DL.org Tutorial at ESWC2011

DL.org announces the Tutorial on Digital Libraries: Foundations & Interoperability during the Extended Semantic Web Conference, 29 May – 2 June 2011, Heraklion, Greece. The half-day Tutorial focuses on the DL.org Reference Model, a conceptual framework for Digital Libraries, coupled with real-world examples and a hands-on session. The aim of this tutorial is to introduce the audience to the state-of the art in Digital Libraries documenting the significant effort towards building a common language to express key issues surrounding interoperability.
The tutorial covers the core concepts characterising Digital Libraries: content, functionality, user, policy, quality and architecture. The tutorial features a rich mix of presentations, interactive discussion, demos and hands-on with comprehensive examples of existing systems that apply semantic technologies to help exemplify abstract concepts. Participants will come away with a conceptual framework and new knowledge on DL.org’s approach to Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices and Modelling Foundations enhancing their research and professional practices.  To ensure maximum impact, DL.org will provide tutorial attendees with a Virtual Reading List and pointers well ahead of the event.
Presenters

• Yannis Ioannidis, University of Athens
• Donatella Castelli, Institute of Information Science & Technologies, National Research Council of Italy
• Leonardo Candela, Institute of Information Science & Technologies, National Research Council of Italy
• Katerina El Raheb, University of Athens

Target Audience
The tutorial is designed for researchers and practitioners dealing with different aspects of semantic technologies, specifically Information Scientists, PhD candidates, Engineers, Digital Library Designers and Administrators, as well as Digital Libraries Managers, Librarians and Information Scientists attending ESWC 2011.

The British Academy

Digital Libraries should enable any citizen, anywhere, anytime to access knowledge in multi-modal format, thus breaking down barriers of distance, language and culture. Digital libraries have the potential to become universal knowledge repositories, combining content and services. To support the development of Digital Libraries as effectively as possible, the DELOS Network of Excellence provided a Reference Model based on a small number of underlying concepts characterising a Digital Library. This Reference Model has been taken forward by DL.orgto enhance and consolidate it with the support of international experts. This expert investigation has focused on the main DL concepts captured in the Model: content, functionality, user, policy, quality and architecture, which were summarised during this talk, which also took a look at all the professionals involved in developing and enhancing a DL.
A key message for the audience is that DLs are among the most complex and advanced types of information systems, which poses a number of research challenges in order to arrive at interoperable systems. A clear architectural framework for the Digital Library System provides a solid foundation to address the complexity on the one hand and interoperability challenges on the other.
The talk Vittore Casarosa is available on the dedicated workshop page on the DL.org website.

• Trigger a multi-disciplinary debate about research on Digital Libraries and Open Access.
• Discuss DL.org project results, and existing frameworks and best practices for interoperability within the communities of practice.
• Propose common strategies for interoperability: start discussing how to implement a mechanism for exchanging, sharing and integrating results between DLs and OARs communities.
• Create new connections and partnerships, and explore ways for a closer cooperation between researchers and the communities of practice.

British Academy - Workshop Setting

The Workshop addresses interoperability challenges within the context of digital libraries and open access repositories, along the perspectives of content, user, functionality, policy, quality and architecture, the six core domains captured in the DL.org Reference Model. Targeted at Library and Information Science researchers and professionals, and to the Open Access community, the event is of interest to people involved in developing interoperability frameworks or models, and people involved in the implementation of digital libraries, institutional, subject or learning object repositories, and associated services across a broad range of communities of practice.

International Experts

Peter Burnhill, EDINA, University of Edinburgh, UK

Pablo De Castro, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

Wolfram Horstmann, University of Bielefeld, Germany

Heather Joseph, SPARC, U.S.

Hans Pfeiffenberger, Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany

Experts on DL.org Outputs

Leonardo Candela,  National Research Council of Italy

Vittore Casarosa, National Research Council of Italy

Perla Innocenti and Giuseppina Vullo – HATII, University of Glasgow

Introduction and Chair of Round Table on Common Strategies for Interoperability

Seamus Ross, Dean and Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, Canada

Places are limited due to venue capacity. Early registration is highly recommended. More details here.

• The Reference Model (V1.0) with Yannis Ioannidis, Professor at the University of Athens and DL.org partner explaining why modelling makes our lives in the Digital Library space easier and pinpoints the core concepts on which our Ref model is grounded.
• The Cookbook (Ready for Comment version) with Leonardo Candela from the National Research Council of Italy offering insights into best practices and current solutions proposed for Digital Library interoperability, which is key to taking DLs to the next level.

Athens Workshop, 13 December 2010

Perspectives from Veria Central Library, a new DL.org Strategic Alliance, are brought by Yannis Trohopoulos &  Vaggelis Banos, taking the floor to discuss heterogeneity in European Digital Libraries with the spotlight on the EC’s Europeana initiative to ensure Europe’s cultural heritage is not only accessible to all citizens but also preserved for new generations in the years to come. One of our experts in our Quality Working Group, Sarantos Kapidakis, a professor at the Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing, Ionian University, looks at interoperability approaches for metadata. Participants will get the chance to debate all of these topics throughout the morning session before the networking lunch.

The rest of the Workshop focuses on demos illustrating a diverse set of Digital Library functionalities from a European perspective:

• Europeana
• TEL & TELplus
• Access-IT
• DRIVER & OpenAIRE
• D4Science.

The event wraps up with an interactive discussion, demonstrating how concerted efforts can ensure  a better understanding of both the role of Reference Models  and of how interoperability challenges are being addressed by DL.org. By doing so, DL.org aims to help narrow the gap between theory and practice so practioners and researchers alike are in a much stronger position to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.

Date: 9 November 2010, Parma, Italy
Venue: Biblioteca Civica, University of Parma, Vicolo Santa Maria 5, Parma, 9.00-17.30.
Registration: Participation to the seminar is free, but for organizational reason it is necessary to register in advance. Please send an email with your name and your affiliation to Christin Mollenhauer (christin.mollenhauer@nemo.unipr.it).
Hosts: DL.org European project, DILL International Master, University of Parma

New strategic alliance: DL.org has forged an alliance with Digital Library Learning (DILL), a Master Programme under the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus Programme with the aim of offering a springboard on education and training on digital libraries.

Event in detail

Parma, setting for Seminar, 9 Nov 2010

The information society in general and digital libraries in particular can be researched from different perspectives and angles: Digital libraries are, for example, technological systems and can be researched as such; but they are also organizations and they can be researched also in that respect; they are arenas for information seeking behaviour and for social processes such as learning and knowledge sharing, which can be another dimension of research; they are collections of content that need curation (collection, description, preservation, retrieval, etc); they are social institutions with a social mandate, and as such they are affected by social, demographic and legal issues.
This  one-day seminar, as a forum for discussion between the research communities participating in the DL.org activities and the communities of Digital Library education in Europe. The main aim of the seminar is to energise thinking on research and education in digital library and explore ways fto foster closer co-operation between them.

• Start discussing how to implement a European scale mechanism for exchanging, sharing and integrating research results into education in digital libraries.
• Start defining research topics suitable for PhD students to ease the integration of research done in European projects and research done in Universities.
• Discuss how the interoperability research results of DL.org can be transferred to education in digital libraries.

Seminar features include presentations on the topic and a round-table debate.

Students & Lecturers at the Autumn School

Feedback collected from the participants of the DL.org Autumn school, which ran 3-8 October 2010 in Athens, underscores the different levels of quality of the event, from the lecturers, background material, expectations, and addressing the main topic to organisational aspects. All participants are interested in attending similar events in the future and almost everyone felt that the cost is acceptable. Here is how the Autumn School faired out of a total score of 5: speaker effectiveness: 4.41; structure of the event: 4.5; value of background documentation: 4.45; organization: 4.83 and addressing the main topic: 4.58.

DL.org Autumn School

Views from Librarians & Library Managers at the School

“The competence of trainers, good explanations of the field are the two things I liked best about the Autumn School. The wide view of DL’s and requirements that have to be discussed for interoperability is my take-home message.”

“The topics for the user domain and architecture domain are my favourite workshop features.”

“The expertise of the speakers is what impressed me most. I take home general knowledge about the requirements needed.”

“I take away with me a method, a complete list of points to take in count, some sites or applications on which I’d like to find more information after the School.”

“I liked the part of the practical hands-on exercises, as well as the part where various researchers presented the steps that they are undertaking such as the DRIVER project. The Autumn School was very helpful in understanding matters that are related to the implementation of a digital library, especially the ones that are related with the matter of interoperability.”

“Collaboration by working on problem solving solutions, the participation of the speakers during the lessons and presentations scenarios based on real-life cases is what I liked best. Additional practices solutions and best methods in order to organize or reorganize digital libraries and repositories is what I am taking away with me.”

“What I liked most was the D4Science demo, bringing a different perspective. For me the main take-away is new knowledge on conceptualisation and generalisation of DL model, as well as interoperability guidelines.”

“I really liked the extensive and thorough presentation of all aspects of Digital Libraries, Digital Library Systems and Digital Library Management Systems. I take back with me new know-how on the DL.org Reference Model and the Cookbook.”

Views from DL Designers, Software Developers, Technology Coordinators & Project Managers

“I most liked the user interactive study approach of Prof. Yannis Ioannidis. I take away with me the systematization of DL research.”

“Perfect organisation, good lecturers, interesting topics, and team working exercises are the best things about the Autumn School. I take away some best practices about DLs and interoperability.”

“Meeting nice people, the social dinner, and an informative well-structured series of lectures are what I liked best. A better understanding of DL interoperability issues and some general knowledge of the DL.org Reference Model is what I am taking away with me.”

“The organisation into the various fundamental “domains”, how they have been treated and explained to us, so as to understand the essential importance and role of each of them to achieve interoperability is what I liked best. Useful theoretical as well as practical references to promote some Digital Libraries ideas for future projects in the Organisation is what I am take back with me.”

Many thanks to all the participants, lecturers, hosts and supporters! We hope to interact with you in the future.