Speaker
Veronica Guidetti
(ESA-ESRIN)
Description
DILIGENT is an ongoing EU IST project whose goal is to
deliver an infrastructure
making possible to define and dynamically create virtual
digital libraries by reusing
available resources. A virtual digital library is a pool of
resources dynamically
aggregated to meet the user requirements where these
resources range from information
sources to services exploiting computing and storage Grid
capabilities. In addition
to such main goal and to prove the viability of the released
infrastructure to meet
their requirements and improve their daily work, two user
communities (ARTE and
ImpECt) belonging to different application contexts have
been selected. As a
consequence, DILIGENT is a project that sits over Grid and
Digital Library (DL)
technologies and it is influenced by requirements arising in
the Cultural Heritage
and Earth Observation domains (the user communities). In
particular, the project
heavily relies on the concept of resources sharing because
the foundational concept
of virtual digital library has been envisaged by elaborating
on and cannot be
implemented without this Grid facility.
By providing to the user communities (i) the capability to
dynamically create DL, and
(ii) to have access to an huge computing and storage
capability, all this with an
acceptable management cost, DILIGENT promises to
revolutionise the way through which
joint research is conducted and propose novel application
scenarios. New kinds of
functionality can be envisaged or improvement of already
existing functionality can
be implemented, the management of new kind of knowledge
becomes feasible, new way to
organise research processes can be implemented.
In such a scenario EGEE plays a fundamental role. In fact,
being EGEE in charge to
provide a big production quality Grid infrastructure serving
a myriad of
applications, it represents the most attractive provider for
an organised and ready
to use pool of computing and storage facilities.
The Diligent project is currently testing the first
prototype that will be delivered
by the end of September ’06.
According to the Diligent implementation plan, this version
is not fully-fledged.
Rather it supports the basic DL functionalities required to
satisfy the main user
communities’ requirements.
The aim of this demo is to introduce the current Diligent
prototype through the
presentation of the ImpECt and the ARTE application scenarios.
The ImpECt scenario (Implementation of Environmental
Conventions) demonstrates the
use of a grid-based digital library for Earth Sciences.
The ImpECt digital library, besides the Diligent basic
services, is currently
providing access to the following information sources and
services:
(1) a collection of processed satellite images showing the
vegetation index;
(2) a collection of digital objects about background
information on MERIS;
(3) the MGVI (MERIS Global Vegetation Index) external service.
The sources together with their metadata are maintained by
the DILIGENT content
management and metadata management, and can be queried by
region, time, and content.
The MGVI service is integrated by means of the DILIGENT
process management. In
addition, searches on external sources (e.g. Google) are
supported using the DILIGENT
search facilities.
Search results can be browsed and used for generating, for a
particular time frame
and location, environmental reports based on a user-defined
template. These
user-defined reports can then be saved and indexed in the
digital library as newly
available information. The user interface for search, result
browsing, and report
generation is realized by means of portlets hosted on a
GridSphere portal.
The ARTE scenario demonstrates the use of a grid-based
digital library for cultural
heritage domain. Its community, represented by educational
institutions (Schools
and/or Universities) and by the Italian educational
broadcasting network, shares a
set of archives with multimedia content with the aim to
combine them in complex
learning objects, named courses. Once a course is built, it
is stored and made
available to be reused in and adapted for new didactic
contexts.
In addition to the management of courses, the ARTE DL
provides functionalities to
store, manage, and retrieve all kind of information objects
related to them, such as
images, texts, audio/video recording, etc.
The current ARTE DL provides access to a number of community
specific information
sources, such as between the others, the "Progetto
Emblemata. 'Con parola brieve e
con figura' Libri antichi di imprese e di emblemi"; “A
Celebration Of Women Writers”;
“Arts And Humanities Data Service”; “Bayerische”; “Gallica”;
“Perseus”; “Emblem
Project Utrecht”; “RAI Medita” collections.
In order to securely store and make available these set of
copyrighted information
objects on the Diligent Grid infrastructure, the Diligent
content security facilities
have been largely used.
Summary
The aim of this demo is to introduce the current Diligent
prototype through the
presentation of the ImpECt and the ARTE application scenarios.
The ImpECt scenario (Implementation of Environmental Conventions)
demonstrates the
use of a grid-based digital library for Earth Sciences.
The ARTE scenario demonstrates the use of a grid-based digital
library for cultural
heritage domain.
Primary author
Dr
Pasquale Pagano
(CNR-ISTI)
Co-author
Veronica Guidetti
(ESA-ESRIN)
