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.

Heather Joseph

Very timely workshop on a topic that is central to the advancing collective mission not only of the library community, but of the academy as a whole, and society at large. Role as a representative of the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is to focus on the importance of consistently using Open Access as a compass point that underpins our efforts in the Digital Library and Institutional Repository space, so that initiatives led by the community can achieve the global impact they are intended to deliver. SPARC’s mission is to act as a catalyst for action in creating a more open and equitable system of scholarly communication, expand dissemination of research and scholarship in a way that leverages digital networked technology and ultimately reduces the financial pressure on libraries. The approach to Open Access is holistic:

• Infrastructure
• Journals
• Digital Repositories
• Legal Framework
• Copyright/licensing
• Author education
• Policy Framework
• Local/national/international
• Coalition Building

In particular, SPARC actively works to support emerging “meta policies” that help ensure that full OA becomes a requirement in the research arena, and enable true interoperability to be achieved.

Policy focus

• Dissemination of results is an essential component of research and the Public’s investment in science.
• Funders obtain value from their investment only when results are used.
• Governments would boost innovation and get a better return on their investment in publicly funded research by making research findings more widely available, and by doing so,  they would maximize social returns on public investments.

Emerging trends in the U.S.

U.S. NIH Public Access Policy; – U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008; Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants (TAA – CCCT). We are in the midst of some clear trends on which the community can capitalise, helping to achieve, from a larger policy level, the kind of interoperability promised by Open Access. A very clear message is being sent from the top that Open is the default.

Call to action

• Set the Default to “Open”
• Recognition that maximising access & utility maximises benefits
• Recognition that exceptions will be the rule – “Shades of Open”
• Community driven approach to  development/implementation
• National discussions include data, Open Educational Reseouces (OERs), other materials – not just articles

• Explicitly recognize need for partnerships (public/private and beyond)
• Culture change needed – incentivize sharing Intellectual property rights must be respected
• “Good Practices” that will evolve into “Best Practices”
• “Will to act” increasing as results from active policies become available

The talk is available on the dedicated web page.

Engaged participants

Policy permeates the digital library from conceptualisation through to operation, so it needs to be represented at these various levels. A DL.org achievement has been shedding light on what is unexplored territory at global organisational (rather than only technical) level & interdisciplinary research. Two points to bear in mind:

1. Lack of policy formalisation and representation methods in current DLs
2. Time dimension: Handling policy drift over time.

Survey focus

Evaluate policies, strategies, frameworks, programmes, plans, or statements that have been prepared to guide how to develop and exploit aspects of their digital library/digital repository’s information management, exchanging experiences with Open Access Repository community in Europe, including EU initiatives, and in the U.S. The survey focus highlights a number of issues that are shared by experts in both DL.org Working Groups on Policy and Quality.

Sample of respondents – showcasing excellence

California Digital Library (CDL) – Calisphere; Data Archiving & Networked Services (DANS – Netherlands); DRIVER; ELis; Europeana; Liber Liber; Nemertes; National Science Digital Library (NSDL);
Padua@Research; UK Data Archive; University of Chicago Digital Repository; USGS Digital Library.

Questions

Questions focused on Access, Preservation, Metadata, Networks, Collection development, Intellectual property, Authentication, Service level agreements.

Outcomes
Most of the organisations have a written strategy or plan, either as part of a library strategic plan or as independent entity within their organisation. Existing policies have been amended and matched to the policies of other organisations with regard to policy exchange and reuse only in the areas of Preservation, Access, Collection Development and Metadata. All respondents indicated an interest or need to interoperate with peer and smaller/larger organisations, both in the public and private sector. But interestingly few
written policies have been stated as available to regulate this interaction.

Issues to be addressed

• Lack of policy formalisation & representation.
• Limited formal specifications are supported, e.g. for network management, security and privacy.
• Some technical interoperability of policy is possible, but only for very specific and technical cases (e.g.access control via Shibboleth).

Looking ahead
It might make more sense to talk about a “future” status as opposed to ‘solutions’ for policy interoperability.
Active areas for policy interoperability are related to access, authentication and licensing policies. Research should focus on human-machine interaction, e.g. how licensing policy interoperability might be achieved automatically in the near future. Making policies machine-readable would make them easier to manage.

The talk is available on the dedicated web page.

The talk is available on the dedicated workshop page on the DL.org website.