Tutorial on Computing: Technological Advances, Social Implications, Ethical and Legal Issues

Computing and information technology have made significant advances. The use of computing and technology is a major aspect of our lives, and this use will only continue to increase in our lifetime. Electronic digital computers and high performance communication networks are central to contemporary information technology. The computing applications in a wide range of areas including business, communications, medical research, transportation, entertainments, and education are transforming local and global societies around the globe. The rapid changes in the fields of computing and information technology also make the study of ethics exciting and challenging, as nearly every day, the media report on a new invention, controversy, or court ruling. This tutorial will explore a broad overview on the scientific foundations, technological advances, social implications, and ethical and legal issues related to computing. It will provide the milestones in computing and in networking, social context of computing, professional and ethical responsibilities, philosophical frameworks, and social, ethical, historical, and political implications of computer and information technology. It will outline the impact of the tremendous growth of computer and information technology on people, ethics and law. Political and legal implications will become clear when we analyze how technology has outpaced the legal and political arenas.

Extending the GUIDE@HAND Tourist Guide Application with QR Codes for Museum Learning

The following paper attempts to encompass the opportunities for applying QR codes for museums and exhibits through the example of the Hungarian Museum of Environmental Protection and Water Management (Esztergom, Hungary). Besides providing interactivity in the museum for the mobile phone generation through the utilization of a device and a method that they are familiar with, it is important to explain how and why it is worthwhile to “adorn” the exhibits with these codes. In this paper we also touch upon the technical issues of how an existing mobile phone application can be incorporated into and used for the presentation of the museum.

Types and Annotations for CIDOC CRM Properties

The CIDOC CRM provides an extensive ontology for describing entities and properties appearing in cultural heritage (CH) documentation, history and archeology. CRM provides some means for describing information about properties (property types, attribute assignment, and "long-cuts") and guidelines for extending the vocabulary. However, these means are far from complete, and in some cases there is little guidance how to "implement" them in RDF. In this article we outline the problems, relate them to established RDF patterns and mechanisms, and describe several implementation alternatives.

Bulgarian Digital Mathematical Library BulDML and Czech Digital Mathematical Library DML-CZ as parts of the European Digital Mathematics Library EuDML

The paper presents in brief the Bulgarian Digital Mathematical Library BulDML and the Czech Digital Mathematical Library DML-CZ. Both libraries use the open source software DSpace and both are partners in the European Digital Mathematics Library EuDML. We describe their content and metadata schemas; outline the architecture system and overview the statistics of its use.

Establishing Correspondences between Attribute Spaces and Complex Concept Spaces Using Meta-PGN Classifier

In this paper, we present one approach for extending the learning set of a classification algorithm with additional metadata. It is used as a base for giving appropriate names to found regularities. The analysis of correspondence between connections established in the attribute space and existing links between concepts can be used as a test for creation of an adequate model of the observed world. Meta-PGN classifier is suggested as a possible tool for establishing these connections. Applying this approach in the field of content-based image retrieval of art paintings provides a tool for extracting specific feature combinations, which represent different sides of artists' styles, periods and movements.

Bulgariana: A Bulgarian Aggregator to Europeana

Europeana is the European virtual museum which was established in 2008. Its ambition is to create a common space allowing to access the cultural heritage of Europe from a single portal, by creating a network in all European countries. To make the initiative technically possible, Europeana has built a technological infrastructure to aggregate metadata from the different Europeana countries and memory institutions, while keeping the original digitized content on their sites. This paper presents Bulgariana, the Bulgarian chapter of Europeana. It is part of the technical infrastructure of Europeana, an established technical aggregator of Bulgarian cultural heritage content. It uses the two Europeana representation models ESE and EDM. Bulgariana is also a community building initiative putting in place a Bulgarian wide network of professionals and institutions working together to preserve and present Bulgarian cultural heritage around the world.

Learning by Doing in the Context of Modern Information and Media Literacy of Students in “Library and Information Management” in ULSIT Using the Digital Collection “Bulgarian Revival”

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of learning by doing as a practical tool for managing the training of students in "Library Management" at the ULSIT, Sofia, Bulgaria, by using the creation of project 'Data Base “Bulgarian Revival Towns” (CD), financed by Bulgarian Ministry of Education, Youth and Science (1/D002/144/13.10.2011) headed by Prof. DSc Ivanka Yankova, which aims to create new information resource for the towns which will serve the needs of scientific researches. By participating in generating the an array in the database through searching, selection and digitization of documents from these period, at the same time students get an opportunity to expand their skills to work effectively in a team, finding the interdisciplinary, a causal connection between the studied items, objects and subjects and foremost – practical experience in the field of digitization, information behavior, strategies for information search, etc. This method achieves good results for the accumulation of sustainable knowledge and it generates motivation to work in the field of library and information professions.

Digital Right Management (DRM) and Library Copyright Policy

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Rights Management (DRM) and its implications for content producers, consumers, and libraries. Simply stated, DRM is a technology that allows copyright owners to regulate and manage their content when it is disseminated in a digital format, and it is the reason why some patrons cannot access some of the downloadable digital content provided by libraries. In the first part of this paper, we provide a short introduction to DRM by outlining the entities, the various technologies used as well as usage restrictions that come with DRM. In the second part of the paper are discussed the alternatives for the libraries, using DRM as a tool for library copyright policy and the main documents, which present the position of library organizations towards information legislation.

Research on Linguistic Approaches, Used for Semantic Explanation of Bell’s Knowledge

This paper presents a research of linguistic structure of Bulgarian bells knowledge. The idea of building semantic structure of Bulgarian bells appeared during the “Multimedia fund - BellKnow” project. In this project was collected a lots of data about bells, their structure, history, technical data, etc. This is the first attempt for computation linguistic explain of bell knowledge and deliver a semantic representation of that knowledge. Based on this research some linguistic components, aiming to realize different types of analysis of text objects are implemented in term dictionaries. Thus, we lay the foundation of the linguistic analysis services in these digital dictionaries aiding the research of kinds, number and frequency of the lexical units that constitute various bell objects.

Building OWL Ontology of Unique Bulgarian Bells Using Protégé Platform

We describe an ontological representation of data in an archive containing detailed description of church bells. As an object of cultural heritage the bell has general properties such as geometric dimensions, weight, sound of each of the bells, the pitch of the tone as well as acoustical diagrams obtained using contemporary equipment. We use Protégé platform in order to define basic ontological objects and relations between them.

Medieval Sources and Present-Day Folklore Materials on Saints in an Electronic Encyclopedia

This paper discusses the variety of the digitized content of an electronic encyclopedia on the veneration of saints according to Bulgarian sources. The emphasis is on medieval Slavonic Church manuscripts and on present-day records of Bulgarian folklore narratives and songs. The combination of these sources provokes discussion of the so-called folklore Christianity and adds new dimensions to the understanding of the role of the cults of saints for culture and of the religiosity of the Bulgarians.

Students’ Digital Archive at the State University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, Sofia

The paper describes the creation and content of the digital archive of photographs, films and materials from fieldwork (interviews, surveys, and observations) of students from the Information Funds of the Cultural and Historical Heritage program at the State University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria. The text discusses the educational opportunities of the archive, and the plans for publishing it as CD and for conversion into an electronic archive on the Internet.

Serious Games in Economics

The European Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation project “Teacher training to improve attractiveness and quality of management education through the simulation tool ‘Emerald Forest’” which emphases on using the computer simulation tool for increasing attractiveness of teaching and learning in economics is presented in this paper. The observation of using computer systems and especially serious games in education is provided as well. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” - William Butler Yeats

Modelling the Functionality of the Multimedia Digital Library for Fashion Objects

This paper describes a project of a multimedia digital library for fashion objects. The presented work aims to provide an environment for the National Art Academy students works, showing in front a professional and nonprofessional public the significant values of the fashion domain.

The Project Hagiotheca Preslavica

Hagiotheca Preslavica (Reconstruction of the Preslav hagiographical collections: Publication and Research of the Stanislav’s menaion-chetii1 manuscript) is a project, developed by a team of young Bulgarian medievalists2. Its principal task is the preparation and publication (both digital and traditional) and research of the Stanislav’s menaion-cheti (better known as 1039 manuscript from the “St. St. Cyril and Methodius“ National Library. Although it is a 14th century copy, the manuscript preserves a number of authentic texts that allow us to reconstruct faithfully the initial contents of menaia-chetii, compiled and translated during the Golden Age of the medieval Bulgarian literature and culture. The realization of the project will be completed by web-based, easily navigable digitalization of the Stanislav’s menaion-cheti, creation of a matrix for the description of the texts, enabling searching and grouping. This will provide the conditions necessary for the work of the team as well as of the wider academic community.