Preliminary Proposal
Preliminary proposal describes the planned tasks as a prototype. The prototype is to provide a single portal of cooperating national and Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs), which makes the public be able to access freely their high quality collections by cooperation. The cooperating libraries are Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana that is an aggregator of national libraries of Europe, National Library of Korea, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The preliminary proposal for IOPDL project will be conducted during 2016-2019.
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.
The planned activities of the IOPDL project shall be directly responsible to President of IOPDL, Boaz Sunyoung Jin, consulted by experts in UIUC, and conducted by the Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers of IOPDL Inc. from January of 2016 at Illinois.
Purposes
The purpose of the planned activities is to provide a single portal of cooperating national and Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs). The IOPDL website, as a single portal of national and Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs), is to make the public be able to access freely their high quality collections by cooperation.
- It is 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.
- to fulfill further the exempt purposes as a not for profit organization, and the charitable, scientific and educational purposes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, or corresponding section of any future federal tax code.
November of 2015 version:
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.
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.
After launching IOPDL official website as a single portal of cooperating national and WDDLs (aiming in 2019), the below 5, 6, and 7 activities will be repeated to keep providing the best services for the public of the USA and all over the world.
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 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, or corresponding section of any future federal tax code.
March of 2015 version:
International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL) project is
- to establish a single international digital library platform connecting rich collections all over the world,
- to maximize efficiency in (re)use, share, and access the world digital infrastructure saving cost significantly,
- to make collections all over the world freely accessible to the public by cooperation with existing Digital Libraries as a non-profit organization, and
- It is to enlarge their educational opportunities at home, school, or elsewhere anytime.
Expected Project Outcomes
During three years period, the project results in:
- establishing IOPDL Corp. employing directors and staff, and IOPDL committees by leaders of WDDLs,
- implementing the financial support model,
- improving interoperability technology to share collections of WDDLs with a hub model and Common Terminology (CT),
- developing a single portal and interface of WDDLs,
- expanding scope and types involving more WDDLs,
- developing a Life-Long Learning Center, and
- engaging all ages users in the USA and the world.
The tasks of improving interoperability technology and developing a single portal will be based on the planned prototype, which develops a single portal and search interface for Harvard, MIT, UIUC Libraries and DPLA online accessible records with cooperation of these libraries.
Outline Proposed Work Plan
Task 1. Establishing IOPDL Organization– Assembling Leaders of Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs).
The objective of Task 1 is to establish a united organization by leaders of WDDLs forming a committee. The task 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 timely on 2010.
The task is to demand for WDDLs to participate in IOPDL sharing their collections and infrastructures, such as NASA’s Visible Earth in geography, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services HHS.gov in medicine, GPO Access in political science and law, National Science Foundation in science subject area, etc, which show the highest scores in evaluations. The task includes hiring 3 directors, 3 staff, and 5 graduate assistants for IOPDL.
Task 2. Conducting Financial Support Model – Support from Governments of the United States and Others.
The objective of Task 2 is to implement a designed financial support model to initiate and develop IOPDL.
Mainly, it will be supported from states and governments of the USA and other cooperating countries. Amount of contribution may be different based on finance status of each state or government, and contribution degrees to WDDLs. Task 1 and Task 2 will be conducted in the first year: October 2015 – September 2016.
Task 3. Establishing Cutting-edge Technology with Common Terminology (CT) to Improve Interoperability.
The Task 3 is to establish leading-edge technology to connect and improve interoperability between WDDLs and IOPDL. It is to develop a hub model to establish an international network between them, and to pull their updated metadata regularly, preserving accurate data.
This task bases on Common Terminology (CT) developed to improve metadata interoperability across standards by Common Terminology project during 2012-2014. 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 searching. The empirical evaluations with 20,000 MIT QDC and 400,000 UIUC MARCXML records prove that CT minimizes considerably loss of information reducing the gaps of different degrees of generality and specificity between MARC and QDC. CT maximizes accuracy in mappings showing high lexical and semantic match rates.
Task 4. Developing a Single Portal and Interface Connecting WDDLs.
The Task 4 is to develop a single portal and interface for IOPDL after designing a union catalog and Linked Data from WDDLs records. IOPDL will be officially launched.
It will base on a planned prototype project conducting in 2015-16 to provide a single portal for 1.5 million Harvard Library, 20k MIT, 400k-1m UIUC, and DPLA online accessible records through cooperation. The prototype will address how metadata will be pulled regularly from WDDLs, and how to build Linked Date with CT from their original records, and how to build a union catalog to maximize performance of searching. Task 3 and Task 4 will be conducted in the second year: October 2016 – September 2017.
Task 5. Expanding Scope and Types Involving More WDDLs and Evaluating More Digital Libraries All Over the World.
The objective of Task 5 is to expand scope and types of collections involving more national digital libraries all over the world in many subject areas by evaluations. It is to develop evaluation tools and methods, and to encourage collaboration of the selected WDDLs, states, and countries. It includes the task to support archiving, maintaining, backup, and preserving unique world digital collections of IOPDL.
Task 6. Developing a Life-Long Learning Center Adapting Existing Methods to Engage Many Users.
The objective of Task 6 is to provide a life-long learning center for users to achieve educational goals anywhere. It is to make libraries’ infrastructure visible, discoverable and usable on the Web via IOPDL preventing many unauthorized resources tempt many youth and children online.
This is the most important task to engage practically many users of the USA and the world. Ultimately, this will be a promising way to be known widely, (re)use, share, and access America and the world digital infrastructure globally saving cost considerably.
Task 7. Evaluating and Developing Constantly Quality Services to Improve IOPDL.
The objective of Task 7 is to provide the best services for the public of the USA and all over the world, keeping the non-profit purposes. Task 5, 6, and 7 will be conducted in the third year: October 2017 – September 2018.