“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:– 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 book-stacks, 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

• “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

• 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:• 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:

• 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?