1. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Vangelis Banos
Digital Library Developments in Greece

2. Digital Library Developments in Greece
About my work
Current Positions:
Research Project Manager at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece,
Researcher at the National Documentation Centre of Greece,
IT Manager at the National Quality Infrastructure System of Greece,
Associate of the Future Library Greece non profit foundation,
Associate of the Veria Public Library, Greece.
Current Projects:
Openarchives.gr – Greek Digital Libraries Search Engine,
Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana,
LoCloud, Bringing Local Content to Europeana (EU Best Practice Network),
Oaipmh.com - Digital Libraries Validation Service,
BlogForever – Web Archiving Project (FP7, EU STREP Project)
ArchiveReady.com – Website Archivability Evaluation Tool
Digital Library Developments in Greece

3. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Table of Contents
Digital Libraries in Greece,
Openarchives.gr - Search Greek Cultural and Scientific Digital Content,
Digital Library Software as a Service,
Digital Library Validation Service,
Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana,
LoCloud Europeana Best Practice Network,
Conclusions
Digital Library Developments in Greece

4. Digital Libraries in Greece
An overview in October 2013
according to the data from the
National Documentation Centre of Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece

5. Digital Libraries in Greece
48 Organisations
Universities / Technological Institutions,
Cultural Organisations,
Research Centres,
Public and Municipal Libraries,
Educational Bodies,
Religion and Ecclesiastical Organisations,
Scientific Societies.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

6. Digital Libraries in Greece
65 Collections
Institutional Repositories of Research Organisations
Journals
Digital Archives and Special Collections
National Archive of PhD Theses
Digital Library Developments in Greece

7. Digital Libraries in Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece

8. Digital Libraries in Greece
Records
Articles, Conference proceedings, Cultural journals, Ecclesiastical artifacts,
Greek sheet music, Grey literature,
Historical photographs, Historical postcards,
Historical pictures, Financial reports, Master theses,
Manuscripts, maps, Museum artifacts, Newspapers,
PhD theses, Research papers, Paintings,
Presentations, Scientific reports,
Scientific journals, Talks, Theatrical plays,
University student reports
Digital Library Developments in Greece

9. The Parthenon Frieze http://repository.parthenonfrieze.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece

10. National Archive of PhD Theses http://www.didaktorika.gr
Digital Library Developments in Greece

11. Veria Public Library http://medusa.libver.gr/
Digital Library Developments in Greece

12. Digital Library Developments in Greece
National Technical University (NTUA) academic repository
Digital Library Developments in Greece

13. Leimonos Monastery http://84.205.233.134/library/
Digital Library Developments in Greece

14. Access Greek Scientific and Cultural Digital Content
openarchives.gr
Access Greek Scientific and Cultural Digital Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece

15. Digital Library Developments in Greece

16. Digital Library Developments in Greece
openarchives.gr
Openarchives.gr is the largest online portal providing a single point of access to quality Greek scientific and cultural digital content.
Content comes from organisations in Greece and Cyprus.
Started in 2006 as a personal project,
Development continues since 2011 by the National Documentation Centre of Greece.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

17. openarchives.gr for users
User-friendly (desktop, smartphone, tablet access)
Single-point-of-access of all Greek digital libraries
Digitized contents that come from authoritative sources
Suitable for research, school and leisure projects
Search, Browse, Discover, Re-use quality content.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

18. openarchives.gr for content providers
Showcase their content,
Reach out to gain new audience,
Increase web visitors,
Increase content visibility and discoverability,
Participate in a large innovation network,
Learn new things,
Embrace new technologies,
Voluntary participation,
No cost.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

19. openarchives.gr requirements for digital libraries
Digital library contains quality cultural or scientific content,
Digital content available to users in digital library’s website,
Digital content must have descriptive metadata,
Metadata should be encoded in Dublin Core,
Unique permanent identifiers should be assigned to each object,
Digital library must support OAI-PMH protocol,
Europeana Semantic Elements is desirable.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

20. Software as a Service (SaaS) Digital Libraries
National Documentation Centre of Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece

21. Digital Library Developments in Greece
SaaS Definition
Provide software as a service on the cloud
Run software and save data on central servers,
Provide service over the internet,
Enables economies of scale, higher quality and security
No need to maintain anything,
Central application of good practices and standards,
Focus on organisation goals and not running software.
Example you may know: Gmail.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

22. SaaS Digital Libraries
Achieving economies of scale in the delivery of digital libraries, using cloud computing technologies.
Organisations can create their own digital library for the storage, management and online dissemination of their digital content.
All data are stored in the cloud infrastructure of the National Documentation Centre (EKT).
During this process, EKT co-operates with institutions and organisations and offers a wide range of supplementary services (such as technical support) for the deposit, management and delivery of quality digital content.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

23. SaaS Digital Libraries Benefits for Institutions
safe long-term storage of the digital content and data,
risk-proofing against physical and technical disasters,
export data according to international standards,
based on Open Source Software
remote access and full control over the institution’s own user-friendly and easy-to-configure administrator environment,
no need for software installation, upgrades and specialised technical knowledge,
enhanced online visibility for the institution and its content,
access to e-learning services and remote technical support,
advanced search, browsing and downloading functionalities for end-users.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

24. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece

25. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Digital Library Developments in Greece

26. Digital Libraries Validation Service
Ensuring high quality
metadata and content
Digital Library Developments in Greece

27. Digital Libraries have issues...
A lot of different software platforms with different features and technologies,
Invalid use of standards,
Limited performance and availability,
Limited reusability,
Problems integrating with national and international aggregators,
High maintenance and operation costs,
Many organisations with quality content but without technical expertise on digital libraries.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

28. Digital Libraries Validation Service
Official tool to validate Greek Digital Libraries metadata and content.
Validation will be compulsory to receive funding in many cases.
Project duration: July Dec 2014.
Lead by: National Documentation Centre of Greece.
Features:
Access the level of digital libraries compliance with international data and system standards,
Run performance tests,
Test interoperability with major national and international aggregators like Europeana,
Detect issues automatically,
Report issues and ways to resolve them.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

29. Digital Libraries Validation Service Aims
Increase the quality of digital libraries in Greece,
Facilitate digital library development,
Enforce data and system standards,
Reduce development costs,
Avoid pitfalls,
Become future proof,
Highlight best practices.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

30. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Validation examples:
Metadata
Metadata character encoding must be UTF-8,
OAI-PMH protocol version >= 2.0,
ESE protocol version >= 3.4.1,
Dc:language values must comply with ISO639-2
(e.g. correct: eng, invalid: English)
Dc:date values must comply with ISO8601
(e.g. correct: , invalid: 2012, January 15th)
Digital Content
Minimum image size and colour depth,
Minimum video quality and bitrate,
PDF must contain textual information (OCR)
Digital Library Developments in Greece

31. Digital Library Validation Workflow
As soon as a digital library is ready, the organisation submits an evaluation request,
The operator of the validation tool performs a number of evaluations over the web.
Download and evaluate metadata values,
Download and evaluate the actual contents,
The outcomes of the evaluation are compiled into a report which is sent to the organisation.
The report indicates any issues and ways to work around them.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

32. Digital Library Validation Service Prototype
Current features include:
Check OAI-PMH standards compliance.
Check compliance with Dublin Core (DC)
Check compliance with Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE).
View, print or download the output of all OAI-PMH supported commands.
Detect problems with metadata records (e.g. invalid URLs, empty titles, invalid date formats etc.)
Download all records from one or more digital libraries in parallel.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

33. Digital Library Validation Service Demo
Digital Library Developments in Greece

34. Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana
Access Greek Scientific and Cultural Digital Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece

35. Aggregation: a sustainable model of content delivery
Horizontal Aggregators
Vertical Aggregators
National Aggregators
Archives
Culture Grid
Archives Portal Europe
Libraries
MLAs
The European Library
Regional Aggregators
Dark Aggregators
Flanders museums
ATHENA
ELocal
Film archives
European Film Gateway
Mn;kl;k;klj;lkj;lkj;jh;lkj;klj;klj;klj;klj
MLAs
Museums
Hellenic Digital Libraries and The Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana
MLAs

36. Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana
A central communication point between Greek digital libraries and Europeana.
14 digital libraries, ~ records.
The responsibilities of the Hellenic aggregator are:
To guide digital libraries and give information about technical standards they should follow
Collect metadata from digital libraries
Validate metadata, suggest solutions to possible problems
Encode digital library metadata according to Europeana Standards
Communicate with Europeana and transmit metadata
Digital Library Developments in Greece

37. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Metadata
Descriptive : describes object for discovery and identification e.g <title>, <publisher>, <author> etc.
Structural : describes structure of compound objects, e.g. how pages are ordered to form chapters.
Administrative : information to help manage a resource, e.g. how it was created, file type, who can access it …
Preservation : information needed to archive and preserve an object e.g. <Provenance> , <Authenticity>
“Relational” : which other objects is the object related?
Digital Library Developments in Greece

38. Aggregation of federated metadata
OAI-server - in library
OAI-server – in museum
Standardised museum metadata
(in XML format)
Standardised library metadata
(in XML format)
Library Collection1
Museum
Collection1
Museum
Collection2
OAI-PMH
OAI-PMH
OAI-PMH
Central
Repository
Aggregated, centralised, standardised, multilingual, multicultural, interoperable, cross-domain CH-metadata as basis for Digital Library 38
OAI-harvester (client)
Digital Library Developments in Greece

39. Metadata Gathering Process
As a first step, a new digital library has to be validated by Europeana
Using the Hellenic Aggregator tools, the optimal metadata aggregation strategy is selected.
The Hellenic Aggregator is working automatically and updates its data on a monthly basis.
Communicates with associated digital libraries and retrieves their metadata.
Detects new records, validates them and saves them to its database.
Europeana contacts with the Hellenic Aggregator in regular intervals:
It checks for new material, and if there is any, it is retrieved by Europeana
It informs the Hellenic Aggregator for new protocols and updates (e.g. new version of ESE, new metadata records)
Digital Library Developments in Greece

40. Digital Library Developments in Greece

41. Digital Library Developments in Greece
<dc:title>
<dc:date>
<dc:subject>
<dc:creator>
<europeana:object>
Digital Library Developments in Greece

42. Extract data from HTML to ESE
From HTML unstructured data
To ESE format!
Digital Library Developments in Greece

43. Digital Library Developments in Greece

44. Enrich Europeana with Local Content
LoCloud
Enrich Europeana with Local Content
Digital Library Developments in Greece

45. Digital Library Developments in Greece
About LoCloud
LoCloud is a Best Practice Network co-funded under the CIP ICT-PSP programme of the European Commission which will enrich the Europeana content by adding over 4 million digitised items from European cultural institutions.
32 Partners from all around Europe.
LoCloud will support small and medium-sized institutions in making their content and metadata available  to  Europeana, by exploring the potential of cloud computing Technologies. 
A cloud-based technology infrastructure will enable the aggregation of local content and a number of micro-services will help to reduce technical, semantic and skills barriers and  to render the content more discoverable and interoperable.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

46. LoCloud is supporting small and medium institutions:
Making their content and metadata  available  to  Europeana, by using the cloud to provide services and tools which help to reduce technical, semantic and skills barriers.
Making available cloud-based software services which enable  them  to  render  their content more discoverable and interoperable;
Enabling smaller institution types such as house museums, which currently fall outside most aggregation infrastructures, to contribute their content to Europeana.
Exploring and trial a cloud based architecture as a scalable platform for Europeana metadata aggregation and harvesting with higher efficiency and reduced maintenance costs.
Provide guidance,   training   and   support  facilities to serve the needs of content providers.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

47. Digital Library Developments in Greece
LoCloud Activities
Identify standard metadata export formats which are commonly used by small and medium cultural institutions.
Develop and implement  metadata transformation and aggregation tools in the cloud (MINT and MoRe)
Develop and test a number of key cloud-based micro-services (SaaS) useful to enrich metadata and improve quality for the benefit of Europeana users.
Geolocation, Vocabularies, Historic place names, authority files.
Provide training, support and guidance relevant to the needs of small and medium sized cultural institutions and aggregators.
Evaluate and assess the impact of this work, including the benefits of cloud services.
Carry out an intensive dissemination programme targeting smaller institutions and their aggregators right across Europe.
Plan the sustainability and transferability of the above approach in the framework of the Europeana Consortium.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

48. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Conclusions
Greek Digital Libraries are doing very well.
Openarchives.gr, Digital Library SaaS, Digital Library Validator,
Hellenic Aggregator for Europeana, LoCloud
Future goals
Enable small institutions go online,
Automate and speed up digital library creation,
Improve quality of metadata and content,
Promote content to all audiences,
Promote content to Europeana.
Digital Library Developments in Greece

49. Digital Library Developments in Greece
Thank you!
Discussion
More information:
Digital Library Developments in Greece