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Developing a digital library of reusable historical artifacts

Article · January 2002

DOI: 10.1145/544220.544342 · Source: OAI

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 Developing a digital library of reusable historical artifacts.
Goh, D.H.L., & Foo, S. (2002). Proc. Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2002 (JCDL2002), Portland,
Oregon, USA, July 14-18.

Developing a Digital Library of Reusable Historical Artifacts

Dion Hoe-Lian Goh & Schubert Foo

Division of Information Studies
School of Communication and Information
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore 637718
{ashlgoh, assfoo}@ntu.edu.sg

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the design and implementation of a digital library of historical artifacts. A
major goal of the project is to create an architecture in which artifacts are reusable across
various digital library applications. Two such applications have been developed and are
described: a virtual exhibition system and a reference helpdesk.

Keywords : Reusable artifacts, digital library applications, archives

INTRODUCTION

The National Archives of Singapore (NAS) is a Singapore government organization that is

tasked with the permanent preservation of the country’s records that are of historical importance
and significance. These range from private memoirs to government records, and are in various
formats including text, photographs, maps, audio and video. To meet the increasing demand for
online research, the NAS developed and launched Archives and Artifacts Online Singapore
(a2 O), a Web portal of heritage information [1]. The portal allows users to search for information
across various independent databases and view selected photographs, maps and building plans,
listen to oral history interview samples and watch snippets of audio- visual recordings.
A project is underway to extend the a2 O portal and develop a digital library of historical
multimedia resources offering a greater range of services to both patrons as well as staff of the
NAS. In addition to search and retrieval, the digital library will provide basic components for
building applications such as virtual exhibitions, lesson development, reference services and
annotation tools. The project aims to build a unified platform upon which all of the NAS’
digitized resources may be accessed through various applications, in effect, creating a digital
library of reusable artifacts [4]. The eventual size of the collection will be relatively large. There

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are for example, currently 1.5 million photographs, 10,000 hours of oral history recordings and
130,000 maps and building plans in the NAS’ holdings.

DIGITAL LIBRARY DESIGN

The digital library is Web-based and consists of two major architectural layers. The
infrastructure layer consists of components that provide essential digital library services such as
artifact and metadata storage and retrieval as well as the repositories for basic artifacts – the
original resources that form the digital library’s holdings (for example, photographs, maps, video
etc.). As different basic artifacts (for example, text versus photographs) may have different
requirements for their management and access, this layer supports independent repositories for
the artifacts and their metadata. However the digital library offers a single point of access to all
artifacts, the infrastructure layer provides a component called the repository gateway that serves
as a unified front-end to the various repositories. All basic artifact access and management
requests will be fulfilled via this gateway.

The application layer consists of applications that use the components in the infrastructure layer
to deliver services to patrons of the digital library. Applications may range from simple wrappers
to infrastructure components such as searching over a repository of photographs, to more
complex ones that may combine various infrastructure components to provide value-added
services to patrons for example, virtual exhibitions. In many cases, applications may also
combine basic artifacts to produce new ones, and these may be atomic (such as annotations) or
composite (such as virtual exhibitions). Separate application-specific repositories are maintained
for these artifacts, meaning that applications will need to access their own repositories as well as
the basic artifact repositories via the repository gateway.

Implementation

The infrastructure layer is implemented in Java and consists of application programming

interfaces (APIs) for basic artifact access and management. APIs are available for searching,
adding, modifying and removing artifacts and their associated metadata. Applications are
developed as Java servlets or JavaServer pages and typically include a HTML or Java applet
front-end. Metadata and artifacts with textual information are represented as XML documents
and stored in XML servers while non-textual artifacts (for example images) are currently stored
in the file system.

APPLICATIONS

To date, two applications have been developed for the NAS digital library: a virtual exhibition
system and a reference helpdesk.

Virtual exhibitions are collections of Web pages revolving around a certain topic. The challenge
is to depart from the traditional “copy and use” means of authoring exhibitions to a more
efficient “reference and reuse” model. In the former method, artifacts such as text and images

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 are duplicated when new exhibitions are created. The result is that multiple copies of a single
artifact are produced and stored in different locations making updates difficult and storage
inefficient. In the “reference and reuse model”, artifacts are stored in a single location (the basic
artifact repositories) and referenced in virtual exhibitions [3]. Only one copy of the artifact
exists, reducing storage requirements and facilitating changes to the exhibition content simply by
changing the artifact(s) involved. In the current implementation, virtual exhibitions are stored as
XML documents in an application-specific repository. At execution time, the virtual exhibition
system will retrieve the necessary artifacts and convert the XML documents into HTML using an
XSL file.

The reference helpdesk provides reference services to common enquiries on Singapore’s culture
and history via a Web-based interface. Virtual folders for topics as diverse as life during the
Japanese Occupation or water management in Singapore are created and subsequently populated
with appropriate references to artifacts through a folder management tool. Users may search the
helpdesk or browse the topic classifications until the desired folders are found. These folders are
XML documents stored in the reference helpdesk repository and converted to HTML when
accessed by the user. However because the digital library is still under development, not all
folders will contain artifacts that can be viewed online, although their metadata records may be
viewed. Many resources have not yet been digitized and users will still have to make a trip to the
NAS to peruse them. Nevertheless, the reference helpdesk is expected to be an improvement
over the current situation in which physical topic folders are maintained, requiring users to visit
the NAS and speak to one of the staff whenever an enquiry has to be made. In addition, the
application will alleviate the heavy workload already faced by NAS staff and allow them to be
involved in more complex tasks.

FUTURE WORK

Work on the NAS digital library is ongoing with the project focusing on the following:
§ Deployment and testing: the two applications mentioned previously will be deployed and tested
by key NAS staff who will eventually use and maintain these systems. It is expected that through
this initial deployment, a better understanding of the usage patterns of the digital library will
emerge leading to a further refinement of the digital library’s architecture and its APIs.
§ Metadata for reusable artifacts: artifacts that can be reused across different applications will
likely have different metadata requirements, although a few core fields will remain unchanged.
Work is currently underway to evaluate flexible metadata models and approaches for managing
them. One approach being considered is through inheritance and/or composition of XML-based
schemas.
§ Artifact management: one near-term project involves an integrated artifact management module
for NAS staff to catalog artifacts acquired from government agencies and private collections.
Currently, different departments use different systems for cataloging artifacts, leading to
potential inconsistencies in assigning metadata as well as interoperability issues across
departments.
§ Workspaces and information exchange: a longer-term project involves the development of
workspaces for patrons to maintain personal holdings or to share information within

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 communities in the digital library. In particular, work will be done on developing “trading
protocols” [2] for autonomous exchange of information between patrons’ workspaces.

REFERENCES

1. Archives and Artifacts Online Singapore. Available at http://www.a2o.com.sg/

2. Cooper, B., and Garcia-Molina, H. Creating trading networks of digital archives. In Proceedings
of the First ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (Roanoke, VA, June 2001), ACM
Press, New York, 353-362.
3. Hong, J., Chen, B., and Hsiang, J. XSL-based content management for multi-presentation digital
museum exhibitions. In Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Research and
Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (Darmstadt, Germany, September 2001), Springer-
Verlag, Berlin, 378-389.
4. Sumner, T., and Dawe, M. Looking at digital library usability from a reuse perspective. In
Proceedings of the First ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (Roanoke, VA, June
2001), ACM Press, New York, 416-425.

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