Methods and Tools Supporting the Lifecycle of

Rich Digital Content

Maria Nisheva-Pavlova, Pavel Pavlov

Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University “St.

Kliment Ohridski”

Abstract. The paper presents the main aspects of an ongoing project aimed at the development of a methodology and proper software tools supporting the creation and publishing of rich digital content. The emphasis of the discussion falls on a set of issues concerning the analysis of existing standards and practices for presentation of particular components of rich digital content. The main types of authors and users of academic digital libraries with rich digital content are identified and their roles are defined in detail.

1 IntroductionIn the last decades information technologies and computer networks have changed considerably the ways in which people read, retrieve information and communicate with each other. In particular, there is an increase of the number of users of the so-called e-books (electronic books) and digital libraries that give up to scholars, professors, students, professionals at organizations of various types and all interested citizen, convenient means for access to a great amount of documents, papers, books etc., available in different digital formats.

The increasing interest to electronic books and digital libraries raises several topical problems. One of these problems concerns the necessity of development of software tools assisting the process of creation of rich e-books and digital libraries with rich digital contents. Rich e-books combine multiform content (integrate multiple sources of content including text, images, audio, video, and others), advantage active reading (which presumes underlining, highlighting, making marks, summarizing, etc.) and support potentiality for personalization of the presentation of their content.

Within an appropriate digital library, rich e-books may be used by a diverse reader auditory and their content (and the related navigation, presentation and interactive mechanisms) could adapt to the situation.There is still no available information in the specialized literature about satisfactory complete solutions of the indicated problem. Among the most innovative projects directed to exhaustive study and finding adequate solutions of some of its aspects, one should point the projects Sophie 2.0

(http://sophie2.org/trac/) and SmartBook [1].

Sophie 2.0 is software for writing and reading rich media documents (interactive e-books) in a networked environment. The program emerged from the desire to create an easy-to-use application that would allow users to combine text, images, video, and sound not only quickly and simply but with precision and sophistication. Sophie’s goal is to open up the world of multimedia authoring to a wide range of people, institutions, and publishers. In so doing, Sophie redefines the notion of a "book" or academic paper to include both rich media and mechanisms for reader feedback and real time conversation.

Its users are interested in creating robust, elegant, networked texts without requiring programming knowledge or training in the use of more complex tools such as Flash.The SmartBook project suggests a vision for the future of the e-books as part of the growing collective intelligence. The vision entails further development of technologies that will facilitate the creation and use of a new generation of ‘smart’ books: e-books that are evolving, highly interactive, customisable, adaptable, intelligent, and furnished with a rich set of collaborative authoring and reading support services.

The proposed set of tools will be integrated into an intelligent framework for collaborative book authoring and experiencing.The paper presents in brief a work in progress within a new project supported by the Sofia University SRF. The main objective of this project is to carry out an accomplished study of the discussed problem in breath. The project activities are directed to the wide spectrum of issues concerning the development of a software tool supporting the complete lifecycle of rich digital content.

The experience of most team members in the implementation of Sophie 2.0 project [2] will be used for the purpose. Some results achieved within a research directed to the development of tools for semantics oriented access to the content of multilingual academic digital libraries [3, 4] will be utilized as well.

2 Project Objectives

The project is aimed at the implementation of research directed to development of a methodology and software tools for creation and publication of rich digital content. Some former results of the research team concerning (1) the development of software tools for writing and reading rich media documents in a networked environment and (2) the development of methods and software tools for creation of academic digital libraries, will be integrated and completed.

More precisely, the project has the following objectives:

1. to analyze the components of the so-called rich digital content and the requirements to a modern format which would give the best possibilities for presentation of multiform digital content;

2. to examine the requirements to an innovative system integrating the entire set of necessary instruments for the support of all phases of the lifecycle of heterogeneous academic digital content (creation, management, browsing/reading, reviewing/annotating, distribution);

3. to work out and to experiment an appropriate methodology for application of semantic technologies and tools in management, annotating and searching of rich digital content.

3 Scientific Tasks and Methodology of Research

As a result of the preliminary analysis carried out by the research team, four main tasks were formulated in order to achieve the project objectives:

1. identification of the main types of authors and users of academic digital libraries with rich digital content and precise definition of their specific roles;

2. formulation of requirements to a format for presentation of multiform digital content;

3. elaboration of a model of the complete lifecycle of rich digital content;

4. advancement and extension of the approach to application of semantic technologies in building academic digital libraries, developed by members of the research team.We envisage the application of some well-approved standards and methodologies in the implementation of the project:

1. standards for selection and description of metadata for digital objects;

2. methods for extraction of metadata for digital objects;

3. methods and technologies for development of rich Internet applications;

4. popular web-based software systems for content maintenance and management;

5. popular methodologies for application of Semantic web technologies in building software tools for access to digitized scientific and cultural heritage;

6. the paradigm of the referent model for digital libraries developed within the project DELOS [5];

7. some actual results in the area of personalizing the access to digital library resources with preference-based queries and advanced search engine technologies.

4 Main Project ActivitiesThe main tasks defined within the project presume the accomplishment of research activities in several directions: analysis of the requirements of authors and users of rich digital content; examination of the formats and standards for presentation of rich digital content; study of the lifecycle of rich digital content; studies in the area of academic digital libraries with rich digital content.

Requirements of authors and usersThe studies in this direction are orientated to:

1. identification of the main types of authors of documents in academic digital libraries with rich digital content and definition of their specific roles;

2. identification of the main types of users of academic digital libraries with rich digital content and analysis of their specific requirements.

Formats and standards for presentation of rich digital contentThe following activities are envisaged in this direction:

1. analysis of popular formats for presentation of single components of rich digital content;

2. specification of requirements to a standard for presentation of multiform digital content.

Study of the lifecycle of academic digital contentTwo principal subtasks are defined in this direction:

1. elaboration of a model of the lifecycle of rich digital content;

2. determination of requirements from various points of view to a software tool supporting the complete lifecycle of rich digital content.

Studies in the area of academic digital libraries with rich digital contentWe envisage in this direction:

1. to specify the main types of documents in academic digital libraries with rich digital content;

2. to define a proper set of metadata for the various types of documents in academic digital libraries with rich digital content;

3. to work out a methodology for application of semantic technologies and tools in management, annotation and search of rich digital content.

5 ConclusionThe most significant results expected from the implementation of the project may be summarized as follows:

1. various kinds of requirements to a standard for presentation of multiform digital content will be formulated;

2. a model of the lifecycle of rich digital content will be developed;

3. the most considerable requirements to a software tool supporting the complete lifecycle of rich digital content will be formulated;

4. a methodology for application of semantic technologies and tools in management, annotation and search of rich digital content will be developed.We suppose that these results will give answers to a set of open questions in the field of creation, management, search and retrieval of rich digital content. In this sense they will contribute to the methodology of development of various kinds of software systems providing adequate access to rich digital content.

Acknowledgements. The project “Methods and Tools Supporting the Lifecycle of Rich Digital Content” has been funded by the Sofia University SRF within

Contract No. 168/19.04.2010.

References

[1] Koychev, I., R. Nikolov, D. Dicheva. SmartBook: the New Generation E-book Meets University 2.0. International Conference on Software, Services and Semantic Technologies – S3T’09, Sofia, Bulgaria, October 28-29, 2009.

[2] Georgiev, K., M. Sredkov. Sophie 2.0 – a platform for reading and writing of interactive multimedia books in a networked environment. In: T. Hedlund, Y. Tonta (Eds.), “Publishing in the Networked World: Transforming the Nature of Communication. 14th International Conference on Electronic Publishing 16 - 18 June 2010, Helsinki, Finland”, Edita Prima Ltd, Helsinki, 2010, ISBN: 978-952-232-085-8, pp. 437-443.

[3] Nisheva-Pavlova, M., P. Pavlov. Building a Digital Library with Learning Materials. In: S. Mornati, T. Hedlund (Eds.), “Rethinking Electronic Publishing: Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (Milan, Italy, June 12-14, 2009)”, Edizioni Nuova Cultura – Roma, 2009, ISBN 978-88-6134-326-6, pp. 471-483.

[4] Nisheva-Pavlova, M., P. Pavlov. Search Engine in a Class of Academic Digital Libraries. In: T. Hedlund, Y. Tonta (Eds.), “Publishing in the Networked World: Transforming the Nature of Communication. 14th International Conference on Electronic Publishing 16 - 18 June 2010, Helsinki, Finland”, Edita Prima Ltd, Helsinki, 2010, ISBN: 978-952-232-085-8, pp. 45-56.[5] Candela, L., D. Castelli et al. The DELOS Digital Library Reference Model: Foundations for Digital Libraries. DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries (http://www.delos.info/), 2007.