Bill McDaniel

Semantic Digital Libraries

Libraries have always been an inspiration for the standards and technologies developed by semantic web activities. However, except for the Dublin Core specification, semantic web and social networking technologies have not been widely adopted and further developed by major digital library initiatives and projects. Yet semantic technologies offer a new level of flexibility, interoperability, and relationships for digital repositories. Kruk and McDaniel present semantic web-related aspects of current digital library activities, and introduce their functionality; they show examples ranging from general architectural descriptions to detailed usages of specific ontologies, and thus stimulate the awareness of researchers, engineers, and potential users of those technologies. Their presentation is completed by chapters on existing prototype systems such as JeromeDL, BRICKS, and Greenstone, as well as a look into the possible future of semantic digital libraries. This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in areas like digital libraries, the semantic web, social networks, and information retrieval. This audience will benefit from detailed descriptions of both todays possibilities and also the shortcomings of applying semantic web technologies to large digital repositories of often unstructured data.

Extending web applications with a lightweight zero knowledge proof authentication

User authentication is a crucial requirement for secure transactions and access to the sensitive resources on the Web. We propose, implement and evaluate a Zero-Knowledge Proof Authentication (ZKP) algorithm based on isomorphic graphs. The proposed mechanism allows for authentication with varying confidence and security levels. We suggest that most of the computations should be carried out by the users web browser without revealing password or login at any point in time; instead generated random isomorphic graphs and permutation functions based on the user login/password can be exchanged. Our experimental evaluation shows that by combining the asynchronous web with ZKP protocols, it is feasible to satisfy existing usability standards on the web.

E-learning on the social semantic information sources

E-Learning grows on the fertile soil of the Internet technologies; it fails, however, to reach their full potential. With new, emerging technologies of the second generation Internet there is even more to be captured and adopted: knowledge sharing with blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking services. In this article we argue that those technologies can be adapted to improve user experience in e-Learning; we present an online social bookmarking system called Social Semantic Collaborative Filtering (SSCF). SSCF supports SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities) metadata which ultimately transforms it in to a browser of blogs, fora, and other community sites. We show how a digital library system, such as JeromeDL, utilising this technology can be used in the e-Learning process, which takes advantage of recent research in the Internet.

2LIPGarden: 3D hypermedia for everyone

The early Web was hailed for being easy to use, and what is more important, giving people a chance to participate in its growth. The Web3D was believed to have potential to be the next step in the Webs evolution, since it could benefit from graphics hardware and provide users with new and exciting experiences. Nevertheless, Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), the first Web3D standard, and its successor X3D, did not generate commercial success. These languages were excessively complex for average Internet users. In this paper, we propose 2LIPGarden, a 3D Hypermedia publishing framework that lets individuals who only know basic HTML - those same enthusiasts who could write pages for the early Web - create simple, easy to use yet interactive 3D web pages. Our framework builds upon 2-Layer Interface Paradigm (2LIP), an attempt to marry advantages of 3D experience with the advantages of narrative structure of hypertext. We introduce c-link to HTML, a new type of hyperlink, which connects text with its 3D visualization.

FRM: Towards a Semantic Platform for Fair Content Distribution

Fair use policy allows legal owners to share products they bought with their acquaintance; it is based on the assumptions that the owners pass an original product and they cannot use it at the same time. In the digital world, we can hardly apply those assumptions since they are based on a physical availability. Furthermore, digital content providers want to have control over the distribution of their products; thus, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems do not assist and even forbid sharing. We present Fair Rights Management (FRM) that is our work towards fair use in the digital world. We propose taking advantage of social networks and terms negotiations. We illustrate our approach by extending existing solutions with semantic descriptions. We describe how to apply and implement the proposed improvements in the standard DRM model. Finally, we evaluate our proposition with the most common fair use scenarios.

Conclusions: The Future of Semantic Digital Libraries

Through out this book we showed that Semantic Digital Libraries are no longer an abstract concept; we have presented both underlying technologies, examples of semantic digital libraries, and their applications. However, the bright future of this technology only begins, and we expect more and more genuine applications of semantic digital libraries to emerge. In this section we will spotlight on three of, in our opinion, the most promising fields of applications: semantic museums, eLearning 2.0, and semantic digital libraries in enterprises.

3DWiki: the 3D Wiki engine

We demonstrate one of the potential paths of the evolution of wiki engines towards Web 3.0. We introduce 3dWiki - the 3D wiki engine, which was built according to 2-Layer Interface Paradigm (2LIP). It was developed for use by Copernicus, our vision of a 3D encyclopedia. In the demonstration: • We give an overview of 2-Layer Interface Paradigm, an attempt to marry advantages of 3D experience with the advantages of narrative structure of hypertext. • We describe step by step how to create an article for Copernicus: from creating models for the 3D background, through authoring the content, creating the c-links, to publishing the result in our encyclopedia. • We show how to use a physics engine in our wiki.

Semantic Digital Libraries for Archiving

Digital libraries offer several benefits for archiving unstructured or semistructured data for long term use. Archival systems which follow a typical document access curve typically leverage online, near line, and offline storage mechanisms to efficiently store and retrieve documents. The nature of storage which is always online, such as large document conglomerations, such as Wikipedia or Google, changes the access curve for digital documents of the future. Semantic enablement over these corpora offers benefits for improved retrieval accuracy, timeliness, and relevance. This paper will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of semantically powered digital libraries in the archival arena.