1. Introducing “Pergamos” Libraries Computer Center Department of Informatics & Telecommunications University of Athens A FEDORA-based Digital Library System utilizing Digital Object Prototypes Kostas Saidis saiko@di.uoa.gr European FEDORA User Meeting Copenhagen, 28 September 2005

2. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Outline Motivation – The University of Athens (UoA) DL Digital Objects (DOs) DO Storage (FEDORA) DO Manipulation (DL Application Logic) Digital Object Prototypes Automatic DO Type Conformance Scope of Prototypes & Collection Management Implementation Details A Preview of Pergamos Discussion

3. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen The UoA DL Project Over 1 million objects originating from 8 disparate collections Folklore notebooks, Ancient papyri, UoA Historical Archive, Byzantine music manuscripts, Theatrical photos & brochures, Informatics research papers and dissertations, Medical images, Press articles Heterogeneous material, in terms of content type, metadata, structure, user requirements Mostly digitized material, requiring detailed cataloging

4. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen UoA DL Project Metadata Build a Web-based DL System to handle all material Centralized DL approach due to Existing hardware infrastructure Funding restrictions Administration simplicity FEDORA is our DO Repository

5. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen UoA DL Project Metadata Contd. Small Team 2.5 developers, 1 librarian, 1 manager Requirements, Specifications, Development, Digitization & Cataloging Management … … while everyday tasks keep running! Cataloging Personnel Scholars & Experts in each collection’s domain (not librarians) Strict Schedule First Collection deadline: early 2006 Project deadline: end of 2006

6. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Motivation Simplify & speed up the cataloging process Provide effective Web-based cataloging interfaces Automate content ingestion Decrease development time Avoid custom coding for each content variation Elaborate on reusable and configurable DL modules Provide the means to treat content variations in a unified manner

7. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Digital Objects A Digital Object is a human generated artifact consisting of the digital content and related information

8. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen FEDORA FEDORA Digital Object Model Content Models, Datastreams, Behavior Definitions, Mechanisms & Disseminators FEDORA is a DO Repository Focus on how each DO part is encoded & stored Handles effectively issues related to storage, preservation & versioning, searching & indexing, interoperability

9. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Traditional 2-tier Approach

10. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen DL Application Logic Cataloging, Workflows, Collection Building & Management, User Interfaces, etc DL Modules manipulate DOs in a higher level of abstraction Focus on the overall behavior of the DO (what are the DO parts and how do they behave) DOs reflect the underlying “real world” objects – they behave according to their nature, their essence, their type

11. DO Typing information Do we effectively capture, express and utilize the nature (type) of DOs?

12. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen An example – Theatrical Collection Albums containing photos of National Theater Performances What is a Photo DO? A digital image stored in various formats (e.g high quality, www quality, thumbnail) accompanied by the metadata required for describing the picture What is an Album DO? A container of Photo DOs accompanied by theatrical play metadata

13. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen A 2 nd example – Historical Archive University’s Senate Session Proceedings > Folders > Sessions > Items What is a Item DO? A digital image (capturing 1 or 2 pages) stored in various formats (e.g high quality, www quality, thumbnail) What is a Session DO? A container of Item DOs + metadata What is a Folder DO? A container of Session DOs + metadata

14. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen DO Typing Information FEDORA Content Models express DO Typing information Content Models are metadata attributes (e.g. “photo”, “album”) that we use as a guide Humans interpret Content Models, not the DL System Manual resolution of DO Typing issues

15. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Problems Catalogers carry out manual XML editing in a low level of abstraction with too technical, complex & over detailed semantics Developers generate ad-hoc, custom & not reusable implementations of DO types’ variations of behavior DL modules exhibit limited evolution and configuration capabilities

16. DO Typing Information The DL System should resolve DO Typing issues automatically (in a manner transparent to the DL Application Logic)

17. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Automatic DO Type Conformance The designer specifies the various DO types… … and the DL System makes DOs conform to these type specifications automatically How?

18. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen By drawing on the notions of OO

19. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen The OO Viewpoint In the OO model an object is itself aware of its “nature” and behaves accordingly Objects are conceived as instances of a type, automatically conforming to the type’s definitions & specifications OO types are separate entities (named either classes or prototypes)

20. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Digital Object Prototypes A DO Prototype is a DO Type Specification, a separate entity that defines the DO’s: Constitutional parts – metadata sets, files, structure, etc Private behaviors – DO internal operations such as serializations, validations, assignment of default values, content conversions, etc Public behaviors (behavior schemes) – the DO external interface, consisting of high level operations such as Detail view, Browse View, Edit View, etc

21. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen OO Encapsulation

22. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Photo Prototype & Instances

23. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen DO Prototypes & Instances The designer carries out the definition of DO Prototypes – the DL System handles the rest DO Prototypes represent the realization of the Content Model notion in a OO fashion: The process of generating a DO from a Prototype is called instantiation The resulted object is an instance of the prototype A DO instance automatically conforms to the Prototype’s specifications Stored DOs vs DO instances

24. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen 3-tier DL Architecture

25. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Digital Object Dictionary The runtime environment in which DO instances and Prototypes operate: Instantiation of DOs based on the prototype specifications (private behaviors: load & parse XML, assign default values, etc) Exposure of the public DO behaviors in a high level, uniform API (for use by DL Modules) Serialization of the DO instance back to FEDORA (private behaviors: serialize data structures in XML, perform validations, etc)

26. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Expression of DL Application Logic A DL Module performs the following steps: 1. Acquire the DO Instance do = dictionary.acquireObject(“type”) do = dictionary.acquireObject(“uoadl:1024”) 2. Perform operations upon it do.getMDSet(“DC”).getField(“title”) dictionary.executeBehavior(do, “editView”) 3. Store the DO in the repository dictionary.saveObject(do) Cleaner, simpler, more effective

27. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen 3-tier DL Architecture Separation of Concerns

28. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen 3-tier DL Architecture Storage Separation of Concerns

29. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen 3-tier DL Architecture Storage DO Typing & Instantiation Separation of Concerns

30. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen 3-tier DL Architecture Storage DO Typing & Instantiation Composition of DO behaviors Separation of Concerns

31. If it sounds like Greek… Pergamos

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35. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Scope of Prototypes Should we have global DO Types? Collection-pertinent types: A DO Prototype is defined in the context of a Collection Support fine grained definition of collection specific kinds of material Hierarchical naming scheme for types Theatrical Collection Photo: dl.theatre.photo Medical Collection Photo: dl.medical.photo Stored in the “contentModel” metadata attribute Avoid type collisions

36. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Album Prototype & Instances

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39. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Collection Management DL = Hierarchy of DO instances Collections are also DOs The DL itself is a DO, representing the “super- collection” (the collection of all the collections) Easily add new collections & sub-collections All content is modeled in a unified manner & can be characterized Allow the DL designer to work out the details of each collection independently, yet in a uniform manner

40. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen DL as a Hierarchy of DO instances

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43. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Implementation details DO Prototypes are Specified in XML form Stored in the “TEMPLATE” datastream of the appropriate Collection DO Loaded, parsed & interpreted by the DO Dictionary in its bootstrap procedure Transparent to FEDORA DO Instances are supplied with the “CONTAINER” datastream, containing the pids of the DOs they “contain”

44. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen DO Prototypes in detail MD Sets Specification of each individual field (label, description, multi-value, mandatory, UI characteristics) Serialization information (how to store it in FEDORA) Field mappings (under development) Files: Automatic conversions (tiff -> jpeg + thumb) Batch Import: automatically create Dos from zip bundles Structure: allowed children types Browsers: browse field Indices: e.g. subject catalog Behavior schemes: atomic DO elements

45. Discussion

46. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Pergamos Historical Archive (production) Folklore Notebooks (testing) Theatrical Collection, Medical Images & Byzantine music manuscripts (finalization of requirements & specifications) Undergoing development … the remaining collections are coming next Historical Archive will be published on early 2006… … with a multi-lingual UI, hopefully!

47. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Public DO Behaviors FEDORA BehaviorsBehavior Schemes Are defined in each DO separately Are defined once and in one place (in the Prototype) Operate on the datastreamsOperate on the atomic elements of a DO Invoked directly on the DOInvoked as in OO Dynamic Method Dispatch Require the a priori existence of datastreams Instantiation (empty DO) GenericTargeted on UI issues Exposed as Web servicesWeb services will be of use after the DL has been built

48. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Future Work Fully implement the OO paradigm OO Inheritance for DO Prototypes (e.g the Notebook type derives from the Book type) OO Polymorphism for DO instances (e.g the DO “uoadl:1234” is both a Notebook & a Book) Supply general purpose linking capabilities that exceed structural relations (FEDORA Metadata for Object-to-Object Relationships?) Deliver on schedule…

49. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Conclusions If in doubt, use FEDORA Flexible & Extensible (they mean it) 1 year of Pergamos development, 2 months of testing & 3 months of production use (Historical Archive) with no serious problems Though, Sandy & Carl, I’d be grateful for some minutes of your time!!! DO Prototypes: a realization of Content Models in OO terms, implemented on top of FDOM to handle DO Typing issues automatically Detailed report on Pergamos to appear…

50. European FEDORA User Meeting 2005September 28, Copenhagen Thank You Questions? Comments? For details: "On the Effective Manipulation of Digital Objects: A Prototype-based Instantiation Approach" Kostas Saidis, George Pyrounakis, Mara Nikolaidou, Proc. 9th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, ECDL 2005, Vienna, Austria, September 2005 email: saiko@di.uoa.gr