Digital Library Developments
in Greece
Vangelis Banos
http://vbanos.gr/, @vbanos
Digital Library Developments in Greece
1
About my work
• Current Positions:
– Research Project Manager at the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece,
– Researcher at the National Documentation Centre of Greece,
– IT Manager at the National Quality Infrastructure System of
Greece,
– Associate of the Future Library Greece non profit foundation,
– Associate of the Veria Public Library, Greece.
• Current Projects:
– Openarchives.gr – Greek Digital Libraries Search Engine,
– Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana,
– LoCloud, Bringing Local Content to Europeana (EU Best Practice
Network),
– Oaipmh.com - Digital Libraries Validation Service,
– BlogForever – Web Archiving Project (FP7, EU STREP Project)
– ArchiveReady.com – Website Archivability Evaluation Tool
Digital Library Developments in Greece
2
Table of Contents
1. Digital Libraries in Greece,
2. Openarchives.gr - Search Greek Cultural and
Scientific Digital Content,
3. Digital Library Software as a Service,
4. Digital Library Validation Service,
5. Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana,
6. LoCloud Europeana Best Practice Network,
7. Conclusions
Digital Library Developments in Greece
3
Digital Libraries in Greece
An overview in October 2013
according to the data from the
National Documentation Centre of Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece
4
Digital Libraries in Greece
• 48 Organisations
– Universities / Technological Institutions,
– Cultural Organisations,
– Research Centres,
– Public and Municipal Libraries,
– Educational Bodies,
– Religion and Ecclesiastical Organisations,
– Scientific Societies.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
5
Digital Libraries in Greece
• 65 Collections
– Institutional Repositories of Research
Organisations
– Journals
– Digital Archives and Special Collections
– National Archive of PhD Theses
Digital Library Developments in Greece
6
Digital Libraries in Greece
Greek Collections Development
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Digital Library Developments in Greece
2011
2012
2013
7
Digital Libraries in Greece
• 453.097 Records
–Articles, Conference proceedings, Cultural journals,
Ecclesiastical artifacts,
– Greek sheet music, Grey literature,
– Historical photographs, Historical postcards,
– Historical pictures, Financial reports, Master theses,
– Manuscripts, maps, Museum
– PhD theses, Research papers,
artifacts, Newspapers,
Paintings,
– Presentations, Scientific reports,
– Scientific journals, Talks, Theatrical plays,
– University student reports
Digital Library Developments in Greece
8
The Parthenon Frieze
http://repository.parthenonfrieze.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
9
National Archive of PhD Theses
http://www.didaktorika.gr
Digital Library Developments in Greece
10
Veria Public Library http://medusa.libver.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
11
National Technical University (NTUA) academic
repository http://dspace.lib.ntua.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
12
Leimonos Monastery
http://84.205.233.134/library/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
13
openarchives.gr
Access Greek Scientific and Cultural
Digital Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece
14
Digital Library Developments in Greece
15
openarchives.gr
• Openarchives.gr is the largest online portal
providing a single point of access to quality
Greek scientific and cultural digital content.
• Content comes from organisations in Greece
and Cyprus.
• Started in 2006 as a personal project,
• Development continues since 2011 by the
National Documentation Centre of Greece.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
16
openarchives.gr for users
• User-friendly (desktop, smartphone, tablet
access)
• Single-point-of-access of all Greek digital libraries
• Digitized contents that come from authoritative
sources
• Suitable for research, school and leisure projects
• Search, Browse, Discover, Re-use quality
content.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
17
openarchives.gr for content providers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Showcase their content,
Reach out to gain new audience,
Increase web visitors,
Increase content visibility and discoverability,
Participate in a large innovation network,
Learn new things,
Embrace new technologies,
Voluntary participation,
No cost.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
18
openarchives.gr requirements for
digital libraries
• Digital library contains quality cultural or
scientific content,
• Digital content available to users in digital
library’s website,
• Digital content must have descriptive metadata,
• Metadata should be encoded in Dublin Core,
• Unique permanent identifiers should be
assigned to each object,
• Digital library must support OAI-PMH protocol,
• Europeana Semantic Elements is desirable.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
19
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Digital Libraries
National Documentation Centre of
Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece
20
SaaS Definition
• Provide software as a service on the cloud
– Run software and save data on central servers,
– Provide service over the internet,
– Enables economies of scale, higher quality and
security
• No need to maintain anything,
• Central application of good practices and standards,
• Focus on organisation goals and not running software.
– Example you may know: Gmail.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
21
SaaS Digital Libraries
• Achieving economies of scale in the delivery of digital
libraries, using cloud computing technologies.
• Organisations can create their own digital library for
the storage, management and online dissemination of
their digital content.
• All data are stored in the cloud infrastructure of the
National Documentation Centre (EKT).
• During this process, EKT co-operates with institutions
and organisations and offers a wide range of
supplementary services (such as technical support)
for the deposit, management and delivery of quality
digital content.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
22
SaaS Digital Libraries
Benefits for Institutions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
safe long-term storage of the digital content and data,
risk-proofing against physical and technical disasters,
export data according to international standards,
based on Open Source Software
remote access and full control over the institution’s own userfriendly and easy-to-configure administrator environment,
no need for software installation, upgrades and specialised
technical knowledge,
enhanced online visibility for the institution and its content,
access to e-learning services and remote technical support,
advanced search, browsing and downloading functionalities for
end-users.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
23
http://ebooks.liblivadia.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
24
http://ebooks.serrelib.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
25
Digital Libraries Validation Service
Ensuring high quality
metadata and content
Digital Library Developments in Greece
26
Digital Libraries have issues...
• A lot of different software platforms with
different features and technologies,
• Invalid use of standards,
• Limited performance and availability,
• Limited reusability,
• Problems integrating with national and
international aggregators,
• High maintenance and operation costs,
• Many organisations with quality content but
without technical expertise on digital libraries.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
27
Digital Libraries Validation Service
• Official tool to validate Greek Digital Libraries metadata
and content.
• Validation will be compulsory to receive funding in many
cases.
• Project duration: July 2013 - Dec 2014.
• Lead by: National Documentation Centre of Greece.
• Features:
– Access the level of digital libraries compliance with international
data and system standards,
– Run performance tests,
– Test interoperability with major national and international
aggregators like Europeana,
– Detect issues automatically,
– Report issues and ways to resolve them.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
28
Digital Libraries Validation Service Aims
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Increase the quality of digital libraries in Greece,
Facilitate digital library development,
Enforce data and system standards,
Reduce development costs,
Avoid pitfalls,
Become future proof,
Highlight best practices.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
29
Validation examples:
• Metadata
–
–
–
–
Metadata character encoding must be UTF-8,
OAI-PMH protocol version >= 2.0,
ESE protocol version >= 3.4.1,
Dc:language values must comply with ISO639-2
• (e.g. correct: eng, invalid: English)
– Dc:date values must comply with ISO8601
• (e.g. correct: 2012-01-01, invalid: 2012, January 15th)
• Digital Content
– Minimum image size and colour depth,
– Minimum video quality and bitrate,
– PDF must contain textual information (OCR)
Digital Library Developments in Greece
30
Digital Library Validation Workflow
1. As soon as a digital library is ready, the
organisation submits an evaluation request,
2. The operator of the validation tool performs a
number of evaluations over the web.
1. Download and evaluate metadata values,
2. Download and evaluate the actual contents,
3. The outcomes of the evaluation are compiled
into a report which is sent to the organisation.
4. The report indicates any issues and ways to
work around them.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
31
Digital Library Validation Service Prototype
• http://www.oaipmh.com
• Current features include:
– Check OAI-PMH standards compliance.
– Check compliance with Dublin Core (DC)
– Check compliance with Europeana Semantic Elements
(ESE).
– View, print or download the output of all OAI-PMH
supported commands.
– Detect problems with metadata records (e.g. invalid
URLs, empty titles, invalid date formats etc.)
– Download all records from one or more digital
libraries in parallel.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
32
Digital Library Validation Service Demo
Digital Library Developments in Greece
33
Hellenic Aggregator for
Europeana
Access Greek Scientific and Cultural
Digital Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece
34
Aggregation: a sustainable model of content delivery
Horizontal Aggregators
Vertical Aggregators
National Aggregators
Archives
Culture Grid
Archives Portal Europe
Libraries
MLAs
The European Library
Regional Aggregators
Dark Aggregators
Film archives
ATHENA
Flanders museums
ELocal
European Film Gateway
Museums
Mn;kl;k;klj;lkj;lkj;jh;lkj;klj;klj;k
MLAs
lj;klj
Hellenic Digital Libraries
and
The
Hellenic
Aggregator
for Europeana
MLAs
Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana
• A central communication point between Greek digital
libraries and Europeana.
• 14 digital libraries, ~150.000 records.
• http://aggregator.libver.gr/
• The responsibilities of the Hellenic aggregator are:
1. To guide digital libraries and give information about
technical standards they should follow
2. Collect metadata from digital libraries
3. Validate metadata, suggest solutions to possible problems
4. Encode digital library metadata according to Europeana
Standards
5. Communicate with Europeana and transmit metadata
Digital Library Developments in Greece
36
Metadata
• Descriptive : describes object for discovery and identification
e.g <title>, <publisher>, <author> etc.
• Structural : describes structure of compound objects,
e.g. how pages are ordered to form chapters.
• Administrative : information to help manage a resource,
e.g. how it was created, file type, who can access it …
• Preservation : information needed to archive and preserve
an object
e.g. <Provenance> , <Authenticity>
• “Relational” : which other objects is the object related?
Digital Library Developments in Greece
Aggregation of federated metadata
OAI-server - in library
Standardised
library
Library
metadata
Collection1
(in XML
format)
OAI-server – in museum
Standardised
museum
Museum
metadata
Museum
(in XML
Collection2
Collection1
format)
OAI-PMH
OAI-PMH
OAI-PMH
Central
Repository
OAI-harvester (client)
Digital Library Developments in Greece
Aggregated, centralised,
standardised, multilingual,
multicultural, interoperable,
cross-domain CH-metadata 38
as
basis for Digital Library
Metadata Gathering Process
1.
As a first step, a new digital library has to be validated by
Europeana
Using the Hellenic Aggregator tools, the optimal metadata
aggregation strategy is selected.
The Hellenic Aggregator is working automatically and updates its
data on a monthly basis.
2.
3.


4.
Communicates with associated digital libraries and retrieves their
metadata.
Detects new records, validates them and saves them to its database.
Europeana contacts with the Hellenic Aggregator in regular
intervals:


It checks for new material, and if there is any, it is retrieved by
Europeana
It informs the Hellenic Aggregator for new protocols and updates (e.g.
new version of ESE, new metadata records)
Digital Library Developments in Greece
39
Digital Library Developments in Greece
40
<dc:title>
<dc:date>
<dc:subject>
<dc:creator>
<europeana:object>
Digital Library Developments in Greece
41
Extract data from HTML to ESE

From HTML unstructured data

To ESE format!
Digital Library Developments in Greece
42
Digital Library Developments in Greece
43
LoCloud
Enrich Europeana with Local Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece
44
About LoCloud
• LoCloud is a Best Practice Network co-funded under the CIP
ICT-PSP programme of the European Commission which will
enrich the Europeana content by adding over 4 million
digitised items from European cultural institutions.
• 32 Partners from all around Europe.
• LoCloud will support small and medium-sized institutions in
making their content and metadata available to Europeana,
by exploring the potential of cloud computing Technologies.
• A cloud-based technology infrastructure will enable the
aggregation of local content and a number of microservices will help to reduce technical, semantic and skills
barriers and to render the content more discoverable and
interoperable.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
45
LoCloud is supporting small and
medium institutions:
• Making their content and metadata available to Europeana,
by using the cloud to provide services and tools which help to
reduce technical, semantic and skills barriers.
• Making available cloud-based software services which
enable them to render their content more discoverable and
interoperable;
• Enabling smaller institution types such as house museums,
which currently fall outside most aggregation infrastructures, to
contribute their content to Europeana.
• Exploring and trial a cloud based architecture as a scalable
platform for Europeana metadata aggregation and harvesting
with higher efficiency and reduced maintenance costs.
• Provide guidance, training and support facilities to serve the
needs of content providers.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
46
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
LoCloud Activities
Identify standard metadata export formats which are commonly
used by small and medium cultural institutions.
Develop and implement metadata transformation and aggregation
tools in the cloud (MINT and MoRe)
Develop and test a number of key cloud-based micro-services (SaaS)
useful to enrich metadata and improve quality for the benefit of
Europeana users.
– Geolocation, Vocabularies, Historic place names, authority files.
Provide training, support and guidance relevant to the needs of
small and medium sized cultural institutions and aggregators.
Evaluate and assess the impact of this work, including the benefits
of cloud services.
Carry out an intensive dissemination programme targeting smaller
institutions and their aggregators right across Europe.
Plan the sustainability and transferability of the above approach in
the framework of the Europeana
Consortium.
Digital Library Developments
in Greece
47
Conclusions
• Greek Digital Libraries are doing very well.
– Openarchives.gr, Digital Library SaaS, Digital
Library Validator,
– Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana, LoCloud
• Future goals
– Enable small institutions go online,
– Automate and speed up digital library creation,
– Improve quality of metadata and content,
– Promote content to all audiences,
– Promote content to Europeana.
Digital Library Developments in Greece
48
Thank you!
• Discussion
• More information:
– http://vbanos.gr/, Twitter: @vbanos
– http://openarchives.gr/
– http://oaipmh.com/
– http://www.epset.gr/
– http://www.ekt.gr/
– http://locloud.eu/
– http://www.futurelibrary.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece
49