IOPDL Organization

IOPDL Organization

International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL) Inc. is a not for profit and tax-exempt organization to fulfill exclusively charitable, scientific, and educational purposes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, or corresponding section of any future federal tax code.

• Article of Incorporation 
• Bylaws

History

The International Open Public Digital Library (also known as, IOPDL) model was proposed by a graduate student on 2008. International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL) Inc. was initiated on January, 2015 and filed at the office of the Secretary of State on November 12, 2015. IOPDL was proved as a tax-exempt organization, exclusively charitable, scientific, and educational organization, by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on January 11, 2016. The effective date of exemption is on November 12, 2015.

Purposes

The main purpose of IOPDL is to make digital libraries’ collections all over the world freely accessible to the universal public, by providing a single international digital library platform and the multilingual service. It is also to provide a learning center for the public, especially for the disabled, in order to enlarge their educational opportunities at home, school, or elsewhere, anytime.

The specific purposes that are described in the Article of Incorporation are as follows:

• provide a single portal for collections of cooperating libraries for the widest public to access, by improving interoperability between various metadata standards used by the libraries,
• provide a multilingual service for the linguistic diversity of the public to find, explore, access, and work with the multilingual collections, by improving interoperability between languages,
• enlarge educational opportunities for the public, by developing a life-long learning center,
• improve efficiency and effectiveness in share, access, and (re)use of the world digital infrastructure, by saving cost,
• accept donations and contributions of money, property, or digital resources from governments, cooperating libraries, or others, by examining they are exclusively for charitable, scientific, or educational purposes,
• maintain and monitor the use of funds received by the corporation to assure that the funds are used in conformity with the intended purposes, and
• engage in any lawful act or activity under the laws of Illinois State.

Why IOPDL organization is necessary?

IOPDL Organization is necessary to complete the following requirements:

To Fulfill General requirement

• to evaluate national digital libraries all over the world to decide which digital libraries can be Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs) of the world in many subject areas;
• to develop evaluation tools and methods; and
• to encourage and mediate collaboration with WDDLs, states, and countries.

To Fulfill Technological requirement

• to achieve and improve interoperability among the selected Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs);
• to develop technology to conduct the CT union catalog, and Linked Open Data with conversions and pulled metadata of WDDLs; and
• to develop technology to design powerful search and retrieval tools maximizing interoperability.

To Fulfill Financial Requirement

• to develop economic models, and to govern financial supports of states and participating governments, and contributions of individual or organizations;
• to support creating, archiving, maintaining, migrating, backup, and preserving the digital resources of IOPDL; and
• to keep the non-profit purposes, and to provide the best service for the public all over the world.

To Fulfil Unifying Language Requirement

• to address legal rights such as copyrights, publicity, and privacy associated with sharing or providing access, copying, and distribution digital materials (Library of Congress);
• to establish protocols and standards to assemble WDDLs respecting privacy and copyright but providing broad access (LC); and
• to encourage for WDDLs to provide their metadata with a common language, English.

The Planned Activities

Aiming launching IOPDL official website in 2019, the planned tasks will be conducted during 2016-2019 are described in the preliminary proposal.

As a prototype, the planned activities are to launch IOPDL official website, a single portal of cooperating national and Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs): Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana, National Library of Korea, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Purposes and Goals

• It is to make the public be able to access freely their high quality collections by cooperation.
• to develop technology to improve metadata interoperability between diverse standards used in libraries,
• to provide multilingual services improving interoperability between different languages.
• to provide a learning-center to enlarge educational opportunities for the public, especially for the disabled, at home, school, or elsewhere anytime.
• to maintain and upgrade IOPDL services continuously.

Activities

The planned activities shall be directly responsible to President of IOPDL, consulted by experts, and conducted by the Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers of IOPDL Inc. from January of 2016 at Illinois. These activities may be funded by the grant of governments and foundations, and/or contributions of the public. Before we have funds, however, Presidents and staff are/will work full time as volunteers without payments.

After launching IOPDL official website as a single portal of cooperating national and WDDLs through activities 1 – 4, the below 5, 6, and 7 activities will be repeated to expand the scope and provide the best services for the public of the USA and all over the world, and to keep the non-profit charitable, scientific, and educational purposes, as an exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

• Activity 1. Establishing Cutting-edge Technology with Common Terminology (CT)to Improve Metadata Interoperability between diverse metadata standards used in libraries.

The Activity 1 is to establish cutting-edge technology to achieve and improve interoperability between WDDLs and IOPDL. It is to convert diverse metadata standards used in the cooperating libraries into the developed Common Terminology (CT), minimizing loss of information, and maximizing transfer rate, and lexical and semantic match rates. This activity bases on Common Terminology (CT) developed to improve metadata interoperability across standards by Common Terminology project during 2012-2014.

It includes the activity to develop a hub model to establish an international network between WDDLs and IOPDL, and to pull their updated metadata regularly, preserving accurate data.

Common Terminology (CT) is a bridge terminology across multiple standards such as MARC, MODS, DC and QDC, allowing communities to use their own standards but providing uniformity to search. The empirical evaluations with 20,000 MIT QDC and 400,000 UIUC MARCXML records prove that CT minimizes considerably loss of information, reducing significantly the gaps of different degrees of generality and specificity such as MARC and QDC. CT maximizes accuracy in mappings showing high lexical and semantic match rates.

• Activity 2. Improving the Multilingual Service by Leveraging Linked Open Data to Connect Multilingual Contents.

The Activity 2 is to provide the multilingual service for diverse languages used in the metadata of cooperating libraries, and to explore that Linked Open Data (LOD) can lower the language barrier. It is to leverage LOD to connect multilingual collections into existing dataset and authority lists. It will be conducted with multilingual metadata provided by cooperation of Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana, National Library of Korea, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The expected outcome tool/technology will impact significantly: to lower the language barrier for sharing the world collections; to improve interoperability between multilingual collections; to make the linguistic diversity of users find, explore, and work with contents of multiple languages; to increase availableness, discovery, and reuse of all knowledge of cooperating libraries; and to provide and improve a multilingual service for the widest public by a universal digital platform, IOPDL.

• Activity 3. Developing a Single Portal and Interface of WDDLs.

The Activity 3 is to develop a single portal and interface for IOPDL after designing a CT union catalog and Linked Open Data by activity 1 and 2. The prototype will address how metadata will be pulled regularly from WDDLs, how to build Linked Date with CT from their original records, how to build Linked Open Data, how to provide the multilingual service, and how to build a CT union catalog and search engine to maximize performance of searching.

• Activity 4. Launching the official IOPDL website.

 The Activity 3 is to launch the official IOPDL website in order to realize the charitable, scientific and educational purposes. It is to utilize the developed technology through IOPDL activities. It is to provide an international single digital library platform of cooperating libraries, for the public to access multilingual collections all over the world freely for their pleasure, research, and education.

• Activity 5. Expanding Scope and Types Involving More WDDLs and Evaluating More Digital Libraries all over the World for the Inclusion.

The objective of Activity 5 is to expand scope and types of collections involving more national digital libraries all over the world in many subject areas by evaluations. The activity includes developing evaluation tools and methods, and encouraging collaboration of the selected WDDLs, states, and countries.

The activity bases on the selected WDDLs by evaluations of content quality, usability and performance conducted for existing 63 digital libraries in 15 subject areas regionally almost in the USA and in 2010. Through the evaluation, 34 out of 63 digital libraries are determined as Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs) that provide high quality collections in a subject domain, and high usability and performance services. Details can be found on https://www.iopdl.org/evaluating-digital-libraries. 

• Activity 6. Developing a Life-Long Learning Center Adapting Existing Methods to Enlarge Education Opportunity.

The objective of Activity 6 is to provide a life-long learning center for the public, especially the disabled, to achieve educational goals anywhere anytime. It is to make libraries’ infrastructure visible, discoverable and usable on the Web via IOPDL, preventing many unauthorized resources tempt many youth and children on the Web. This is the exclusively charitable and educational activities for the public of the USA and the world. 

• Activity 7. Evaluating, Improving, and Maintaining Services of IOPDL.

The objective of Activity 7 is to evaluate the launched IOPDL and improve IOPDL services in order to provide the best services for the public of the USA and all over the world, and to accomplish the non-profit charitable, scientific, and educational purposes, as an exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.