Building the digital world from local to universal

1
Building the digital world from local to
universal

• Adolf Knoll
• National Library of the Czech Republic
• adolf.knoll_at_nkp.cz

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Why digitize?

• We should return to this question again and again
• What can we offer to whom?
• Access
• Long-term access (preservation element)
• Added-value services to individiuals
• How?

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Which value to add

• The sense is to add such values, which users
  cannot create by themselves
• For libraries it is about how to enter the
  digital world
• They cannot compete with companies on open battle
  fields, but they have specific materials to
  process and organize

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Libraries and users

• Libraries
• Great number
• Different places
• Different documents
• Communication skills
• They work in the world of users and for users
• For good functioning, they need to be exposed to
  the outside world

• Users
• Greater number
• Different places
• Different languages
• Different interests
• Also other interests than we can imagine
• Communication skills

Our behaviour of normal citizens in normal daily
circumstances is the criterion.
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Libraries and research communities

• Libraries have specific research related to
  communication and preservation
• They aim to provide access to the objects that
  are subject of research of specific groups
• These two research entities should communicate
• Their work is complementary, not identical

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Cultural heritage

• Objects of cultural heritage
• Finding aids (catalogues, bibliographic lists, )
• Documentation
• Acquired other documents, databases,
• Created other documents, databases,
• To join them together without forcing researchers
  to modify their research points of view

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Library as content creator

• Identification of cultural heritage
• Visual or aural representation of cultural
  heritage
• Creation of a hybrid world classical and virtual
  components
• Once libraries have abandoned this scheme, they
  will not be needed in modern society

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Joining forces

• Discrete library entities merge virtually
• Remake of original contexts, because dispersed
  objects are put together
• Enrichment of research environment
• More resources
• More competition among researchers
• More opportunities to step over narrow thresholds
  of born-in and educated-in behaviour and
  knowledge
• Humans have more in common indifferently of
  places where they live
• and indifferently of cultures that seem to
  divide them

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How to help our sensual perception?

• Images and sounds talk to our senses
• In order to master the world that surrounds us,
  we try to classify it in undestandable objects
• The same reality can be classified differently
• All consistent artificial human classification
  schemes are true

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Examples

• Our languages are a good example
• ??????? ????? blue (light dark)
• ??????????? effective or efficient ?
• The reality is split in understandable chunks
  differently in various cultures, regions, groups
  of people
• What is relevant information for one of us, it is
  null information for another one
• If I am a specialist, then a discovery for you
  can be banal or insufficient for me and vice
  versa
• This works in any domain of human activity

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Declare your aims

• Work in conformity with this declaration
• Libraries inform and assist users to access
  various pieces of information
• Libraries must talk well defined languages
• description rules
• encoding platforms
• .. which enable very large communication
• From narrow solutions to mark-up languages and
  choice of largely accepted description rules
• Bridging various approaches through conversion of
  categories of knowledge this is not only
  library task ontological bridges
• motion from bottom up (cataloguing) towards
  grasping the reality as it is by well structured
  and sophisticated tools (thanks to detailed
  knowledge of how various approaches work and
  thanks to ever increasing computation speed)
• we have to face and enjoy a new quality of
  technological environment

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Archive, migrate, provide access
ORIGINALS books, periodicals, maps, printed
music, audio recordings,
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Tasks

• preserve both inherited and created documents
• provide access to both
• multiply access points analytical cataloguing,
  linking additional resources of all kinds
  catalogues, video resources, works, studies,
  papers,
• create a research world
• enable to prolong the work or to add other values
  to it

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Standards

• Look at http//digit.nkp.cz and follow the line
  to Technical Standards
• access tools databases linked to visual
  representation and other resources look at
  http//www.memoria.cz
• works tools for users (off-line viewers, digital
  library applications)
• author rights control