BRICKS A Distributed Service Infrastructure for cultural digital library services

1. BRICKS A Distributed Service Infrastructure for culturaldigital library services Massimo Bertoncini, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica http://www.brickscommunity.org Workshop on Emerging Technologies for Digital Libraries Wisla, Poland, 9 november 2006

2. Outline • What is BRICKS? • The BRICKS Concept • What does BRICKS allow? • Results • BRICKS today • Integration • Services • Applications • Next steps

3. What is BRICKS?

4. Project Identity Card • Project Acronym:BRICKS - Building Resources for Integrated Cultural Knowledge Services • Project type:Integrated Project in FP6 • Thematic area:Digital Libraries Services • Consortium:22 organisations from 9 countries • Duration: 42 months (January 2004 – June 2007) • Funding: 7,2 Mega Euro

5. The BRICKS Concept • Connecting cultural digital content through a distributed service infrastructure • Setting up the organisational and technological foundations for a distributeddigital library, supporting the emerging concept of a shared European Digital Memory. • A digital library in this context refers to a networked system ofservices, targeted to libraries, archives, museums, allowing any kind of user to access and exploit globally distributed collections of multimediadigital content

6. What does BRICKS allow? • Integrating digital content from European Cultural Heritage Institutions: • A portal, but peer-to-peer rather than centralized • Providing basic and advanced Cultural Heritage Services • Low level services for management of users, content, metadata • High level applications

7. BRICKS main issues • BRICKS handles any kind of digital content and metadata • BRICKS is designed for all kind of cultural institutions (museums, libraries, archives, audio-visual collections) • BRICKS supports standard protocols (OAI-PMH, Web-Services) • BRICKS is distributed, peer-to-peer, and seamlessly integrates distributed content repositories • BRICKS provides interoperable Digital Rights Management • BRICKS is multilingual • BRICKS software is Free Software

8. Results: BRICKSDistributed Service Infrastructure • Service oriented • Standardized interface descriptions based on Web Services • Flexible composition of services • Decentralized P2P • P2P Service discovery • P2P Indexing (DHT) • Avoid central coordination • Open Source • LGPL Licence • Lower barrier for usage • Software for running Bnodes • More than 300.000 code lines • About 1.000 classes • Multilingual

9. Results: Distributed Service Infrastructure • Distributed Service Infrastructure, consisting of: • BRICKS Cultural Service Library • BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network (BNet)

10. Results: BRICKS Cultural Service Library • An open source library of components that offer a wide range of functions within a modular service-oriented architecture based on Web Services • Benefits • Low development costs for cultural applications • Access to a large pool of digital cultural content • Sustainable evolution as an open source project

11. Results: BRICKSCultural Heritage Network (Bnet) • The collection of BRICKS Nodes (BNodes) hosted by European cultural heritage institutions and integrated through a peer-to-peer network. • Benefits • Critical mass • Low costs for installations and maintenance • Easy integration olf existing digital content • High visibility

12. The BRICKS Service Oriented Architecture • The BRICKS SOA is based on Web Services • HTTP transport (firewall friendly) • XML-based protocol (SOAP) • Platform independence • Service description over WSDL (Web Services Definiton Language) • BRICKS Implementation • AXIS: Apache open source SOAP implementation • Servlet Container: Apache Tomcat • Java 1.4.2 + Installation Package

13. Decentralized Architecture • Advantages • Scalability • Storage and processor capacity distributed • Control • Individual Nodes have full control over their content • Sustainability • No centrslized support required beyond the end of the project • Disadvantages • Performance • Trade-offs: distributed systems vs “Google-like” systems

14. BNode A look into a BNode {

15. BRICKS today

16. BRICKS Integration • The BRICKS approach is not to replace but to integrate with existing systems • Rely on already accepted protocols in the Digital Libraries domain to tap existing metadata and content databases • OAI Harvesting • RDF-RDBMS mapping • Content may be imported by reference or copied

17. BRICKSIntegration • Import of existing metadata via the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) • Easy to understand • Easy to use and minimal implementation effort for cultural institutions • Gives a minimum level of interoperability (Simple Dublin Core)

18. BRICKS Services • Content Management • Metadata Management • Collection Management • Search for Information • Annotation Management • Security and DRM

19. Content Management • Two ways to handle Content in BRICKS • stored locally at site of a member party, accessed via URL • stored within BRICKS • Implemetation based on Java Content Repository (JCR/Jackrabbit) • Provide a meta-content model • Re-use of existing content models • Use standard models • Built-in support to CIDOC-CRM

20. Metadata Management • Handles descriptive Metadata • Follows the OAI methodology for the management of metadata records • Support of different metadata schemas defined in OWL-DL • Bibliographic records in RDF; query on records in SPARQL • Implementation based on Jena Semantic Web Framework • Two-layer Data Model • RDF Graph layer • RDF / RDFS / OWL • Inference via Jena or external Inference Engines • Query via Jena (RDQL) • Presentation layer • Document-centred view • Hides RDF graph and dependency on Jena

21. Collection Management • Organize content items in hierarchical structures (or folders) • Two types of Collections: • Physical Collections • Organise resources on one BNode • Each content item in exactly one Physical Collection • Created by Content Provider • Logical Collections • Can include content from multiple BNodes • Contain references to content • A content item (reference) can be in many Logical Collections • Help users structuring content they are interested in • Created by end users

22. Search for information • Discover DL resources • regardless of their location, format, language, etc. • By Content (words, pixels, voxels) • By Meaning, as represented using Ontologies, Thesauri, Classification Schemes, Vocabularies • By Profile attributes (creator, title, type, …) • By Structure • Extensibility: in content types, semantic description schemes, languages, user types • Design: 2-layer approach • Global layer, fixed: Query Mediator (and its helpers) • Local layer, variable: Specialized Query Evaluators • Query types: • Simple search: full text search on metadata records • Advanced search: DB-like on metadata attributes • Ontology search: KR-like on ontologies • Combinations of the above

23. Annotation Management • Collaborative aspects of BRICKS • Annotate images or image parts with text or links to other items • BRICKS Annotations • Provide background information • Support collaborative teams of scholars • Enable contextual search and browsing

24. Pillars Exisiting infrastructure External DRM Repository External Payment Gateway WS-Security BNode Security Services Mpeg21 HTTPs Organization Accounting Dept Web Services EbXML External User Directory Accounting Manager DRM Manager User Manager LDAP Security Manager WS-Security + BNode Trust Trust Manager Other BNODEs Security

25. IPR Management • Open “Interoperable” DRM • Open Source • Open to standards (M-PEG 21, ORDL) • Open to concerned vendors • BRICKS Approach • MPEG-21 REL is adopted as the Right Expression Language for BRICKS • Advantages: • MPEG-21 is an ISO Standard (good for interoperability) • Expressiveness: a very rich vocabulary allows to express many usage types and conditions, supporting all mentioned scenarios. • Openess, basis for many interoperability initiatives (i.e. OMA, DMP, ...) • Support of PKI for identifying Principals • XML-based

26. Applications • Foundation • Workspace • Desktop • Pillars • On-line exhibition • EMYA Award Management • Archaeological Digital Library • Finds Identifier

27. BRICKS Applications: Workspace • a web application (thin client) accessing BRICKS Cultural Service Library • Enables direct access to the Cultural Heritage Network (Bnet) • Primary users are end-users (citizens)

28. BRICKS Applications: Desktop • a rich client application accessing BRICKS Foundation services • Enables direct access to the BNet • primary users are experts (administrators, researchers, educators, application developers)

29. BRICKS Applications: European Museum of the Year Award • integration of web sites with the BRICKS Cultural Service Library • Exploiting the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network as a gateway to the BRICKS Community • Primary users are • museum managers • Curators • Professional

30. BRICKS Applications: European Museum of the Year Award

31. BRICKS Applications: Online Exhibitions Tool • Allows one to build easily a web site for online exhibitions, re-using existing content and metadata • Primary users are cultural institution managers, curators, museum visitors

32. BRICKS Applications: Online Exhibitions Tool • Web-based application Built on BRICKS Workspace • “Guideline” for the access to BRICKS functionality • Reuse existing functionality • Multilingual support • Flexibility • Built on BRICKS Cultural Services Library • Reuses existing functionality • Provides the ability to create common online exhibition among different institutions

33. BRICKS Applications: Archaeological Digital Library • Access to digital archaeological resources provided via OAI-PMH • Provide Metadata and contents (iconographic, bibliographic, unedited sources, geographical content via WebGIS) • Possibility to enrich archaelogical contents using annotations • Primary users are • museum managers • Curators • Professional

34. BRICKS Applications: Archaeological Finds Identifier • Helps general users to classify an object they found by comparing it to a reference collection • To narrow down the search the user is presented with a set of questions easy to answer (material, weight, size,…) • The user can select: • Guided search • Detail view (full metadata and image display) • Map view (display the place of discovery of the object)

35. BRICKS Applications: Archaeological Finds Identifier –Building the Reference Collection • Data from different institutions imported in BRICKS for building the reference collection • Schema of institutions mapped to CIDOCCRM to have a common standard • Steps • Mapping tool assisting curators in producing an XSLT sheet transforming the XML dump to CIDOC CRM (mapping) • XML dump transformed with the XSLT sheet and imported into BRICKS (importing) • The curator defines the questions ashed to the user and how possible answers map to the element-property chains in CRM (configuring)

36. BRICKS : on the move towards i2010 • BRICKS is addressing the i2010 goal of Access: • Accessibility, Interoperability, Multilinguism, Reuse, Rich Multimedia Digital Content available to EU Citizens • BRICKS technology for digital library users and content • Concrete cooperation initiatives • TEL(The European Library) has become active member of the BRICKS Community • A joint technical task-force is going to be established for identifying a common approach • Preliminary studies for interoperability are very promising: a TEL-BRICKS Node will be the nexus for a full integration • A round table is going to be arranged soon between BRICKS, TEL, MICHAEL and DELOS • Joint workshop on the semantic interoperability todat between EPOCH, BRICKS and DELOS

37. What about the future? • Large effort and EU money invested in delivering state-of-the-art technology solutions for cultural digital libraries • Now at the crossroads for turning BRICKS technologies into real user effective tools • Concrete benefits for the EU citizens will be gained only if these technologies will be widely adopted • BRICKS and The European Library complement one each other in addressing the European Digital Library objectives • Cooperation and synergies between existing digital library networks and projects are strongly welcomed as the ONLY way for building a truly European Digital Library Technology is worth nothing without USERS and CONTENT.

38. Next steps • Development • Performance and Stability • Security and DRM • Multi-lingual queries • 3rd Foundation Prototype • Deployment • Testbed • Large-scale deployment