Preserving the Essence: Identifying the Significant Properties of Social Science Research Data

In the light of technological and cultural changes, a question that digital archives face is: Which characteristics of our assets must be preserved to keep them usable and authentic? The concept of significant properties, which can be thought of as the “essence” of a digital object, provides one possible answer. The GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences (DAS) currently determines the significant properties of the data it preserves. We describe the procedure used to determine the significant properties of our digital assets, present first results of our work, and give an outlook on work still to be done.     

数字化小城镇空间元数据服务体系的构建

应用目前成熟、先进的分布式数据存储技术和网络技术整合集成多源异构的信息资源,实现数据共享是“数字化小城镇”建设的一项基础与核心内容。采用目前主流的Web Service技术,提出在分布式异构存储条件下的元数据服务的技术方案,分析了基于Web Service的数据流程,构建了逻辑存储表,定制元数据工具方案。     

Reimagining the Format Model: Introducing the Work of the NSLA Digital Preservation Technical Registry

In this article we introduce the work of the National and State Libraries Australasia Digital Preservation Technical Registry project.

Any technical registry model must allow digital preservation analysts to understand the technical form of the content they are tasked with preserving, understand the capabilities they have in relation to that content, and reflect on the community position in relation to those capabilities. We believe the solution outlined here is well placed to deliver the information required to answer these questions, and in a manner that makes it easy to understand, reference and augment.

The primary focus of this article is to describe the format model, which is the most radical part of the Digital Preservation Technical Registry. The flexibility the model provides delivers on all of the requirements outlined by the NSLA partners and project team members; this includes the ability to reference many layers constituting a format, including relationships between specifications and implementations of real-world formats. We seek input from members of the community on the model and suggestions for use cases and requirements that we have not envisaged.     

Preserving and ensuring long-term access to digitally born legal information

Written laws, records and legal materials form the very foundation of a democratic society. Lawmakers, legal scholars and everyday citizens alike need, and are entitled, to access the current and historic materials that comprise, explain, define, critique and contextualize their laws and legal institutions. The preservation of legal information in all formats is imperative. Thus far, the twenty-first century has witnessed unprecedented mass-scale acceptance and adoption of digital culture, which has resulted in an explosion in digital information. However, digitally born materials, especially those that are published directly and independently to the Web, are presently at an extremely high risk of permanent loss. Our legal heritage is no exception to this phenomenon, and efforts must be put forth to ensure that our current body of digital legal information is not lost. The authors explored the role of the United States law library community in the preservation of digital legal information. Through an online survey of state and academic law library directors, it was determined that those represented in the sample recognize that digitally born legal materials are at high risk for loss, yet their own digital preservation projects have primarily focused upon the preservation of digitized print materials, rather than digitally born materials. Digital preservation activities among surveyed libraries have been largely limited by a lack of funding, staffing and expertise; however, these barriers could be overcome by collaboration with other institutions, as well as participation in a large-scale regional or national digital preservation movement, which would allow for resource-sharing among participants. One such collaborative digital preservation program, the Chesapeake Project, is profiled in the article and explored as a collaborative effort that may be expanded upon or replicated by other institutions and libraries tackling the challenges of digital preservation.     

Preserving Social Media: The Problem of Access

This article is part of a 12-month study commissioned by the UK Data Service as part of the “Big Data Network” program funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The larger study focuses on the potential uses and accompanying challenges of data generated by social networking applications. This article, “Preserving Social Media: The Problem of Access,” comprises an excerpt of that longer study, allowing the authors a space to explore in closer detail the issue of making social media archives accessible to researchers and students now and in the future.     

数字图书馆中数据对象的描述和检索

数字图书馆中最基本的元素是数据对象，对数据对象的描述、存贮和检索构成了数字图书馆的基本功能。该文首先介绍了一个数字图书馆结构框架，并以此为基础提出了数字图书馆中基本元素数据对象的描述方法和目前正在制定中的标准，然后给出了一个基于层次化树状结构的数据对象检索方法。     

Toward a Conceptual Emulation Framework for the Preservation of Archaeological 3D Visualizations

Through the Preservation of Complex Objects Symposia (POCOS), leading researchers and practitioners have managed to propose strategies for preserving digital art and computer games. The same is not true for the preservation of archaeological visualizations. This article therefore discusses the following question: “Can emulation be employed to effectively preserve obsolete computer visualizations from the Archaeology domain?” Guidelines and test results coming from this work would be of great benefit to the archaeological community, and would contribute knowledge to other research communities, specifically those interested in similar data types/3D visualizations.     

QoS Management in Educational Digital Library Environments

Advances in multimedia computing technologies offer new approaches to the support of computer-assisted education and training within many application domains. Novel interactive presentation tools can be built to enhance traditional teaching methods with more active learning. Since a variety of user expectations are possible in such an environment, research must address the incorporation of these factors into presentation tools. During an interactive learning/training process, presentation tools must be able to handle various types of delays. A flexibly adjustable quality of service (QoS) should thus be supported. In this paper, we investigate a framework and systematic strategies for supporting the continuous and synchronized retrieval and presentation of multimedia data streams in a client/server distributed multimedia environment for educational digital libraries. Specifically, we establish a practical framework for specifying multimedia objects, tasks, schedules, and synchronization constraints between media streams. We identify the QoS parameters critical to the support of multimedia presentations for learning and training activities. Based on the proposed framework and QoS specifications, we develop presentation scheduling and buffer management strategies which can enforce the specified QoS requirements in an educational digital library environment.     

Media Archives and Digital Preservation: Overcoming Cultural Barriers

Media archives have begun implementing digital preservation processes and strategies. However, a robust take-up of digital preservation standards such as OAIS has not occurred. A key question is whether or not implementing these standards is relevant in all media archives. Six media archives, representing three different “types”—broadcast, hybrid and national libraries—were studied to gain a better understanding of how digital preservation norms fit into their mission, what drives their requirements, and whether in fact digital preservation is relevant to their main “business.”     

室内人体运动目标的自动跟踪方法

元数据在银行数据仓库中具有重要意义.讨论元数据的分类和作用,分析元数据的管理功能,给出一种基于银行数据仓库的元数据管理系统,对其结构进行分析和说明.实践结果表明,该系统可以加强对数据的分析和管理能力,提高银行数据仓库等决策系统的灵活性和可扩展性.     

Building a Future for Our Digital Memory: A Collaborative Infrastructure for Permanent Access to Digital Heritage in The Netherlands

This article describes the developments in The Netherlands to establish a national Network for Digital Heritage. This network is based on three pillars: to make the digital heritage visible, usable, and sustainably preserved. Three working programs will have their own but integrated set of dedicated actions in order to create a national infrastructure in The Netherlands, based on an optimal use of existing facilities. In this article the focus is on the activities related to the sustainable preservation of the Dutch national digital heritage.     

Making Our Digital Memory Accessible Tomorrow by Watching Technology Today

Since its foundation in 2002, the Digital Preservation Coalition has published a series of topical Technology Watch Reports that provide an authoritative introduction to recognized challenges associated with maintaining access to data and digital materials in the long term. The series fills a strategic gap between emerging research and actual professional practice, and it strongly reflects the needs of the DPC's members. Commissioned from recognized domain experts, they identify and track developments in IT, as well as the standards and tools that inhibit or enable digital preservation. The reports are thoroughly peer-reviewed and scrutinized by the DPC membership prior to publication to ensure they are informed, current, concise, and balanced. They are available to all and are intended as a lasting and helpful contribution to knowledge exchange.     

知识对象在学校数字化建设中的作用

该文从中小学信息技术应用的现状出发,讨论了知识对象的概念、知识库的组织,知识库的结构,并从应用的角度对知识对象的结构进行了重新定义、描述。     

Practical maintenance of evolving metadata for digital preservation: algorithmic solution and system support

Metadata (i.e., data describing about data) of digital objects plays an important role in digital libraries and archives, and thus its quality needs to be maintained well. However, as digital objects evolve over time, their associated metadata evolves as well, causing a consistency issue. Since various functionalities of applications containing digital objects (e.g., digital library, public image repository) are based on metadata, evolving metadata directly affects the quality of such applications. To make matters worse, modern data applications are often large-scale (having millions of digital objects) and are constructed by software agents or crawlers (thus often having automatically populated and erroneous metadata). In such an environment, it is challenging to quickly and accurately identify evolving metadata and fix them (if needed) while applications keep running. Despite the importance and implications of the problem, the conventional solutions have been very limited. Most of existing metadata-related approaches either focus on the model and semantics of metadata, or simply keep authority file of some sort for evolving metadata, and never fully exploit its potential usage from the system point of view. On the other hand, the question that we raise in this paper is “when millions of digital objects and their metadata are given, (1) how to quickly identify evolving metadata in various context? and (2) once the evolving metadata are identified, how to incorporate them into the system?” The significance of this paper is that we investigate scalable algorithmic solution toward the identification of evolving metadata and emphasize the role of “systems” for maintenance, and argue that “systems” must keep track of metadata changes pro-actively, and leverage on the learned knowledge in their various services.     

Karamanlidika Digital Library Proposal: Reconstructing the Past of a Specific Diaspora

ABSTRACT

The World Wide Web provides unlimited visibility for the personal documents and cultural artifacts that remain in the hands of families of people belonging to different diasporas. Computer mediated platforms are often the building blocks of their transcendental homelands. This article presents a study aiming to build a model and community around Karamanlides by using digital library technologies. Karamanlides is one of the many interesting communities in need of the creation of a “niche personal/community knowledge environment” as an archetype for similar conceptualizations.     

基于P-Grid的数字媒体信息共享研究

文中总结了网络环境中的数字媒体使用现状,分析了在传统的数字媒体应用中存在的问题。为了解决这些问题,基于对等计算(P2P Computing)的思想,作者提出了一个基于P-Grid的数字信息共享模型,以基于XML的数字媒体生命周期为基础,利用P-Grid网络信息共享技术对Metadata进行有向发布和检索,实现数字媒体信息的有效使用。     

Digital Libraries for the Next Millennium: Challenges and Research Directions

The unprecedented growth of Internet technologies has made resources on the World Wide Web instantly accessible to various user communities through digital libraries. Since the early 1990s, there have been several digital library initiatives sponsored by government agencies and/or private organizations all over the world. A digital library is a networked system environment that provides diverse user communities with coherent, seamless and transparent access to large, organized, and digitized information resources. This article provides a comprehensive overview of major digital library projects that are currently being undertaken across the globe. We also identify and discuss major challenges and research issues to be addressed in the design and implementation of digital libraries for the next millennium. We believe that digital libraries are ripe with research opportunities, offer many challenges, and will continue to grow in the next several years.     

基于DEB和XML签名的电子证据管理

论述电子证据与传统物理证据的区别,分析电子证据的管理需求,提出一种电子证据管理方法。采用DEB格式作为电子证据的统一包装,设计XML数字签名链,对证据保全及保管链进行维护,以保证电子证据保全处理过程的可跟踪性。给出基于该方法的原型系统,验证了该方法的可行性。