Modern repositories for storage of scientific information

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Krassen Stefanov

FMI, Director UCC

04/08/23

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Digital Library (Repository)

• Library in which collections are stored in digital formats (as opposed to print, microform, or other media) and accessible by computers

• The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks

• A digital library is a type of information retrieval system

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Main functions

• offer the outputs to the world

• maximise the visibility and enhance impact

• showcase and sell results / products

• to collect and curate digital collections

• to manage research and teaching activities

• workspace for collaborative projects

• development and sharing of digital teaching

materials and aids

• access to student achievements04/08/23

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Some issues

• How to collect content

• How to look after the content

• How to add value to the content

• How to share information with other digital libraries

• How to offer services to end users

• How to ensure legally sound operations

• How to ensure interoperability

• How to make it sustainable04/08/23

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Metadata

• Data about data

• Describe various characteristics of the digital objects stored in the library

• Used for cataloguing purposes

• Many standards available (metadata schemes)

• There is no official only one standard set

• Dublin Core (DC) is de-facto standard

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Open Access Initiative (OAI)

• Main goal: open access as the worldwide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students and other curious minds

• First declared in Budapest, best known as Berlin Declaration (http://www.openarchives.org/)

• Includes (a) authors grant free access to users; (b) full version available in at least one digital library

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OAI Protocols

• OAI-PMH: Protocol for Metadata Harvesting – for exposing all metadata descriptions in the digital library for free use of others

(http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/ )

• OAI-ORE: Object Reuse and Exchange – for exchange of digital objects (mainly for software programs providing authoring, exchange, reuse, visualization etc. of all digital objects in the digital library) (http://www.openarchives.org/ore/ )

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European picture

• In 2006 about 230 institutes had at least one digital library established

• In last two years at least one new library was created daily

• More than 95% of European digital libraries support OAI (mostly through OAI-PMH)

• eContent and eContentplus program

• Two big initiatives: DRIVER and Europeana

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DRIVER

• Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (currently DRIVER II)

• Main goal: to create a knowledge base for European research

• DRIVER I funded under FP6, DRIVER II under FP7 http://www.driver-support.eu/

• Includes only OAI-compliant libraries

• Members from almost all European countries

• Many subject-specific libraries

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EUROPEANA

• Common multilingual access point which will make it possible to search Europe’s distributed digital cultural heritage online

• http://www.europeana.eu/

• Many projects aiming to achieve the goal

• Bulgarian National Library included

• Part of the European i2010 Initiative

• Online from 20 November 2008

• All work coordinated by EDL Foundation04/08/23

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Features (2)

• Provide more comprehensive user feedback (rating and annotating)

• Recommendations and tagging services• Scheduler (user wizards and workflow

management)• User wizards and workflow management• User Authentication and user management

services

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Features (3)

• Community vizualization and navigation Service

• Community participation Service

• Interactive creation of metadata records using the RICK tool

• Organize resources as favourites by a user via tags

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Share.TEC system architecture

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Share.TEC Repository

• Share.TEC Repository (or central repository) is the main component

• Contains metadata representing resources from the Teacher Education (TE) domain

• Metadata are stored in CMM format• OAI-PMH protocol is used for search an retrieving

metadata in CMM format from partners and external repositories

• Contains the representation of TEO (Teacher Education Ontology)

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OAI-PMH Harvester

• Special computer program which periodically connects to all metadata sources

• Collect new instances of metadata from this sources

• Validation of the collected metadata through the validation service

• Publishes collected metadata to central repository via SPI (Simple Publishing Interface) protocol

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Share.TEC Web Portal

• Multilingual user interface

• Personalization

• Queries in the user’s native language

• Simple and advanced range of parameters for query filtering

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Share.TEC Web Portal (2)

• Key parameter values automaticaly set in accordance with user profile

• Based on TEO a multidimensional data search

• Automatic ranking of search results in accordance with user profile characteristics

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Partner’s and external repositories

• External well-known digital repositories, containing relevant TE domain metadata, as well as the local repositories established at each project partner site are essential component of the system

• To support of CMM metadata records a specific program called MMF (Metadata Migration Facility) is provided which main role is translate from well known metadata formats to CMM format.

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RICK (Resource Integration Companion Kit)

• RICK is a comprehensive tool for the creation of new metadata records

• Provides support to individual user setting some of the metadata fields’ values automatically (e.g. file type, owner, date, keywords, etc.) and offering a web form for filling the required and optional field from CMM metadata format

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User functions

User functions can be classified into several groups:– Account management functions– Profile management functions– Searching and navigation functions– Authoring functions

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Account management functions

• These are functions related to creating and removing user accounts, logging in and out of the system and password reset. They are: register, unregister, log-in, log-out, password reset, profile change.

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Profile management functions

• These functions allow the user to modify his/her profile and customize how Share.TEC presents information. They are: personal profile, custom front page, preferences, multilingual interface.

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Searching and navigation functions

• These functions provide the ability to browse, filter, and search the data which is stored at Share.TEC repository. They are: browsing (navigation), searching, filtering, and alerts.

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Browsing (Navigation)

This function allows the user to browse the Share.TEC repository using different navigation paths based on TEO.

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Searching

• To perform searching queries against Share.TEC data the user provides a list of search criteria.

• The searching function provides the used with forms to fill-in these criteria, performs the actual search and provides results back to the user.

• Searching for registered users may be fine-tuned by searching preferences provided by the user in his/her profile.

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Faceted search (filtering)

• This function is similar to the searching in a way that it also allows the user to set criteria for filtering information.

• The user is only given facets and constraints that make sense in the context of the items they are looking at.

• The user always knows what to expect before they apply a constraint

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Search Alerts

• users may set an automatic notification system which is triggered whenever the user condition is fulfilled.

• users receive alerts when: – new content with specific properties is being added

to the repository by the community, – existing content has passed a predefined ranking

threshold or – a new actor with specific properties is registered.

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Authoring functions

• These functions allow the user to contribute to the Share.TEC content by providing annotations, ranking and additional references. They are: annotation, ranking, enriching, and adding references.

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Availability of user functions

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FunctionAvailability for users

UnregisteredRegistered

Logged out Logged in

1. Account managementRegister (sign up) Yes Yes –Unregister – – YesLog in – Yes –Log out – – YesPassword reset – Yes –

2. Profile managementPersonal profile – – YesCustom front page – – YesPreferences – – YesMultilingual interface Yes Yes Yes

3. Searching and navigationBrowsing Yes Yes YesBasic Searching Yes Yes YesAdvanced Searching – – YesBasic Filtering Yes Yes YesAdvanced Filtering – – YesAlerts – Yes Yes

4. AuthoringAnnotation – – YesRanking – – YesAdding metadata – – Yes