PSNC Digital Libraries Team

dLibra 5.0 is still under intensive development. One of the most important things, that we are working on, is the user interface of the dLibra Readers Application. By changing old mechanism and adding new features, with extensive use of Web 2.0 approach, we are trying to improve user experience, of this most often used part of the dLibra system.
Recently we have modified the search mechanism and interface, in which we have previously implemented some important changes, like thumbnails in search results view. Currently we have also changed mechanism of selecting ambiguous synonyms values and filtering by collections. On the attached screen we can see the current result.

Selection of the ambiguous values is now visible on the left side of the search results page. For those, who have already used digital library based on the dLibra system, changes of values presentation can be noticeable; interface is also more friendly and intuitive. Other change allows a selection of more than one collection by which search results are narrowed.

We have also prepared some changes in content view interface. When viewing content on the bottom of the screen there is a new functional toolbar, in which there will be possibility to use few options from the user profile.

In relation to the previous version of dLibra there is also a change in view handlers selection – now each data format will have its default view handler and option of changing it to another (if possible) will be presented in the new toolbar.

The last thing, which is worth to mentioning, is some improvements to new publication creation mechanism in WWW application of the dLibra. New functionality was presented on dLibra Users Meeting at the PBC 2009 conference. Partly thanks to our users voices we have decided, before the dLibra 5.0 release, to prepare some improvements. One of attached screenshots shows the new interface of second step of publication creator.

Presented features are in test phase and can be changed before the final release. In the middle of August we are planning to stop the development of this dLibra version and start functional tests before the final release.

On July 19th  2010 the Jagiellonian Digital Library based on dLibra software officially started. This digital library is partially sponsored by the European Community from the funds of European Regional Development Fund for the Operational Programme ‘Infrastructure and Environment’ for years 2007 – 2013, Priority 11. “Culture and Cultural Heritage” Action 11.1. “Protecting and preserving cultural heritage of supra-regional importance”.

Looking at first publications it is worth noticing two different ways of maps presentation. One of them uses Zoomify, which has been used before in Kujawsko-Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa. The example of the map presented this way is Mappa szczegulna [!] Woiewodztwa Płockiego i Ziemi Dobrzynskiey… The second way of presentation is based on The Google Maps Image Cutter mechanism developed by Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis – University College London. The example can be Karta pocztowa Królestwa Polskiego przez K. Widulińskeigo Sekretarza Jeneral(nego) Poczt wydana na r. 1827.

Viewing maps with any of these methods does not require installing any additional software. Zoomify based on flash technology seems to be a bit slower than Google solution using JavaScript. However, two different publications were used to compare both solutions and this opinion might not be objective. Beside that, the functionality of both Zoomify and The Google Maps Image Cutter is similar. More advanced versions of Zoomify are payable but its free basic version supplies enough functionality to successfully present maps on digital library pages. The Google Maps Image Cutter is all free.

We encourage digital libraries to use both solutions. It should increase the attractiveness of the presented maps or drawings.

On 14-15 of April 2010 in Kiev, Ukraine the IV conference “Library and Book in the Context of Time” was held. The conference scope joins scientific topics with the information useful for practitioners. The main organizer of this conference is the National Parliament Library of Ukraine. In this year the main topic of the conference was “Libraries activities on the preservation of national cultural heritage”.
First day of the conference was dedicated to the multi-aspect analysis of this topic including legal issues, practical experiences and case studies. During this day a presentation “Polish Digital Libraries in the PIONIER Network” was made by Marcin Werla and Anton Kozik from the PSNC Digital Libraries Team. The presentation shown the role of PSNC in the development of digital libraries in Poland, the dLibra Digital Library Framework and national and international projects working on metadata aggregation (including the Polish Digital Libraries Federation, EuropeanaLocal and Europeana).
The second day of the conference was devoted to a practical seminar, which main topic was “Presentation of national cultural heritage in the digital environment”. The seminar was mostly about various IT solutions in the libraries domain. A presentation by Anton Kozik was made during this day on the dLibra system and its functionality. This was possible because of the cooperation between PSNC and Lviv National Scientific Library established with the help of the Digital Center company. One of the first results of this cooperation was the professional Ukrainian translation of the dLibra system.
After the presentation there were several questions of quite wide scope: from the technical details of dLibra to the organizational issues of the Digital Libraries Federation.
We hope, that the result of this conference will be the increased interest in dLibra and digital libraries in general in the community of Ukrainian librarians. This can be the start of cooperation with organizations interested in this topic and the basis for future exchange of experience in the digital libraries development.
It is worth to mention that one of the popular systems for the creation of digital libraries behind our easter border is called… T-Libra. The on-line demo of this software is available here (registration required).

On the 22nd of March 2010 the Wielkopolska Digital Library has reached the number of 100 000 publications available on-line. The publication which was published as number 100 000 is the Kurier Poznański issue from 1884.06.05 (R.13 nr 128), published in the WDL by Mr Wojciech Zagartowski from the Department of Electronic Humanistic Texts of the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Congratualtions to Mr Wojciech and all other supporting the existence and development of the Wielkopolska Digital Library!

Year 2009 appeared to be the record year in terms of the number of newly started digital libraries. Yesterday on dLibra project home page, 16th entry concerning 2009 has been added to the list of dLibra installations. It means that in 2009 there were started 4 more digital libraries than in 2008 (see http://dlibra.psnc.pl/biblioteki/). Moreover, from the information that we receive it appears that 2009 is not finally “closed” – there is still a chance to increase the number of newly started digital libraries in 2009 by several entries.

Digital Libraries Federation (DLF) can also be proud of the record – in 2009 the total number of digital objects available through DLF increased by around 150 000 – it is twice as much as in comparison with 2008, when this number increased by around 75 000!

One of the project from Europeana group – Europeana Connect is currently preparing several surveys and usability tests to evaluate new elements on the Europeana website. If you are interested in improvement of Europeana sign up as a Europeana test user. In order to join you need to fill in a small survey with information about yourself and your use of the internet and mobile phone.

dLibra also needs some testers! dLibra 5.0 is developed in a bit different way than a previous version. If you are interested in taking a closer look at things which will be available in 5.0 take a look at our dlTeam repository which is using dLibra 5.0. Software still may contain some bugs, if you spot any – let us know!

source: http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/news.php?area=News&pag=26

Lucene 3.0.0 was released on 25 November 2009. Lucene is an open Java framework that is used for indexing and searching text in dLibra software. Lucene 3.0.0 is the first release with Java 5 as a minimum requirement. The API was cleaned up to make use of Java 5′s advantages. You can find many optimizations and new features in the latest Lucene, though it is not fully compatible with earlier releases due to many changes. The most important are near real-time search capabilities added to IndexWriter, new query types, per segment searching and caching, improvements in wildcard searching, improved Unicode support, high-performance handling of numeric fields and many more. Detailed information on changes in Lucene framework is available here.

We are planning to use Lucene 3.0.0 in one of the future versions of dLibra software. It will help us improve indexing and searching performance.

Iławska Biblioteka Cyfrowa (IBC), run by the Municipal Public Library of Iława (Poland), was recently made available on-line. IBC aims to build an open digital collection of materials concerning the Iława district. These are mostly articles from local and national magazines and books, manuscripts, maps, postcards or photos. Currently available are more than 800 objects, divided into three main collections: “Articles from national magazines,” “Articles from regional magazines” and “Books”. Thanks to the agreement with several publishers, the IBC can publish for free digital copies of articles from regional newspapers.

Iławska Digital Library is another local digital library, similar to Nowohucka Digital Library and Digital Library of Wejherowo. It is worth to take care of the visibility on the web in case of such  small digital libraries. Presented resources are unique and strongly connected with local themes. Therefore, it is difficult to find them for users who have no awareness of the existence of such library. It is much easier to find large digital libraries, such as the WBC or KPBC, because they publish not only local material but also materials generally related and important to Polish or European culture.

Issue 3/2009 of the PIONIER Magazine, published by PIONIER Consortium and Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center is available on-line in the PSNC Digtial Libraries Team Repository. This issue is devoted mostly to digital libraries.

Silesian Digital Library published recently materials from didactic workshop titled “Web 2.0 – narzędzia, wpływ na biblioteki i społeczny obieg informacji” (Web 2.0 – tools, influence on libraries and social information circulation) organized by the Institute of Librarianship and Information Science of the MCS University during the “Library and information” conference on 20 and 21 of November 2008. These materials were published as a so called “group publication” (i.e. with complex internal structure) connecting presentations from particular speeches merged into a PDF document, and audio and video recordings from these speeches.

Silesian Digital Library uses the dLibra software, and the publication described above is an interesting example of the multimedia possibilities of this software. More multimedia materials available In Polish digital libraries can be found via the Digital Libraries Federation.