Semantic Digital Library Framework
Talia is a framework for building semantic digital libraries and research platforms. Semantics means it can eat any type of metadata, and expose it as RDF. This makes it compatible with other cool Semantic Web apps including SWikyNotes.
A framework is a set of libraries to simplify the life of programmers while developing semantic digital libraries and research platforms. Talia is written in Ruby on Rails, but runs on JRuby, this way you can mix and match Java and Ruby code. Talia runs in any java servlet container like Tomcat or Glassfish.
If you download Talia, you won’t get any user interface shipped with it, just the plain framework. However there are a number of user interfaces available that are also Open Source. Here’s some:
TALIA GENERIC USER INTERFACE
This is the generic user interface, you can use it as a starting point for building your own. It includes some cool widgets too (like ipod-style ontology browsers and a timeline view). The generic ui ihas a thing we callsemantic template matching. It means that it will try to undarstand the type of the resource to visualise (is it a person? a book?).
If it’s something it knows (you told it what it is in the ontology) and Talia has a corresponding template, then it will use that one template to show the resource to the user. If it doesn’t it will use the generic one. This way you can make you collection smarter but you can still publish any type of stuff, without caring too much of metadata schemas, conformance, database schemas and other annoying things like that.
New, unpredicted data coming in your library? New types of resources you didn’t expect? musical scores maybe? or antique manuscripts? Just pick a metadata format, describe them, throw them in and you’re done. You want it to look fancier? Then be creative and make a new cool template for that old manuscripts!
COOL STUFF FOR FREE
Using Talia, you will also get some cool stuff for free. One is an embedded IIPImage server and client which you can use to show very high resolution images to the users. Another is a cool widget that automattically creates a timeline out of the resources that have been described with temporal metadata.
INTEROPERABILITY ON STEROIDS!
Interoperability is very important in the Digital Library ecosystem. Unfortunately, despite it has become a buzzword, it is not easy to obtain. On the Semantic Web interoperability is the name of the game, it is all about interoperability. If you have read our vision you probably noticed that we are obsessed with interoperability.
Talia exposes metadata via OAI-PMH, which is the exchange protocol used by many DL systems. By default the Talia OAI-PMH provider exposes metadata in simple Dublin Core XML, but also in ESE XML, the format used by Europeana.
We believe that OAI-PMH is an important way of exposing metadata, also because it is used by many digital archives. On the other hand, we think it’s a bit limited. The Semantic Web and in particular the Linked Data initiative, propose more powerful ways to achieve interoperability. Talia also exposes metadata in RDF in a way that is compliant with the Linked Data initiative.
