 |
|
Web site funded by the European Commission.
The site author is solely responsible for its content.
The site does not represent the opinion of the Community and the
Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of data
appearing herein.
Reproduction of any part of the site is authorised,
except for commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged.
Some of the documents and multimedia sequences on this
site might contain references, or pointers, to information maintained
by other organisations. Please note that we do not control and cannot
guarantee the relevance, timeliness or accuracy of these outside
materials.
|
|
| |
The purpose of COVAX is to analyse and draw up the technical solutions
required to provide access through the Internet to homogeneously-encoded
document descriptions of archive, library and museum collections
based in the application of SGML/XML.
The project will demonstrate its feasibility through a prototype
containing a meaningful sample of all the different types of documents
to build a global system for search and retrieval. It is based on
the assumption that in libraries, archives and museums an enormous
number of descriptions could be made available over the Internet
by converting existing records or by creating new ones to specific
SGML/XML DTD's.
The basic operational core is considered to be the application of
SGML and the various DTD currently being defined in libraries (MARC
DTD), archives (EAD) and museums (AMICO), as well as the DTD defined
by the Text Encoding Initiative for the mark-up of electronic versions
of cultural texts. The use of SGML/XML will allow standardisation,
interoperability and interconnectivity between libraries, archives
and museum in the processes of handling, browsing, searching and
retrieval of all kinds of descriptions and documents. The application
of XML will allow a standard distribution of primary sources through
Internet and will provide more widespread access to all citizens
World-wide.
|
 |
| |
Operational objectives:
1. The basic operational core is the application of XML
and the various DTD currently being used in library materials descriptions
(MARC DTD), archives finding aids (EAD) and museums finding aids
(MUS-EAD), as well as the DTD defined by the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI) for the mark-up of electronic versions of cultural texts.
The use of XML will allow the use of a domain specific mark-up language
for handling, browsing, searching and retrieval of all kind of descriptions
and documents. In particular, it will allow the application of XML
as the means for standard distribution in the realm of the Internet.
|
Technical objectives, should be:
|
|
A coherent sample of records and documents from libraries,
archives and museum will be selected among the partners.
|
|
Analysis of existing DTDs and proposal for a common information
structure for all types of documents.
|
|
By means of the appropriate conversion tools each user partner
will convert their selected records and documents from the
existing formats in use to the appropriate DTD.
|
|
The conversion tools developed must work with the initial
set of documents and with subsequent updates of new records
created in the existing systems of each content owner partner.
|
2. To form a network of repositories as a distributed database
so that both users and other computer systems can access them as
a single one. COVAX will act as a meta-library, offering access
to a huge repository of contemporary culture the user will see as
a single library with book references, finding aids, facsimile images,
museum items, etc.
|
Technical objectives:
|
|
Each user partner must hold their own XML repository.
|
|
Development of a meta-search engine to access all the distributed
repositories.
|
|
COVAX meta-library must access any single repository and
also all the distributed repositories belonging to user partners.
|
3. Definition and development of common interfaces and software
components to offer an easy access to query for, retrieve the items
held in repositories and display information.
|
Technical objectives:
|
|
Definition of basic information elements for search.
|
|
Definition of interfaces for search and retrieval in different
languages.
|
|
Definition of common protocols to transmit operations and
display information.
|
|
The interfaces will allow different kind of searches: global,
to all the documents and distributed databases, and specific,
to a selected kind of documents (i.e. only museum type) or
a selected institution.
|
|
Creation, handling and maintenance of links between XML records
and with digital surrogates of documents or external entities.
|
|
Retrieval and display of XML documents.
|
|
Usability of the system will be checked by a wide range of
users: scholars, educators, librarians, archivist, etc.
|
|
|
 |
