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Virtual Repository Progress. Lars Lindberg Christensen (ESA/ESO). Programme Group Virtual Repository under the IAU Working Group Communicating Astronomy.
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Virtual Repository Progress Lars Lindberg Christensen (ESA/ESO)
Programme Group Virtual Repository under the IAU Working Group Communicating Astronomy The goal: “To construct the framework for a virtual repository to allow outreach resources across projects and country borders to be ‘catalogued’ in a virtual repository and accessed by communicators, educators, press, students and public through specialized visual tools combined with search engines.”
The problem • The volume of astronomical data is exploding (VOs) • In VO EPO we ultimately would like to give access to real data in a “Digital Universe”, but this is a major undertaking • Complex datasets • Raw data are ‘dirty’ • Laypeople and teachers lack the background to understand many of the issues • Meanwhile, the volume of digital products (outreach images and videos) is all the time increasing • As a first step how do we better share resources internally? • Ultimately, how do we allow the public better access to images, videos and other materials? • Astro-Google?
How do we solve this problem? • Very similar problems as the VOs are struggling with now => learn from them, compatible with VOs • We can not realistically hope to standardise the archives • A Programme Group called Virtual Repository under the IAU Working Group Communicating Astronomy has been set up • Goal: “To construct the framework for a virtual repository to allow outreach resources across projects and country borders to be ‘catalogued’ in a virtual repository and accessed by educators, press, students and public through specialized visual tools combined with search engines.”
Some repositories • Educational portal NASA Space Science - The Space Science Education Resource Directory - PHYSICAL • Vortal AthenaWeb – VIRTUAL
Implementation • Central coordinating organisation: IAU WG on Communicating Astronomy? • Metadata tags with the pixels (in for instance XML format added with the FITS Liberator) • List of Data Holdings (dynamic): yellow pages, Registries that contain metadata about data resources and information services • Communication between user and data holding – for instance through the Registry with the help of a VO-style Data Access Layer, such as the Simple Image Access Protocol (SIAP)
Funding • EU’s eContentplus programme? • A multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable. • “The Programme addresses specific market areas where development has been slow: geographic content (as a key constituent of public sector content), educational content, cultural, scientific and scholarly content. The Programme also supports EU-wide co-ordination of collections in libraries, museums and archives and the preservation of digital collections so as to ensure availability of cultural, scholarly and scientific assets for future use.”
Members • Content providers (observatories, VOs etc.) • Educators • Visualizers
Collaborators • NASA’s Virtual Cosmos programme: Nahide Craig • NASA Explorer Institutes’ Focus Group Seeing The Universe • NVO EPO: http://virtualobservatory.org/ • http://virtualsky.org
This meeting • Soliciting community inputs – Come & discuss these issues! • Join the Metadata Lunch Meeting Thursday 12:45 • Will report on the progress of this work Friday 15:00