Hussein Suleman

A Framework for Building Open Digital Libraries

Digital Libraries (DLs) have traditionally been positioned at the intersection of library science, computer science, and networked information systems. The different underlying philosophies of these three fields has had an unsettling influence on the development of DLs. While library science is fairly mature, networked information systems are constantly evolving to keep pace with Internet innovation. DLs are thus expected to demonstrate the careful management of libraries while supporting standards that evolve at an astonishing pace. This architectural moving target is a predicament that all DLs face sooner or later in their lifecycle, and one that few manage to deal with effectively. To exacerbate this problem, there has been a general desire for systems to be interoperable at the levels of data exchange and service collaboration. Such interoperability requirements necessitated the development of standards such as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). These standards have achieved a degree of success in the DL community largely because of their generality and simplicity. Informed by those lessons, this project is an attempt to consistently extend known interoperability standards to form the basis of a framework of components for building extensible DLs.

Issues of adoption: have e-learning management systems fulfilled their potential in developing countries?

Despite the potential of learning management systems to support both blended learning and learning that is entirely delivered online, the majority of LMS-supported e-learning initiatives in developing countries do not fulfill their potential; they fail, either totally or partially. To identify the underlying causes of failure, a survey was conducted through interviews with key e-learning personalities directly involved in e-learning initiatives in five universities in Africa. Some of the most probable causes of failure were identified as: high ICT illiteracy rates among the student community; low comfort levels with technology; usability issues of learning management systems; poor marketing strategies; ineffective maintenance strategies and insufficient user/technical support. The dimensions of these causes of failure are discussed, as are the probable interventions likely to avert some of them. The findings are intended to inform further research towards more successful deployment of learning management systems in developing countries.

The Open Archives initiative: Realizing simple and effective digital library interoperability

Summary The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is dedicated to solving problems of digital library interoperability. Its focus has been on defining simple protocols, most recently for the exchange of metadata from archives. The OAI evolved out of a need to increase access to scholarly publications by supporting the creation of interoperable digital libraries. As a first step towards such interoperability, a metadata harvesting protocol was developed to support the streaming of metadata from one repository to another, ultimately to a provider of user services such as browsing, searching, or annotation. This article provides an overview of the mission, philosophy, and technical framework of the OAI.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations Bridging the Gaps for Global Access - Part 1: Mission and Progress

The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is a collaborative effort of universities around the world to promote creating, archiving, distributing and accessing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). Since its inception in 1996, over a hundred universities have joined the initiative, underscoring the importance institutions place on training their graduates in the emerging forms of digital publishing and information access. The outreach and training mission of NDLTD is an ongoing project so in this article we report on the current status of membership and support activities. Recent research has focused on creating a union database that will provide a means to search and retrieve ETDs from the combined collections of NDLTD member institutions. The Virtua system developed by VTLS will serve as the heart of this union database. In order to bridge the gap between the existing distributed institutional archives and a unified collection of ETDs, we have developed a metadata standard especially suited to ETDs this is then used by partner sites to export their freely-available metadata using the Metadata Harvesting Protocol of the Open Archives Initiative. We also link name authority information into the metadata records to support unique identification of authors and others associated with the works. Additional research efforts include advanced search mechanisms, semantic interoperability, the design and development of multi- and cross-lingual search systems, and software modules that support the development of higher-level services to aid researchers in seeking relevant ETDs.

Automatic marking with Sakai

Large student numbers often drive teaching staff to consider greater degrees of automation of assessment activities. In introductory Computer Science classes - where submitted programs need to repeatedly be compiled, executed and tested -automation is an obvious route to investigate. This paper reports on an experimental automation system for assessing programming assignments, and its integration with the open source Sakai learning management system. While the system has been an administrative success, feedback from students has identified numerous areas for improvement at the interface of the student and the automatic marker. Furthermore, the use of automation has highlighted the need for teaching software development methodology from an early stage.

Designing Protocols in Support of Digital Library Componentization

Reusability always has been a controversial topic in Digital Library (DL) design. While componentization has gained momentum in software engineering in general, there has not been broad DL standardization in component interfaces. Recently, the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) has begun to address this by creating a standard protocol for accessing metadata archives. We propose that the philosophy and approach adopted by the OAI can be extended easily to support inter-component protocols. In particular, we propose building DLs by connecting small components that communicate through a family of lightweight protocols, using XML as the data interchange mechanism. In order to test the feasibility of this, a set of protocols was designed based on the work of the OAI. Components adhering to these protocols were implemented and integrated into production and research DLs. The performance of these components was analyzed from the perspective of execution speed, network traffic, and data consistency. On the whole, this work has shown promise in the approach of applying the fundamental concepts of the OAI protocol to the task of DL component design and implementation.

Enforcing interoperability with the open archives initiative repository explorer

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is an organization dedicated to sol ving problems of digital library interoperability by defining simple protocols, most recently for the exchange of metadata. The success of such an activity requires vigilance in specification of the protocol as well as standardization of implementation. The lack of standardized implementation is a substantial barrier to interoperability in many existing client/server protocols. To avoid this pitfall we developed the Repository Explorer, a tool that supports manual and automated protocol testing. This tool has a significant impact on simplifying development of interoperability interfaces and increasing the level of confidence of early adopters of the technology, thus exemplifying the positive impact of exhaustive testing and quality assurance on interoperability ventures.

Leveraging OAI harvesting to disseminate theses

NDLTD, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, supports and encourages the production and archiving of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). While many current NDLTD member institutions and consortia have individual collections accessible online, there has until recently been no single mechanism to aggregate all ETDs to provide NDLTD‐wide services (e.g. searching). With the emergence of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), that has changed. The OAI’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is a robust interoperability solution that defines a standard method of exchanging metadata. While working with the OAI to develop and test the metadata harvesting standard, we have set up and actively maintain a central NDLTD metadata collection and multiple user portals. We discuss in this article our experiences in building this distributed digital library based upon the work of the OAI.

Digital libraries without databases: the Bleek and Lloyd collection

Digital library systems are frequently defined with a focus on data collections, traditionally implemented as databases. However, when preservation and widespread access are most critical, some curators are considering how best to build digital library systems without databases. In many instances, XML-based formats are recommended because of many known advantages. This paper discusses the Bleek and Lloyd Collection, where such a solution was adopted. The Bleek and Lloyd Collection is a set of books and drawings that document the language and culture of some Bushman groups in Southern Africa, arguably one of the oldest yet most vulnerable and fragile cultures in the world. Databases were avoided because of the need for multi-OS support, longterm preservation and the use of large collections in remote locations with limited Internet access. While there are many advantages in using XML, scalability concerns are a limiting factor. This paper discusses how many of the scalability problems were overcome, resulting in a viable XML-centric solution for both greater preservation and access.

Building quality into a digital library

The Web Characterization Repository contains a collection of internet log files used by researchers to analyze and improve on the architecture of the Web. This repository improves on prior collections by thoroughly testing the log files for format to assure a degree of data quality. Instituting quality control into the digital library addressed many complex issues including technical support for quality assessment, the definition of a workflow to achieve quality control, the assignment of tasks to different people and the definition and automation of quality assessment for log files. By reaching realistic compromises on these issues it was possible to build quality control as an integral part of the digital library.