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This page is intended for printing purposes.
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By Christine Michaut - July 2002
This section aims to provide news of the European Commission's initiatives in the field of digital heritage and cultural content. Its objectives are to pinpoint the latest developments in programmes, projects and activities and to give a clear picture of progress in the area since the last issue. It certainly does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of what the EC is doing in the area but rather a short summary of some of the key items. The content is based largely on the information provided in the eCulture Newsletter [1], published by the European Commission, DG Information Society, Cultural Heritage Applications Unit [2].
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Since the last column in February, a number of important conferences have taken place, two of which we would like to highlight:
This conference, which was supported by the EVAN (Electronic Imaging and The Visual Arts Networking) European Project, was preceded by two days of training activities and Workshops [3].
The main EVA Conference saw the presentation of 55 papers and two important special sessions: one devoted to the 6th Framework Programme plans of the European Commission (2003-2006), presented by Bernard Smith. The other, organised by TRIS, was given over to the presentation of 17 Projects (TRIALS) launched as a result of the 4th IST Programme of the European Commission in 2000.
Several outcomes from the EVA 2002 Florence conference were forthcoming:
This conference was held within the framework provided by the Lund Action Plan. The Lund Principles [4] cover the tasks needed to co-ordinate Member State digitisation programmes. The associated action plan requires the establishment of a National Representative Group (NRG)[5]. This group is formed by representatives and experts nominated by Member States, in many cases from national cultural institutions or Ministries of Culture. The National Representative Group has Terms of Reference [6] and meets every 6 months under each Council Presidency. The first meeting took place under the Belgian Presidency, and this mission report covered the second meeting hosted by the Spanish Presidency.
The actual NRG meeting took place on the 16th May 2002. The agenda covered:
The meeting on 17th May 2002 was given over to presentations on good practice in Member States (based upon a request by the Spanish Presidency to the NRG group). Spain, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, and Italy nominated more than 40 best practice projects and made short presentations during the day.
Following these presentations a statement was made by the future Danish Presidency. They indicated continuing support for the work of the NRG and also for the issues of quality (leader Belgium) and long-term digital preservation, (leader Spain with the Council Resolution). The session continued with a more detailed presentation by the Spanish CAC representative on the new Council Resolution on Long-term Digital Preservation.
The next NRG meeting mill take place in Copenhagen on 10-11 December 2002 under the Danish Presidency.
The essential issues were:
The new network MINERVA presented its different objectives and practical tasks. The meeting's conclusions mentioned priorities both for the NRG and MINERVA partners. MINERVA will compile examples of good and best practice into a document for circulation.
The Spanish Presidency presented the Council Resolution on long-term digital preservation. Its cultural priorities had been:
The last point concerns the influence that cultural policies and related activity brings to bear upon other policies of the EU; (to date cultural policies have more been subject to the impact of other EU policies). The need for a "European Cultural Space" was introduced.
Luis Alberto de Cuenca, the Spanish Secretary of State for Culture, concluded that there was a new spirit of cooperation between Member States on digitisation, and that Spain had many excellent on-going projects and was well placed in the EU context. He congratulated all the participants on making the event a success of the Spanish Presidency. His closing speech was followed by a press conference, resulting in several articles being published in Spanish newspapers.
Overall the meeting the meeting proved invaluable in terms of its technical content and its high standards of organisation by the Spanish Presidency were appreciated. The facilities provided by Alicante University were outstanding.
Negotiations are currently ongoing for 7 projects along 3 different action lines:
For "Preparing for future research activities", two Thematic Networks are being set up, "e-Culturnet" and "Orion", and one Accompanying measure, called "First".
Under Action line "Network of excellence and working groups" three projects will probably been taken up -"Pulman", "ART-E-FACT" and "Musicnetwork" (see below), whereas there is only one negotiation under way for "Enabling RTD co-operation with newly associated States" (working title "HEREIN2E")
More detailed information will be available on the CORDIS projects pages [7] as soon as the contracts are finalised.
One of the interesting new projects to emerge from the 8th call is MUSICNETWORK, a network of excellence on music interests across Europe. The main objective is to bring European music industries and content providers together in order to promote interactive multimedia. Special attention will be devoted to interactive coded music - standards, representation, distribution, protection, imaging conversion, etc. The user community will include publishers, multimedia distributors, music shops, schools, music conservatoires, individual consumers and software developers. The project will of course be undertaking state-of-the-art analyses of the technical and content-related aspects. Account will be taken of earlier project work in the field, drawing on the experience of HARMONICA, WEDELMUSIC, MIRACLE and CANTATE. Work is expected to begin in June. Coordination will be by University of Florence DSI, [8].
On 15th May 2002, the European Parliament approved the Council's common position on the Sixth Research Framework Programme to run to 2006 with a budget of some €17.5bn, together with some 34 compromise amendments.
As the new Community Framework (FP6) for research and development introduces important shifts in the approach to EU-funded research, both in terms of content and instruments, the IST programme is organising a series of open workshops in May 2002 [9]. The objectives are to present to the research community the concepts and the details of implementation of IST in FP6, including the new funding instruments and to provide support for partnership building.
The IST priority in FP 6 is an important part of the specific programme on Integrating and Strengthening the European Research Area.
There is further information on the new Framework Programme [10].
The main purpose of IST 2002 [11] is to help build the European Research Area for the Information Society within the EU's Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP6), which is to be launched at the end of 2002.
To be held in Copenhagen on 4-6 November, IST 2002 will broaden its scope to everyone with a strategic interest in Information Society research, whether at European, national or regional level - or even entirely within the private sector. The general theme is 'Partnerships'. The aim is to help Europe's researchers and industrialists build networks for collaborative IST research, at a time when the IST priority within the EU's 6th Framework Programme for research and technological development is getting underway.
The 68th IFLA General Conference and Council [12]will be hold from August 18th to 24th 2002 in Glasgow. This year's focus will be on Libraries for Life: Democracy, Diversity, and Delivery.
DigiCULT will have its own stand on the IFLA 2002 exhibition and over 20 of our funded projects will participate and present their activities. Volume 3 Issue 3 of our eCulture newsletter will have a special supplement on our participation in this exhibition.
In this issue we would like to draw your attention to our "Heritage for All" Key action line, which is funding projects that aim to reinforce Community Memory.
"Heritage for All" was the theme of KA III.1 .2, one of the two cultural heritage action lines in the 6th call for proposals launched in January 2001 within the context of the Information Society Technologies programme, under the Fifth Framework Programme.
In line with the objectives of the eEurope initiative, to provide content for all and ensure digital inclusion, "Heritage for All" aimed to "foster sustainable online communities by creating and documenting the digital record of their societies, including safeguarding its accessibility for the future''; in other words, to provide a context for documenting, sharing, accessing and preserving community heritage and collective memory in digital form. Conceived to encourage participation by smaller scale cultural and memory institutions, as well as to initiate citizen-, rather than technology-driven projects, this action line focused on the enhancement of local and regional cultural resources by developing digital archives to document past and present social history and cultural expression for the use of the widest possible range of individuals and groups of citizens. In this context, projects were selected which encouraged, to a greater or lesser extent, active participation of diverse on-line citizen communities in producing an evolving digital record of their culture.
CHIMER, CIPHER , COINE and MEMORIAL, the four projects that make up the "Heritage for All" cluster, are each of 30 months' duration. In some cases, preliminary results will start to emerge towards the end of this year. The first three of these projects all seek to address the personal views and interests of ordinary people in order to build a living image of regional heritage across Europe. MEMORIAL focuses on developing a methodology for digitising content of a very specific nature and making it available to the general public.
MEMORIAL [13] deals with a dark side of our recent history, the Holocaust, and focuses on data documenting former Nazi concentration camp prisoners in order to create a digital personal records archive on the Web. The project aims to increase awareness of, and facilitate access to relevant historical information for the general public, while simultaneously providing an invaluable and dedicated data resource for the use of special-interest groups, for example relatives of victims researching their family history.
Research work in support of the virtual MEMORIAL archive will provide a new technical approach, based on OCR (Optical Character Reading) techniques, which will be more generally applicable to a wide variety of paper documents in libraries, archives, museums or public record offices.
The MEMORIAL partnership brings together OCR and digital archiving experts from Germany, Israel, Poland and the UK. They combine to develop an innovative methodology and achieve optimum digitisation results, most notably, higher resolutions based on new imaging technologies. These technologies will tackle traditional problems, such as the poor quality of faint carbon copies, which are the main source of prisoner records, the inclusion of hand-written comments and rubber stamps and the presentation of data in columns of various types depending on the source. In addition, MEMORIAL makes use of technology methods capable of addressing problems of another nature, such as content-resolution problems, which are, for instance, due to variations in family and place names (e.g. in Polish, Russian, Italian).
The strong technical component of the project is crucial in terms of the application and development of technologies within the MEMORIAL context could be widely applied in digitising other kinds of paper-based documents, thus making use of new types of content.
CHIMER [14] sets out to capitalise on the natural enthusiasm and interests of children in developing new approaches to the use of evolving technologies for documenting items of cultural interest in their local communities. To achieve that, CHIMER will establish an international network of educational and cultural institutions, which, supported by technical partners, will work towards enhancing children's interaction with technology, so as to enable them to create on-line cultural content.
More specifically, twelve-year-old children in different parts of Europe will follow the guidance of museologists and teachers in building digital maps combining geographical coordinates detected using GPS devices with the creative use of mobile technologies and digital cameras. In this way, children from Bohemia to La Coruña and from the Netherlands to Lithuania will combine drawings and photographic images with their own comments on items of interest. Little by little they will participate in creating a digital archive of their own towns, villages and surrounding communities, which should enhance interest in the region, not only for children but also for other age groups.
CHIMER hopes to offer a model which can later be replicated on other networks, not only in the area of culture but also, for example, for public sector information, health and tourism, based on the use of digital cartography linked to multimedia databases.
The creation of a user-friendly web based environment which will enable ordinary citizens to record, present and share their personal and local cultural heritage, lies at the heart of the COINE project [15]. Partners work together to develop a toolkit of software tools and techniques for digitising, creating and maintaining multimedia resources which are brought together to build up a coherent cultural domain exploitable by individuals and small groups.
The overall aim of the project is to provide ordinary citizens or groups of citizens with software, which can support them in documenting and sharing their cultural interests, as well as exploring their local heritage. People of varying IT competence, age, social and educational background will be engaged in creating, managing and making available cultural content of the utmost importance to them personally. Practical examples of the usability of the COINE system by local communities in Greece, Spain, Poland and Ireland are:
Aiming to promote and preserve a living view of regional heritage across Europe, CIPHER [16] is committed to providing methods and tools that enable individuals and groups of people to document their reactions and experiences from interacting with their local heritage. Research work will focus on the construction and maintenance of four Cultural Heritage Forums, four on-line thematic collections of various heritage items, (archaeological material, historical documents, monuments, music, oral history, etc.), intended to trigger visitor participation and encourage active interpretation of heritage. Provided by a network of cultural institutions, the content of each forum highlights the distinct cultural identity of a European region that may transcend country borders. Forum themes include "Irish Cultural and Natural Heritage", "Nordic Heritage through Storytelling and Historical Artefacts", the "Shared Heritage of Central Europe" and the "Tradition of Technology Innovation in South Central England". Members of local communities are encouraged to explore, research and, more importantly, contribute creatively to content building for these cultural domains. Innovative tools for story construction supported by visualisation and virtual world technologies allow users to weave their own narratives and forge new associations across digital artefacts.
By developing dynamic, user-centred applications that serve as focal points for regional communities to interact with their local heritage, the CIPHER project seeks to support ordinary people in creating personalised content in order to share their group experiences and history.
And here is some news on internal issues: Behind us lies quite a long period of global restructuring of the IST Web pages. During this time, not being able to implement any changes or updates on our pages, we did our best to keep you informed via our newsletter eCulture. But since 24th May, the new system is online and we are busy updating our pages. If you should still happen to find - for a hopefully very short period - incomplete or outdated information while searching on DigiCULT, please feel free to contact us [17].
Finally, we would like to add that the work in the Information and Communication field in our Unit is now done by Christine Michaut who has succeeded to the post formerly held by Concha Fernandez de la Puente.
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Christine Michaut
Information & Communication Officer
Digital Heritage & Cultural Content Unit
With the assistance of the Cultural Applications team http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/whoswho.htm
in Luxembourg.
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For citation purposes:
Michaut, C. "DIGICULT Column", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/digicult/>
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By Rosalind Johnson - July 2002
Rosalind Johnson reports on the DLM-Forum 2002 conference, Barcelona, 6-8 May 2002.
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In unseasonably wet and windy weather, records managers, archivists and information professionals gathered in Barcelona to attend the third DLM Forum on access and preservation of electronic records [1]. DLM is an acronym for the French Données lisibles par machine, or in English translation, 'machine readable data', although at the conference the acronym DLM was given an English meaning: Document Lifecycle Management.
The DLM-Forum is based on the conclusions of the Council of the European Union of 17 June 1994 concerning greater co-operation in the management of electronic records. It was created as a platform for collaboration between technology providers and public institutions and administrations to address the issues involved in electronic records management, including technical solutions and the creation of guidelines and model requirements. DLM has published and sponsored a number of reports. Two previous European-level conferences have been held in 1996 and 1999.
The wealth of parallel sessions meant that I was unable to sit in on every presentation; and choices had to be made [2]. I chose to attend those sessions featuring 'best practice', especially those covering European Commission (EC) funded projects. Those which seemed to include the most relevant examples for my work included the sessions on the memory of the information age (preservation, migration and longer-term availability), the use of public information, and improving access to knowledge (training and education for information experts and users). This involved some swapping between parallel sessions, and, being unable to bi-locate, I was regrettably unable to attend other conference tracks and workshops which formed a significant part of the programme. These included parallel sessions on content management and delivery, organising records and archives, and capturing and transforming information with automatic indexing technologies and retrieval solutions. I was also obliged to miss the workshops on metadata, digital signatures and the legal admissibility of digital storage. However, that should give an insight into the overall content of the DLM-Forum, and the amount of information being presented. At the conclusion of the conference, it was recommended that the conference papers be made available on the DLM-Forum Web site. At the time of writing, this has not yet happened, but if it does, it should produce some interesting material.
Among the EC projects presented, the Open Archives Forum is a new project set up to support European and national initiatives that adopt, or are willing to adopt, an open-archives based approach [3]. Special attention will be dedicated to those initiatives implementing or using the Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Protocol [4].
Another European project, e-TERM sought to develop and test a multidisciplinary and adaptable course for teaching electronic records management to archivists, records managers, IT personnel and administrators [5]. The course modules were designed to be delivered in a wholly electronic environment. With partners across Europe, this made administrative sense, and reduced the need for face-to-face meetings. Yet the need for human contact remained; for social contact when it did occur was found to contribute to a better mutual understanding and commitment. Although the project has formally ended, the partners hope to work together to develop a European centre for higher archival education and training.
Several examples of national projects and best practice were presented. Naestved Kommune in Denmark claims to be the first local government in the country to employ a complete digital signature system to enable total electronic administration for local citizens [6]. Already, 80 per cent of households have access to a broadband connection. The aim is to focus on the different needs of citizens at different stages of their lives to provide a fully comprehensive service. This will be facilitated by the use of digital signatures, although there are legal issues to consider regarding the need for hard copy documents to be produced.
Frank Brady of the European Commission gave an interesting presentation on the EC's efforts to set up a single document management system. Investigating claims that 600 separate document management systems existed within the various EC departments led to the discovery that some 2,000 different systems could be identified. Developing a single new system was a considerable challenge, not only technically, but also with reference to convincing, and indeed coercing, EC staff into accepting the new system. The new electronic document management system will not only have to deal with internal administration, but also with the 8,000 external requests the EC receives every year for documents. Additionally, the query system must take into account different languages - for example, the many variants of the phrase 'mad cow disease'.
Despite the challenges faced by Frank Brady and his team, the new system should improve access to documents for EC staff and ultimately for Europe's citizens. A standardised procedure across the EC will demonstrate its transparency to the public. The EC has a reputation for secrecy and bureaucracy among the public which it has been working to correct; this is part of that overall work. The improved procedures will also benefit staff, by facilitating mobility and communication across different departments.
Emphasis was given at the conference to announcing and promoting: MoReq, the
model specification for the management of electronic records [7]. This has
been developed under the EC's IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations)
programme [8]. MoReq is a high level specification, but also fairly comprehensive in
its approach. MoReq is largely intended for the archives community and is mainly
applicable to records which are originated and managed in the public sector. This
reflects its origins in archival standards, and their application to public
procurement of electronic records management systems. However, the impact of
MoReq could be felt elsewhere. One conference delegate felt this might be the
case if the EC's dreams of greater commercial exploitation of public sector
information comes to pass.
There were a few technical hitches during the conference. At least two speakers found their slides were unavailable, and one speaker chose not to speak at all, rather than present without them. This apparent reliance on technology has, of course, parallels with generations of lecturers reduced to canceling seminars on discovering that they have left their notes at home.
But new technology brings its own problems. Speaker Piero Corsini from IBM commented that people now demand information in 'two to three clicks', an impatience particularly noted in young people. He believes that many user interfaces in the public sector are in need of improvement. Other speakers also focused on the issues of the user interface and the need to involve users in the solutions to the problems of electronic records management; not only public servants who use such systems at work, but the citizen trying to access information and services.
Ulrich Kampfmeyer of AIIM International spoke of his belief that we stand at the beginning of new developments. The traditional problems of records management involved paper - its bulk, its relative fragility, its indexing. More recently, the migration to electronic management of records involved considerations of whether or not to preserve the original hard copies, and the durability of digital systems, but paper was still the core of the business, especially as multiple photocopies and print-outs found their way into filing systems across the world.
But with digital information, we face a new set of challenges unique to that environment. Ulrich Kampfmeyer quoted a statistic that the amount of information available world-wide now grows in one year more than in the previous 2,000 years. Much of it has no physical representation, and is therefore totally reliant on electronic systems for its survival and its use. Unlike the single physical format of paper, electronic data may be available in several formats - digital video, digital voice, different software packages. Standards, such as MoReq, are therefore of crucial importance to ensure preservation of the data, and to enable its fast and effective retrieval and use. The effectiveness of this use includes the training and education of users, and the design of efficient front ends and help systems.
Finally, a well-publicised feature of the conference were the six industry- sponsored White Papers on key issues facing electronic records in the public sector [9]. Summaries of these papers, and note of the conference conclusions, are available on the DLM-Forum Web site [10].
Rosalind Johnson
European Consultant
CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
7 Ridgmount Street
LONDON WC1E 7AE
United Kingdom
URL: <http://www.cilip.org.uk
Email: rosalind.johnson@cilip.org.uk
Phone: +44 20 7255 0604
Fax: +44 20 7255 0501
Rosalind Johnson is a freelance editor and information consultant specialising in European information for the library and information sector. She attended the DLM-Forum 2002 on behalf of CILIP, for whom she acts as European Consultant.
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For citation purposes:
Johnson, R. "Access and Preservation of Electronic Information: Best Practice and Solutions", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/dlm/>
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By Sanita Berzina - July 2002
Sanita Berzina reports on the conference "Co-operation of Museums, Archives and Libraries in the Electronic Era - Experience, Reality, Strategies for the Future", held in Riga, 25 - 26 April, 2002.
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This conference was held in Riga, the capital of Latvia. It ran for 2 days, both of which were well attended and which saw a high degree of activity. The conference was notable not least for the fact that this was the first time that archive, library, museum and IT specialists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had met in such numbers.
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| Figure 1: Opening Session of the 1st. e-MAL Conference of the Baltic States |
The importance of the conference can be estimated when one considers these two points. Firstly, it united specialists from museums, libraries, archives and IT in the Baltic States and from other countries. Secondly, the conference was devoted to what some might consider three quite different cultural areas - archives, libraries and museums. As such it helped to raise awareness of the current state of these branches in the context of digitisation. In addition, it ensured the sharing of experience across the national, local and international levels.
The main objectives of the conference were:
The process of digitization of archives, libraries and museums has just begun in the Baltic States. With but a few exceptions there is no access to digitised collections on the Internet and practically no capacity to use metadata for searching for digital objects.
In order to coordinate the digitisation of information resources, it will be essential to foster co-operation between archives, libraries and museums in Latvia and the other Baltic States. One of the main things to be done is to achieve agreement on common digitisation standards, both on the national and international level, but, first of all on the institutional level. Another major goal will be to promote the development of unified programs and strategy for digitising.
The majority of conference participants were the specialists from archives, museums, libraries, IT and other fields, not only from the Baltic States, but also from Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom. All in all, there were more than 25 presentations given over the two days of the conference.
On the first day of the conference, held at the Riga Latvian Society, 14 speakers participated: M.Andress, E.Becker (Germany), S.Bang (Norway), N.Brakker (Russia), K.Cerans, A.Vilks (Latvia), L.Johansson (Sweden), A.Knoll (Czech Republic), A.Lepik, M.Siiner (Estonia), A.Plioplys (Lithuania), B.Royan (United Kingdom), J.Saarinen (Finland) and T.Wanning (Denmark). They gave a deep insight into various national and regional projects providing a clear picture of what been done in the other countries in the context of digitisation, a run-down of the main issues to be confronted and a view of the most successful solutions.
On the first day there were 212 participants, including 61 library specialists, 48 museum specialists, 39 archive specialists, 44 specialists in other fields and 20 guests.
The second day of the conference was organised into three sections:
Given the close proximity of the substance of sections A and B, it would have possible to have considered them jointly.
In section A, held in the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences (University of Latvia), the presenters, K.Alev, H.Helves (Estonia), S.Berzina, A.Spektors (Latvia), N.Caidi (Canada), and I.Kondratieva, D.Roubashkin (Russia), covered a wide range of themes: issues of national information policy and the role of archives, museums and libraries therein, library standards in Latvia and the importance of national and international projects within cultural heritage institutions in the age of technology were examined.
Section B was held in the Latvian Academic Library and there were 4 speakers participating: A.Aboltina, A.Glosiene (Lithuania), R. Kalnina (Latvia ), and K.Saarevet (Estonia). The speakers gave a presentation on the current situation in the sphere of digitisation in the Baltic States, looking for the best solutions and likely directions activity would take towards the successful development of digitisation.
Section C was concerned with questions of restoration. It was held at the Riga Latvian Society. Three speakers from Latvia, M.Dzenis, I.Limane and I.Rudzite gave presentations on the current situation, the problems and solutions regarding restoration in Latvia together with comparisons with the experience of other countries.
On this second day highest activity was observed in section A "Metadata, Standards & IT" : 49 people took part. 38 participants were attended section B and 32 section C.
 |
| Figure 2: Section Reports Session |
In conclusion, overall, attendance at the conference may be regarded as very satisfactory , taking into account the small number of working specialists in these spheres in the Baltic States. Participants' interest was clearly discernible from the lively debate that ensued following each session's formal agenda.
National Library of Latvia http://www.lnb.lv
British Council http://www.britishcouncil.lv
Directorate General of Latvia State Archives http://www.arhivi.lv
IBM http://www.ibm.com
Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences (University of Latvia) http://www.lumii.lv
Lattelekom http://www.lattelekom.lv
Latvia State Authoriy on Museums http://www.muzeji.lv
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania
NORDINFO http://www.nordinfo.helsinki.fi
Riga Latvian Society http://www.rlb.lv
ZFB http://www.zfb.com
 |
Sanita Berzina
Laboratory Assistant
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences
University of Latvia
Raina 29
Riga LV 1459
Latvia
URL: <http://www.ailab.lv/
Email: snt@ailab.lv
Phone: +371 722 74 86
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For citation purposes:
Berzina, S. "The 1st e-MAL conference of the Baltic States", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/eMAL/>
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By Richard Wright - July 2002
Richard Wright reports on the Multimedia Archive Preservation Workshop held in London this May.
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During the period 22-24 May 2002, about 130 people directly involved in multimedia preservation gathered in London to review the problems and learn about new solutions. The workshop had an international audience, from Africa, the Caribbean and North America as well as from Europe. About 1/3 of delegates were from outside broadcasting, representing audio, film and video collections in a range of cultural and academic institutions, from the Edison National Historic Site to the National Archive of Malawi.
The workshop was sponsored by four organisations working together:
PRESTO and the BBC took the opportunity to host the 5th IASA/FIAT seminar on digitisation, and extend it to cover PRESTO results, and present them to an audience that extended outside FIAT/IASA membership.
In order for people to get maximum benefit, people new to audiovisual archiving also attended a training day on 21 May, where the BBC archive operations and policies were presented. Also, half of the final day was devoted to tours of actual preservation work by the UK National Sound Archive, British Film Institute, and the BBC.
In a very packed three-day programme, there were 27 formal presentations, covering the following areas:
Presentation of all 14 PRESTO 'new technology' key links, and an equipment demonstration of the actual devices up and running. There were also presentations covering restoration work: EC projects BRAVA and DIAMANT. The afternoon focussed on non-broadcast archives, to keep the balance from the morning's concentration on PRESTO technology for broadcast archives. Two presentations from Vienna showed both the range and depth of the problems (Dietrich Schüller, Phonogrammarchiv - Austrian Academy of Sciences), and a very inspiring solutions: an audio collection could be fully digitised with datatape robotics and interned access (Rainer Hubert, Austrian Mediathek).
The day concluded with seven informal presentations from a range of cultural archives, from Malawi to the US Library of Congress. A very informative discussion took place on what preservation really meant, what planning, technology and funding it required, and the role of PRESTO technology in small and diverse collections.
The third day began with tours to the actual preservation work at BBC, BFI and NSA, followed by informal presentation from six broadcast archives. In was notable that although the size and history of the six archives varied greatly, from the BBC to new archives in Albania and South Africa, the broadcast archivist had very close agreement on both what they meant by preservation, and the approach they would use (the high throughput 'preservation factory'). The problem for small broadcast archives is that they cannot invest in setting up such a factory themselves, so there was a clearly-expressed demand for central facilities - preservation factories - to provide cost-effective preservation services. The other clear need was for better information on preservation: what equipment and what media is good - and bad, where to get it, how to use it - and the problems people have had with media and equipment.
For me, it was a pleasure from beginning to end to bring together this wealth of experience and interest, and PRESTO will live on after the EC funding ends, to work with IASA, FIAT and other organisations to continue this essential educational work.
[ Note that Richard has also contributed an article on the PRESTO Project in this issue. ]
Richard Wright
Technology Manager
BBC
Information & Archives
S120 Reynards Mill, Windmill Road
Brentford
Middx. TW8 9NQ
United Kingdom
URL: <http://www.bbc.co.uk
Email: richard.wright@bbc.co.uk
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For citation purposes:
Wright, R. "Multimedia Archive Preservation: A practical workshop", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/prestows/>
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By Pete Cliff - July 2002
Pete Cliff fills us in on a useful tool for Web site owners that brings them distinct benefits with relatively little maintenance effort and enhances what the site can offer to its users. This is an enthusiast who can provide different approaches to implementing RSS.
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Imagine you could create a Web site that keeps your users informed of the latest news, jobs and resources available in a given subject area in addition to any content you wish to provide. A site that is updated automatically so that once you have set it up, it looks after itself, with minimal maintenance from you. Sounds like so much fiction? A little idealistic perhaps, but it is this sort of thing that a technology like RSS aims to provide.
This article explores what RSS is, how it may be used, and finally summarises some of the tools you may use to make the job easier. We begin with the obvious question:
Depending on whom you ask, RSS stands for either "Rich Site Summary" or "RDF Site Summary". The debate is old [1], and this article will not concern itself with that discussion. Suffice it to say the ideas and the motivation behind the creation of an RSS channel remain the same, regardless of the "flavour".
XML Deviant Leigh Dodds defines RSS as:
... an XML format for syndicating metadata about online content [2].
RSS is an XML format designed to enable the sharing of online content metadata. It can be used to describe the content of a Web site in a way that can be re-used by others. Because it is XML, it facilitates the full automation of the sharing and display of this metadata.
The use of RSS benefits everyone involved. As a Web site provider you get free content; as a content provider you make your content visible to a broader audience through a larger number of sites; and as an end user you get the benefit of a broad range of content available at a single site.
RSS is an incredibly flexible format. It can be used to describe just about any sort of online content. The latest news, the new books in the library, job advertisments and similar content can be pointed to via an RSS channel. That RSS channel can then be used by other institutions or local departments.
Imagine that a university carries around twenty links to campus (and other) news stories on its internal homepage. Each of the departments within the same university has similar news "channels" on its homepage in addition to departmental news. Imagine users are interested in finding out about new research grants awarded in each department. Unless the homepage was very comprehensive, they would have to visit every department, fairly regularly, just to keep up to date. If they have their own favourite external news feeds, the problem gets bigger.
If each of the departments chose to export its news as RSS channels, it would be a simple matter for the institution to create a single "information point" that syndicated all of the news across campus onto a single page.
| Figure 1. uPortal[3] supports the use of RSS to create institutional portals, like this demonstrator at the University of Nottingham[4] |
This idea could be extended further to provide the end user with the option to search the channels, or personalise which channels are displayed. This is, in effect, the beginnings of an institutional portal. A portal where the content creation is distributed, but access is at one point for any end user.
A very similar scenario could be imagined for users of a public library, where local news, jobs, new books, etc. may be syndicated onto a single library homepage, but the news is collected from other sources, including local goverment pages.
The key advantage is the devolution of Web site maintainence, (devolution that may well exist if departments all have their own pages), to those who know best, but which provides a mechanism to provide a central, one stop access point to all of this information.
Many Web homepages are lists of news items that highlight events, publications, and so on. If not the homepage, then a great many sites have news sections or pages that are lists in this way. It makes sense to provide RSS views of these listings, but this creates a problem. If you have an HTML view of a page, and an RSS view, you will have to update them both. This creates a problem of synchronicity.
There are many ways around this problem. Perhaps the most elegant is to put all of the news stories in a database and generate both RSS and HTML views from this data. However, if there is a single database this can remove the benefits of devolved maintainence of RSS channels. A database is also a fairly development heavy solution. If, however, you were looking to move your entire site into a content management system you may want to check if content can be exported as RSS as well as HTML.
There is a compromise: generate the HTML for the site from the RSS, or vice versa.
This approach has been explored by the World Wide Web Consortium [5] and has been implemented by a few sites[6]. The idea is to include a set of fixed "classes" into your page (which must be well formed XHTML), and, provided the HTML can be parsed correctly, a script is able to convert the content of these classes into well formed RSS.
For example, look at the following HTML fragment:
<p><span class="rss:item"><a name="26-06-02"><strong>26 June 2002</strong></a><br />
<small class="rss-anchor"><a href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2002/news.html#26-06-02">Workshop Conclusions</a></small><br />
The <a href="talks/conclusions/">workshop conclusions</a>, given by Brian Kelly,
are now available online. </span></p>[7]
Here we see that an item is enclosed in a single span and the link for that item is given the class
rss-anchor. This enables an XHTML to RSS converter to create an RSS channel from this
Web page.
| Figure 2. HTML to RSS. A script is used to parse the HTML page and extract the relevant sections. This information is then used to create an RSS XML file. |
This approach has been adopted by a number of sites. Webreference[8] for example, or closer to home, the RDN[9]. The two "channels" on the RDN homepage (see figure 3) - Behind the Headlines and the RDN News - are automatically generated from two RSS channels [10]. We use the same two channels to create the News[11] and Behind the Headlines pages[12]. This means RDN staff need only maintain a single copy of the metadata, but it can be resurfaced in a number of ways.
| Figure 3. The highlighted area is created from two RSS channels. |
UKOLN's home page[13] is essentially a list of news items that highlight events, publications, announcements, etc.; in effect what has been happening at UKOLN. This list of news items is maintained as an RSS channel. It works like this, (numbers in brackets relate to diagram in Figure 4):
| Figure 4. RSS to HTML (see list above) |
UKOLN derives a number of benefits from this approach:
The approach adopted by UKOLN was, in fact, very easy to implement. However, it will
not suit all Web sites, nor will everyone have the time, effort or access to the server
to add SSIs, or write scripts. There has been some effort towards overcoming this problem
by making adding an RSS news feed to your page as simple as adding a <script>
tag.
For example, by pasting the following HTML into one of your Web pages will automatically include the RDN's "Behind the Headlines" RSS channel into that page:
<script src="http://www.rdn.ac.uk/rss/viewer/?rss=http://www.rdn.ac.uk/rss/channels/behind-the-headlines.xml" ></script>
The "source" of the script tag is the URL of the RSS parser script, in this case the one
used by the RDN (1). Part of that URL includes the location of the RSS to parse and return to the browser.
The RSS parsing script then retrieves the RSS channel (2), the RSS is then parsed and some HTML is created.
Because the browser is expecting to get JavaScript back, this HTML is then wrapped in document.write()
statements and passed back to the Web browser (4). At this point the Web browser has some standard JavaScript
and deals with it in the usual way. (Numbers in brackets refer to diagram in Figure 5).
| Figure 5. RSSxpressLite |
Examples of this approach can be seen at:
Because this way of including a channel means the channel is only included by a Web browser on processing the JavaScript, channel content does not get indexed by some robots. Because of this, it is not recommended to use this approach where indexing is important, for example, the UKOLN homepage.
RSS can provide you with ways of adding external content to your site, but what content is available? Because RSS has been around from a while and has been something of a success, there are many channels you can use. Public content can usually be found in registries of channels:
So you like the idea of RSS? You want to get out there and start using RSS. But I guess you want to know how to create it, what does it look like? You may, if you are thinking "RDF Site Summary", be getting nervous about the syntax and the complexities of RDF? If that is case you needn't worry. You can get by with RSS 1.0 with a minimal knowledge of RDF (though you may wonder about some of the syntax), and if you are not interested in RSS 1.0 then the 0.9x versions appear far simpler and are still supported.
When it comes to creating RSS there are many ways you can go, and many tools you can use:
If you are lucky enough to have a content management system, or you simply serve your Web content from a database, then you will find creation of RSS very easy. Many CMS's will export RSS for you and if they don't you (or your friendly programmer) can easily add RSS export support using one of the many tools available[21]. Otherwise an editor will quickly get you started with RSS creation.
| Figure 6. RSSxpress Editor Screenshot |
However, you don't need to get caught up with worries about using RSS. Tools are available, such as the JavaScript options, that make using RSS very easy. There is no requirement for you to create RSS (though you may want to) before you can benefit from the myriad of content available.
Hopefully by now you will be starting to see the benefits of a technology like RSS. It provides a simple way to syndicate online content. Implementation may be as simple as including some JavaScript in a single Web page to using a content management system to syndicate external content and export your content for others to use.
Either way, the benefits of this easy, open XML success story, are clear.
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Pete Cliff
Systems Developer, The Resource Discovery Network
UKOLN
University of Bath
BATH BA2 7AY
United Kingdom
URL: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Email: p.d.cliff@ukoln.ac.uk
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For citation purposes:
Cliff, P. "RSS - Sharing Online Content Metadata", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/rss-issue/>
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By Kim Veltman - July 2002
Kim Veltman believes the semantic web should be about the meaning of humanity with all the richness of its cultural and historical dimensions. Here he reviews three approaches to the semantic web, namely of the World Wide Web, Dublin Core and a small group within the AI community. He then suggests that a new kind of cultural semantics is needed in order to reflect the richness of human experience.
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The semantic web [1] is analogous to motherhood and apple pie. Everyone agrees that it is a good idea. 'Semantic', as the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, has to do with meaning and everyone wants meaning [2]. As is so often the case when everyone thinks that they agree, it may be that the meaning of meaning is not as clear as it seems; that persons are actually speaking about different things, and that there is a danger that they are speaking past each other. This paper suggests that there are at least four approaches to the semantic web, namely that of:
A brief survey of the four approaches is given. It is claimed that the first two approaches are correct but too narrow; that the third is misleading, while the fourth represents a direction full of challenges to which we should aspire.
At WWW7 (Brisbane, 1997), Tim Berners-Lee outlined his vision of a global reasoning web. At WWW8 (Toronto, 1998), he articulated the vision of a semantic web, whereby one can separate rhyme from reason: i.e. the subjective dimensions of art and poetry from the objective dimensions of logic, which is one definition of science. At one level, this is a direct continuation of the vision, which inspired Shannon, which itself grew out of the subject-object distinction that Cassirer [3] traced back to the Renaissance. In some senses it also goes back to the Greek debates about universals and particulars. In terms of the classical trivium of grammar (the structure of language), dialectic (the logic of language) and rhetoric (the effects of language), the emphasis of Tim Berners-Lee on the logic of language reflects the concerns of the dialectic in Antiquity.
In the vision of Tim Berners-Lee [4], there is a great emphasis also on distinguishing the basic structure of content from the various forms in which it is expressed. In the trivium, this is the distinction between grammar (the structure of language) and rhetoric (the effects of language). There is corresponding attention to the quadrivium. Optimists will note that the makers of the World Wide Web (W3) Consortium are addressing all the questions of the ancient trivium and quadrivium such that all the potentials of the traditional seven liberal arts will soon be available in electronic form (Figure 1). At the same time there is a danger in being over-optimistic and in being too easily satisfied. Separating rhyme from reason is useful. Creating a web which focusses only on reason at the expense of poetry may not be sufficient.
Logic is, of course, an excellent starting point. Tim Berners-Lee has a conviction, which can be traced back to the early history of Oxford from whence he comes, that logic is a way to separating the wheat of truth from the chaff of idle claims. Logic is universally applicable: it reflects the scientific spirit. It represents the dimension concerning which there ought, in theory, to be no debate. Logic has the added value that it can be very useful in the realm of transactions. If we can sort out which accounts are true and which false, this can greatly help the rise of e-commerce.
| Grammar | Structure, Syntax [5] | Extensible Markup Language [6] | XML |
| Dialectic | Logic,Semantics | Resource Description Framework | RDF |
| Rhetoric | Effects, Style,Pragmatics [7] | Extensible Style Language | XSL |
| Geometry | Continuous Quantity | Mathematical Markup Language | MML |
| Arithmetic | Discrete Quantity | Mathematical Markup Language | MML |
| Astronomy | Applied Continuous Quantity | Astronomical Markup Language | AML |
| Music | Applied Discrete Quantity | Standardized Music Description Language | SDML |
All this is excellent. Meaning, however, is about much more than transactions. Whereas the meaning in logic and science focusses on the universally true, meaning in the realms of culture typically focusses on what is nationally, regionally or locally unique. Science is in large part uni-lingual and uni-cultural. Culture is multi-lingual and multi-cultural. The solutions of science have become the models for our treatment of all domains of existence. Today when we search for a word on the Internet there is an implicit assumption that we are searching for a single meaning. For the realms of culture we need a semantic web, which allows us to discover differences in meaning in different places and at different times. We shall return to this in the section on Cultural Semantics.
The W3 Consortium works closely with the Dublin Core (Metadata Initiative), which was inspired in part by the vision of Yuri Rubinsky (1994) for a metadata semantics [8]. This set out to identify a minimal set of universally applicable fields on which one could hope to gain international acceptance. These fifteen fields, known as the Dublin Core, were initially intended to describe web sites developed by persons without formal training in the principles of library cataloguing (e.g. MARC). In the eyes of some the Dublin Core has much grander applications in memory institutions. In any case it can serve as a very useful bridging device to connect otherwise heterogeneous resources. The Dublin Core initiative helps to reach agreement on matching effectively equivalent fields in different systems: a process which is alternatively called mapping, bridging, linking, creating crosswalks, walkthroughs or more generally interoperability. Interoperability of content is at least a twofold problem. There is interoperability of:
The initiators of the Dublin Core use semantics to refer to the definition or meaning of the fields (or elements). They deal with part one of the problem and this is very important. Without basic agreement concerning the fields there can be no sharing of information and knowledge. In other words, in respect of fields/elements/containers we must first decide that Subject and Topic are equivalent. But interoperability of content entails a second part: in respect of the meaning of terms in the fields we then need to agree that the subject/topic of car and the subject/topic automobile are equivalent.
In the case of car and automobile almost everyone will agree that the terms are equivalent. In the case of a word such as pasta, in Italy alone there are well over 60 definitions. In science, one internationally accepted definition of a term or word is all that is needed. By contrast in the realm of culture there is typically a definition at the international level and variants at the national, regional and local levels. Both the W3 and Dublin Core use science as a model. This approach based on logic and universals is excellent in the case of scientific knowledge, but is too narrow to deal with the particulars of multi-lingual, multi-cultural and historical cultural knowledge. For this we need a cultural semantics.
The authors of the Dublin Core and the W3 may rightly protest that this is a level of semantics, of meaning, which they never intended to solve and this is a reasonable position. Nonetheless, the problem remains. Without a means of separating these different kinds of meanings, we shall not have a semantic web which can address the complexities of culture. Indeed, we need more, because these meanings also change historically, such that a term, which meant one thing in the 17th Century may mean something very different today. Hence the word 'nice', which in the 17th Century frequently meant lazy, lewd, or lascivicious, now means something quite different when persons speak of "a nice day". We need new kinds of search engines which do not simply search for a "natural language" term, but allow us to distinguish between local, regional, national, and international levels, multi-lingually, multi-culturally and historically (i.e. including etymologies).
Within the field of Computer Science and particularly among a small group of individuals in Artificial Intelligence (AI), semantics has a much narrower meaning. Here the quest is to arrive at a supposedly objective machine-readable code whereby machines can make decisions without human intervention. In this context, meaning is reduced to efficient commands and decision trees. There is an assumption that if the code were perfected then humans would no longer be necessary. For instance, computer scientists such as Carl Hewitt have claimed that one needs to replace humans with robots in the case of decision systems. The quest is to create machines:
"that could take care of us, that could be our guardians and that would also be our rulers and policemen to program computers and robots that could garner all the weapons of mass destruction into a machine-controlled system, in the same way that you have to take matches away from children [9]."
According to the supporters of this school, all decision-making concerning military actions, when to send planes, drop bombs, etc. needs to be removed from the human sphere and the goal is to turn the keys [10] for all such actions over to robots. To this end, the army, navy and the air force are all working on autonomous decision robots [11]:
"The necessary turnover in personnel you get in human-based systems, because of their very short lifetimes, seems to throw instability into the system. And the general diversity of human stock we have, in terms of different languages, cultures and interest is not something that can be smoothed out very quickly [12]."
In this approach the subjective meanings of humans with their many languages, cultures and attendant ambiguities are merely a nuisance and ultimately meaningless. The profound dangers of such a quest were pointed out nearly three decades ago by the Nobel physicist, Joseph Weizenbaum (1976):
"The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the destruction of history. For when society legitimates only those 'data' that are "in one format" and that "can easily be told to the machine" then history, memory itself, is annihilated. And the curious paradox is that the immortality of knowledge means the death of culture [13]."
These dangers were restated a decade later in Grant Fjermedal's "The Tomorrow Makers", (1986), a fascinating book on the development of living brain machines [14]. Fjermedal noted that this vision of autonomous decision robots was a quest for a non-biological intelligence which, according to Richard Jarrow, founder of NASA's Goddard Institute, was destined to replace humans altogether [15].
This goal of creating autonomous decision robots helps to explain a growing fascination with and commitment to natural language and so-called common sense worlds, which were described by Jerry Hobbs and Robert Moore (1986) [16]. It helps explain also the rise of artificial intelligence projects such as Doug Lenat's CYC, Generic Artificial Consciousness (GAC) and Common Sense [17]. It suggests a deeper reason for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) very active participation in Knowledge Query Markup Language (KQML), Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF), DARPA Agent Modeling Language (DAML) and, possibly, their increasing role in W3's quest for a semantic web.
One is tempted to dismiss such a quest to replace human intelligence by machines as efforts of a marginal minority in the military. However, analogous ideas are being developed in the realm of American industry. For instance the authors of "Visionary Manufacturing Challenges for 2020" foresee new techniques evolving independently of language and culture, which is the opposite of the European approach:
"A major task will be to create tools independent of language and culture that can be instantly used by anyone, regardless of location or national origin. Tools will have to be developed that allow for effective remote interaction. Collaboration technologies will require models of the dynamics of human interactions that can simulate behaviors, characteristics, and appearances to simulate physical presence [18]."
By implication there are two fundamentally different visions of a semantic web. One aims at understanding human meanings, which vary from place to place and vary historically. A second aims to use natural language and common sense to offer a single language for robots acting independently of humans with no reference to cultural diversity and the complexities of history. In our view, the first vision needs to be developed. The second is misleading and dangerous. It implicitly undermines the larger vision of the W3 Consortium as a world wide web for humans. Ultimately the second vision is a threat to the human race.
Historically, there have been other, more subtle, trends working against multilingualism. Ever since the scientific revolution in the Renaissance there has been a gradual tendency towards international standards which gained enormous ground in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries with the rise of many international organisations such as the International Standards Organization (ISO), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Underlying these bodies was a vision that one needed to reach agreement on terms in order to make progress. Local and regional agreement were first steps, national agreement was one step further and international agreement on a term or concept was ultimately the goal.
In the realms of science and technology this is essential. Science is concerned with universally valid laws and rules. Hence we need globally accepted definitions of zinc, chemical formulae and the like if we are to have an international scientific community. This is also the case in medicine. Our definition of a heart needs to be the same if surgeons are to operate successfully around the world. This quest also relates to Tim Berners-Lee's assumption that meaning is closely linked to logic and thus with things which can be proven. Hence his notion of a semantic web strives for information or knowledge that is universally true.
In the realms of the arts and culture, however, the situation is different for three fundamental reasons. First, the cultural sector has a historical dimension, which is central to its existence. In the case of science, the focus is on the laws and rules which apply now [19]. In culture, the arts and the humanities, the historical commentaries on great authors such as Homer and Shakespeare or on great artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt are not just of passing interest. They are central to the field, for the depth of culture lies precisely in the cumulative effect of these historical commentaries over the ages. Indeed these commentaries over time give cultural objects such as the text of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" their full importance. Hence, whereas science deals with laws, rules and formulae, which function as if they were a-temporal, cultural objects entail an essential temporal dimension. In science, a database of current formulae and definitions may be sufficient. In the realm of culture we need databases which include historical definitions, (etymologies) and make visible the cumulative dimension of cultural objects.
Related to this is a second difference. The goal of science is to arrive at truths or at least working hypotheses concerning which there is global acceptance. The greater the acceptance the more scientific a claim becomes. In the cultural sector, global agreement is extremely rare. Even in the case of UNESCO World Heritage sites there is often disagreement about what should be included. Indeed the richness of the cultural sector lies precisely in the amount of disagreement; in the diversity of interpretations concerning the same object. Hence, whereas science needs databases to record those 'facts' on which there is global agreement, culture requires databases to record all the disagreements concerning a given cultural object.
Hence the semantic web as it is emerging admirably reflects the needs of modern science and technology. But it does not yet answer the more complex needs of the cultural sector. Some might argue that this is not essential and merely a luxury. In a world where narrow identities of fundamentalist sects are threatening the very fabric of society, the need for identities with dimensions of tolerance many become our only hope for long-term survival as a civilisation. Meanwhile, economists who concentrate exclusively upon financial considerations need reminding that culture is intimately connected with tourism, which is the most important source of income in all the G7 countries and many other countries of the world. In addition to being fundamental to our sense of identity, it is thus also one of our most important sources of economic gain.
There is a third reason why culture is different from science and technology. Science is concerned only with globally accepted laws and rules. Cultural objects or products have local, regional and national variants. To take a prosaic example: beer has certain international standards, which are necessary to ensure that the brew is safe and not poisonous. But ultimately what makes beer interesting is that German beer is different from Dutch or Danish beer. Within a region and even locally there are many variants.
To take a more exalted example: paintings of the Annunciation are culturally rich precisely because there are so many national, regional and local variants. Hence a semantic web which aims to create databases with only a single definition of beer or of only one Annunciation, is not useful. In the case of cultural products or objects we need databases to indicate information or knowledge at the global, international, national, regional and local levels. And in an increasingly networked world we need ever more links between these levels.
Given the global nature of science, ultimately it is sufficient that there is only a single term for a given law, principle, rule or concept in a single language. Nuclear physics or radio astronomy do not preclude multilingualism, but one could argue that multiple languages merely risk adding further confusion to an already complex subject. By contrast, in the cultural sector local, regional and national variants are essential to the richness of cultural expression, and depend fundamentally on different languages and dialects. Thus a semantic web, which includes cultural, spatial (local, regional, national, global), historical and interpretative dimensions is one of the essential challenges that face us in the future.
Since the rise of the nation state there has been a tendency to compartmentalise knowledge. Local knowledge was stored locally, regional knowledge at the provincial or state level, national knowledge in the capitals of countries and international knowledge was stored in a few global libraries such as the Vatican and more recently in national collections (e.g. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Library of Congress).
The advent of new technologies and the Internet led in the first instance to a networking of the great international libraries and research institutions such as the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) and through projects such as the Gateway to Europe's National Libraries (GABRIEL). Such networks provide access to tens of millions and potentially hundreds of millions of titles. Through projects such as Gallica (BNF, Paris) the full contents of such titles are also becoming available.
Meanwhile, our search engines often implicitly assume that everything on the web is equally valid. Alternatively they perpetuate nineteenth century, positivist assumptions about terms: i.e. that, implicitly, when we search for a word a single definition is entailed. The quest to achieve interoperability of content further strengthens this trend. There is an assumption that unless there is complete equivalence between the meanings of fields, there can be no interoperability. Paradoxically, however, if there is a complete equivalence in contents of fields there is nothing gained in bridging meanings at different levels. Complete interoperability in this narrow sense would lead to precisely the McWorld effect against which Barber warned [20].
What is needed therefore is a more subtle approach. We need more than just the internationally agreed usage of a term. We need access to national, regional and local versions, with an indication at each stage about the level of agreement that exists concerning a term in a given language or dialect. Hence, when we search for 'heart', the system needs to provide us with terminology and a definition which have been internationally agreed and at the same time indicate national, regional and local variants. If the local interests us there may be cases where a local term is a) defined in a local dictionary or dialect phrasebook; b) where it is available in a recorded corpus and not yet formally defined or c) where it is used locally and not yet even systematically recorded. Until we have a framework which allows such distinctions, we cannot achieve full syntactic and semantic interoperability. Hence a challenge lies in a new synthesis of knowledge at local, regional national and international levels complete with new methods for reflecting these levels within our search engines and devices for navigating through networked knowledge. This is the challenge of cultural semantics.
The first half of the twentieth century introduced new ideas for computers, which transformed earlier concepts of computational devices which have evolved since the times of Pascal and Leibniz. The last half of the Twentieth Century transformed the notion of individual computers to an inter-networked world, whereby supercomputers and personal computers can be linked through computational grids. The notion of computers as devices concerned only with computation, number crunching, evolved also to include text, images, sound, touch and more recently smell and taste.
The 21st Century marks a new epoch in these developments. In 1995 there were 30 million users. In 2000 there were 300 million users and in the past two years the Internet has grown to over 544 million users. This figure is predicted to double again within the next five years. Within a decade more persons will have access to the Internet than has ever been the case with any other technology.
Freud, McLuhan, Levy and others have argued that computers should be seen as extensions of humanity: not only in the physical sense of mechanical tools, but also in a conceptual sense. Kurzweil would go further to claim that computers are extensions of mankind in a spiritual sense. In this context, the vision of a semantic web is one of the keys to the future. We need to get beyond number crunching and word crunching in order to get at the meaning of texts, images, and other creations of the human spirit.
We have noted that there are at least four approaches to the semantic web:
We have suggested that the efforts of 1) the W3 Consortium thus far are important, very useful for transactions, but do not yet answer the needs of human meaning; that the efforts of 2) the Dublin Core mark another important step forward, but that this cannot be seen as a comprehensive solution. We suggested that the approach of 3) a small minority in the AI community potentially undermines the vision of the W3 and is ultimately a threat to the human condition. What we need is a semantic web, which embraces cultural dimensions, which provides new levels of access to knowledge at the local, regional, national as well as international levels. The essence of science may lie in the universality of its claims, in universals. The essence of culture lies in the unique, in particulars, in the exceptions to the rule. We have exceptional databases for the universal laws of science but we have very little by way of databases for the unique and exceptional expressions of culture. To achieve this is one of the great challenges for the semantic web of the future: not to replace humans, but rather to find new ways of making visible their abiding expressions.
I am grateful to Dr Traugott Koch, Professor Gerhard Budin, and my colleague Johan van de Walle for discussions which helped to clarify my ideas. My colleague John Beckers kindly read the text and offered helpful corrections. I am also grateful to Dr Frank Roos (CWI) for kindly reading the manuscript.
| Syntax | SGML |
| Style | CSS/XSL |
| Structure | HTML |
| Semantics | XML |
Reprinted from Kim H. Veltman, "Challenges for a Semantic Web", Semantic Web
Workshop at the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference, 7-11 May
2002, Honolulu, Hawaii. Position paper published at:
URL: <
http://semanticweb2002.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/proceedings/Position/veltmann.pdf>
Dr.Kim H. Veltman
Scientific Director
Maastricht McLuhan Institute
PO Box 616
Maastricht MD 6200
Netherlands
Email: k.veltman@mmi.unimaas.nl
Dr. Kim H. Veltman is Scientific Director of the Maastricht McLuhan Institute and co-ordinator of a new European Network of Centres of Excellence in Digital Cultural Heritage. He has worked as a consultant in new media to the CEO of Bell Media Linx (1996-1998), and done research on new media and standards for Northern Telecom (1995-1998). From 1990-1996 he was Director of the Perspective Unit in the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto. He has a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science (Warburg Institute, London) and has spent twenty years as a post-doctoral fellow with support from the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Wellcome Trust, the Volkswagen, Alexander von Humboldt, Thyssen and Gerda Henkel Foundations, and the Getty Trust. His research is focussed on the history of perspective, Leonardo da Vinci and developments in new media. He has published three books, 45 sections in books, 25 articles in refereed journals and 15 reviews. He has taught at the universities of Toronto, Göttingen, Siena, Rome I and II, and Carleton. His professional memberships include the Internet Society (Reston), the International Institute of Communications (London), International Society for Knowledge Organization (Amsterdam), International Society for the Arts Sciences and Technology (Berkeley), Leonardo Society (London), Museum Computer Network (New York), Visual Resources Association (Harrisburg) and the Wolfenbütteler Kreis für Renaissance Forschung (Wolfenbüttel). He is a member of the International Who's Who of Professionals.
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For citation purposes:
Veltman, Kim H. "Challenges for a Semantic Web", Cultivate Interactive, issue
7, 11 July 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue7/semanticweb/>
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ISSN 1471-3225 |