ICADS Topic: Digital Resource Discovery

Theme: Accessing digital collections
This page provides links to information about initiatives and innovative projects relating to Digital Resource Discovery at the national libraries contributing to ICADS (IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Digital Strategies). For more general information on the topic follow the PADI Topic links below.
What's in scope?
- Delivery of generic digital discovery solutions
- Delivering effective integration with traditional library discovery services
- Metadata standards and automatic generation of metadata for discovery services
- Development of ‘next generation’ discovery for specialist digital formats (e.g. images, maps, sound)
- Cutting edge search interfaces, navigation technologies, etc.
For additional resourcessee PADI Topics: Digital Libraries and Metadata
ICADS libraries contributing to the topic:
British Library |
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek |
Library of Congress |
National Library of Australia |
National Library of China |
National Library of New Zealand
- Images Online
- Images Online gives instant access to thousands of the greatest images from the British Library's collections which include manuscripts, rare books, musical texts and maps spanning almost 3000 years. The range of images available include illustrations, drawings, paintings and photographs.
- Contact: Caroline Brazier
- http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/
- (Contributor: British Library;
Added: 25 Feb 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Online Gallery
- An online showcase of 30,000 items from the British Library's collections, including virtual books using the Turning the Pages system.
- Contact: Caroline Brazier
- http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/index.html
- (Contributor: British Library;
Added: 25 Feb 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Treasures in Full
- High-quality digital editions showcasing how the British Library is providing online access to rare historic works such as the Magan Carta and the Gutenberg Bible.
- Contact: Caroline Brazier
- http://www.bl.uk/treasures/treasuresinfull.html
- (Contributor: British Library;
Added: 25 Feb 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
- A searchable database of some of the western illuminated manuscripts in the British Library. The Catalogue includes descriptions and images of western manuscripts with pictorial and decorative embellishments, from fully painted miniatures to decorated initials.
- Contact: Caroline Brazier
- http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm
- (Contributor: British Library;
Added: 25 Feb 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- 19th Century British Newspapers
- Over two million pages of newspaper from 49 national and regional UK titles have been made available in partnership with JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and Gale
- Contact: Ed King
- http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/
- (Contributor: British Library;
Added: 22 Jun 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
|
- ALEXANDRIA
- The aim of ALEXANDRIA is to provide a user-oriented, Internet-based knowledge platform which helps users to publish, process, annotate and search for content in large multimedia data collections. ALEXANDRIA will provide tools and other aids to facilitate simple and intuitive use. The aim is to link semantic technologies with social search services and to combine technical automatic systems and intellectual content. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (BMWi) and collaborates closely with the CONTENTUS project.
The project partners are: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, neofonie (Lead) and Siemens (Corporate Technology & IT Solutions & Services)
- Contact: Aenne Löhden
- http://www.d-nb.de/eng/wir/projekte/alexandria.htm
- (Contributor: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek;
Added: 5 May 2010;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Competence Center for Interoperable Metadata (KIM)
- The aim of the project is to set up a competence center for interoperable metadata intended to help improve knowledge about and skills in interoperable metadata, metadata exchange and formats within the German-speaking countries.
The structured descriptions (metadata) of various data collections are described as "interoperable" if their content can be searched using uniform search procedures, or if they can gainfully be integrated in the data management system. Interoperability is achieved by adhering to given technical specifications in controlled institutional contexts.
A key task of the "Competence Centre for Interoperable Metadata", the DCMI affiliate in Germany (after the end of the project there will also be partners in Austria and Switzerland), is setting up a core working group plus additional specific working groups to reach a commonly agreed understanding of what constitutes good practice in the use both of the Dublin Core model and also the semantic web model by examining existing usage profiles. This understanding will then form the basis for developing certification procedures, training courses and consulting services in the field of interoperable metadata.
Project partners are the Göttingen State and University Library and the German National Library.
- Contact: Reinhard Altenhöner
- http://www.d-nb.de/eng/wir/projekte/kim.htm
- (Contributor: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek;
Added: 5 Mar 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- CONTENTUS
- Millions of books, images, sound recordings and films are stored in Germany's 30,000-odd libraries, museums and archives - a vast treasure trove of knowledge. The partners involved in CONTENTUS are exploring ways to make this cultural heritage accessible to as many people as possible and how to preserve it for use by subsequent generations.
One of the main tasks for the knowledge society is to grant users easy access to knowledge and cultural products stored in a variety of different media. As part of the project headed by the German National Library, ideas and technologies are being developed for an infrastructure which will help cultural facilities and information providers to achieve this objective. These new technologies permit the automatic processing and semantic interlinking of large quantities of data - in the form of texts, images or video and sound recordings. Here, comprehensive description of the content in the form of metadata is important - comparable with key data or indices - as a means of facilitating rapid location. For this, researchers are developing intelligent algorithms which automate all the necessary processes and which allow users to add their own information to digital content. The result: a new generation of interlinked virtual mediatheques.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (BMWi) and collaborates closely with the ALEXANDRIA project.
The project partners are: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Fraunhofer Institut für Intelligente Analyse- und Informationssysteme (IAIS), Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Deutsche Thomson OHG, Institut für Rundfunktechnik, moresophy GmbH, mufin GmbH
- Contact: Andreas Heß
- http://www.d-nb.de/eng/wir/projekte/contentus.htm
- (Contributor: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek;
Added: 5 May 2010;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
- SRU-OASIS Initiative
- The Library is leading an OASIS Technical Committee that is developing search and retrieval web services with the goal of integrating various approaches under a unifying model, an Abstract Protocol Definition. SRU/CQL and OpenSearch are the two approaches featured by the current work, and we hope that additional protocols will be similarly integrated into this model.
The model provides for the development of bindings, both static (human-readable profile documents) and dynamic (machine-readable description file that a server provides for retrieval by a client that may then dynamically configure itself to access that server). The premise of the dynamic binding concept is that any server – even one that pre-dated the concept – need only provide a self-description in order to be accessible. A client will be able to access the server simply by reading and interpreting the description and, based on that description, formulating a request (including a query) and interpreting the response. Behind this concept is a standard description language, and that will also be part of the OASIS work.
Article: D-Lib Magazine January/February 2009 Partner: OASIS Search Web Services Technical Committee
- Contact: Ray Denenberg
- http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/oasis.html
- (Contributor: Library of Congress;
Added: 2 Jun 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Metadata Object Description Standard (MODS) Development Project
- The goal of the MODS project is to provide the community with a metadata format that is especially suitable for describing and providing access to digital material. It is being developed by the Library of Congress with an Editorial Committee of implementers. As an XML schema it can carry selected data from existing MARC 21 records as well as serve as the format for original resource description records.
Partner: MODS Editorial Committee
- Contact: Rebecca Guenther
- http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/
- (Contributor: Library of Congress;
Added: 2 Jun 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- ID.LOC.GOV Vocabulary Web Service
- A vocabulary web service project, Authorities and Vocabularies, at the Library of Congress has the primary goal to enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress. As a by-product it also has a web interface that provides simple user access. The initial vocabulary offering, opened in May 2009, is a version of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). This service is a step toward exposing and interconnecting vocabulary and thesaurus data via URIs, thus for LCSH, links have been made to terms in a similar service provided in Europe for RAMEAU, a French subject heading vocabulary closely coordinated with LCSH. Over the next year it will be expanding to other vocabularies commonly found in standards that the Library of Congress supports such as the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, geographic area, language, and relator codes, and preservation events and roles. The Library is very interested in feedback on the uses and usefulness of the service. (There is a comment form at the site.)
UPDATE (2011): LC is pleased to make available new vocabularies from its Authorities and Vocabularies web service (ID.LOC.GOV), which provides access to Library of Congress authority and vocabulary data as Linked Data. The new additions include:
Thesaurus of Graphic Materials,
MARC Code List for Relators,
Cryptographic Hash Functions,
Preservation Events,
Preservation Level Role,
MARC List for Countries,
MARC List for Geographic Areas,
MARC List for Languages.
Additional vocabularies will be added in the future, including additional PREMIS controlled vocabularies.
The vocabulary data are published in RDF using the SKOS/RDF Vocabulary. Individual concepts are accessible via the ID.LOC.GOV web service via a web browser interface or programmatically via content-negotiation. The vocabulary data are also available for bulk download.
As always, your feedback is important.
- Contact: Clay Redding
- http://id.loc.gov
- (Contributor: Library of Congress;
Added: 2 Jun 2009;
Updated: 22 Jan 2011)
- Library of Congress Web Archives (LCWA)
- The Library of Congress is forming topical collections of archived web sites, selected by curators and subject specialists, and evaluating various aspects: workflow strategies, efficient metadata creation for end-user access, metadata packaging, and search systems. Each site in a collection is given simple descriptive cataloging using MODS (Metadata Object Description Standard), which is currently used by a Lucene-based access system to provide searching across the collections or in individual or selected collections. The MODS data is partially derived from the archived site and partially supplied by program. Catalogers review the descriptions and supply information for basic search points. Ongoing work will include experimentation with METS wrappers for the MODS descriptions, image thumbnails, tag clouds, and PREMIS preservation metadata. The deriving, describing, searching, and packaging aspects of the project are all part of continuing research into effective archiving of web material. It is also part of a continuing effort by the Library to preserve web materials for future generations of researchers, and also to use metadata to enable consistent searching across sites that may be in various languages and scripts. The project has given a special emphasis to United States elections and the sites of persons in the United States Congress. Technical information is available from the project web site.
- Contact: Tracy Meehleib
- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/lcwa/html/lcwa-home.html
- (Contributor: Library of Congress;
Added: 2 Jun 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- XML Datastore Project
- The Library of Congress's Network Development & MARC Standards Office has been performing pilot testing of the efficacy of a native XML datastore for enabling search across all of the types of metadata for LC collections, including MARC, non-MARC, EAD, and MODS. MODS and METS are the XML standards central to this project.
- Contact: Morgan Cundiff; Nate Trail; Clay Redding
- (Contributor: Library of Congress;
Added: 2 Jun 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
National Library of Australia
|
- Trove
- The Trove discovery service is the result of the Single Business Discovery Service Project which aims to integrate the National Library of Australia’s national resource discovery services. Its purpose is to improve the discovery process for users and to reduce the number of separately maintained and branded discovery services offered by the Library. The new service is based on a virtual 'national metadata store' which is dissected into a number of 'Collection views' that recognise the unique requirements of different types of information resource, and provide result sets tailored to the needs of users.
Article:
Cathro, W. (2008) Single Business Discovery Project. Libraries Australia Advisory Committee paper LAAC/2008/2/7. http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/nlasp/article/view/933
- Contact: Warwick Cathro
- http://trove.nla.gov.au/
- (Contributor: National Library of Australia;
Added: 18 Dec 2008;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
National Library of China
|
- Oracle Bone Resources
- Oracle bone inscription is one of the four literature discoveries in the 20th century, which is valuable material for doing research on the later Shang Dynasty. The NLC has collected 35,651 pieces of oracle bones, covering a quarter of the total number. In the best period of naturally preserving oracle bones, we use advanced image database to sort the oracle bones, so that the scholars can do research through the images of oracle bones and rubbings with high definition provided by Internet. In 2006, database of oracle bones includes 2,964 pieces of metadata of oracle bones and 5,932 pieces of images; and includes 2,975 pieces of metadata of rubbings and 3,177 pieces of images.
- Contact: webmaster@nlc.gov.cn
- http://res4.nlc.gov.cn/index_jg_sw.jsp?channelid=75013
- (Contributor: National Library of China;
Added: 31 Dec 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Digital Chronicles
- Chronicles are specially owned by China, and they are one of the special collections of the National Library of China. The number and quality of the existing documents are very high. Using digital library to sort, process and compile the chronicles before Qing Dynasty (including Qing Dynasty) is useful for the preservation, dissemination, research and exploration of Chinese special culture, which promotes the construction of digital resources.
- Contact: webmaster@nlc.gov.cn
- http://res4.nlc.gov.cn/index_dfz.jsp
- (Contributor: National Library of China;
Added: 31 Dec 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- Rubbings
- Rubbing is one of the most important carriers to record Chinese document. The National Library of China has more than 230,000 rubbings including tortoise shells, bronze, stones and so on. The rubbings include a lot of useful materials for the researchers on history, geography, politics, economics, military science, folklore, literature, art, science and technology, architecture, and etc.
- Contact: webmaster@nlc.gov.cn
- http://res4.nlc.gov.cn/index_jstp.jsp?channelid=75013
- (Contributor: National Library of China;
Added: 31 Dec 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- New Year Pictures
- Traditional New Year Pictures are very popular in China, which are loved by Chinese. The subjects are mainly good luck, happiness and folklore, which reflect the good wishes and colorful life of people. Through many years¡¯ hard work, NLC has collected more than 4000 New Year Pictures, which are rich in different subjects. In order to make readers use and appreciate the special collections in NLC, NLC will provide a lot of video resources of the New Year Pictures, and give an introduction to the drawing including the gist, background and some related knowledge.
- Contact: webmaster@nlc.gov.cn
- http://res4.nlc.gov.cn/index_nh.jsp?channelid=75013
- (Contributor: National Library of China;
Added: 4 Jan 2010;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
National Library of New Zealand
|
- Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa (APNK)
- The Aotearoa People’s Network Kaharoa provides free access to broadband internet services in public libraries so that all New Zealanders can benefit from accessing, experiencing and creating digital content.
APNK opens up the digital world by giving access to computers, the internet and training. Scanners, audio recorders and Kete (digital repositories) allow communities to gather, digitise and store their histories and memories and to share them with others.
APNK was initially funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the New Zealand government’s Digital Strategy and by other government funding through the National Library of New Zealand.
- Contact: peoples.network@natlib.govt.nz
- http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/home
- (Contributor: National Library of New Zealand;
Added: 20 Oct 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
- DigitalNZ
- DigitalNZ is a collaborative initiative led by the National Library of New Zealand, working with a wide range of contributing institutions and organisations.
DigitalNZ aims to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use. This includes content from government departments, publicly funded organisations, the private sector, and community groups.
DigitalNZ tests and develops approaches that increase the amount of New Zealand content flowing through the Digital Content Life Cycle. We need to create and digitise more New Zealand content so we can stay digitally connected to our own stories, creations, knowledge and culture.
- Contact: info@digitalnz.org
- http://www.digitalnz.org.nz/
- (Contributor: National Library of New Zealand;
Added: 20 Oct 2009;
Updated: 10 Jun 2010)
Top
Related Topics: ICADS Topic: Digital Archiving | ICADS Topic: Digital Ingest & Storage
| ICADS Topic: Digital Preservation
| ICADS Topic: Digital Rights Management
| ICADS Topic: Digitisation
| ICADS Topic: Web Archiving
Broader Topic:
ICADS (IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Digital Strategies)
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, Canberra, ACT 2600, AUSTRALIA
Telephone + 61 2 6262 1111; Facsimile +61 2 6257 1703; Telephone Typewriter
Number: 1800 026 372
|