Bringing special collections to the forefront of society
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DILL Master thesis presentation @ BOBCATSSS 2013, Ankara, Turkey
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Bringing special collections to the forefront of society
- 1. Bringing Special Collections to the Forefront of Society International Collaboration as a Case Study of Manuscriptorium Digital Library Adina Ciocoiu BOBCATSSS2013, Ankara
- 2. Outline Motivation & Purpose Methodology Case study: Manuscriptorium Findings Discussions 2
- 3. Context “Globalization has accelerated the mingling of peoples and cultures. The rapid development of information technology has multiplied opportunities for rapprochement and social interaction.” “…individuals become whole in society as member of a community…” (Bokova, 2010) 3
- 4. 4
- 5. Motivation Aims: Identifying the advantages and disadvantages for local institutions in international collaboration for special collections Understanding its impact on the local community Case study: Manuscriptorium 5
- 6. Methodology Semi-structured questionnaire distributed via individual emails to all partner institutions: 41 out of which only 28 read the message 14 actually responded to the questionnaire: Serbia (1), Poland (3), Hungary (2), Slovakia (1), Bulgaria (1), Lithuania (1) Romania (2), Sweden(1), Denmark (1), Czech Republic (1) 6
- 7. Methodology 5S model for digital library architecture Streams Structures Spaces Scenarios Societies digital systems platform specific human content that were can be activities, and connects it accessed tasks or machine operations interaction Gonçalves, M. A., Fox, E. A., Watson, L. T., & Kipp, N. A. (2004). Streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, societies (5s): A formal model for digital libraries. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst., 22(2), 270–312. doi:10.1145/984321.984325 Fox, E.A., Gonçalves, M. A., Shen, Rao. Theoretical Foundations for Digital Libraries: The 5S (Societies, Scenarios, Spaces, Structures, Streams) Approach. In: Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, July 2012, 180pdoi:10.2200/S00434ED1V01Y201207ICR022) 7
- 8. Results Content Management Locations Activities Communities (Streams) (Structures) (Spaces) (Scenarios) (Societies) Motivation Standard Reading Prior Humanities Credit tools room experience Literacy Visibility Specialized Virtual Systems and personnel spaces humans Funding 8
- 9. Results 3 roles: Aggregator Active participant Passive (1) (9) participant (4) The most experienced, High standards digital No or less experience the most involved content Scheduled participant Institutional harvesting Active & up-to-date representation “Help desk” Established policies (access, preservation, etc) 9
- 10. Conclusions “…promoting our local history…” Contextualized environment Commitment from local researchers Involvement from local authorities History through special collections via international collaboration = valuable resource! 10
- 11. 11
- 12. Thank you! Teşekkürler! Mulţumesc! adina_ciocoiu@yahoo.com Master Thesis online at: http://goo.gl/uG1zv 12
Editor's Notes
- Hello everyone! First of all I would like to thank IOS Publishing for sponsoring my presence here. Thank you very much, I’m really happy to be here. Secondly, I would like to bring to you today the case of collaboration in digital libraries, particularly the role and purpose of special collections in defining the history of a nation, locally and globally.
- The work I’m presenting here is a summary of the research I’ve done as a Master student of DILL –International Master in Digital Library Learning. Before DILL I was working for the National Library of Romania, in the Digital Library Department – and I still do - and as national library this institution had the main purpose of preserving the Romanian cultural heritage. In fulfilling this goal it started digitizing its rich historical collection and as result joined some International collaborative endeavors. Seeing the good impact this project had at all levels (staff, collections, international relations), I was wondering whether there were any differences in how other participants experienced the involvement in similar initiatives. And so I decide to take the case of the most comprehensive, experienced initiative, namely Manuscriptorium, the European digital library of written cultural heritage. As the time is limited I will just focus on presenting shortly the purpose of the study, the methodology and allow some time to discuss the findings. If you find this talk interesting and want to read more, I put the link where you could find my thesis at the end of this presentation.
- To set the context of my research I would like to start by quoting the Director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, that spoke generally about the impact of globalization. She mentioned the new humanism embraced by today’s professionals as the result of globalization and technology that compels new conditions for mutual understanding. Her assertion encourages the audience to learn and to discover , and offers institutions the chance to presents themselves as valuable actors on the national and international scene. (Frumkin, 2006) In my opinion this could be considered the challenge of the millennium, knowing and accepting everyone’s uniqueness and value, putting all differences together to create, innovate, develop and progress. So my claim here for libraries to bring out the specific, to translate it and to interpret for everyone’s use. By doing so, and by using today’s and tomorrow’s technologies our profession will ensure a viable opportunity for rapprochement and social interaction , as Ms Bokova mentioned.
- To give just a quick example, let’s take the case of the cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe, geographical Europe not the EU. There are more than 100 languages here and so more than 100 nationalities, dialects and minority languages. How do you make use of all that richness? How do you preserve it for future generations to understand their past? If not by contributing to the growth of multilingual virtual research environments or adequate digital libraries.
- We hear of big projects that have great success, projects that are built on the collaborative act of many institutions, but not so much on how this project affected, the local organizational structure. During my research I found that there was a lack of data regarding this aspect and I came up with 2 research questions aiming at: Identifying the advantages and disadvantages for local institutions in international collaborative projects for special collections Seeing how this collaborative act improves the value of their digital collection And so I looked at Manuscriptorium Digital Library, Europe’s digital library of manuscripts as it gathers other types of so called special collection: rare books, maps, charts, letters, and many more - from various European institutions – national, public and university libraries, research institutes - and makes it available as digital representations through a virtual research environment. Manuscriptorium acts also as platform for scholarly research and provides all the technical expertise for participants thus allowing for local and global interaction . Nevertheless, the focus of this study was more on how people interact with systems and less on the technical aspects of the digital library.
- About the methodology I’ve used: It was a qualitative approach , aiming at identifying mostly perceptions and experiences of individual institution; therefore had the purpose of understanding the phenomena of joining and participating in international collaboration The case I was investigating had around 41 participants declared on their website And so I developed a semi-structured questionnaire that was sent out at the end of April to mid June 2012 to all participants - 41 participant institutions - out of which only 28 institutions read the questionnaire - 11 national libraries, 9 university libraries, 2 public libraries, 6 academic libraries or research institutes – and eventually 14 took the time to respond. E-mail was the sole instrument for communication, in English for all participants, some replying in Romanian, my native language. The time allowed for answering was flexible, from two weeks to being adjusted to fit the respondents’ schedule. The interpretivist approach was used to present the findings in a structured manner and allowed me to complement the findings with the existing knowledge and experience.
- The questionnaire was adapted following the model presented by Gonçalves et al. (2004) describing the digital library architecture, as to contain five main variables described by them as to be streams, structures, spaces, scenarions and societies within the digital library (p.270). The authors of the model argue that these 5 tracks define the architecture of a digital library, underlining the importance of Streams = as dig The questionnaire was created following the model presented by Gonçalves et al. (2004) describing the digital library architecture throught five main variables: streams, structures, spaces, scenarios and societies (p.270) underlining the importance of: Streams = as digital content or the bits combining a digital document, Structures = the systems used to describe, and display that content, using a unified description tool to ensure the uniformity of the content, Spaces = the portal/ platform hosting the above, Scenarios = events that describe activities, tasks or operations that specify the functionalities of a digital library; these can aid understanding of how digital libraries affect the host organization, Societies = human and machine interaction to maintain and support the services of a digital library content, or the bits combining a digital document
- The Questionnaire had 14 questions, of both open and closed questions, asking for detailed and comprehensive answers regardless. As I mentioned already, the questionnaire was adaptated from the 5s model (5S model – streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, societies) and the results were analyzed in the context of digital representations, as content submitted to specific management tools regardless the locations while a particular set of research activities are handle by the community of users. And so the content category revealed that all respondents had digital content to contribute (even though just fragments, not a complete digital representation) for the purpose of making available worldwide their rich historical collections. The care for these materials alongside the willingness of presenting them in an online environment underlined the concern they have for the research community. Being involved in such international projects triggered a certain position in society and showed them as trusted partners for future similar initiatives. The management category describes the specific links between content and standards that allows for uniform representations of the digital content. This category comprises the resources (human and technological) involved in creating and maintaining the digital representation – specialized personnel and technical staff as well as the tools developed to support their description and online presentation. The experience gained by the working staff proved to be a very good support for other similar activities, while new skills were learned and mastered. Working with the tools provided by Manuscriptorium was also mentioned among the benefits, as being very easy to include documents and to create digital editions of manuscripts. I’ll briefly mention these tools developed and recommended by Manuscriptorium as follows: Mtool a stand-alone, online and offline application developed to create structural and descriptive metadata for individual and compound documents (Uhlíř & Knoll, 2009, p. 72), M-Can an online tool that helps the uploading workflow and management of the records (Jindřich, 2009, p. 13) and Gaiji Bank of non-standard characters and glyphs for normalizing manuscript characters not standardized under Unicode/UTF-8 (“The ENRICH Project and Non-Standard Characters,” n.d.) - ensured that all the providers used a uniform system to describe their materials and therefore developed an interoperable infrastructure between contributor and aggregator. From the locations perspective, the physical and virtual spaces were identified as settings for interaction. The “reading room” continues to be the main place for most local researchers not ignoring the digital repository for the ones willing to access the digital version of manuscripts. The language, both for content and descriptive information, showed to be one of the limitations of globally accessible content – for instance you would’ve expected in an online environment to have a description both in English and in the language of the contributor, whereas in the brick and mortar library you mostly find materials described in the language of the host institution. Locations, be they physical or virtual are validated by numbers - of visits, items, and so on – and could define to some extent the impact the collaboration in the community, respectively to the society. In this case, the majority of respondents said that they ignored this aspects, while few presented approximate or exact information. The activities category revealed any prior experience in digital library collaboration. The level of involvement was illustrated by the practical knowledge and expertise gained, and where this was lacking the participants had the opportunity to adapt and adjust to the general requirements – which added value to the quality of the contribution. These activities are interrelated with the tools provided by Manuscriptorium – the ones I mentioned earlier. Under this category, three roles were identified: the aggregator, the active and the passive participant, that I will talk about on the next slide. As for the communities, the respondents mentioned mostly graduates and PhD students, researchers in the humanities (historians, philologists, and library and information specialists), local professors, scholars or researchers locally based at the university. This can be interpreted as a very important characteristic of Manuscriptorium, that works with and for a small and dedicated community, and by doing so it helps the developers and the creators of the research environment to easily predict, test and evaluate their expectations Nevertheless, the success of the VREs still depends on the level of technological literacy of their users – as some of them still prefer working in the reading room with the original or a printed copy ignoring the benefits of such environments.
- And now I will briefly describe the 3 roles I mentioned earlier: The aggregator = identified as the initiator of the VRE, has the know-how and is able provide the technical support through its technical partner. It also has the motivation to develop international collaboration and the experience to handle it. It is an active and up-to-date institution, able to understand and to apply further developments and knows how to attract partners and sponsors. The aggregator also acts as a help-desk for other participants and assists them in solving the problems they face. The active participant = was identified here as the institution that is willing to deliver its digitized local collection to the aggregator, that acknowledges the importance of good quality material (at both data and metadata level). It has also the understanding that by creating the best possible representation it will benefit also the host institution as well as the globally built research environment. Is the one having most practices and policies already established and functional, it is aware of the fact that the material provided is of international interest. The passive participant, and this category can be split in 2 types of participants. On one hand lies the institution that doesn’t have the experience, or the practice but has the willingness to learn, to open and to evolve knowing the value of its collections. One the other hand lies the locally active participant, that has a interoperable digital repository in place and just allows for scheduled harvesting of their collections. At this point, the second type has no wish to get further involved as an active participant in this particular case.
- To conclude, the most prevalent benefit of international collaboration was promoting the local history . Secondly, the value of local collections has increased, meaning that any remote researcher could have access to the virtual space in a contextualized manner. When online, this content could benefit from a rich description that could allow comparison and analysis along side with similar documents, accessible maybe in another physical location. This supports the main purpose of virtual research environments, where researchers could annotate, save, and share the document having no worries about destroying the original. Part of the identified challenges, or disadvantages, was the level of awareness , learning capacity, openness and communication skills. The question of long term funding sustainability was raised considering both local and international support. While the local financial support could raise particular challenges – namely the local political and financial situation - , the international funding might be better justifiable and less costly, in the context of the current global situation. By placing each participant in their own context (from the institutional background, the historical and political environment) and then adapting this to the context of this case, I believe that this study could provide a better understanding of to the collaborative act in digital libraries. And so there is plenty to be investigated and to be analized in the case of digital special collections as manuscripts and special collections at large are known to represent the documented history of a nation. In a world that calls for sharing resources in the name of progress and innovation, collaboration brings new and broad perspectives for the local organizations.
- Here we can try a short demo – or you could do it on your own. As we are in Turkey, I would like to briefly mention the case of the Turkish contribution. You would need to log in in order to get accurate results. Let’s go now to the “digital library” section, and then query with no other filter “words anywhere”, for turkish – in this way we’ll get all documents that have in their description this word. You would then see contributions from National Library of Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark some presenting a facsimile of the document, others just a description. If on the other had you would search for National Library of Turkey , you would notice that there are around 500 entries, none of them presenting a facsimile like in the prevois cases, just the description. And that could have its reasons, institutional, political, economic or of any kind. So there is plenty to investigate as in the local participation in the context of international collaboration and I’m hoping this research could well serve as staring point for future, in-depth research.
- Thank you for your attention!