Seamus Ross

Preservation research and sustainable digital libraries

The National Science Foundation and DELOS , the European Commission sponsored Network for Digital Libraries, supported a working group to define a research agenda for digital archiving and preservation (DAP-WG) within the context of digital libraries. The report of this group, Invest to Save, has laid out a range of research challenges that need to be addressed if we are to make progress in the development of sustainable digital libraries. DAP-WG considered archiving and preservation needs and the research that had been conducted to address these. It concluded that research in this domain could benefit from being expanded and refocused—new research communities must be engaged, the approaches to conducting the research must be made more rigorous, and a significant shift in what was being researched needed to be taken. The Group identified twenty-two key research activities worthy of investigation.

Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries

Digital libraries, whether commercial, public, or personal, lie at the heart of the information society. Yet, research into their long-term viability and the meaningful accessibility of their contents remains in its infancy. In general, as we have pointed out elsewhere, “after more than twenty years of research in digital curation and preservation the actual theories, methods and technologies that can either foster or ensure digital longevity remain startlingly limited.” Research led by DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) and the Digital Preservation Cluster of DELOS has allowed us to refine the key research challenges—theoretical, methodological and technological—that need attention by researchers in digital libraries during the coming five to ten years, if we are to ensure that the materials held in our emerging digital libraries are to remain sustainable, authentic, accessible and understandable over time. Building on this work and taking the theoretical framework of archival science as bedrock, this article investigates digital preservation and its foundational role if digital libraries are to have long-term viability at the center of the global information society.

Examining Variations of Prominent Features in Genre Classification

This paper investigates the correlation between features of three types (visual, stylistic and topical types) and genre classes. The majority of previous studies in automated genre classification have created models based on an amalgamated representation of a document using a combination of features. In these models, the inseparable roles of different features make it difficult to determine a means of improving the classifier when it exhibits poor performance in detecting selected genres. In this paper we use classifiers independently modeled on three groups of features to examine six genre classes to show that the strongest features for making one classification is not necessarily the best features for carrying out another classification.

Assessing digital preservation frameworks: the approach of the SHAMAN project

How can we deliver infrastructure capable of supporting the preservation of digital objects, as well as the services that can be applied to those digital objects, in ways that future unknown systems will understand? A critical problem in developing systems is the process of validating whether the delivered solution effectively reflects the validated requirements. This is a challenge also for the EU-funded SHAMAN project, which aims to develop an integrated preservation framework using grid-technologies for distributed networks of digital preservation systems, for managing the storage, access, presentation, and manipulation of digital objects over time. Recognising this, the project team ensured that alongside the user requirements an assessment framework was developed. This paper presents the assessment of the SHAMAN demonstrators for the memory institution, industrial design and engineering and eScience domains, from the point of view of users needs and fitness for purpose. An innovative synergistic use of TRAC criteria, DRAMBORA risk registry and mitigation strategies, iRODS rules and information system models requirements has been designed, with the underlying goal to define associated policies, rules and state information, and make them wherever possible machine-encodable and enforceable. The described assessment framework can be valuable not only for the implementers of this project preservation framework, but for the wider digital preservation community, because it provides a holistic approach to assessing and validating the preservation of digital libraries, digital repositories and data centres.

“The Naming of Cats”: Automated Genre Classification

This paper builds on the work presented at the ECDL 2006 in automated genre classification as a step toward automating metadata extraction from digital documents for ingest into digital repositories such as those run by archives, libraries and eprint services (Kim & Ross, 2006b). We have previously proposed dividing features of a document into five types (features for visual layout, language model features, stylometric features, features for semantic structure, and contextual features as an object linked to previously classified objects and other external sources) and have examined visual and language model features. The current paper compares results from testing classifiers based on image and stylometric features in a binary classification to show that certain genres have strong image features which enable effective separation of documents belonging to the genre from a large pool of other documents.

Genre classification in automated ingest and appraisal metadata

Metadata creation is a crucial aspect of the ingest of digital materials into digital libraries. Metadata needed to document and manage digital materials are extensive and manual creation of them expensive. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) has undertaken research to automate this process for some classes of digital material. We have segmented the problem and this paper discusses results in genre classification as a first step toward automating metadata extraction from documents. Here we propose a classification method built on looking at the documents from five directions; as an object exhibiting a specific visual format, as a linear layout of strings with characteristic grammar, as an object with stylo-metric signatures, as an object with intended meaning and purpose, and as an object linked to previously classified objects and other external sources. The results of some experiments in relation to the first two directions are described here; they are meant to be indicative of the promise underlying this multi-facetted approach.

Towards a Digital Library Policy and Quality Interoperability Framework: The DL.org Project

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of systems and organizations to work together. Today interoperability is recognized as a key step in the shift from isolated digital libraries toward a common information space that will allow users to browse through different digital libraries within a single integrated environment. In this paper, we discuss the premises underlying a novel Policy and Quality Interoperability Framework, taking into account the preliminary outcomes and the recommendations of the Policy and Quality Working Groups that are currently being run by the EU co-funded project Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices, and Modeling Foundations (DL.org).

Detecting Family Resemblance: Automated Genre Classification

This paper presents results in automated genre classification of digital documents in PDF format. It describes genre classification as an important ingredient in contextualising scientific data and in retrieving targetted material for improving research. The current paper compares the role of visual layout, stylistic features, and language model features in clustering documents and presents results in retrieving five selected genres (Scientific Article, Thesis, Periodicals, Business Report, and Form) from a pool of materials populated with documents of the nineteen most popular genres found in our experimental data set.

Selection, Appraisal, and Retention of Digital Scientific Data: Highlights of an ERPANET/CODATA Workshop

CODATA and ERPANET collaborated to convene an international archiving workshop on the selection, appraisal, and retention of digital scientific data, which was held on 15-17 December 2003 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Portugal. The workshop brought together more than 65 researchers, data and information managers, archivists, and librarians from 13 countries to discuss the issues involved in making critical decisions regarding the long-term preservation of the scientific record. One of the major aims for this workshop was to provide an international forum to exchange information about data archiving policies and practices across different scientific, institutional, and national contexts. Highlights from the workshop discussions are presented.

Paving the Way for Interoperability in Digital Libraries: The DL.org Project

While Digital Libraries are working towards making universally accessible collections of human knowledge a reality, considerable advances are needed in Digital Libraries methodologies and technologies to make this happen. Achieving interoperability between Digital Libraries is a crucial requirement for reaching this goal. Interoperability is a multi-layered and context-specific concept. It encompasses different levels along a multidimensional spectrum ranging from organisational to technological aspects. Addressing the interoperability challenges is the prime goal of the DL.org project. DL.org is advancing the state of the art in this area, and is proposing solutions for interoperability in addition to best practices and shared standards, bringing together knowledge from the DELOS project and expertise of Digital Library stakeholders. To achieve its objectives, the project is looking at the DELOS Digital Library Reference Model and investigating interoperability from the viewpoint of the six fundamental Digital Library concepts: Content, User, Functionality, Quality, Policy, and Architecture. Our paper describes the results of DL.org research, and how the project is addressing the interoperability challenge from the perspectives of the six domains. Relevant Digital Library interoperability aspects will be described, from conceptualisation at a high organisational level to instantiation at process level, and modelling techniques for representing and enabling interoperability between heterogeneous digital library mediation approaches, methods, and systems. By pursuing the interoperability goal, DL.org is paving the way forward for embedding new research achievements into real-world systems, and is supporting the advancement of research and the creation of a European Information Space for the knowledge-based economy.