Newsletter Issue 6

Editorial | Summer School on Preservation | ELAG 2006 Workshop

DELOS Digital Library Manifesto | Multilinguality in the European Library

Summer School on Multimedia Digital Libraries | DELOS Researcher Exchange

DELOS Digital Library Manifesto Discussed with Invited Experts

Despite the large number of systems named ‘digital libraries’ (DLs), there is as yet no agreement on what these systems are exactly, nor upon on which functionality they ought to provide. Existing systems are heterogeneous in scope and focus on very different aspects and functionality. They range from digital objects/metadata repositories, reference linking systems, archives and commercial systems which provide administration functions, through to complex systems (mainly developed in research environments) that integrate advanced digital library services.

Research on DLs covers several different areas. It is often difficult to compare or combine the results achieved in these areas since it is not always clear how they are related, nor how they may affect or constrain one another. This fragmentation of results hinders the embedding of new research achievements into real world systems. These problems have a common origin: the lack of any agreement on the foundations of Digital Libraries. Over the last year the DELOS Task 1.4 group has been working to solve this problem. In particular, it has recently produced a report entitled “Digital Library Manifesto” containing a proposal for a reference model for DLs. This model establishes an abstract framework for understanding significant relationships among the entities within the DL environment. It is based on a small number of unifying concepts but is not directly tied to any standards, technologies or other concrete implementation details. However it does seek to provide a common semantics that can be used unambiguously across and between different implementations.

The reference model illustrates the relationships among three types of relevant ‘systems’ that play a central and distinct role in the DL world, i.e., Digital Library, Digital Library System, and Digital Library Management System, each of which is characterized in terms of six main concepts: ‘information domain’, ‘user’, ‘functionality’, ‘quality’, ‘policy’, and ‘architecture’. The Manifesto describes how these and the other more specialized concepts are related to the three types of systems within the perspective of the different actors that have a role to play in the digital library world.

Villa Grazioli in Frascati, venue of the Workshop

This DELOS Digital Library Manifesto was presented at the Reference Model Workshop organized by ISTI-CNR at the Villa Grazioli in Frascati, Italy over 1-2 June 2006. The objective of the workshop was to discuss the proposed model with an invited group of key international experts in the digital library field in order to achieve global and stable consensus on the model. As Patricia Manson, Head of the Unit “Technology-Enhanced Learning & Cultural Heritage” of the European Commission said in her introductory speech, the Reference Model draft and the related in-depth discussions during the workshop were definitely expected to nurture Commission thinking so as to work on priorities of the FP7 EC research programme and to set up the relevant political and operational action at EU level necessary to deliver the European Digital Library to European citizens.

The workshop, attended by 21 participants from 9 countries, was organised in three separate sessions: the first was dedicated to the presentation of the Reference Model; the second presented similar work carried out at the Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, USA, in the context of the 5S research project, as well as in the framework of larger initiatives, such as the JISC/DEST eFramework (UK/Australia) and the DLF Service Framework (USA). Finally, the third session was divided in a number of break-out meetings where the modelling of the different DL aspects was discussed in deepth.

Many useful comments and recommendations were received during the workshop and collaboration agreements were established. In particular, it was decided to hold another similar workshop in 2007, enlarging the number of participant organisations.

Donatella Castelli, ISTI-CNR

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