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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