Putting it all together

A summary and opportunity to explore an existing project critically

But first …• Organizing who will present on each

week (Note, all must be present and active attendees for all presentations)– December 7

– December 14

Course outline• What and Why of Digital Libraries• The 5S model of digital libraries• Content – gathering, classifying, describing• Google books – an especially large collection• Access control and encryption• Quality issues in digital libraries• User interfaces and Usability• Interoperability – OAI and other protocols• Online information seeking behaviors• Introduction to Drupal (Guest instructor)

What and Why• Do you know more about libraries, and digital

ones in particular, than you did before?• What are the necessary components of a

digital library?• Redo the concept map experience, based on

the semester’s input– Use the cmap tool found on your computer

system– Work in groups of 2 or 3– 15 minutes– Open discussion to follow

Before 5 S• As we may think– Vannevar Bush, 1945, The Atlantic

• The vision– Everything you saw or read, readily available

for you to retrieve and use again.– Desk image (what would he think of iPhone?)– The essential elements are there• Storage• Indexing• Retrieval• Viewing

The 5 S model• A language for discussing key aspects of

a digital library• A check list for making sure all relevant

aspects are addressed in your DL design• The terms:– Streams– Structures– Scenarios– Societies– Spaces

The 5 S terms expanded• Stream – what types of data? gif, jpg, avi?

• Structure – How are the elements organized? Is there a hierarchy?

Are there multiple structures?• Spaces – How will we index the items? How will we divide them

into related groups• Scenarios– What services will we provide? What information do

we need to provide those services?• Societies– Who is the library intended to serve? Remember to

include agents and other processes as well as users.

Content• The actual material and its description– Example: The archeology DL

• A digital library is not limited to textual materials• Part of the challenge is deciding how best to

represent the content that you want to share.

• Standard descriptions for use in information exchange– Dublin core– Specialized terms for use by a particular

community.• The important thing is that the vocabulary be known

and accepted by all who will exchange descriptors

Access control• Two components– An appropriate policy that respects the

intellectual property rights associated with each item.

– Technical implementation to keep the policy in effect• Digital signatures and encryption as tools for

ensuring limited access to resources that have distribution limitations

Google Books• An example of a very large DL project that

has all the challenges of our smaller projects, greatly magnified– Both by the scale of the project and by the

visibility of anything Google does– The project has inspired other projects and has

raised issues about digital rights management and about preservation issues

• See also the Internet Archive.– www.archive.org– Dedicated to preserving digital material from the

web and other sources.

Quality• Points of interest

– Accessibility– Pertinence– Preservability– Relevance– Significance– Timeliness– Accuracy– Completeness– Consistency– Composability– Efficiencey– Effecteveness– Extensibility– Reusability– Reliability

• Measures of quality applied to– Data objects– Metadata– Collection– Catalog– Respository– Services

• Which terms go with which items?

• Which are most critical?• Which are easy to measure

and which are hard?• Where does the data come

from to test each one?

User Interfaces and Usability• User centered design

– Start with a clear image of the user and design to satisfy the user’s needs and interests

– Make the interface as self-evident as possible. No instructions should be necessary for web-based systems.

• Evaluation– Formative and summative

• Know your user!• The usual suspects:

– Wording, consistency, graphic layout and organization, user’s model of the system

• Digital libraries add– Browsing, filtering, searching, new item submission

Your Ensemble review• I showed the original layout (that may be

the only remaining copy of that layout) and the proposed changes.

• Your input was instrumental in making changes in the version that was deployed last week– More about that later.

Special needs• Video– Different types of attributes– Different needs for viewing, for scanning, for

selecting segments• Common features

– Most systems use a textual querying interface and few systems provide any form of visual query interface, probably indicating the need for further development in this area;

– Most systems use keyframe(s) as their video browsing method;– Playback is provided in all listed systems, indicating that playback is

regarded as a most important interface feature;– Whereas most systems provide more than one video browsing

method (often transcript + playback and/or keyframe + playback), browsing aids such as synchronization between different browsing methods are not often facilitated.

Interoperability• Digital libraries rarely stand alone– They provide feeds to other libraries– They harvest from other libraries

• The interconnectedness of the world of digital libraries enhances the user’s opportunity to find a curated collection entry to suit a particular need

• Basic Standard: Open Archives Interconnection– Vocabulary of messages– Standardized meaning and expected responses

Online information seeking behaviors

• Digital libraries are nearly always web-based information resources

• Knowing how users seek and use information in other web-based situations helps to inform the design of a digital library.– Subject of the new field of personal

information management (PIM)

Information seeking• People’s expectations are changing– Where there previously was wonder and

amazement, now there is growing expectation for perfect results instantly provided.

– Where a desktop or good laptop was previously the medium for obtaining information, more and more people are expecting results suitably formatted for cell phones and similar small devices.

– Where people previously were glad to know where to find the answers, more and more they are expecting the answers to be presented directly.

– Changing expectations apply to digital libraries, perhaps even more than to the web in general.

Providing information from the Web

• Gather (web crawlers)• Extract information• Index the information• Process the query• Rank results of query• Present the results in useful and

convenient form.

Using information obtained• Serve immediate need• Keep for later?– If so, how to organize so it can be found later– If not, how to decide to discard? Remember

how to find it again?• How is kept information organized?

Drupal• I don’t have slides. Did Dr. Siegfried use

slides? (If so, I will get them onto our site.)

• What did you learn about Drupal? • What do you think of it?• How do you see it relating to digital

libraries?

The Ensemble Launch• Most of you know that I have been fairly

well consumed by the launch of our digital library for computing education during this semester.

• Last Wednesday, we presented the Alpha version to the representatives of NSF and to the other NSDL pathway projects.

• I think you might like to see that presentation and I will ask your informed opinion of how well we are doing.