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My changed name is Boaz S. Han. I graduated a Post Master degree program, Certificate of Advanced Study in Digital Libraries, in Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). My background until master degree is the Computer Science. The detail about my research and work experiences is in the Resume.

Since 2008, I have proposed International Open Public Digital library (IOPDL) for the future by the faith. The 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. That is, The IOPDL is to make collections freely accessible to the universal public. It will consist of a set of unique world collections and a set of metadata of the selected and cooperating National or Well-Designed Digital Libraries (WDDLs) all over the world in diverse subject domains.

As a baby step to establish it, I had argued we should use an unified standard format to describe metadata to share resources. I designed and developed the Unified Standard Metadata Format in 2009. But, I faced on big barriers that many communities do not want to change their metadata. So, the work is left as my novice work in the library field. 

Next, to discover and select Well-Designed Digital Libraries that will cooperate with the IOPDL, as a prototype, I evaluated existing sixty three digital libraries. The evaluating digital libraries was conducted in 2010 based on the content quality (accuracy, coverage, authority, and satisfaction), usability (accessibility, ease of use, consistency and visible design), and performance (response time and relevance) criteria. It was a big prototype that suggests a way to evaluate existing digital libraries in respect to usability, performance, and content evaluations in their subject domains. I found thirty four Well-Designed Digital Libraries in 15 subject areas based on Library of Congress Classification. The evaluation criteria and methodology are in Evaluating Digital Libraries web page.

But, it is reality that we need to achieve interoperability between the selected well-designed digital libraries that use diverse standards (Jin, 2014). During the research about interoperability problems in transportation libraries with Cambridge Systematics from 2011 to May 2012, 'the Common Terminology (CT)' concept caught my attention.

During May 2012-2014, I have researched to improve metadata interoperability with the Common Terminology (CT). I have developed a Common Terminology (CT) of MARC, MODS, DC, and QDC with supervision of Professor Dubin and support of Dean Smith at GSLIS in UIUC. The developed CT is a set of 12 Common Terms (less than DC) and 58 qualifiers (many fewer than 1000 MARC tags and subfields). The CT has been represented with XML and RDF schema language, diagrams, and the SKOS concepts linking them semantically. The most recent versions of them are on http://ct.iopdl.org/ct-schemas/. The performance of CT has proved by empirical evaluations with 400,000 UIUC MARCXML records and 20,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) QDC records, thanks to their cooperation. The other mapping experiment with 1.5 million Harvard (MARC or their description) records is under development. More details of CT project and results are on http://ct.iopdl.org/ct-performance/ and http://ct.iopdl.org/1-1/. 

<Surprising the Experiment Results Snapshot of http://ct.iopdl.org/ct-performance/>

"As a result of MIT (QDC) to CT conversion evaluation with 20,000 QDC records, CT shows 99.99537% transfer rate, 98.7% lexical match rate, and 100% semantic match rates. The rate of no transferred, 0.00463%, means loss of information rate is extremely low and preserve much information.

As a result of UIUC (MARCXML) to CT conversion evaluation with 400,000 MARCXML, CT shows 95.2709% transfer rate and 100% semantic match rate by SKOS concept (exactMatch rate: 55.347% and broadMatch: 44.6527%). Tag Match Rate out of Total transfer rate, 95.2709%. Non-transfer rate, loss of information rate from MARC records to CT is 4.729%. 4.729% loss of information rate is very low rate, considering that CT has only 12 common terms (less than Dublin Core) and 58 qualifiers (many fewer than MARC tags).

The results proves that CT minimizes considerably loss of information reducing the gaps between MARC and QDC and CT. CT increases significantly accuracy in mappings showing high lexical and semantic match rates. It reduces significantly the gap of different degrees of generality and specificity."

In 2015, I have focused on having cooperation and/or partnership with national libraries and the selected well-designed digital libraries. To date, the cooperating/partner libraries are:

• DPLA (8 million Metadata Application Profile (MAP) records), 

• National Library of Korea (40 thousand old rare collections’ MODS records), 

• Harvard (1.5 million Library Cloud records), 

• MIT (0.35 million QDC records), 

• UIUC (0.39 million RDF/XML records), and 

• Europeana (4 million Europeana Data Model (EDM) of diverse languages’ collections).

By their cooperation, IOPDL has been receiving their metadata. I am analyzing the usage of the provided records developing Python programs, under being consulted by Professor Dubin (he is very good at pointing out my missing points or pieces) and supported by Dean Smith (e.g., paying three months behind mortgage loan) of GSLIS at UIUC. I plan a a research project to lower the language barrier for sharing the world collections, to improve interoperability between multilingual collections, to promote multilingual access to the linguistic diversity of users in the USA, and to provide a multilingual service for the widest public by a universal digital platform, IOPDL.  

Thanks to GOD, my family with two children feed properly, and sleep and rest well at home HE provided, although I have no income since January of 2015, because I have insisted on researching the IOPDL project instead of having other jobs for living. 

I hope you are very interested in my researches and engage in my projects in some ways such as funding, technical support, providing your data, evaluating digital libraries, etc. If you have any questions about my research or my career, please contact me.

My research projects are described in detail at the 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

Last modified: October 09, 2015

My research agenda consists of two closely related projects that are requirements for the proposed International Open Public Digital library (IOPDL) for the future: 

• Improving metadata interoperability(MI) at multiple metadata levels (schema, schema definition language, record, and repository levels); and 

• Evaluating existing digital libraries with respect to their content quality, usability, and performance. 

Research Objective for Improving metadata interoperability(MI)

• Investigate in depth solutions to the problem of metadata interoperability in digital libraries;

• Conduct a case study to improve metadata interoperability by Common Terminology (CT) of MARC, MODS, DC and QDC;

• As a prototype, Empirical Evaluations for the developed CT with designed conversions that converts MARC records provided from Harvard (12 million) and UIUC (10 million) and  QDC records from MIT (20 thousand) into CT by cooperation of three university libraries;

• As a prototype, building Linked Open Data (LOD) and CT union catalog with the CT, designing an integrated search engine of Harvard, MIT and UIUC libraries with their provided online accessible records under their licenses.

Activities for Improving metadata interoperability(MI)

• Researched Compatibility & Convertibility in 20C and Metadata Interoperability (MI) at multi-levels: metadata schema, schema definition language, record, and repository levels.

• Developed the concept and abstract model, and roles of the Common Terminology with Professor Dubin.

• Improved Metadata Interoperability (MI) at the schema metadata model level:

  • Designed and developed Common Terminology of widely used MARC, MODS and DC & QDC.

  • Investigated MARC tag usages in Harvard (12 million) records, UIUC (10 million) (by the designed programs), and WorldCat.

• Achieved MI at the schema definition language metadata model level:

  • Representing the developed CT with RDF schema and XML schema, and SKOS concepts connecting CT semantically on the Web.

• Improved MI at the record level demonstrating the performance of the CT:

  • Conducting a case study with actual metadata of Harvard (MARC), MIT (QDC) and UIUC (MARCXML);

  • Designing Python conversion programs that convert MARC or (Q)DC into CT and measure transfer, lexical and semantic match rates:

    • • Designing QDC of MIT to CT conversion, measuring transfer rate, lexical and semantic match rates

      • MARC of Harvard and UIUC to CT conversion, measuring transfer rate, lexical and semantic match rates

• To achieve MI at repository level:

  • Building Linked Open Data (LOD) and CT union catalog with the converted CT from MARC of Harvard and UIUC, and from (Q)DC of MIT;

  • Experiment for built LOD and CT union catalog by an integrated search engine of three university libraries.

Last modified: March 26, 2024