Position Statements

DL.org - A Common Journey to New Frontiers

“DL.org is both timely and much needed. This effort provides an umbrella for existing and future digital library projects, which have become fragmented and, in many cases, duplicative in functionality. The community has grown significantly during the past ten years, with many experiments launched and lessons-learned. The current landscape is now in need of coordination to harness the global expertise that exists. Building from the Digital Library Reference Model work, DL.org brings together a team of researchers with a proven track record that is recognized worldwide for their expertise in the digital library community. They recognize that interoperable systems are the key to ensuring that digital libraries continue to grow in a way that meets the needs of users across the Web. Capturing best practices, providing a “living” Digital Library Reference Model and addressing the ongoing educational needs fill crucial needs for global digital library community”.
Geneva Henry, Rice University, U.S. & Member of the External Advisory Board

The DL.org community has been proactive in providing feedback, views and perspectives during our events through a series of position statements. Comments come from librarians playing diverse professional roles and library decision makers, software developers, project managers, experts and educationalists, computer scientists, researchers and students at different stages of their academic careers.

Position statements from the most recent come from:

All the Position Statements are collected in one downloadable document: DL.org Stakeholder Position Statements

 


agobert Soergel – University of Bufallo (USA)

Determine overlap between WGs:

  • Functionality with Content: interoperability of functions with data, interoperability of functions based on data, detailed descriptions of functions that deal specifically with digital objects: ingest, format conversion, display of complex objects, annotation
  • Functionality with Architecture: Software Component, component profile.  Function and software component description has tow parts: (1) Description of what the function does for whom as related to DL services and behind-the -scenes operation (Functionality WG) (2) API, how software modules work together, composition, syntax of such descriptions etc., Web services specification (Architecture WG).  (1) and (2) together make a complete description / specification / profile.
  • Functionality with User: (1) User requirements as related to function description (2) Detailed description of functions relating to users, such as authentication and user profile creation
  • We may want to encourage all working groups to keep a log of qualtiy parameters and policy problems as they encounter them.

The Quality WG needs to cover quality at a higher level as it relates to services to users.

The cookbook should have a section for assessing the quality of a DL.  In the future it would be useful to have toolkit for assessing DL quality (an expansion, in a way, of the DRAMBORA toolkit for assessing the preservation function) perhaps a follow-on project.

At least one person mentioned to me that a database of detailed function descriptions would be incredibly useful to designers, especially if it includes design patterns (user interface oriented) and software components (implementation oriented).  There are many places where content for such a database is already available, it is a matter of making all of this available in on place.

Geneva Henry mentioned that we should look at the JISC eFramework and build on what they have done.