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Bill Whyte discusses ADVISER (ADded Value Information Service for European Research); a range of on-line services intended to provide better visibility of EU research results, including assistance with proposals for the IST Programme, a search service over ACTS, ESPRIT, TAP, and experimental services that allow regional technology brokers to provide news sheets in local languages, discussion groups and real-time multimedia consultancy. An initiative within the project proposes one single meta-tag per project web page, specifying the project name and one of 15 entity types (home page, deliverable, etc).
Does the European Union get full value for the money it spends in subsidising research and development? For at least one reason, the answer has to be, 'No'. All too often, good results are not sufficiently visible to others. Other researchers fail to capitalize on what has gone on before; Commission officials and auditors pay for the re-invention of work they have previously funded; perhaps worst of all, excellent ideas fail to be exploited because no one can understand their significance.
The ADVISER project, and its successor, ADVISER II, were set up in the Research Sector of TAP, to do something about this problem of lack of visibility. The project has moved into large scale demonstration phase and its first product, a free, on-line service [1] shown below in Figure 1, is intended to assist organisations interested in putting together proposals for the Fifth Framework IST Programme, as well as providing a fast and comprehensive search service over results from ACTS, ESPRIT and TAP. |
Users can carry out free text searches of their own choosing; alternatively, they can search for projects under the detailed activity headings used by the IST Programme. Obviously, there are not yet any IST projects up and running under any of these headings, but ADVISER currently returns details of ACTS, ESPRIT and TAP projects that match these IST activities, giving project summaries, contact details and, where they exist, home pages and information on deliverables (i.e.contractual reports). Once users have identified a project of interest, they have the option to request e-mail notification of any changes to that project, for instance, the announcement of new deliverables.
Figure 1: istADVISER is one of the services provided by ADVISER |
In addition, editing tools make it easy for information produced by intermediaries in the research process - technology brokers, horizontal observatory/support actions such as EXPLOIT, CORDIS, ETHOS, PROSOMA, NECTAR, SCIMITAR etc - to be attached to the basic project data, as short summaries with links back to the sources.
It is not always sufficient to find something: you also have to understand it. Difficulties can occur with unfamiliar jargon, foreign language or doubt about the relevance of the data to your own regional situation. To help resolve this, ADVISER is experimenting with a range of services that allow regional technology brokers, for example, Innovation Resource Centres (IRCs), to provide on-line support in the form of explanatory news sheets in local languages, discussion groups and even real-time multimedia consultancy. Partners in this experiment include the West Norway Research Institute, ISQ (Portugal), Royal University of Ghent, IRIDE (Bari, Italy) and VDI/VDE (Germany).
The project is intended to deliver a real service, not just a theoretical demonstration. As far as possible, ADVISER makes use of an integration of commercial technologies. Our platforms, designed and built by the University of Leeds, England, and TCNO, Bari, Italy, are based on Microsoft NT and SQL Server. The broker services use NetMeeting as the basis of the real-time interaction.
But, of course, there is much more to knowledge management than that. ADVISER's approach can be described as mix of automated and manual methods focussed on providing low cost creation of a well-defined search space across unstandardised, dynamic, inconsistently structured sources of information federated across a large number of web servers. We aspire to provide a highly cost-effective way of turning 'grey' information into gold.
To do this, we must resort to a mixture of manual and automated methods. The initial problem is in finding the sources. It is only when you set out to get a complete set of European RTD data that you find out how difficult the task has been for 'official' sources (for example, CORDIS) and none of them have been completely successful in locating comprehensive sources of grey information and presenting it to users in a friendly way.
In ADVISER finding things, such as page describing project deliverables, is predominately a task for our human information officer, although we do provide him with a set of search and copy tools that make life easier. Hopefully, we only need to find things once and, once we have done so manually, we can leave a machine to do the rest. We have developed automated data extraction tools than can periodically visit a site and extract any information we require for our database. Of course, if, on a subsequent visit, the system discovers that the site has changed, we can alert any interested party to this change. One line in our current research is in trying to develop automatic ways of identifying significant changes, as opposed to minor alterations to text or format. (For example, we are exploring the indexing powers of SQL Server).
The specification of the search engine across this grey information space is a major issue. We currently provide free-text searching across the project summary information and will extend this to cover other indexed web pages. We have also looked at a number of classification schemes, including Serif and FoR. However, at the moment we make most use of the thematic priorities of the Fifth Framework, especially those for the IST Programme. These comprise around one hundred terms within a three-level hierarchy.
In the case of our bidADVISER service, which provides background information to organisations interested in creating proposals for the IST Programme, we have used automated search together with domain experts to classify a large number of ACTS, ESPRIT and TAP projects under the IST thematic areas.
In general, we are not particularly optimistic about the early adoption of consistent meta-tagging for project related information. There simply does not appear to be a great deal of willingness on behalf of projects to participate. Perhaps this will change, but it is our belief that any scheme that will have any chance of success must be extremely light-weight. It must not involve any significant effort or technical skill on behalf of the project.
Nevertheless, we do have something to propose in the way of meta-tagging of project sites. Our approach is slightly less document-centred than the traditional approach through Dublin Core and the like; this is partly based on our requirement, mentioned earlier first to identify web sites before extracting information from them. We need to know the project to which a web page relates and have some idea of the context of that relation.
The ADVISER team have become, by necessity rather than by personal virtue, somewhat expert in the custom and practice employed by EU projects to create their web sites. We have looked at thousands and studied many of them in detail. An interesting fact emerges - the names given to sections of web pages and to links off these pages are extremely numerous, but the entities to which they relate are relatively few. For instance, links are given to 'partners', 'consortium', 'who we are', and so on, many names but all referring to the same thing.
It is our contention that we can cluster the project entities into a compact set of around 15 top-level terms (project aims, project home page, information on deliverables, demonstrator, and so on). We would like one single meta-tag per web page, specifying the project name and the entity type. To promote this view and to get a level of consensus on how it should be implemented, we have set up the European RTD Meta-Information Working Group, EURMI [2]. We would be delighted to welcome readers to become active or passive members of this informal group.
The ADVISER services have been extensively evaluated with real users, as part of the ADVISER and ADVISER II projects. Structured usability and utility trials led by MAC Ltd (Limerick, Ireland) have been conducted in seven countries and detailed focus-groups have been set up by Clear Communication Associates (England). A feedback form is also available on-line. The results of all this are regularly analysed in workshops involving user requirements representatives and the technical design teams. Expert user interaction skills are provided by the University of Limerick, Ireland.
ADVISER has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of providing on-line access to EU RTD results, not just the static, 'official' data, but also the ever-changing grey information. Over the remainder of the current year we intend to improve upon the current quality and comprehensiveness of our content, at the same time reducing the cost of doing so. We are keen to talk to third-party providers of information relevant to the Fourth Framework TAP, ACTS, ESPRIT projects and also any activities that are working towards the IST Programme. ADVISER's information model is geared to working with IST data and we hope to be there, next year, bringing you EU research results as they happen.
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Bill
Whyte
Project Manager
ADVISER II
Email: billw@scs.leeds.ac.uk
URL: <
http://advisereu.vws.co.uk/>
Formerly a Division Manager at BT Labs, Bill Whyte is based in the University of Leeds where he is part-time project manager of ADVISER II. His latest book, 'Networked Futures: Trends for Communication Systems Development,' recently published by John Wiley and Sons (http://www.wiley.co.uk/) is a comprehensive survey of issues of interest to the IST Programme.
For citation purposes:
Bill Whyte, "Getting a
Result with ADVISER," Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/adviser/>
CECUP brings (electronic) copyright awareness to the library community in the 10 Central and Eastern European countries which have applied membership in the European Union. CECUP aims to encourage librarians and their associations to take a more active part in the copyright discussion in their respective countries. First contacts with right owners will also be established. Tuula Haavisto introduces CECUP, its plans, dissemination strategy, and political results.
 |
Copyright is getting to be a hot matter in libraries in the 10 Central and Eastern European countries which have applied for membership in the European Union (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). Changes in the legislation are demanding from libraries and librarians much more involving than earlier. |
Before the 1990s the copyright laws used to be quite favorable for libraries and other users - the legal exemptions were formulated in very general terms. They allowed generous copying and other non-commercial use of documents. These privileges were also largely used in and by libraries. In the 1990s the laws have been tightened towards the Western European models, and this is a continuing line. The basic reasons are harmonizing with the EU legislation, fighting piracy and changes within the electronic environment. Changes also include elements which affect libraries strongly.
CECUP [1], Central and Eastern European Copyright User Platform, was born in this situation. EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations)[2] has organized this concerted action with the accession countries with financing from the European Commission DGXIII/E.
Library associations taking part in CECUP:
The working plan includes:
The project period is 18 months from June 1998 to December 1999.
There is a very active Steering Group [11], composed of representatives of all the ten countries and different types of libraries. It has had three meetings during the first year of the project. The meetings have been a very important source of information in many ways, and the discussions have really put thinking forward. The members are able to enrich the project with the experiences from their own countries. [Note: Editors apologies for missing accents/characters lost in the conversion process.]
Nine of the ten workshops have been held, with more than 630 participants in total. The feedback and results have been rewarding and encouraging, immediate actions taken. All partner library associations have formed copyright groups (where there were none). Several associations are planning regional copyright workshops. Many library journals have or will be publishing related articles about copyright. During the preparations and workshops, active contacts were established with the legislators and other parties interested in copyright.
The CECUP project has its own web site which is integrated with the well-known ECUP+ site. It is especially worth mentioning that direct law quotations [12] concerning the most important articles for libraries and copyright can be found at the site (at the end of the report "Copyright and libraries in the ten C&EE countries").
The preliminary report, "Copyright and libraries in the ten C&EE countries", was published on the web in Spring 1999 [13]. It includes the basic facts about the copyright legislation from the library point of view in the countries, and a chapter with more detailed descriptions of especially library-related regulations. The report will be completed with the information collected from the workshops on-site and with up-dated information about the development in the copyright laws. The final version will be published in paper form and on Internet in the end of the project in late Autumn 1999.
During the project contacts with publishers and other right holders will be made as well. In October 1999 there will be a meeting in Budapest, where 10 representatives of publishers' associations, authors associations, collecting societies and subscription agents will be invited.
From the political point of view one of the most important achievements of CECUP has been the new visibility which libraries have reached through the workshops. Libraries used not to be discussion partners (parties?) in copyright matters - in fact it seems there have been no voices speaking for any user group in these countries. Now, in most of the workshops also ministry officers, political adivisors or even politicians have participated, who have got new information about users position in copyright matters. It has got clear that the response towards the more active role of libraries in copyright matters is welcomed in most C&EE countries.
One important topic has been spontaneously discussed in most of the workshops: the Public Lending Right (PLR) systems. They are more or less under work (if not yet existing) in most European countries because of the regulations of the Rental and Lending directive of 1992. This is also a new phenomenon where libraries should express their opinions, and need basic information about existing models for that. Co-operation between CECUP and the international PLR focal point in the UK has begun.
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Tuula Haavisto
CECUP Project Manager
Haemeentie 153 B, FIN-00560 Helsinki, Finland
Email: tuulah@fla.fi
URL: http://www.edliba.org/cecup/
Tel.:(mobile) +358 40 568 9396
Fax: +358 9 560 70 550 and 560 70 P
|
Tuula Haavisto is on leave from the Office of the Secretary General, Finnish Library Association, while working with CECUP. |
For citation purposes:
Tuula Haavisto, "Central and Eastern European Copyright User Platform (CECUP),"
Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL:
<http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/cecup/>
Colleen O'Reilly gives an overview of phase II of the ELISE project, addressing the exploitation of results and tasks undertaken by the different partners.
The Electronic Library Image Service for Europe II (ELISE II) is the second phase of the successful ELISE project from the Third Framework Telematics Programme. This project falls within area B, Sector 5 of the Telematics Applications Programme and is the Telematics applications for interconnected library services, DG XIII, Commission of European Communities.
 Figure 1: The ELISE II Image Service for Europe |
ELISE I began in February 1993, and concluded in 1995. ELISE II was funded for a further three years and will be completed by the end of 1999. The aim of the ELISE II project is to model a facility that provides access to full colour image banks including textual descriptions. The focus is on developing and demonstrating an operational image retrieval service based on a combined set of networked image banks located in several Member States of the European Union.
The network provides security control against unauthorised access where required and charging mechanisms for retrieval of images when authorised. The model allows for a variety of user groups, with different usage types. It also provides controlled access to a variety of image resolutions, which can have individual cost codes associated with them i.e. a particular image can be identified as being of special value.
 Figure 2: Login to ELISE |
The project has investigated technical aspects associated with the creation of a distributed image delivery service. A demonstration system exists, which provides controlled access to remotely held and managed databases. Image banks in member organisations can be accessed using standard search and retrieval protocols and is illustrated below.
 Figure 3: ELISE Search Screen |
 Figure 4: Results for Query |
The project was broken down into work packages. All partners participated in these work packages with each project partner taking turns at being the lead partner responsible for the completion of the following objectives:
 Figure 5: ELISE II Partners |
De Montfort University will use the new expertise and knowledge gained from the ELISE project to achieve its mission of creating a comprehensive electronic library.
De Montfort University is interested in extending its distance learning and networked customer base and the experience gained from ELISE can aid in the delivery of new services to its customers both in full time attending and in part-time and distance learning modes.
De Montfort University would like ELISE to be used in course development, promotion, dissemination, and revenue generation through image sales, digitising, hosting databases etc; and believes customers to be both internal in its marketing and research functions and external through institutional subscriptions and individual user accounts. De Montfort University plans to utilise further the National Art Slide Library for the benefit of its own students and higher education in Europe generally.
ELISE gives the Hunt Museum the potential of being able to be used in relevant curriculum support and development with the University of Limerick and other educational institutes of all levels. An undergraduate and post-graduate course in decorative arts could be introduced that involves utilising ELISE.
ELISE has enabled the exploitation of expertise for Laboratorium voor Biomedische, and would like to offer ELISE services to its academic departments.
The University of Limerick has an ever-increasing requirement for access to banks of images relevant to their teaching and research needs. It intends to utilise its existing contacts within the medical community to validate and exploit the opportunities emerging from the involvement of Laboratorium voor Biomedische and would use this as an example for further work in developing access services to image resources in fields such as chemistry, biochemistry, and aviation. It considers access to the National Archive of Images on all aspects of Irish society assembled by Radio Telefis Eireann to be an asset that it could never expect to build. The University of Limerick would utilise these resources in teaching and researching Irish Studies, European Studies, and in a planned Master of Arts course in Local History.
The Victoria & Albert Museum is at the forefront of the provision of high-quality image services both to the educational community and individuals. It aims to have a large number of images and text to be made accessible via the Internet, or an equivalent network, and also on a dedicated network server in the Museum. The Museum views ELISE as a means to identifying areas where there is greatest benefit to be gained from networked image banks so that it can concentrate its resources on digitising and cataloguing projects and also in establishing inter-institutional conversion projects in those areas.
The University of Limerick believes that the other partners are capable of testing the utility of such a national cultural resource on a pan-European basis.
Radio Telefis Eireann views ELISE as an opportunity to demonstrate how an archive could be made generally available to external organisations through the use of advanced information technology. It believes that ELISE could be developed and piloted as a service of great future national and European value.
The Hunt Museum wishes to extend access to its resources on a regional, national, and international basis through becoming a national and international resource centre for designers. It believes that ELISE provides the opportunity to promote interest in and encourage research in art, design, craftsmanship, and decorative art generally on a national and international basis.
The Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) presents through Elise a rare collection (19th and 20th local newspapers) and medical images from the Dermatology service of the faculty of Medicine. Elise II provided ULB with the opportunity to experiment image databases. This experience gave rise to a reflexion inside the libraries about the requirements to access images meeting teaching and research needs. This issue will be also addressed by the new 'Centre des technologies au service de l'enseignement' department created recently at ULB.
Laboratorium voor Biomedische views ELISE as a model for visually-oriented analytical professions. The lessons learned will be applicable to the very new field of on-line multimedia analysis of visual information.
Tilburg University is interested in the development of image services. It has just completed an image bank of 10,000 images on the Brabant area and now wishes to move forward into offering this resource to the region on an operational basis. Tilburg University is interested in advancing the research area of WWW/Z39.50 interoperability.
The IBM UK Scientific Centre believes that Digital Libraries will play an increasingly vital role in the provision of multimedia information for both individuals and institutions. ELISE II has explored many of the issues, including user-based studies, that will determine the success or otherwise of Digital Library ventures. IBM wishes to exploit the results of ELISE by making available to its customers the experience gained from collaborating in the project.
As well as ELISE, De Montfort University is the lead
partner in a project known as HELIX (Higher Education Library Image Exchange),
which was launched on 18 June 1998. HELIX contains 52,000 images, which are free
to the higher education sector of the United Kingdom if used in a non-commercial
manner. More details of HELIX are available at:
<http://www.helix.dmu.ac.uk/>
The project is exploring economic models and potential business frameworks and is intended to be beneficial to the European community. ELISE will investigate options and present guidelines for such a service.
When considering an appropriate business framework, the project partners have agreed with the following objectives:
ELISE welcomes collaboration with other projects and countries.
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Colleen O'Reilly
Project Officer
International Institute for Electronic Library Research
Department of Learning Developmen
Email: cpo@dmu.ac.uk
URL: http://severn.dmu.ac.uk/elise/
 |
Colleen O'Reilly is a Project Officer for De Montfort University working for the International Institute for Electronic Library Research within the Division of Learning Development. She is working on the exploitation plan for the Electronic Library Image Service for Europe (ELISE) project, which is funded by the European Commission. Prior to this, Colleen was the Project Manager for the Cedenco Recovery Project funded by the Local Employment Committee for the Community Employment Group (CEG), a division of the Department of Labour for New Zealand. She has a degree in Management Studies with a double major in Management Systems, Marketing and International Management obtained from the University of Waikato in New Zealand. |
For citation purposes:
Colleen O'Reilly, "ELISE II Project: Exploitation of Results and Tasks Undertaken by
Different Partners," Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/elise2/>
Günter Mühlberger introduces the LAURIN Project in which 18 partners in 7 European countries are producing a modular system that, on the one hand, provides newspaper clipping archives with digital technology and, on the other hand, users with on-line access to these fine collections. The project is co-founded by the European Union and sponsoring partners. LAURIN is co-ordinated by the University of Innsbruck. Its official duration is from May 1998 to August 2000.
For more than 100 years an enormous number of libraries, archives, companies, NGOs and governmental institutions have been collecting newspaper clippings and maintaining clipping archives[1]. With the emergence of online-editions of newspapers and networks of such electronic editions some of them have closed their paper-based collections. The newspaper publishing houses themselves have ceased to clip their newspapers. But most of the other institutions still maintain their paper-based clipping collection, and they will continue to do so in the future. The reasons for this are simple: their users are not only interested in the pure text of a newspaper article but demand a higher level of authenticity. The typography, the layout, the pictures that come with it, the impression of the whole page - all this information is lost in the full-text database. As long as print editions are the main distribution media of newspapers, it will make sense to collect clippings of the print edition, because they have this added value of information - either by cutting them out manually, or by scanning them and cutting them electronically. But this is not the only reason why we are optimistic about the future of clipping archives. Another reason lies in the general role research libraries will play in the near future: The information society of the future will not suffer from a lack but from a surplus of information. Distinguishing relevant from non-relevant information will, therefore, be one of the main tasks of librarians in the future. Since the very beginning it has been the job of archivists to select from a wide range of newspapers specific articles related to the subject of the collection. When accessing a clipping archive of one of our consortium members, such as the clipping archive of the University Library of Uppsala [2], one can be sure that the archive has recorded every important article on Swedish politics, culture and contemporary history from all Swedish newspapers - and this simple fact gives the user an enormous amount of confidence. He can be sure that, in principle, all of the more than 3 million articles are "relevant" articles that have been selected by specialists. This argument becomes even more important if we do not think in months or years, but in decades. Searching a database containing the full text of all Swedish newspapers from 1990 to 2010 will produce such a huge number of hits that working with such a database will be a task for information specialists only. The majority of users, who may be able to use a database but who are no specialists, will prefer a system where librarians have reduced complexity to a degree which allows non-professional users to access relevant information in a comfortable way.
These considerations have been the starting point for the LAURIN project: It has been initiated in order to equip paper-based clipping collections with the main tools for doing their job in a digital environment. The project pursues three objectives:
The LAURIN project started in May 1998 and will last until August 2000. It is managed and co-ordinated by the Department of German Language and Literature of the University of Innsbruck. The German Department hosts the Innsbrucker Zeitungsarchiv [3], one of the most comprehensive collections of newspaper clippings pertaining to literature and criticism in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Seven other clipping collections from Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland are in the consortium as well. Their collections mainly comprise articles about cultural, political and economic issues. Altogether they boast a total of some million clippings from the end of the nineteenth century up to the present. Six archives will implement the LAURIN system and use it in their daily work. Some tens of thousands of articles will be recorded in the LAURIN database and accessible via the LAURIN OPAC. Depending on the outcome of our negotiations with copyright holders, users will, in principal, be able to view and print the electronic facsimiles of the articles. For the last phase of the project we have planned to set up a non-profit successor to the network. This organisation will devote itself to the management and expansion of the future LAURIN network, and to the task of supporting the associated archives in their work.
The overall LAURIN architecture provides a set of nodes connected by the Internet: one node for each of the participating libraries, plus a central node collecting data from local nodes and providing the end user with a uniform query environment. The central node hosts a relational database in which metadata from the local nodes are being stored, such as titles of the articles, author names, dates, newspaper names, and keywords. Local nodes are in charge of clipping, scanning, and indexing; in addition to that, they store all the information about the clippings available: index data, the OCR-processed full text, and the electronic facsimile (image) of the article. Whenever a user formulates a query, the central node uses the central data as a basis for its response involving local nodes only when specific full-text queries are issued. The central node is in charge of collecting the responses coming in from the local nodes and provides the user with the final result. The central node also contains a Z39.50 interface allowing it to operate as a Z39.50 server, exporting all LAURIN index data to existing library networks. Depending on the decisions of the library, each local node may be directly queried by the end users through a WEB interface and/or a Z39.50 interface. LAURIN clippings are linked with the LAURIN thesaurus, which is stored in the central and local nodes. There is a constant flow of information from local nodes to the central node, continuously updating the central database with new index data and new thesaurus entries. Periodically, the thesaurus administrator validates the proposed thesaurus entries (candidates), and the central node forwards these validations to each local node. The LAURIN-thesaurus is organised by concept. This is done by linking names stemming from different languages but expressing the same concept, and by identifying functional and useful relationships between these different concepts. Every single concept will have a unique key to it but will be represented by several names (including name string, normalised name string, language flag, and preferred flag). The thesaurus will also contain information about the relationship between concepts (e. g. broader term, related term, ...) and some administrative information (who changed/added what and when in the thesaurus). The LAURIN system not only provides the infrastructure but also contains some authority data. Among others, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names [4] as well as the NUTS [5] code have been incorporated.
Apart from working on the detailed design of the overall architecture during the first year, the focus of the LAURIN project was on the workflow in the clipping departments. The Innsbruck Press Archive (IZA) can serve as an example of the typical workflow within a clipping department. Since the 1960s articles concerning literature and language have been clipped from about 35 daily and weekly Austrian, German, Italian, and Swiss newspapers. 120 articles are processed per day, amounting to an annual output of some 30,000 articles. To facilitate convenient filing, the articles are clipped and pasted onto A4 sheets. They are classified according to subject, copied and, if necessary, multiplied, in order to file all the relevant articles under different subject headings. The articles can be accessed locally, and they are delivered as paper copies by snail mail to off-site users. The standard workflow of an electronic clipping archive will be organised in a similar way and will consist of the following steps:
The standard workflow will be organised by using libClip 1.0 [6] clipping software (see Figure 1).
 Figure 1: libClip 1.0: Distinction of Articles |
The scanning module of libClip enables us to scan newspapers with common scanners from A4 to A2 both in black and white as well as in grey scale. Grey scale scanning is indispensable for achieving good quality pictures and graphs. It is also a valuable feature used for retrodigitisation in order to improve image quality by deskewing and applying noise reduction tools. The clipping module comprises an automatic layout analysis of the source page. This automatic layout analysis selects articles on a page as well as textual objects within the article. These textual objects are: Title, subtitle, author, abstract, body text, picture, and caption. LibClip highlights the recognised objects, and the clipper corrects the suggested result. In connection with the automated OCR-processing of the article, the recognised textual objects are used to automatically transfer the main bibliographic data into the LAURIN local database system. In order to facilitate the viewing and printing of the clippings, the article is automatically arranged on an A4 page. This target page contains the logo of the newspaper, related bibliographic data, address of the clipping archive and, in case the archive uses a large-format scanner, thumbnails of the source page. In the end, three outputs of the clipping process are exported to the LAURIN local database system: (1) The electronic facsimile of the article, (2) the OCR-processed full text of the article, and (3) the prime and bibliographic indexes (metadata). Adhering to common standards, the electronic facsimile will be scanned at 3-400 dpi and stored in TIFF (CCITT Group 4). Having exported the article to the LAURIN local database, the clipping process is completed. The last step of the acquisition process consists in finishing the indexing. This is done through a separate user-interface, provided by the LAURIN local database in connection with the LAURIN central database. In a first step, the LAURIN local node database matches the OCR-processed full text of the article with the controlled vocabulary of the thesaurus. A list of matching keywords is produced, and the indexer has to confirm, or to delete, the suggested keywords. In a further step the indexer can choose adequate thesaurus entries, and to connect them with the article. If the thesaurus contains no suitable entry for the article, the indexer may use freely chosen vocabulary (in his own language) as well. This free index will be translated into English and updated regularly by the thesaurus administrator. After having indexed the article, the librarian confirms the data (bibliographic data and keywords) in a one-stop quality check, and the article is finally stored.
The LAURIN data will be accessible in different contexts. First of all, the LAURIN OPAC will provide access to the metadata of all newspaper articles processed in the course of the project. At least two kinds of interfaces will provide occasional, as well as expert, users with the possibility to retrieve the LAURIN records. Access to the collection will be supported not only by providing a set of different search fields but also by the multilingual thesaurus. In fact, the thesaurus will be one of the main tools to navigate through the information space of the LAURIN database. Since all keywords of the LAURIN thesaurus are also represented in English, users will be able to search and find interesting articles even if they have only a rudimentary knowledge of the English language.
In addition to the LAURIN central database, the LAURIN data will be accessible via a z39.50 gateway as well. This feature facilitates the integration of the LAURIN data into established library networks.
Apart from the electronic catalogue, the LAURIN system will also be able to provide users with the electronic facsimile of the articles. Obviously, this feature is closely related to copyright issues. The LAURIN project is affected by copyright law in two respects: (1) the digitisation of newspaper articles and (2) the making available of these articles to the public via an electronic network. In the case of reproducing the articles, it has to be seen that most European countries have put special limitations on their copyright acts in favour of libraries and archives. The European directive on copyright, which will probably be ratified by the European Parliament in 2000, follows these traditions and allows member states to set up limitations to the reproduction right. Article 5(2)c says that "member states may provide for limitations to the exclusive right of reproduction [...] in respect of specific acts of reproduction made for archiving or conservation purposes by establishments which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage" [7]. It is very likely that countries that already have similar regulations will implement this article. After the ratification of the directive, the digitisation of newspaper clippings for archival and preservation purposes should therefore be possible in most European countries.
The delivery of the electronic facsimiles of the articles via the LAURIN network, however, is a much more complicated matter. At least three aspects have to be taken into account: (1) Existing library privileges, (2) the differences between closed and still growing collections, and (3) the question of "who is the real owner of a (paper-based) digitised newspaper article?";
Similar to the reproduction right, many European countries make certain exceptions for the use of copyright protected material for educational and research purposes. The EU copyright directive also follows these exceptions, and in Article 5(3)a it is said that "Member States may provide for limitations" in the case of "use for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research". In the comments on the article it is said that member states are allowed "to exempt the use of a work [...] for instance for a compilation of an anthology" and that the article "might also serve to exempt certain uses in the context of on-demand delivery of works" (comments to article 5, no. 8, p. 40). From this point of view, it seems to be quite clear that, for instance, the use of scanned and archived clippings for producing an electronic online schoolbook that is accessible only to teachers and students may be possible in those countries which will implement this article. Nevertheless, the objective of the LAURIN network is that the whole database is accessible to researchers, teachers, and students. Therefore, separate solutions on the basis of license agreements will be necessary to guarantee broader access to the articles. But in order to enter into negotiations one has to find the copyright owner of an article - and this might be more difficult than one thinks at first glance. Finding the addressee for the licensing agreement is a question of rights management, and in this context the difference between closed and still growing collections is considerable. The two main characteristics of closed newspaper clipping collections are that (1) the digital kind of use was unknown at the time when the articles were published and (2) it is impossible to identify every single author of the articles collected. It is obvious that a contract between a publisher and a journalist, negotiated in the 1960s, covered only the right to publish that article in paper form [8]. The digitisation and distribution of this article via an electronic network is a new type of distribution and needs, therefore, the separate agreement of the originator. But how are we to find the authors of tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of articles from the 1920s up to the present? The problems that arise may be exemplified by the collection of the National Library of Norway. The National Library holds some 700,000 articles on Norwegian people published in Norwegian newspapers from the 1920s to 1985. These articles, mainly written on the occasion of birthdays, obituaries, advancements, etc., have been created very rarely by regular journalists writing for those newspapers, but more often by free-lancers and even friends of the people in question, and some of the articles do not contain the name of their author. Even if the library spares no effort to find the originators of the articles, there will always be authors (or heirs) that cannot be traced. Do we necessarily have to conclude from this that future use of the material will be impossible? We do think that there is a feasible solution which might also be of interest to similar collections, such as archives of photographs, illustrations, etc.: More than one hundred years ago Reproduction Rights Organisations have been founded in order to solve the problem of collective rights management [9]. They are a link between the large number of copyright owners and an enormous number of users. The German collecting society for authors, VG-WORT, has recently got the right to license collected editions, such as newspapers, journals, anthologies, etc., which were published at a time when their digital rebirth could not possibly have been forseen. The LAURIN team is therefore optimistic that other RROs will follow suit and that our chances of receiving a license for the retrospective digitisation of newspaper articles throughout Europe will increase in the future.
When considering clipping collection that are still growing, however, we are confronted with a completely different situation. This is particularly due to the new role of newspaper articles after the digital revolution. It is only recently that, under the influence of the Internet, newspaper articles have become a completely new product. Not too many years ago they were just written for the day, and their value diminished after a very short time. By contrast, the Internet permits various kinds of re-publication of electronic newspaper articles. Especially online editions of newspapers, online archives, networks of newspapers, homepages of electronic bookshops, companies, and information services, appreciate the availability of news articles. Obviously, the writers and publishers of these articles are fascinated by the new possibilities and have a strong interest in the exclusive exploitation of the new value of newspaper articles. On the other hand, the "new" newspaper article and the possibilities of its dissemination through the Internet are more akin to the broadcasting of music songs on the radio than to the traditional form of paper publishing. And what would Radio be like if songwriters had to exploit their songs without the support of collecting societies? It is quite likely that collecting societies will play an important role in the retrodigitisation of clippings, and they might play a similar role in the case of current articles, too [10]. There is a strong need to compare various possibilities in order to solve this problem. The LAURIN project will therefore organise a public copyright meeting in spring 2000 to discuss various approaches.
In the course of the next few months, the LAURIN clipping software and the local node software will be installed and validated at the participating libraries and archives. In January 2000 this process will be finished, and a first prototype of the LAURIN OPAC will be available on the Internet. During the demonstration phase of the project, new partners will be welcome to join the consortium.
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Günter Mühlberger
Project manager
Department of German Language and Literature
Innsbrucker Zeitungsarchiv
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Email: guenter.muehlberger@uibk.ac.at
URL: http://laurin.uibk.ac.at/
 Günter Mühlberger, project manager of the LAURIN project, is working at the Department of German Language and Literature of the University of Innsbruck. He is involved in several national digitisation projects (Austrian literature online, Censorship in Austria - 1792-1848). Further information is available at: <http://germanistik.uibk.ac.at/germ/leute/muehlberger.html> |
For citation purposes:
Günter Mühlberger, "Newspaper Clippings in a Digital World: The LAURIN Project,"
Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL:
<http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/laurin/>
Jens Koblin gives an overview of the now completed MURIEL project.
 |
The MURIEL project aimed to create, demonstrate and evaluate a multimedia interactive training and education system for librarians and information professionals. It produced a multimedia book suitable both for lecturers and students of librarianship as well as for information professionals already working in the field. The subjects "Information Ethics" and "Libraries and the Internet" had been chosen for the initial courseware but, in the long term, MURIEL may host a whole collection of courseware added by libraries and information research institutions according to their own needs. MURIEL demonstrated and evaluated the practical applications of innovative telematic services and systems in on-line-education, training and resource-sharing environments for information professionals. |
MURIEL was an electronic education system with remote document processing facilities. The libraries and information research institutes used their LANs (Local Area Networks) or stand alone systems to integrate MURIEL courseware user and developer workstations, as well as a Courseware Data Server. This server provided an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) gateway to import courseware to and export from other MURIEL Courseware Data Servers.
ISDN had been chosen for its availability, cost effectiveness, suitability for multimedia information transmission (such as text, images, graphics, sound and video) and the wide range of other ISDN services available for information professionals such as remote joint processing of electronic documents.
 Figure 1: System Architecture of the MURIEL Prototype |
Courseware models and specifications were developed taking into account the latest electronic training technologies, such as multimedia courseware, hyperlinks between lessons, interactivity, remote access through ISDN and user-friendly interfaces. MURIEL offered its users remote consultation of the multimedia courseware located on the Courseware Server and for the courseware developers the possibility to integrate and modify the content of the MURIEL courseware.
The MURIEL system offered off-line help and "learning by doing" facilities as well as incorporating exercises, questions and answers, and also access to third party services such as the Internet, thus creating a very realistic learning situation.
The project also designed and implemented a joint-processing tool, which course developers used to elaborate in common electronic documents. These were integrated into the multimedia courseware.
The copyright concept of MURIEL was that use of the content is free. The courseware was produced by the partners or provided for free by third parties. Therefore, in MURIEL only copyright free material was used.
The MURIEL system offered various features for librarians and information specialists as well as for students. The most important were:
The international field trials took place in real end-user work environments of libraries and universities, where for the duration of about one semester the MURIEL prototype was used to support daily education processes, i.e. creating lessons and studying. During this time, quantitative as well as qualitative data on user requirements and usability of the system were collected.
The project finished in October 1997.
The following partners participated in the MURIEL project:
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Jens Koblin
MURIEL Project Manager
Teles AG
Berlin, Germany
Telephone: +49.30.39928.243
Fax: +49.30.39928.01
Email: koblin@teles.de
URL: <http://www.teles.de/de/eu/muriel.html>
 Jens Koblin is the MURIEL Project Manager, Teles AG., Berlin |
For citation purposes:
Jens Koblin, "MURIEL: Multimedia Education System for Librarians Introducing
Remote Interactive Processing of Electronic Documents",
Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/muriel/>
Alexandra Papazoglou introduces VERITY and its Virtual Librarian to help young people with their information seeking process.
Verity, a project funded by the Libraries sector under the European Union's Telematics Applications Programme, aims to explore new ways of providing virtual library services that are creative, stimulating and educational for young people in the 13-19 age group [1]. It will develop a system "The Virtual librarian" that will help young people with their information seeking process. The system will also teach them the required information skills that will allow them to become independent learners, capable of facing the needs and demands of an increasingly complex information society. Verity will be developed in parallel in five languages (English, Finnish, German, Greek and Portuguese) corresponding to the respective countries of the participating partners. The consortium headed by Information Services at the University of Sunderland comprises the University of Helsinki IT Centre for Schools, Stuttgart Public Libraries, Athens College Library and ISEGI based at the New University of Lisbon.
The "Virtual librarian", the Verity service based on the Web, will be an intuitive client software, an interface between the user and the final provider of resources. It will manage mechanisms to describe resources (Internet, OPAC, CD-ROMs) in a Unified Way. A keyword search applied in the system will yield as results, resources coming from the web, a library OPAC, possibly a CD-ROM database, and an experts' database. It can be browsed through any web browser.
The Virtual librarian will contain four components: the enquiry service, the information skills training, the referral service and the fourth element.
Results of the Verity user needs analysis provide evidence that young people have difficulty with the formulation of a search query [2]. Some of the particular problems they encounter include:
Verity will guide them, through a series of interactive steps that simulate the real life interview process, to the information they require either via a database of library resources, or to the actual information held on the Web.
Information skills are of critical importance for survival in the information society that demands life long learning habits and continuous self-training.
Verity will have an integrated "Information skills component" that will actively guide the user through a query and will establish the exact information sought. This is a trend already seen in some search services [3] [4], but Verity will differ by including such an aspect as an integral interactive component of its service.
Like in real life a young person will be able to forward their enquiry via a trans-national mediated SIG (Special Interest Group) to experts (persons or institutions), or other users for an answer. The answers can then be fed back into the system.
The fourth element refers to the data and the programs that make the system work; allow it to acquire information and to provide a simple interface to other modules. It contains:
The four components of the Virtual librarian are interlinked and feed one another.
 Figure 1: Possible representation of the Virtual Librarian service. |
A possible computer screen representation of the "Virtual Librarian" service is shown in Figure 1. On the left frame the user can select among the various choices: help, skills, referral to an expert. All these choices will also be embedded in the search process of a particular search query. There is also a language option one can select from. The enquiry, in this case "technological achievements of Ancient Greece" can be expressed in natural language. The system then will attempt to extract the relevant search words and ignore the stop words.
Verity will build a prototype: a model containing the above mentioned components with examples of content. This approach will help analyse the problems and difficulties encountered and it will evaluate the technical and software solutions in order to improve the system. The methodology will cover areas such as: parallel development of Verity's components, in-house development, commercial software packages, and protocols. Topics selected for the building of the prototype are environment and countries (traveling, history). A user forum is to be established in each country, consisting of students, librarians, schoolteachers or lecturers. They will review the deliverables, and will provide advice to the consortium. They will play an active role in the verification and demonstration phases.
Library catalogs (OPACs) can be accessed on the Internet through the use of a client/server (or "origin/target") based Z39.50 standard. The use of the Z39.50 standard allows different software products to talk to each other and exchange data. Verity will make links to OPACs that are already available on the Internet using Z39.50.
Internet protocols (Telnet, FTP, Mail, HTTP), well understood and accepted as standards offering interoperability between platforms, domains and age-groups, will also be incorporated in the Verity system.
A very important aspect of Verity is the indexing, searching and retrieval of information. To structure data about the data that will enter the Verity database, that is to create metadata, the consortium is considering the use of the Dublin Core format [5]. A thesaurus will also be applied. Its controlled vocabulary will be used to generate subject access for the selected records.
Metadata also defined, as "data which assist in the identification, description, evaluation and selection of an information object" [5] will play an important role for Verity, in finding and evaluating the desired information quickly and accurately. The metatabase will be created from metadata originating from selected Internet resources, OPACs and the referral service. For the purposes of building the prototype the Internet resources will be limited to the topics "environment" and "traveling". Later on more topics can be added to the database. There are three different versions for producing metadata:
 Figure 2: The Verity Metadatabase: Deliverable 3 Monika Rautenberg |
The "Verity Librarian" will be a product relevant to the information needs of young Europeans. It offers an enquiry service that will better allow the exploitation of electronic resources for young people. It will support them with their research projects in retrieving, selecting and evaluating the relevant information available in library catalogs and on the Internet. It will also equip then for the culture of life long learning. Their ability to learn independently will be enhanced as they will be better able to locate and manage information on their own.
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
(Updated on 28 Mar 2000)
Alexandra Papazoglou
Hellenic American Educational Foundation
Athens College Library
15 Stefanou Delta
15452 Greece
Email: papaz@ns.haef.gr
For citation purposes:
Alexandra Papazoglou,
"PROJECT VERITY: Virtual and Electronic Resources for Information Skills
Training for Young People", Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/verity/>
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