Semantic Digital Libraries Bringing Libraries to Web 3.0

This full day tutorial will consist of two parts:

1. During the morning session the attendees will learn how Semantic Web and Web 2.0 technologies can be applied to digital library systems; they will also get introduced to existing prototypes of semantic digital libraries.
2. During the afternoon session, which will be the hands-on session, the attendees will learn how to install and use existing prototypes of semantic digital libraries.

We recommend registration for Part I for people who want to get familiar with digital library, Semantic Web and Web 2.0 technologies in general, and to learn how they can be combined together. Additionally registering for Part II will allow you to get familiar with specific applications of semantic digital libraries and gain hands-on experience.

We suggest registration for afternoon (Part II) session only, for people already familiar with the topics presented in the morning session, who want to learn more about specific applications of semantic digital libraries.

SemDL Tutorial - Part I (morning)

• Introduction to Semantic Digital Libraries [1h 15min]
  • Introduction to Semantic Web and Web 2.0
  • Introduction to Digital Libraries and Knowledge Organization Systems
  • Definition of Semantic Digital Library system
  • How Semantic Digital Library is different?
  • Semantic Digital Libraries applied to everyday scenarios (eLearning, eGovernment)
• Coffee break [15min]
• Existing Semantic Digital Libraries solutions (SIMILE, JeromeDL, BRICKS, FEDORA; with short demos) [1h 45min]
• Lunch break

SemDL Tutorial - Part II (afternoon)

• Parallel Hands-on session [part 1] (SIMILE, JeromeDL, BRICKS, FEDORA) [1h 30min]
  • BRICKS: http://semdl.corrib.org/Tutorial/ESWC2007/Bricks
  • JeromeDL: http://www.jeromedl.org/guide/
• Coffee break [15min]
• Parallel Hands-on session [part 2] (SIMILE, JeromeDL, BRICKS, FEDORA) [1h 30min]
• Panel discussion: Future of Semantic Digital Libraries - Conclusions [30min]

• Sebastian Ryszard Kruk, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway
• Bernhard Haslhofer, University of Vienna, Austria
• Philipp NuŸbaumer, ARC - Research Studios, Austria
• Sandy Paytte, Cornell University, USA
• Tomasz Woroniecki, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway

This tutorial was presented at 4th European Semantic Web Conference 2007 in Innsbruck, Austria.

The aim of this tutorial is to educate attendees on the applications of Semantic Web and Social Networking (Web 2.0) technologies in digital library systems. These technologies include metadata management, semantic search and browsing, personalized and community-aware services, and semantically empowered federations of digital libraries. The semantic digital libraries can be used in enterprise scale systems such as knowledge management systems, medical records systems, legal research systems and others will be discussed at some depth. These applications can benefit in manners which directly impact the ROI for the effort of including semantic encoding and metadata into an enterprise digital library based systems and services. After this tutorial, the audience will be able to start using existing semantic digital libraries or apply Semantic Web technologies to digital library systems.

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Sebastian Ryszard Kruk is a lead researcher (Semantic Infrastructure Lab at e-Learning Cluster in DERI Galway) and project manager (Corrib.org) affiliated with DERI, National University of Ireland, Galway and Gdansk University of Technology (GUT). His main areas of interest covers Semantic Web technologies, digital libraries, information retrieval, security and distributed computing.

In 2002, together with prof Henryk Krawczyk he came up with an idea of the semantic digital library which was implemented first at GUT as Elvis-DL. At the moment he continues work on this system under JeromeDL project (since 2004), established as a joint project between DERI and GUT. To improve the quality of JeromeDL system he started MarcOnt Initiative and the FOAFRealm project. Since 2005, both are supported by DERI and GUT under the hood of Corrib.org. He initiated the work on the lightweight implementation of HyperCuP protocol, that was later transformed into an independent project. In 2005, as a part of (that time) FOAFRealm project, he envisioned and delivered first prototype of Social Semantic Collaborative Filtering, a unique bookmarks sharing solution. In 2006 he delivered JOnto component, unified API to access different taxonomies (used in e.g. JeromeDL and FOAFRealm). He initiated work on the Didaskon, which delivers a framework for assembling a curriculum from existing learning objects provided by e-Learning services; the selection of learning objects will be based on the semantically annotated specification of the user's current skills. He also delivered TagsTreeMaps component for efficient filtering tagged information space; and HexBrowser for representing information space using HoneyComb paradigm. In 2007 he prototyped the MultiBeeBrowse component, a solution for collaborative faceted navigation on unstructured metadata; MBB together with other components constitutes the social semantic search and browsing cycle (S3B). Based on the S3B components, together with Adam Gzella, he set up notitio.us - a social semantic information sources discovery and sharing service.

He contributes to Open Source community with a number of other projects, including all aforementioned Corrib.org solutions. As an active member of the semantic web research community, he works together with Stefan Decker, Daniel Schwabe, and Henryk Krawczyk. He published a number of scientific articles in international conferences and journals.

Stefan Decker is a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway, director of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (leading a research institute employing over 100 people) and Cluster Leader of the Semantic Web Cluster within the institute. He obtained in 1995 a masters in Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern (awarded with distinction). From 1995 to 1999 he worked towards a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe (awarded 2002 with distinction). From 1999-2002 he worked as a Postdoc and Research Associate at the Computer Science Department of Stanford University and established one of the first Semantic Web research groups. From July 2002 to July 2005, he worked as a Computer Scientist and Research Assistant Professor at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, USA. Since October 2003 he was involved in setting up a new Research Institute, leading the Semantic Web research group as a Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer responsible for 10 group members within the Institute and the National University of Ireland.
His current research interests include the Semantic Web, metadata, ontologies and semi-structured data, web services, and applications for Digital Libraries, Knowledge Management, Information Integration and Peer-to-Peer technology. He published around 70 papers as books and journal, book, conference, and workshop contributions. CiteSeer ranks him at 1035 in their list of most cited computer scientists (see http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/allcitedn.html). He co-organized around 35 scientific workshops and conferences and has edited several special issues of scientific journals. He was editor-in-chief of Elsevier's Journal of Web Semantics, editorial committee member of the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) (the Semantic Web), the Journal on Internet Research and the Journal on Web Intelligence and Agent Systems (WIAS) and is recognized as one of the most widely cited Semantic Web scientists. His dissertation work was quoted as one of the inspirations for the DARPA DAML program, which span the Semantic Web effort.

Dean Krafft received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1981. He is currently the Director of Information Technology for Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, and he is the Principal Investigator on the NSF-Funded National Science Digital Library Project at Cornell. He led the effort over the past two years to convert the NSDL core infrastructure to a web-services digital object repository architecture based on the Fedora repository middleware. The project's current technical efforts focus on extending open-source collaborative applications to create content and context around the resources of the NSDL, using semantic web technologies to represent the relationships among the underlying objects and to support search and discovery within the library. Krafft has been working on digital libraries since 1992, when he worked on the Dienst and NCSTRL projects. He has been a researcher with NSDL since the program's inception in 2001.

Predrag Knežević received his Ph.D. at Fraunhofer IPSI Institute in Darmstadt, Germany in 2007. He holds diploma in computer software and engineering from the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. Since 2001, as a member of OASYS and i-Info divisions, he was/is a lead software architect in a few EU and national projects like TeachwareOnDemand, MGN, and BRICKS. Before joining Fraunhofer IPSI, he has spent five years working as system and network engineering at broadcasting company B92, Belgrade. His main interests are: peer-to-peer storages, replication protocols, and decentralized systems.

Mariusz Cygan is a research assistant affiliated with Digital Enterprise Research Institute since 2005. He is currently a developer and a lead software architect of the JeromeDL project. His main area of interest concerns introduction of semantic technologies into production environments. His current work focus on delivering JeromeDL as a production system. Mariusz Cygan received his M.Sc in Informatics from Gdansk University of Technology in 2006. He specializes in distributed applications and Internet systems. His publications concern ubiquitous search and browsing, as well as heterogenous networks of digital libraries.

Researchers and computer scientists from (digital) library, semantic web, distributed systems and knowledge management communities; with an introductory or intermediate level of experience in the presented topics.

This full day tutorial will consist of two parts:

• During the morning session the attendees will learn how Semantic Web and Web 2.0 technologies can be applied to digital library systems; they will also get introduced to existing prototypes of semantic digital libraries.
• During the afternoon session, which will be the hands-on session, the attendees will learn how to install and use existing prototypes of semantic digital libraries.

We recommend registration for Part I for people who want to get familiar with digital library, Semantic Web and Web 2.0 technologies in general, and to learn how they can be combined together. Part II will allow participants to get familiar with specific applications of semantic digital libraries and gain hands-on experience.

Morning session

1. Introduction to Semantic Digital Libraries [ 50 min ]:
   1. Welcome
   2. Semantic Web
   3. Semantic Digital Libraries
   4. Digital Libraries and Social Networks
2. Existing Semantic Digital Libraries solutions [ 40 min ]:
   1. SIMILE,
   2. Greenstone,
   3. DELOS,
   4. BRICKS
3. Coffee break [ 30 min ]
4. Existing Semantic Digital Libraries solutions [ 1h 10 min ]:
   1. JeromeDL
   2. FEDORA
5. Comparison,
   1. Evaluation, and
   2. Future of Semantic Digital Libraries [ 20 min ]

Afternoon session

1. Hands-on session (Part I) [JeromeDL Installer ] [ 1h 30 min ]
2. Coffee break [ 30 min ]
3. Hands-on session (Part II) [JeromeDL Installer ] [ 1h 15 min ]
4. Conclusions, Discussion [ 15 min ]

The participants of the tutorial will learn about the main design goals and features of semantic digital libraries. They will get to know semantic web and social networking technologies, which can improve current information management and retrieval, as well as, search and browsing solutions in digital libraries. The participants will learn about 6 different approaches to building semantic digital libraries; they will also get some first practical experience with installing, configuring, and using these libraries. After the tutorial, the participants will be able to select, and use, the most appropriate solution for their needs, whether this will be a complete semantic digital library, or a single component, which can be applied to the existing infrastructure.

The aim of this tutorial is to educate attendees on the applications of Semantic Web and Social Networking (Web 2.0) technologies in digital library systems. These technologies include metadata management, semantic search and browsing, personalized and community-aware services, and semantically empowered federations of digital libraries. The semantic digital libraries can be used in enterprise scale systems such as knowledge management systems, medical records systems, legal research systems and others will be discussed at some depth. After this tutorial, the audience will be able to start using existing semantic digital libraries and apply Semantic Web technologies to digital library systems.

We will start by defining problems in the domain of semantic digital libraries and present solutions that provide building blocks for semantic digital libraries, such as WordNet, DMoz, SKOS, CIDOC-CRM, and OAI-ORE. We will then present the architecture of existing semantic digital libraries, elaborate on resource management, search and browsing features, identity management and communication interfaces. We will discuss in detail the problems and solutions for bibliographic metadata management and interoperability, followed by a presentation of semantic search and browsing solutions, and other personalized and community-aware services.

We will present and discuss results of an evaluation of social and semantic information discovery technologies for digital libraries [http://library.deri.ie/resource/ARfuVUi8 ]. We will compare results achieved using a semantic digital library with a classic, open source library. We will show how semantic digital libraries enhance user experience in information discovery. We will analyze various user satisfaction measures gathered during the evaluation. Finally we will discuss if semantic digital library users are able to retain better the knowledge they have gained while using the system.

We will discuss the future of federations of digital libraries in the context of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 Internet. Finally we will present six initiatives that adhere to the idea of a semantic digital library:
• SIMILE which leverages and extends DSpace [http://www.dspace.org/] by enhancing its support for arbitrary schemata and metadata.
• Corrib.org, which delivers semantic-aware digital library components like JeromeDL, MarcOnt, FOAFRealm, S3B, and HyperCuP.
• BRICKS , the largest cultural heritage project in the EU 6th framework program, which applies semantic web technology for managing metadata in a European wide digital library network.
• FEDORA, a flexible service-oriented architecture for managing and delivering digital content
• Greenstone, a suite of software, which use advance technologies for building and distributing digital library collections.
• DELOS, an European Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries that contributed a number of research solutions applicable to the domain do semantic digital libraries.

The tutorial will be followed by a hands-on session where participants will be able to try out existing prototypes of semantic digital libraries. We will wrap up the whole tutorial by encouraging everyone to take part in the discussion on the future of semantic digital libraries. Complete materials for this tutorial can be found at http://library.deri.ie/resource/8xyj7azg

We would like to invite everyone to the 4th edition of the Tutorial on Semantic Digital Libraries. We will present it during the JCDL 2008 conference on April 16th, 2008.

The aim of this tutorial is to educate attendees on the applications of Semantic Web and Social Networking (Web 2.0) technologies in digital library systems. These technologies include metadata management, semantic search and browsing, personalized and community-aware services, and semantically empowered federations of digital libraries. After this tutorial and the hands-on session, the audience will be able to start using existing semantic digital libraries and apply Semantic Web technologies to digital library systems.

Complete materials for this tutorial can be found at http://library.deri.ie/resource/8xyj7azg