Design and Evaluation of Maintenance Tools for Distributed Digital Libraries
This targeted research project is investigating and developing tools and social protocols to make more feasible the management and maintenance of distributed digital library collections in which authors put material into the library and librarians (collection managers) organize and annotate it for the library patrons. While such "author-based" approaches enable a digital library to grow rapidly, they can create confusion as resources are added, deleted, or changed without warning. In the case of web sites that are pointed to, noticing when those web sites go away, are rehosted, or change their underlying structure is very time consuming. Additionally, when changes are made to the content of the resources, the collection manager must decide if the new version is still suitable for the collection and, if so, whether the document needs to be recategorized. Towards the goal of improving the ability of collection managers to maintain distributed digital libraries this project is developing: i) algorithms and heuristics for identifying resources no longer available; ii) methods for identifying the relocation of resources; iii) methods for categorizing and evaluating the significance of changes to resources; and iv) tools supporting social mechanisms (between resource authors, library managers, and library patrons) to contend with document changes. The project plan includes the evaluation of identification and categorization algorithms based on technical and social metrics. These evaluations answer whether the algorithms correctly identify network and server problems, whether resources that have been moved are successfully located, and whether ratings of significance of change match those of human evaluators.
ReMarkable Texts: A Digital Notepad for the NSDL
This Targeted Research project is investigating capabilities for an innovative pen-based digital notebook to enable users, particularly students, to work and interact with NSDL's digital materials in a personalized manner. The main features of the system include viewing, taking notes on, annotating (e.g. freehand ink, post-it notes, and bidirectional fine-grained hyperlinks), organizing, and collaborating on multimedia documents, all with the ability to replay the temporal sequence of one's notes in the contexts in which they were made. Whiteboarding activities are also supported along with audio facilities to capture voice commentary digitally and anchor it to a specific document location. The primary targeted device is a lightweight, high-resolution tablet computer used in an environment with ubiquitous wireless LAN in frequented areas (e.g., on a college campus) and a WAN for other areas. However to ensure widespread usage, the system also works on standard desktop and laptop computers. Finally, the system includes facilities for personalized organization of documents and notes, for example folder and outline views, search, and default support for personal spatial hypertext provided by the basic annotation and linking facilities.This research effort extends Microsoft Research's DISC project (DIStributed Classroom) in the areas of collaboration, fine-grained hyperlinking, multidocument journaling and synchronization, and document and note organization. In addition to partnering with Microsoft, the PI and team are working with other NSDL projects, such as Carnegie Mellon University's Threading Information Pathways Through NSDL Video, to help integrate the system with the NSDL's existing and future services and infrastructure. With the capabilities of this project in hand users of the NSDL are much better able to make the available materials of NSDL "their own", forming a personalized, hyperlinked portfolio from their digital library experience that supports a natural and enjoyable process of learning.
The Development and Use of Digital Collections to Support Interdisciplinary Education
The primary purpose of this project is to mentor emerging creators of digital collections for educational uses, especially those that are multidisciplinary and integrate science and technology with the humanities. The Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (http://alsos.wlu.edu, DUE Award 0085657) is a web-based searchable collection of approximately 500 annotated references to multimedia resources that offers a broad, balanced perspective on current and historical topics relating to nuclear issues. The Library, due to its relatively small scale, interdisciplinary focus, inclusion of multimedia materials, and diverse users make it an excellent example of digital collection concepts. This project is using the Alsos Digital Library as a model for educators wishing to develop their own digital collections in the following manner.1. The Alsos Digital Library model is being disseminated through a series of workshops. The target audience is educators, often content experts, who wish to build digital collections associated with courses, and to make their collections accessible through credible, digital, searchable, annotated references. Each participant brings an interdisciplinary topic that is to be developed during the workshop. Discussion topics at the workshop include collection development, software systems, processes for editing materials, integration of collections into courses and curricula, evaluation, and dissemination. Mentorship of workshop participants by the PIs is ongoing during the award period.
2. The software system developed for the Alsos Digital Library consists of four interconnected tiers, the user interface, the search engine, the database system, and the metadata system, constituting a digital resource locator. Work with this system and training in related concepts in the workshops is serving as the creative stimulus and model for educators who are creating their own prototype digital collections.
3. As the Alsos Digital Library evolves, issues that deal with assessment, maintenance, culling, technology migration, security, collaboration, and integration into large digital libraries are being encountered and resolved in cooperation with other NSDL collections.
Significant co-funding of this project is being provided by the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences in recognition of the importance of providing access to digital resources for interdisciplinary education that involve the physical sciences.