PAVANI, Ana M B
Department of Electrical Engineering ,Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, apavani@fourier.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br, http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br/ANAPAVANI/APAVANI.HTM
Abstract: this paper presents the Maxwell Project - a Digital Reference Center on science and technology. A Digital Reference Center is the integration of a Digital Library and a WEB Based Learning environment. The theoretical concepts are introduced, the architecture and technological aspects are presented and the implementation at the Electrical Engineering Department of PUC-Rio is discussed. Operation results are addressed.
Keywords: libraries, education, multimedia, databases, WEB
Since the Middle Age libraries and universities have been closely related. There are important libraries that are not associated to universities; they are the national libraries or libraries affiliated to religious institutions. Some examples can be mentioned – the Library of Congress in the United States, the Bibliotheque Nationale in France, the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana in the Vatican City and the Biblioteca Nacional in Brazil.
It is a fact that a good institution, devoted to teaching and researching, can not exist if a good library is not one of its assets. All good educational institutions worldwide have good libraries whose collections have not only periodicals and text books but manuscripts, historical items, iconography, etc. Some examples may be cited – the University of California in Berkeley, Stanford University, the Imperial College of Science and Technology, and the University of Padova.
A visit their WEB homepages shows the close relation of these universities to their libraries. For example, Yale University has 21 libraries and their collections range from the Africana and Judaica Collections to the Electronic Text Center; medieval manuscripts are included. The library team is made up of 600 staff members. The Yale University homepage has its menu represented by books on a shelf. The opening page of its library homepage is the beautiful image of figure 1.
This image suggests that entering a library is like traveling all over the world (there is a map on the background) and through the time (there is a medieval scene and a computer keyboard). The traveler is reading a book and the library is the guide. This is clearly stated in the bottom line: A GUIDE FOR YOUR JOURNEY.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the University of Padova, founded in 1222, shows its close ties to libraries on the opening page of its library system – Sistema Bibliotecario di Ateneo. The second paragraph on this page states that the ”library is considered an essential service to the support of teaching and researching and it is, formally, defined as a pedagogical-scientific-cultural laboratory.” This site can be visited at: http://www.cab.unipd.it/pres/pres.htm
The library system of the University of Padova has 75 libraries. Its collections hold 1,350,000 books, annual acquisitions of 30,000 new titles, 27,000 periodicals (11,000 are current).
These two examples illustrate that good and traditional learning institutions are closely related to good libraries. Many other all over the world can be cited.
Figure 1 – Image of the opening page of the Library System of Yale University – http://www.library.yale.edu/htmldocs/welcome.htm
Information technologies in general and computers in particular have increased their role in libraries as well as in schools since the sixties. In both cases, computers started being used to fulfill administrative tasks and in libraries the additional mission of supporting the OPAC’s (Online Public Access Catalogs).
The use of OPAC’s lead the library community to establish standards to exchange catalog information (MARC Format – Machine Readable Catalog Format – ISO2709 - 1973) and to connect systems (ANSI Z39.50 - 1988).
The use of computers in education, for non-administrative purposes, is newer and the education community is in the process of discussing the standards to connect WEB-based course servers (IMS Project – 1998). Currently, there are proposals of metadata, functionality requirements and technology standards.
The creation of microcomputer networks and of the INTERNET made available information and services, which were only used by people who had, access to corporate networks of mainframes. This revolution started in the nineties and is going on at this moment.
Currently, the topics of digital libraries, distance learning and information technology applied to learning are very popular not only in professional groups and IT providers. Many companies are developing projects for continued education as well as many universities are engaged in distance learning programs. When digital libraries are concerned, many projects on museum collections, corporate files, patent offices, etc. are going on.
It is interesting to remark, though, that digital library and IT supported education activities are running on parallel but separate tracks. Either a site holds a digital library or a virtual school.
This works presents the implementation of a digital reference center that is the integration of a digital library with a WEB-based learning environment, recreating the traditional coupling of schools/universities and libraries. It was created under the following assumptions:
All the implemented functions focus on the digital extensions of the traditional functions of libraries and schools, and are in accordance with the practices of these communities.
This section presents the basic architecture of the system regarding users, functions, environments (to hold the functions) and information. This architecture is based on the definition of classes for different entities - users, information, functions and environments.
Users execute functions with the information and these functions are grouped in environments which users access. Figure 2 shows this relationship.
Figure 2 – Relationship users-functions-information
A user can access more than one environment, according to the tasks he/she must perform with the information.
The users of the system are persons with different profiles and different activities. They are:
The objective of the digital library is to allow the users to access the information related to the topics of interest, no matter where they are located and the type of media they are on. The information in the digital library can be classified according to nature and to location. The types of information are:
In a digital library, as well as in a conventional library, there are differentiated functions. The staff of the technical processing department (of the library) has tasks that are very different from the tasks of a user searching for a specific book. The same happens in a school or university. The professor preparing a test performs functions that are different from those of a staff member in the admissions office and, also, different from the ones of a student reading a text of Calculus.
For this reason, the functions in the Digital Reference Center are of different natures so that the specific needs of each class of users are fulfilled. Some functions for each type of user are listed as examples:
Since the functions for each type of user are specific, they are grouped into eight systems each one to be used by a class of users. These systems will be presented later in this work, when the implementation is discussed.
Section 4b mentioned the different types of information that exist in a Digital Reference Center. Since this information is made up of items of different natures, it must be dealt with specific types of technology products. Each type of product is presented in the following subsections along with the types of information it supports.
This type of technology is used to store, search and retrieve alphanumeric structured information. Some examples are tables of countries, languages, institutions, electronic media, etc.; information on the users and on classes, courses, grades, etc.; control of items of the digital library; etc.
This type of technology is used to store, search and retrieve alphanumeric information that has a variable structure or is in free text format. One example of the former is a catalog record, like the ones that yield library cards. One example of the former is a text on Laplace Transforms.
HTML pages are used to serve nonlinear course contents. They are very practical because they require only a browser on the client’s machine. They allow links to be established among the various contents and they also hold still images, animations, tables, etc.; they can be created dynamically from information on the DB. Another interesting characteristic is that they can be searched by text searching products.
HTML pages can be stored in a separate directory, according to the organization of the digital library, the languages it uses, etc.
In many applications it is important to offer the user the possibility of downloading files. One example of the use of this facility is having the text ready for printing and linear reading. In this case, a format that can be viewed with a browser and printed can be used and, after downloading, the user can work locally. Another example is the downloading of programs to be executed, like simulators in different areas.
Like the HTML pages, the files for download are stored according to the organization of the digital library and with the classes of files that it holds.
Nonalphanumeric files are rich source of learning material. Animation, digitized video, digitized sound and images are useful in teaching languages, arts, music, laboratory techniques, geography, etc. These electronic objects require a good planning from their development to their distribution, not forgetting their storage. The organization of the digital library determines the storage procedure.
As mentioned in section 1, international standards exist or are under discussion for both libraries and education assisted by IT. The URL of the sites where these standards can be found are listed in the references.
An important aspect of the digital library and the distance learning areas is the protection of intellectual property. The rights of authors must be protected as in all other means of distributing contents. There are IT products that allow control of transmission and of reproduction, as well as other products to protect storage.
The Maxwell Project is the implementation of a Digital Reference Center at the Department of Electrical Engineering. It began in July 1995 and it is partly in operation and partly under development. Its home is a laboratory called LAMBDA, which was established under a partnership between PUC-Rio and IBM Brasil. Its original purpose was to be a reference center in Electrical Engineering, but it has grown to hold contents in other areas.
Last January, the LAMBDA team started a joint project with MatMidia, a laboratory in the Department of Mathematics that has as one of its missions to develop learning programs in math.
LAMBDA has two teams. The first develops systems and is developing the Maxwell Project; the second is trained in help faculty transform the course materials into electronic course materials.
The Maxwell Project is under development complying with the IMS Project specifications, which are under discussion since April 1998. More information on this topic can be obtained from the author.
The Maxwell Project is designed so that the user needs to have access to a machine with a browser and some plugins, which can be obtained for free from the INTERNET.
The environment, at LAMBDA, used to develop the project is:
The Maxwell Project is the design, the development, the validation and the, eventual, modification of some functions of a Digital Reference Center.
In order to make the user’s life easier, the functions were grouped in sets. Each set is used by a different class of users. Each set of functions is available from a separate port of the Web server. The systems are:
Though the system is divided in eight systems, there are characteristics that are common to all of them.
In order not to risk the operation and the data stored in the system, there are two separate environments – one for development and test, and the other for operation. Each one has its own DB and sets of data, files and programs. Although there is only one instance of the DB for operation and only one for development, since the functions are accessed from different ports of the WEB server, the addresses are slightly different from one to the other. Table 1 shows the systems and their ports.
|
Operation |
Development |
|
|
School and library (1) |
80 |
8100 |
|
Faculty (1) |
8001 |
8101 |
|
System administrators (1) |
8002 |
8102 |
|
Librarians (1) |
8003 |
8103 |
|
Managers (2) |
8004 |
8104 |
|
Researchers (2) |
8005 |
8105 |
|
Academic administrators (1) |
8006 |
8106 |
|
Development managers (1) |
8007 |
8107 |
|
Table 1 – Systems and ports |
(1) – In operation with parts under development |
|
(2) – Under development |
The DB in the development environment is an image of the operation DB except for the tables that are not in operation. The HTML pages, the programs and all the files have duplicates when possible. The transfer from development to operation is accomplished via a program.
The Maxwell Project is compatible with PUC-Rio’s administrative system. For this reason, all information concerning students per course, professors per course, etc. are imported from this system.
In any processing of contents, granularity must be defined for the cataloging or the creation of the metadata. The IMS Project metadata specification has five metadata sets; the base set is the minimum requirement for a system to be IMS compliant. The Maxwell Project uses the base and the module sets. A module is a learning resource with a particular educational value or purpose; the module in this project was chosen to be equivalent to a chapter of a printed book.
Authors create chapters which are cataloged to identify the contents, the author and other identification cataloging information. When a chapter is developed in electronic format to be added to the digital library, an instance of the chapter is generated in a given format (for example - .htm, .pdf, and .swf) and stored in the proper address, after a process of instance cataloging. Users use the instances of the chapters.
In a conventional situation of library & school or university, there exist authors and teachers or professors. In this project authors create chapters whose instances are in the digital library. When a professor or a teacher organizes a course, by selecting the contents, he/she can use the chapters in the digital library, as long as the authors have defined that the contents (they created) are allowed to be shared. This information is stored in the system DB during the process of cataloging.
Once a chapter and its instances are cataloged, the instances are stored in accordance to their formats and each one exists only once; there is no duplication. The link between a course and its contents is logical and performed via DB2. This model was specified to stimulate cooperative developing and sharing of contents, and to easily allow the addition of new contents to a course. Since there is no duplication of instances, there is a better usage of storage space and a simpler procedure of maintenance of contents and instances.
As mentioned in the previous items, the author may authorize his/her contents to be shared by other professors. Under this circumstance, the professor may choose from any shared contents via a set of programs in the Faculty System.
The access of students or general public to contents in the project is determined via information given by the authors and stored in the DB2 database. The authors have to choose among three levels of access – public, any user of the project or students enrolled in courses that use the contents.
Contents are controlled by dates too. The author specifies the dates (a time interval) the contents are available and the teacher specifies the dates (a time interval) the students may access the instances. The second time interval must be contained in the first.
Every user of the project has a ”type”; it specifies the class he/she belongs to. Associated to classes there exist functions that users may perform. The types and functions are controlled via DB2 and they grant access to performing tasks.
As it was previously mentioned, all the applications, tables and messages, as well as the relations among these three sets of entities are controlled via DB2. The access to this control is granted to system administrators and to the project manager. The control is performed by a set of programs in the Development Managers System (port 8007).
Programs process all data that enters or leaves the operation DB. No manual information selection, update, inclusion or deletion is performed. This is a basic procedure of information security and is one of the IMS Project functionality requirements.
Since there are eight systems and many programs are common to more than one, a program may be accessed from more than one system; some programs have specific instructions according to the system they were called from. There is no program duplication though.
In order to establish and maintain information integrity all over the system DB, the DB contains many domain tables to validate cataloging information. These tables are updated via programs as all others.
Hypertexts are used for one of options of the access to course contents. The chapter instances in HTML format have internal links (to different sections of the same chapter), external links to other chapters or to the Toolbox contents, and external links to other repositories.
The Toolbox is a facility for quick reference on materials. For example, tables of transforms, linear algebra relations, etc. The motivation to create the Toolbox was to make the project self-contained with respect to simple basic results and yield access to reference materials in a fast manner.
The Maxwell Project is in use and serving many students and faculty members. In the first semester of 1999 there are 2867 students in classes which use the Maxwell Project to hold course contents, to use the administrative infrastructure or to do both. There are 64 students of the State University of Londrina who use the project to access the math courseware. At the present there are courses from the Departments of Civil Engineering, Economy, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. A course from the Education Department is under development and will use the Maxwell Project for the first time in the second semester of 1999.
At the end of this semester, an evaluation by its many users will be held. The results will be considered in order to improve the functionality.
http://www.cab.unipd.it/pres/pres.htm
http://www.library.yale.edu/htmldocs/welcome.htm
http://www.clir.org/programs/diglib/diglib.html
http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core
http://lcweb.loc.gov/marcdocz.html
Figure 3 shows the opening page of the Maxwell Project at:
http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc-rio.br
The frame on the left has the followin buttons:
Figure 3
This work is partially financed by IBM Brasil and by FAPERJ – Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.