include details about the minor issues and bumps that occurred while reaching our final product as well as the team members’ perspectives on the project as a whole including: problems, words to for the wise, and triumphs.

Digital Libraries and Portals Saving National Cultural Heritage (IMI–BAS Experience)

The current research activities of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI—BAS) include the study and application of knowledge-based methods for the creation, integration and development of multimedia digital libraries with applications in cultural heritage. This report presents IMI-BAS’s developments at the digital library management systems and portals, i.e. the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library, the Bulgarian Folklore Digital Library and the Bulgarian Folklore Artery, etc. developed during the several national and international projects: - "Digital Libraries with Multimedia Content and its Application in Bulgarian Cultural Heritage" (contract 8/21.07.2005 between the IMI–BAS, and the State Agency for Information Technologies and Communications; - FP6/IST/P-027451 PROJECT LOGOS "Knowledge-on-Demand for Ubiquitous Learning", EU FP6, IST, Priority 2.4.13 "Strengthening the Integration of the ICT research effort in an Enlarged Europe" - NSF project D-002-189 SINUS "Semantic Technologies for Web Services and Technology Enhanced Learning". - NSF project IO-03-03/2006 ―Development of Digital Libraries and Information Portal with Virtual Exposition "Bulgarian Folklore Heritage". The presented prototypes aims to provide flexible and effective access to the multimedia presentation of the cultural heritage artefacts and collections, maintaining different forms and format of the digitized information content and rich functionality for interaction. The developments are a result of long- standing interests and work in the technological developments in information systems, knowledge processing and content management systems. The current research activities aims at creating innovative solutions for assembling multimedia digital libraries for collaborative use in specific cultural heritage context, maintaining their semantic interoperability and creating new services for dynamic aggregation of their resources, access improvement, personification, intelligent curation of content, and content protection. The investigations are directed towards the development of distributed tools for aggregating heterogeneous content and ensuring semantic compatibility with the European digital library EUROPEANA, thus providing possibilities for pan- European access to rich digitalised collections of Bulgarian cultural heritage.

A quantitative and qualitative evaluation of reports of clinical trials published in six Brazilian dental journals indexed in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO)

INTRODUCTION: Open access publishing is becoming increasingly popular within the biomedical sciences. SciELO, the Scientific Electronic Library Online, is a digital library covering a selected collection of Brazilian scientific journals many of which provide open access to full-text articles.This library includes a number of dental journals some of which may include reports of clinical trials in English, Portuguese and/or Spanish. Thus, SciELO could play an important role as a source of evidence for dental healthcare interventions especially if it yields a sizeable number of high quality reports. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to identify reports of clinical trials by handsearching of dental journals that are accessible through SciELO, and to assess the overall quality of these reports. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Electronic versions of six Brazilian dental Journals indexed in SciELO were handsearched at www.scielo.br in September 2008. Reports of clinical trials were identified and classified as controlled clinical trials (CCTs - prospective, experimental studies comparing 2 or more healthcare interventions in human beings) or randomized controlled trials (RCTs - a random allocation method is clearly reported), according to Cochrane eligibility criteria. CRITERIA TO ASSESS METHODOLOGICAL QUALITY INCLUDED: method of randomization, concealment of treatment allocation, blinded outcome assessment, handling of withdrawals and losses and whether an intention-to-treat analysis had been carried out. RESULTS: The search retrieved 33 CCTs and 43 RCTs. A majority of the reports provided no description of either the method of randomization (75.3%) or concealment of the allocation sequence (84.2%). Participants and outcome assessors were reported as blinded in only 31.2% of the reports. Withdrawals and losses were only clearly described in 6.5% of the reports and none mentioned an intention-to-treat analysis or any similar procedure. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that a substantial number of reports of trials and systematic reviews are available in the dental journals listed in SciELO, and that these could provide valuable evidence for clinical decision making. However, it is clear that the quality of a number of these reports is of some concern and that improvement in the conduct and reporting of these trials could be achieved if authors adhered to internationally accepted guidelines, e.g. the CONSORT statement.

Projeto de uma biblioteca digital conjunta entre o México e Portugal: uma ponte para apoiar a investigação e o ensino em biblioteconomia e áreas afins

Apresenta-se um projeto em curso entre a ESEIG/IPP (Portugal) e o IIBI/UNAM (México) para a criação de uma biblioteca digital na área da Biblioteconomia e dos Estudos de Informação. Considerando a missão educacional das instituições envolvidas, são analisados os conceitos conexos Ambientes Virtuais de Pesquisa e Aprendizagem nos quais a biblioteca digital fundamenta alguns dos seus princípios. É apresentado o modelo de biblioteca digital que sustenta o projeto e são caracterizadas as instituições participantes. Faz-se ainda uma reflexão sobre a conceção e o estabelecimento de uma política de informação, de modo a proporcionar um substrato para a criação e utilização dos recursos e serviços entre as comunidades envolvidas no projeto. Por fim, são apresentados os objetivos da biblioteca digital e diretrizes para a criação e partilha dos recursos digitais.

Cost Factors in Digital Projects: A Model Useful in Other Applications

Description of a costing model developed by digital production librarian to determine the cost to put an item into the Claremont Colleges Digital Library at the Claremont University Consortium. This case study includes variables such as material types and funding sources, data collection methods, and formulas and calculations for analysis. This model is useful for grant applications, cost allocations, and budgeting for digital project coordinators and digital library projects.

Biblioteca Digital de Catalunya: 10 anys d'activitats

El Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC) va ser creat el 1996 amb l'objectiu de fer i mantenir el catàleg col·lectiu de les universitats de Catalunya (CCUC) però aviat va ampliar les seves activitats amb el préstec interbibliotecari i les compres conjuntes d'informació electrònica. Aquesta darrera activitat va iniciar-se a finals de 1997 quan el CBUC va presentar als vicerectors de recerca de les universitats públiques de Catalunya el projecte de comprar bases de dades de manera consorciada. Aquests van estar-hi d'acord i van manifestar el seu interès de que en les compres conjuntes també s'incloguessin revistes electròniques. El CBUC va decidir englobar aquestes activitats sota el nom Biblioteca Digital de Catalunya (BDC) la qual naixia amb la "finalitat de proporcionar un conjunt nuclear comú d'informació electrònica per a la totalitat dels usuaris de les biblioteques del CBUC". A finals de 1998 el projecte de la BDC es va presentar a la Generalitat de Catalunya i es va obtenir un finançament per al projecte que cobria el període 1999-2001. Des de llavors la BDC ha passat per almenys tres fases: Una de formació, 1999-2001, que es va iniciar amb un ajut del llavors Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació (DURSI) de la Generalitat de Catalunya, ajut que es va traduir en una inversió de 180.000€/any i que va permetre l'inici de subscripcions conjuntes, principalment bases de dades. Una de creixement, 2002-2004, realitzada a partir d'un increment de l'ajut del DURSI, ajut que s'usa com a "capital llavor" per subscriure de forma especial revistes. En aquest moment la BDC s'amplia a universitats no membres del CBUC. Una d'estabilització, 2005-2009, en la que s'han fet algunes compres per a una part de les universitats (i no per a totes com fins llavors) i s'han iniciat alguns intents d'estendre la BDC a altres institucions de recerca. L'article caracteritza les diferents fases i mostra les causes de la seva evolució. Finalment, s'exposen els principals assoliments de la BDC així com els reptes de futur més immediats.

The Digital Memory of Catalonia, Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia

The Digital Memory of Catalonia, Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia, contains open-access digitized collections of photographs, drawings, maps, posters, pamphlets, incunabula, ancient Catalan periodicals and many other items with a total of over two million documents related to Catalonia from 18 different institutions (universities, specialized libraries, institutes, archives, etc.).

Workshop on new strategies and tools for the eHealth library

The Andalusian eHealth Library (Biblioteca Virtual del Sistema Sanitario Publico de Andalucia, BV-SSPA), was created in June 2006. The 42 librarians who already worked for the Health System were integrated within this new system. The annual library meeting has been held every year since then, and in 2013 the EAHIL workshop held in Stockholm was the model to follow.