International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL)

New Developed Websites (from January 1, 2015):

• International Open Public Digital library (IOPDL) project is found on http://www.iopdl.org
• Common Terminology(CT) is found on http://www.ct.iopdl.org

Since 2008, I have proposed 'International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL)'* (Jin, 2014) for the future.

IOPDL is an open public digital library that the public can access collections of all over the world either free of charge or with fewest possible limitations as a non-profit organization.

• The proposed IOPDL will consist of a set of links for cooperating well-designed libraries (WDDLs).
• It will also consist of a set of newly published collections all over the world in many subject areas.
• It will provide a uniformity interface and an integrated search engine.

One method of establishing it

• Existing well-designed digital libraries of the world cooperate and consist of it.
• In this context, well-designed libraries (WDDLs) refer to libraries that are qualified by usability, performance, and content evaluations in their subject domains.
• This approach will reduce budget, time, and effort as well as encourage WDDLs to improve their exclusive contents considerably.

Four requirements to establish it

• General requirement (evaluating existing digital libraries to find WDDLs):
  • Since WDDLs are defined by evaluations, evaluations and analyses for the present digital libraries are required to find WDDLs.
  • Through evaluations, qualified digital libraries will be considered as well-designed digital libraries, in various subject areas (e.g. science, art, technology, history, medicine, education, etc.).
  • Evaluation tools and methods were investigated and developed.
• Technological requirement (achieving metadata interoperability among WDDLs):
  • It is essential to share specialized collections of the selected WDDLs for IOPDL.
  • To share collections of WDDLs, achieving interoperability is necessary.
  • A main problem of achieving interoperability is found in existing techniques at multi metadata levels - schema, record, and repository levels (Chan & Zeng, 2006).
  • Existing techniques achieve interoperability at individual level with limited success.
  • There is not a common way to achieve interoperability at all metadata levels.
  • As a possible solution, historically, a uniform standard approach has been argued:
    • Svenonius argues constructing a common communication format (Svenonius, 1983, p. 2);
    • Lancaster and Smith state a common command language and a common vocabulary would be an optimum situation in the mapping (Lancaster & Smith, 1983, p. 21).
  • As a practice of uniform standard approach, thus, a unified metadata format or Common Terminology (CT) is suggested.
  • It will make easy to achieve interoperability and to retrieve effectively and efficiently resources with uniformity.
  • It will be one of policies of IOPDL for WDDLs to cooperate in sharing their collections.
• Financial requirement (building financial support model as a non-profit organization):
  • Need for financial aid is just as significant as need for cooperation among the chosen WDDLs.
  • The suggested method for financial aid is that every states and the government of the U.S. and of participating countries support small amount of their budgets.
  • That is, the participating governments of the world should allot somewhat of year budgets for establishing and maintaining the IOPDL.
  • Contributions of foundations and government agencies (e.g. Institute of Museum and Library Service, etc.) are fundamental, as the DPLA is supported (DPLA, 2013).
  • Contributors as an organization or as an individual will play important roles to establish and maintain the world property, IOPDL.
• One united organization requirement (establishing and managing the IOPDL):
  • Above three requirements (general, technological, and financial requirements) should be governed by a united organization.
  • The united organization managed by a union of WDDLs or governments of participating countries must be established so as:
    • to decide which digital libraries can be WDDLs of the world in various subject area (general requirement);
    • to encourage and mediate to collaborate with WDDLs, states, and countries;
    • to achieve and improve interoperability (technological requirement);
    • to develop technology to pull metadata of WDDLs and convert them into CT achieving metadata interoperability;
    • to develop technology to provide an integrated powerful search engine;
    • to purchase, preserve and maintain object materials of IOPDL;
    • to realize and govern financial supports of states and governments of participating countries, and contributions of individual or organizations (financial requirement);
    • to keep the non-profit purposes; and
    • to provide the best service for the public all over the world.

Visions of the IOPDL

Once the IOPDL is established, ultimately, it has important visions.

• First, it encourages WDDLs to develop and improve their specialized domains in order to provide better quality of collections, usability and performance.
• Second, it can provide life-long learning opportunities for the public and for all ages of the world with rich resources.
• Third, it will play significant roles as an international public digital library of the world, realizing the human rights in accessing the common property of mankind, knowledge.
• Lastly, through the one united organization for IOPDL, the world can work together for the public all over the world with one accord.

Ultimately, IOPDL will provide life-long learning opportunities for the public and for all ages of the world with cutting-edge technologies as a learning center (Jin, Proposal, 2014).

Reference

Chan, L. M., & Zeng, M. L. (2006, 06). Metadata Interoperability and Standardization – A Study of Methodology Part I. Achieving Interoperability at the Schema Level. D-Lib Magazine, Volume 12(Number 6). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/chan/06chan.html

DPLA. (2013). Retrieved from Digital Public Library of America: http://dp.la/

Jin, S. (2014). The International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL): A Proposal for the Future. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50101

Jin, S. (2014). The International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL): A Proposal for the Future. Evaluating Existing Digital Libraries with the Suggested Criteria: Content, Usability, and Performance Evaluation Criteria. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50102

Lancaster, F. W., & Smith, L. (1983). Compatibility Issues Affecting Information Systems and Services. General Information Programme and UNISIST.

Svenonius, E. (1983). Compatibility of Retrieval Languages. Introduction to a Forum. Int. Classif., 10(No.1), 2-4.

*The National Open Public Digital Library (NOPDL) was proposed in 2008. The NOPDL was renamed as the International Open Public Digital Library (IOPDL) in 2013, since Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) was launched.

Last modified: August 11, 2014