Jeroen Bekaert

A standards-based solution for the accurate transfer of digital assets

This article describes results of a collaboration between the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the American Physical Society (APS) aimed at designing and implementing a robust solution for the recurrent transfer of digital assets from the APS collection to LANL. In this solution, various recent standards are combined to obtain an asset transfer framework that should be attractive as a means to optimize content transfer in environments beyond the specific APS/LANL project. The proposed solution uses an XML-based complex object format (the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language) for the application-neutral representation of compound digital assets of all sorts. It uses a pull-oriented HTTP-based protocol (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) that allows incrementally collecting new and updated assets, represented as XML documents, from a producing archive. It builds on an XML-specific technique (W3C XML Signatures) to provide guarantees regarding authenticity and accuracy of the transferred assets.

Representing digital assets usingMPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration

Various XML-based approaches aimed at representing compound digital assets have emerged over the last several years. Approaches that are of specific relevance to the digital library community include the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), the IMS Content Packaging XML Binding, and the XML Formatted Data Units (XFDU) developed by CCSDS Panel 2. The MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration (MPEG-21 DID) is another standard specifying the representation of digital assets in XML that, so far, has received little attention in the digital library community. This article gives a brief insight into the MPEG-21 standardization effort, highlights the major characteristics of the MPEG-21 DID Abstract Model, and describes the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language (MPEG-21 DIDL), an XML syntax for the representation of digital assets based on the MPEG-21 DID Abstract Model. Also, it briefly demonstrates the potential relevance of MPEG-21 DID to the digital library community by describing its use in the aDORe repository environment at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the representation of digital assets.

Using MPEG-21 DIP and NISO OpenURL for the dynamic dissemination of complex digital objects in the Los Alamos National Laboratory digital library

This paper focuses on the use of NISO OpenURL and MPEG-21 Digital Item Processing (DIP) to disseminate complex objects and their contained assets, in a repository architecture designed for the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the architecture, the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL) is used as the XML-based format to represent complex digital objects. Through an ingestion process, these objects are stored in a multitude of autonomous OAI-PMH repositories. An OAI-PMH compliant Repository Index keeps track of the creation and location of all those repositories, whereas an Identifier Resolver keeps track of the location of individual complex objects and contained assets. An MPEG-21 DIP Engine and an OpenURL Resolver facilitate the delivery of various disseminations of the stored objects. While these aspects of the architecture are described in the context of the LANL library, the paper will also briefly touch on their more general applicability.

Pathways: augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories

In the emerging eScience environment, repositories of papers, datasets, software, etc., should be the foundation of a global and natively-digital scholarly communications system. The current infrastructure falls far short of this goal. Cross-repository interoperability must be augmented to support the many workflows and value-chains involved in scholarly communication. This will not be achieved through the promotion of single repository architecture or content representation, but instead requires an interoperability framework to connect the many heterogeneous systems that will exist.We present a simple data model and service architecture that augments repository interoperability to enable scholarly value-chains to be implemented. We describe an experiment that demonstrates how the proposed infrastructure can be deployed to implement the workflow involved in the creation of an overlay journal over several different repository systems (Fedora, aDORe, DSpace and arXiv).

Timing issues in multimedia formats: review of the principles and comparison of existing formats

In recent years. a large number of new multimedia (MM) formats have been created. It is widely recognized that the life cycle for a MM document consists of three areas. First of all, a document model is needed to model the MM scenario. Secondly, this document model is to be translated into a computer description. Finally, a set of synchronization primitives must be defined in order to be able to present the computer description to the end-user. The contribution of this paper is the definition of an integrated reference model that covers all three areas. For each of the three areas a model is put forward, based on the current state-of-the-art in that area. From these models, a reference model is created consisting of ten rules and a document model. This model is then applied to a number of real-world MM formats (SMIL, QuickTime, RealVideo, Advanced Streaming Format, Shockwave, and MPEG-4). Finally, a comparison is presented showing the results obtained from applying the reference model to the MM formats.

Packaging models for the storage and distribution of complex digital objectsin archival information systems: a review of MPEG-21 DID principles

Abstract.In recent years, the number of organizations making digital information available has increased dramatically. This evolution has encouraged the development of various approaches to represent complex digital objects. Approaches that are of specific relevance to the digital library and archiving community include the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), the Content Packaging XML Binding of the Instructional Management System (IMS) project, and the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). The MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration MPEG-21 DID) is yet another packaging approach that, so far, has received little attention in the digital library community. The primary goal of this article is to offer a method to compare these packaging approaches in the context of the needs of the digital library community and the rising digital preservation programs. The contribution of this paper is the definition of an integrated reference framework, based on both the ISO OAIS Reference Model and a set of additional significant properties that affect the quality, usability, encoding, and behavior of complex digital objects. This article also gives a brief insight into MPEG-21 DID and examines its potential relevance by showing the results obtained from applying the proposed reference framework.

Metadata‐based access to multimedia architectural and historical archive collections: a review

This review is a summary of the state‐of‐the‐art for those who have not been intimately dealing with the evolution of digital archives. At the same time this survey will be a useful resource and starting point for archivists, librarians and technicians, who are becoming involved in institutional digitization projects. It presents a brief overview of what is meant by a digital library and a digital archive, and how archival collections can be described. It expresses briefly the different approaches to collections and their descriptions and suggests that a consistent approach to descriptions at collection and item level is an important factor in initiatives which seek to provide integrated access to distributed resources, whether those resources are traditional or digital.

aDORe: a modular and standards-based digital object repository at the los alamos national laboratory

This paper describes the aDORe repository architecture, designed and implemented for ingesting, storing, and accessing a vast collection of digital objects at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory

Dynamic adaptation of multimedia data for mobile applications

The current explosive expansion of mobile communication systems will lead to an increased demand for multimedia applications. However, due to the large variety of mobile terminals (such as mobile phones, laptops .) and, because of this, a wide collection of different terminal possibilities and terminal characteristics, it is difficult to create a mobile multimedia application which can be used on mobile devices of different types. In this paper, we propose a mobile multimedia application that adapts its content to the possibilities of the mobile terminal and to the end-user preferences. Also the application takes changing device characteristics into account. To make this possible, a software framework is set up to enable negotiation between the mobile terminal and the content server. During the initial negotiation, the concept of the Universal Multimedia Access framework is used. Subsequent negotiations take place after changing terminal characteristics or end-user preferences, and this by means of time-dependent metadata. This newly created flexible and extendable framework makes it possible that multimedia applications interact with the content provider in order to deliver an optimal multimedia presentation for any arbitrary mobile terminal at any given time.

Erratum to: Pathways: augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories

Due to a processing error, the name of one of the author is incorrect in the HTML version of this article and should read: Herbert Van de Sompel.