United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Foreword

by Edward A. Fox

Computer science addresses important questions, offering relevant solutions. Some of these are recursive or self-referential. Accordingly, I am pleased to testify that a suitable answer to the question carried in this book’s title is the book itself! Witten and Bainbridge have indeed provided a roadmap for those eager to build digital libraries.

Late in 2001, with a draft version of this book in hand, I planned the introductory unit for my spring class Multimedia, Hypertext, and Information Access (CS4624), an elective computer science course for seniors. Departmental personnel installed the Greenstone software on the 30 machines in our Windows lab. Students in both sections of this class had an early glimpse of course themes as they explored local and remote versions of Greenstone, applied to a variety of collections. They also built their own small digital libraries—all within the first few weeks of the course.

When the CS4624 students selected term projects, one team of three asked if they could work with Roger Ehrich, another computer science professor, to build a digital library: the Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GRHS) Image Library. After exploring alternatives, they settled on Greenstone. I gave them my draft copy of this book and encouraged them throughout the spring of 2002 as they worked with the software and with the two GRHS content collections: photographs and document images. They learned about documents and metadata, about macros and images, about installation and setting up servers, about user accounts and administration, about prototyping and documentation. They learned how to tailor the interface, to load and index the collection, and to satisfy the requirements of their client. Greenstone was found useful for yet another community!

Ian Witten has given numerous tutorials and presentations about digital libraries, helping thousands understand key concepts, as well as how the Greenstone software can be of use. Talking with many of those attending these sessions, I have found his impact to be positive and beneficial. This book should extend the reach of his in-person contact to a wider audience, helping fill the widely felt need to understand “digital libraries” and to be able to deploy a “digital library in a box.” Together with David Bainbridge, Witten has prepared this book, greatly extending his tutorial overviews and drawing upon a long series of articles from the New Zealand Digital Library Project—some of the very best papers in the digital library field.

This book builds upon the authors’ prior work in a broad range of related areas. It expands upon R&D activities in the compression, information retrieval, and multimedia fields, some connected with the MG system (and the popular book Managing Gigabytes, also in this book series). It brings in a human touch, explaining how digital libraries have aided diverse communities, from Uganda to New Zealand, from New Mexico to New York, from those working in physics to those enjoying popular music. Indeed, this work satisfies the “5S” checklist that I often use to highlight the key aspects of digital libraries, involving societies, scenarios, spaces, structures, and streams.

Working with UNESCO and through the open source community, the New Zealand team has turned Greenstone into a tool that has been widely deployed by Societies around the globe, as explained at both the beginning and end of the book. Greenstone’s power and flexibility have allowed it to serve a variety of needs and support a range of user tasks, according to diverse Scenarios. Searching and browsing, involving both phrases and metadata and through both user requests and varied protocols, can support both scholars and those focused on oral cultures.

With regard to Spaces, Greenstone supports both peoples and resources scattered around the globe, with content originating across broad ranges of time. Supporting virtual libraries and distributed applications, digital libraries can be based in varied locations. Spaces also are covered through the 2D user interfaces involved in presentation, as well as internal representations of content representation and organization.

Structures are highlighted in the chapters on documents as well as markup and metadata. Rarely can one find a clear explanation of character encoding schemes such as Unicode, or page description languages such as PostScript and PDF, in addition to old standbys such as Word and LaTeX, and multimedia schemes like GIF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and MPEG. Seldom can one find a clearer discussion of XML, CSS, and XSL, in addition to MARC and Dublin Core. From key elements (acronyms, phrases, generic entities, and references) to collections, from lists to classification structure, from metadata to catalogs, the organizational aspects of digital libraries are clearly explicated.

Digital libraries build upon underlying Streams of content: from characters to words to texts, from pixels to images, and from tiny fragments to long audio and video streams. This book covers how to handle all of these, through flexible plugins and classifiers, using macros and databases, and through processes and protocols. Currently popular approaches are discussed, including the Open Archives Initiative, as well as important themes like digital preservation.

Yes, this book satisfies the “5S” checklist. Yes, this book can be used in courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Yes, this book can support practical projects and important applications. Yes, this book is a valuable reference, drawing upon years of research and practice. I hope, like me, you will read this book many times, enjoying its engaging style, learning both principles and concepts, and seeing how digital libraries can help you in your present and future endeavors.

© UNESCO 1995-2007 - ID: 11613