A meta data model for distributed library systems: building a magic mirror (xml/rdf) for rdbs

Autor: R. Schimmer, W. Muehl, F. Klaproth
Rok vydání: 2005
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Zdroj: ADL
DOI: 10.1109/adl.1999.777698
Popis: Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Gottingen Digitization Center (GDZ) was established in May 1997 at the Lower-Saxony State and University Library (SUB) in Gottingen, Germany. Building up a digital library on the basis of old book collections, the main purpose of this service center is to acquire up-to-date know-how and experience in scanning old book material, image processing, OCR, document management including access of digital libraries and books via the Internet. And another main task is the transfer of this knowledge to related library digitization projects. The GDZ is also engaged in some projects with practical services, digitizing a collection of North-Americana from the 18th and 19th century, the "Jahrbuch uber die Fortschritte der Mathematik," a collection of German printed material from the 18th century and supporting the European project DIEPER (DIgitized European PERiodicals).The AGORA System [1] is a RDB driven EDMS based on an extensible Meta Data Model. The Model can be implemented on different RDB platforms. All functions are controlled by an administrative tool. In order to allow for maximum interoperability with other meta data sources, the system is equipped with an interface that is based on XML/RDF [2];[3];[4]. Such a component is indispensable for the setting up of a distributed digital research library, which is our overarching objective. But it is also possible to develop a whole range of applications for the exported XML/RDF schemes and hence to allow for individually defined views on the meta information and the digital objects they are pointing to. Taken together, AGORA provides the following integrated features: Importing scanned images Importing/exporting meta data (XML /RDF) Batch converting images (TIFF -> GIF, JPEG, PNG) Generating WWW pages with HTML-Templates In the next stage, AGORA will provide Contents Search in full-text documents, "electronic book trolley," user accounting, ordering of CDRs over the web and controlled printing on demand. The largest part of the AGORA Meta Data Model is used for documenting and retrieving digital resources and their parts. For their description, we use a heterogeneous hierarchy of structural object information with common and distinctive features (e.g. monograph, title page, chapter...); but special objects (e.g. figures, tables or indexes) can be referenced as well. The actual pages of a digital book are differentiated from their "logical" structure. Users can still use the original page number to access any document object. A minor part of the Meta Data Model is used for defining the constraints all document information is subjected to for maintaining data integrity. Some additional information applies to the user interface (e.g. labels for the multilingual bibliographic description of document structures).One of the prerequisites of our digital library is its openness to other electronic research libraries. It is one of our main concerns to support the importing of electronic books from external providers and to allow for simple discovery and usability of electronic documents and their meta information. We expect that XML/RDF will not only be the emerging standard for the description of electronic documents but also open the door to real global information systems. For one, it will most likely offer a great opportunity for efficient target oriented retrieval by XML-compliant search engines in the internet; and on the other hand, we hope that already in the near future users can view and process our documents with a variety of XML and RDF tools (e.g. browser, editing tools). XML/RDF acts like a "magic mirror" and allows for access not only to the contents but also to the highly complex internal structure of our data collections.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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