COMP3410/COMP6341 IT in E-Commerce
Tutorial: Electronic Document Management and Digital Library

The aim of these questions is to get you thinking about some of the issues discussed in the lectures. You can attempt these in your assigned tut/lab time, or at a time convenient to you. We encourage you to discuss the questions, and solutions to them, with your fellow students, either in person or on the E-Commerce.talk forum. Any feedback is always welcome.

In the tut/lab, proceed as follows: Form a group of three or four students. Choose one or two of the following questions that interests you. Spend about 90 minutes researching and discussing this question in your group, and prepare a 5 minute presentation for the class. In the last 30 minutes of your class, the groups will take turns to present their findings and then discuss them with the whole class.

  1. Digital library: In August 2007 at its General Assembly Meeting in Addis Ababa, the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) decided to have the ACS built it a Digital Library.

    Read the "Report of the IFIP Digital Library Selection Task Force", (27 August 2007) and consider:

    1. What are the main issues and problems are evident with setting up the digital library? How might e-document management and e-publishing guidelines be used to address these? You might reference those mentioned in the lectures: "Requirements for Electronic Document Management" (OGIT, 1995) and "Web Publishing Guide" (AGIMO, 2007).

    2. Which technologies discussed in the course might be used to address IFIP's needs? Why?

  2. Metadata: Last week Tom Worthington asked librarians to test the first version/a> of the IFIP Digital Library. This is implemented using the same Open Journal Systems (OJS) open source software used for the ACS Digital Library. It has an interface for the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Use the Open Archives Initiative - Repository Explorer to access the ACS DL OAI interface:

    1. Enter the OAI base URL: http://dl.ifip.org/iojs/index.php/ifip/oai into the Open Archives Initiative - Repository Explorer and select the verb "Identify" to see the Archive Self-Description. It is not necessary to enter any parameters for this. What version of the OAI protocol is being used? What form of compression is offered? What is the oai repository Identifier and sample Identifier?
    2. Now use the "List Metadata Formats" verb to find what formats is the Metadata available in from the archive. What is each useful for? Which would you choose to use to use and why?
    3. Enter one of the metadata prefix you found above, as a parameter, and select the verb "List Identifiers" to list all papers in the archive. Find the entry for article: 1273, "Differentiated Survivability in a Distributed GMPLS-Based IP-over-Optical Network" by David Harle and Saud Albarrak near the bottom of the list. Click the link to display the record. What metadata elements are not filled in? This paper is from the conference proceedings of "Optical Network Design and Modelling" held in 2008. Does the date for the paper look correct? Why might there be blank and incorrect metadata entries?
  3. Create an Atom Feed with two papers from ICT and Learning for the Net Generation. Check your work with the W3C Feed Validation Service. You can create the feed using the text editor, but consider how XSLT could be used to create the feed from the OAI metadata.

Remember that even though your group may only work on one of these questions, all of this material is relevant to the course. Pay attention in the other groups' talks, and think about spending some extra time on research over the lecture break.