Transcript “Old Style” Libraries, Digital Libraries: Convergences, Divergences, And the Troubles in Between Physical Libraries : • Bound to the medium of the book • Embodiment of.

“Old Style” Libraries,
Digital Libraries:
Convergences,
Divergences,
And the Troubles in Between
Physical Libraries :
• Bound to the medium of the book
• Embodiment of the “sedimented” values &
practices of print culture, including
– Fixity of the print artifact / manufactured object
– Finite set of well-known paths to items
– Built-in structures of legitimation & authority
– Importance of local repositories
“Library Function”
• Identify, acquire, organize, support, and
preserve cultural and intellectual expression in
its recorded forms
• Core values:
– Unfettered availability of all materials to meet
educational, cultural, intellectual, civic, and personal
needs
– Commitment to standard methods & practices in
service of resource sharing & open access
– Preserve the collection, i.e. keep it permanently
accessible
“Library Function,” cont’d
• Libraries as cultural heritage institutions
• Libraries as embedded in larger social
systems:
– Communities (cities, towns)
– Colleges & universities
– Corporations & similar organizations
• Library as social / physical / virtual nexus
for the cultural & intellectual record
Repository & Service Roles
• All true libraries are defined by coherent and
carefully assembled collections keyed to specific
domains, with services supporting associated
user needs. For example:
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Public Libraries – general readers
College Libraries – undergraduate learning
University Libraries – advanced learning & research
Special Libraries – corporate or organizational
research
Browsing & Serendipity
• Physical libraries, through their classified
grouping of related items in open bookstacks, have long supported two key
aspects of learning & intellectual inquiry:
– Browsing of related items
– Serendipitous encounters with unexpected or
previously unknown ideas & materials
“Deep Access”
Indexical and Research Aids
• Libraries incorporate structured tools for
analytical access to “buried” information,
including indexes & abstracts, reference
compendia, bibliographies & finding aids,
and experienced intelligent human agents,
also known as “reference librarians.”
Libraries as Filtering Systems
• Libraries are (medium independent)
complex and layered filtering and access
systems
– for aggregating cultural and intellectual
materials
– for providing efficient routes into the specific
content of those materials
Current issues
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“Mass digitization” – including Google Books
Intellectual property barriers
Tools & functionality
Collections & communities (how the virtual world
meets the “life world”)
• Fragmentation of discourse (blogs, etc.)
• Resource discovery
• New kinds of collections (collaboration)
Personal Projects
• Digital Bridges
• Irish Press
• Pennsylvania Digital Library of Illuminated
Manuscripts
• Villanova Digital Library
Technical Architecture –
Villanova Digital Library
• Back-end is a Native XML database (NXD)
• Btree index for searching
• Items stored in a structured directory tree
• Collection
• Entity (i.e. digital object)
• Elements (individual book pages in raw files – TIFF, JPEG etc.)
• Digitized entities embedded in XML framework
• XML file for each object (e.g. book, manuscript, etc.)
• Built around Metadata Encoding & Transmission
Standard (METS), a Library of Congress XML schema
Technical Architecture, 2
• Uses Xquery, a subset of XPath (W3c standard)
for search & retrieval of XML elements
• Uses Extensible Stylesheet Language
Transformations (XSLT) for presentation of items
in a multipicity of potential formats
• Interaction with XML database is via
Representational State Transfer (REST) syntax,
with “nouns” I.e. complex objects to “get”)
embedded in URLS
• PHP used a development environment for
unpacking & handing off URLs to Web server
application
Design Simplicity
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Every collection is a directory
Every file is a Digital Object
Searchable using simple standard syntax
Display using standard transformation tool
in any XML schema:
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HTML
OAI-PMH
PDF
???
Building VUDL
• 90% or VUDL project development work (programming)
has focused on “ingest” side – input & processing
• Templates & processes for importing digitized items
• Automated upload of complex interlinked entities
• Automated creation of METS XML, including:
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Dublin Core metadata
File data (name, path, etc.)
RIghtsd data (copyright, access)
Provenance (how digitized, format, etc.
Structure (chapters, sections, etc.
Why not DSPACE?
• Not designed a full-function “digital library”
• DSPACE is an academic document
management system using a limited object
model
• Hard to modify
• Not suited to automatic insertion of large,
complex entities
• No integrated publication management model
• Therefore, not an extensible full-servce
repository framework
Questions?