IEEE TCDL Bulletin
 
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TCDL Bulletin
Current 2006
Volume 3   Issue 1

 

Digital Library Projects in Taiwan

Hsueh-hua Chen
Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University
Co-PI, Applications & Services Division, National Digital Archives Program, Taiwan
<sherry@ntu.edu.tw>

 

Abstract

The development of national-level digital library projects in Taiwan began in 1998. The initial project – the Digital Museum Project (DMP), sponsored by the National Science Council (NSC) – included several topic-based projects and technical support projects. After three phases of the DMP had been completed, the five-year National Digital Archives Program (NDAP) was launched in 2002. The main goal of the NDAP program is to promote and coordinate content digitization and preservation in leading museums, archives, universities, research institutes, and other organizational content holders in Taiwan. This paper focuses on the development of the DMP and NDAP, including their background, organization and functions, outcomes, and research-related issues. This paper also describes some obstacles and challenges of digital libraries that may influence the effectiveness of digital library development in Taiwan.

I. Introduction

The impact on human societies of various fast-developing information technologies has been studied for a long time. These studies have led us to believe that we are now facing critical cultural and social changes – changes in the means of communication from printed materials to electronic documents, and changes in lifestyle. Information technologies provide people many opportunities to digitize cultural treasures and heritage objects so they can be preserved and utilized in the digital era. Otherwise, some of them might gradually become inaccessible or lost entirely. Realizing the importance of digital content, the National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan initiated pilot projects in 1998 to study the feasibility of digitizing national cultural holdings. The first such project was the Digital Museum Project (DMP), which lasted from 1998 to 2001. Dozens of universities and research organizations participated in this project [1].

After three phases of the DMP had been completed, a five-year National Digital Archives Program (NDAP) was launched in 2002 with support from the NSC. The main goal of this national program has been to promote and coordinate content digitization and preservation in leading museums, archives, universities, research institutes, and other organizational content holders in Taiwan. The NDAP is also a sub-project of e-Taiwan, which belongs to a higher-level national development project in Taiwan.

In May 2002, the Executive Yuan of Taiwan proposed "Challenge 2008", a comprehensive six-year national development plan to foster creativity and cultivate talent among the Taiwanese people and to transform Taiwan into a "green silicon island". The plan is estimated to cost NT$2.6 trillion (approximately US$75 billion) [2]. Among the ten identified major development areas in the "Challenge 2008" plan is the construction of Digital Taiwan (e-Taiwan). The e-Taiwan project aims to adopt information and communication technologies for developing Taiwan into a new knowledge-based economy, upgrading the competitive advantages of local industries, establishing a highly efficient government, and promoting a high-quality information society [3].

This paper focuses on the development of the DMP and NDAP, including their background, organization and functions, and outcomes, and on the research-related issues of digital libraries. This paper also describes some of the obstacles and challenges facing digital libraries that may influence the effectiveness of digital library development in Taiwan.

II. Digital Museum Project in Taiwan

The main goal of the Digital Museum Project (DMP) was to integrate and establish several topical or technology-based digital museums that focus on disseminating cultural and educational content via information technology to the general public and students in Taiwan. The DMP project was divided into three phases.

  • Phase 1 (September 1998 - August 1999) was composed of two types of projects: topic-based projects (digital museums on various subject topics), and technology support projects. The topic-based projects in the first year included local or traditional culture and natural science subjects. For example, "The Discovery of Tamsui River" and "Indigenous Taiwanese – The Pingpu People" were about local Taiwanese culture; "Taiwanese Butterflies" and "Native Plants and Fishes of Taiwan" were about natural science and environmental ecology. There were also three digital museums projects on traditional Chinese culture: "Traditional Thoughts and Literature (The Four Books, Lou-Chuang, Poems of the Tang Dynasty)", "An Immortal Palace – Han Dynasty Culture and Burials", and "Firearms and Warfare of the Ming and Ching Dynasties". Technology support projects in Phase 1 consisted of five different areas: geographic information systems, word net, metadata, digital rights management, and digital library evaluation [4].
  • Phase 2 (January 2000 to December 2000) was announced to the general research community through a request-for-proposal invitation. It drew wide attention and attracted nearly 90 topic-based proposals, from which 12 proposals were selected and funded, including four continuations from the first phase of the DMP [5]. During the second phase, two technology support projects, one on a metadata management system and the other on digital watermarking, were carried out. Since the second phase projects were open to everyone in academia, the principal investigators of the proposals were affiliated with many universities and organizations with valuable cultural heritage.
  • Phase 3 (2001) of the DMP included 15 topic-based projects of a wide variety, such as language literature, religious art, folk culture, historical relics, mathematics, biology, architecture, and geography. The outcome of the DMP was quite fruitful; however, the scale and budget of the DMP (only $130 million NTD, ca. US$4 million) was not adequate to cover the entire cultural heritage of Taiwan. Hence, in 2002 the NSC proposed a new program, the National Digital Archives Program (NDAP), as a sub-project of e-Taiwan.

III. Background of the National Digital Archives Program

The first phase of the NDAP (http://www.ndap.org.tw) was launched on January 1, 2002, and is a 5-year program spanning the period from 2002 to 2006. This program, also sponsored by the NSC, is to promote and coordinate content digitization and preservation at leading museums, archives, universities, research institutes, and other major organizational content holders in Taiwan. The goals of the NDAP are designed to accomplish the ultimate mission of preserving cultural heritage and sustaining cultural development activities in Taiwan. The goals are to [6]:

  1. Preserve national cultural collections.
  2. Popularize fine cultural holdings.
  3. Revitalize cultural heritage and cultural development.
  4. Invigorate cultural, content, and value-added industries.
  5. Promote knowledge and information sharing.
  6. Enhance research, education, and life-long learning.
  7. Improve literacy, creativity and quality of life.
  8. Embrace collaboration and international community.

There are nine institutions who are participating in the NDAP, including: Academia Historica, Academia Sinica, National Central Library, National Museum of History, National Museum of Natural Science, National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Historica, and Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council. More organizations, public or private, are anticipated to join the effort to contribute to this program in the future.

The NDAP budget for the first five years is $339, $368, $530, $638 and $645 million NTD, respectively, (approximately $10.3, $11.2, $16.2, 19.5 and 19.7 million USD). The second phase of NDAP will start in 2007 and covers the period 2007 to 2011. It is estimated that the budget for the second phase will be higher than the first phase.

IV. Organization and Functions of the National Digital Archives Program

The organization and functions of the NDAP are shown in Figure 1, which includes three components: 1. Program Office, 2. Institutional Projects and 3. Non-solicited Projects [7].

NDAP organization chart

Figure 1: Organization Chart of the NDAP

1. Program Office

There are five divisions in the Program Office: 1. Content Development Division, 2. Research and Development of Technology Division, 3. Applications & Services Division, 4. Training & Promotion Division, and 5. Operations Management Division. These divisions will jointly carry out the overall planning organized by the Program Office, build common infrastructures, and establish general content processing guidelines and specifications for all participating institutions and non-solicited projects.

1.1 Content Development Division

The primary tasks of the Content Development Division are to:

  1. Survey the quantity of specific types of objects collected in participating institutions, monitor the progress of digitization for each participant, and document the working procedure for each project;
  2. Organize the NDAP Content Development Committee for supervising the progress of this division and working groups for contents such as paintings, rubbings, works of art, botanical specimens, etc.;
  3. Build home pages for the Content Development Division and each thematic group;
  4. Assist (on a consulting basis) all the participating institutions to implement their digitization projects smoothly.

The Content Development Division also plays a major role in setting up a content development strategy for future projects, establishing working standards for potential participants, and working out a mechanism for the division of labor for participating institutions. The Content Development Division invites representatives who participate in the NDAP to form the OAI testbed team, to construct the union catalog of the national digital archives with OAI-PMH, and to handle system technology.

1.2 Research & Development of Technology Division

The main purpose of the Research & Development of Technology Division is to carry out the plans of the program office and to pursue research and development efforts for many aspects of digital archives technologies. This includes the:

  1. Establishment of standardized information reference guidelines for digital content creation, storage, and processing;
  2. Development of common and application-specific information processing infrastructure and tools;
  3. Construction of the public information system;
  4. Services for digital archives storage and backup; and
  5. Assistance in technology skills and personnel development training for members in participating organizations.

1.3 Applications & Services Division

The Applications & Services Division, which serves as a bridge between the content holders and digital content industries, is designated to fulfill the utilization goal of sustaining digital preservation activities, promoting digital content industries and improving creativity and productivity. This division has four major missions:

  1. Fund seed projects to build up experience and skills on creative-use;
  2. Lay out marketing strategies to promote digital content industries;
  3. Integrate resources and uses effectively to increase business transactions;
  4. Promote a virtual industrial park to create agglomerated economy.

1.4 Training & Promotion Division

The Training & Promotion Division organizes training courses, conferences, and workshops for participants of the NDAP projects as well as for librarians, archivists, and people from industry. In order to promote the use of the end products of NDAP, the Training & Promotion Division conducts several workshops for elementary and high school teachers. An instructional design contest is held each year, and the contest winners are invited to demonstrate their works. The division also attends the Taipei International Book Exhibition and conducts promotional activities with the media. Objectives of those activities are to:

  1. Offer training courses for people involved in digital libraries or digital archives;
  2. Assist professionals in libraries, museums, and archives to understand the development of digital archive technology;
  3. Strengthen the abilities of elementary and high school teachers to use digital archive resources;
  4. Invoke public interest in digital archives;
  5. Promote the end products of the National Digital Archives Program.

1.5 Operations Management Division

The Operations Management Division assists the NDAP Program Office in various administration matters. The major functions of this division are to:

  1. Provide administrative support for the Program Office;
  2. Assist external advisory committee in its evaluation of the NDAP endeavor;
  3. Operate the necessary information systems;
  4. Prepare various NDAP publications; and
  5. Maintain a small library about archival digitization efforts in different countries.

2. Institutional Projects

The Institutional Projects are conducted by major content holders and providers of digital resources in Taiwan. There were nine participating institutions, including Academia Historica, Academia Sinica, National Central Library, National Museum of History, National Museum of National Science, National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Historica, and Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council. These institutions hold national cultural heritage and collections, and take leadership positions in different areas. Digitizing their archives not only preserves cultural treasures, but it also facilitates new applications to be developed for these collections and cultural holdings.

3. Non-solicited Projects

Non-solicited Projects are those projects selected from proposals submitted to open Request-for-Proposal (RFP) announcements. From 2002 to 2006, 282 projects were selected, including: 90 for digital content development, 51 for technology research and development, 86 for various applications of digital archives, and 55 for creative learning (see Table 1).

Table 1
Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Total
Digital Content Development
Non-Solicited Proposals
6 8 22 25 29 90
Technology Research and Development
Non-solicited Projects
5 6 10 17 13 51
Applications of Digital Archives
Non-solicited Projects
16 15 25 16 14 86
Creative Learning
Non-solicited Projects
N/A N/A 10 25 20 55
Total 27 29 67 83 76 282

Content Thematic Groups & Technology Working Groups

In order for the NDAP to progress efficiently, the Program Office has provided a common mechanism for coordination, technological support and personnel training. In the coordination aspect, 16 thematic groups and 6 working groups were formed in 2005. The thematic groups provide a coordination mechanism to solve problems arising in digitizing and managing collections in the respective areas. The themes supported by these 16 groups are: Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Archives, Artifacts, Botany, Calligraphy & Painting, Chinese Classics Full-text Database, Geology, Journalism & Mass Media, Linguistics, Maps & Remote images, Rare Books, Stone & Bronze Rubbings, Video, and Zoology. The six working groups for technology are: Reference Platforms for Digital Archives, Naming and Distributed Searching, Formats of Digital Objects and Archives, Digital Archives Services, Multimedia Digitization Process and Multilingual Information Processing. These working groups meet on a regular basis to discuss technology-related issues associated with building human-centered, scalable, interoperable, and cross-culture systems. These discussions enable specialists in the social sciences and humanities to create, access and use digital contents, and enable general users to browse, learn, and enrich their intellectual content, and hence improve their quality of life.

V. Outcomes of the National Digital Archives Program

The end products of the NDAP will be collected into the "Taiwan Digital Archives (TDA)." The digital resources in the TDA are divided into three levels: the archive level, the open-market level and the public information system level. The resources of the archive level are for preservation purposes and are accessible only on a case-by-case basis. The resources of the open-market level are to be released (subject to some costs) for commercial use, from which value-added digital content and digital services can be developed. The resources of the public information system level are for educational purposes and are free of charge for public consumption. Figure 2 illustrates a scenario of what the NDAP considers the derived benefits of the TDA to be [8].

In the future, besides preserving the national collections, promoting Taiwan's cultural holdings, and encouraging information/knowledge sharing among the organizations holding content and citizens, the NDAP will continue to promote new applications and services over content collections and cultural holdings. By using digital resources of TDA, the NDAP can then achieve the goal of developing a content rich and creative society, promoting industry and economy that boost creativity, productivity and quality of life in Taiwan.

Chart showing prospects for digital archives application

Figure 2: Prospects for Digital Archives Application

VI. Research Related Issues

The different aspects of digital library research have been considered to be very important for supporting the functions of both of the national-level digital library projects – the DMP and the NDAP.

The DMP was composed of two types of project: topic-based projects and technology support projects. The major research work was carried out by technology support projects that covered different areas, including: geographic information systems, word net, metadata, copyright management, digital watermarking, and digital library evaluation. Among these areas, the author participated in and led a metadata research team, ROSS (Resources Organization and Searching Specification), to study metadata-related issues and to design metadata suitable for Chinese materials. The ROSS team also developed an XML/metadata management system known as Metalogy [9].

The NDAP supports research projects on many aspects of digital libraries, and these projects are carried out mainly by the Research & Development of Technology Division. This division has provided technical services for over 50 content projects, including services for metadata analysis, standards development, database development, systems analysis, systems development, and follow-up maintenance; has enabled successful technology transfers to local companies and government organizations, including a new Chinese word segmentation method to the Institute of Information Industry, a missing Chinese characters input and presentation technology to the Electronic Data Processing Center, Executive Yuan, and the video archive construction technology to Acer Inc.; and has completed over 40 technical papers on digital archives infrastructure, information retrieval, and multimedia content management. In the past three years, the research and development efforts have focused on intellectual property, global resources discovery, interoperability, metadata, multilingual information retrieval, communication networking, multimedia technology, information security authentication and integrated services [10].

The NDAP also supports some application development research projects that are being carried out mainly by the Applications & Services Division. These projects address commercialization-related issues. This division has interviewed several key commercial companies within the digital archives-related industry in Taiwan to understand the difficulties and challenges they face and to find solutions for them. In early 2005, the Applications & Services Division proposed a virtual industrial park to promote and create agglomerated economy of digital archives. This virtual industrial park provides a hub for transactions involving the products of digital archives and for licensing digital objects for commercial use.

VII. Future Challenges

With the rapid advancement of information technologies and the increasing number of Internet users, an increasing number of museums, galleries, libraries, archives, universities, research institutes, and other organizational content holders are and will be involved in the NDAP. As cultural digital archives have been growing dramatically in size and variety, an industry built around the construction and application of digital archives is gradually taking shape. It is therefore very important for the NADP to identify business models for the cultural digital archives industry.

From the discussions with approximately 150 companies that participated in the various national digitization programs in Taiwan, the Applications & Services Division has summarized five categories of business activities. They are (1) digital archives data bases, usually in Web-accessible form, (2) integrated data bases, usually on a specific subject such as paintings or plants, (3) products from creative reproduction of digital objects, (4) digital content services delivered through hardware devices, and (5) digitization technologies, software, and services. To be successful in developing the digital archives industry in Taiwan, the challenges will be:

  • Establishing the environment and regulations suitable for the rapid growth of the industry,
  • Attracting investment and international cooperation,
  • Assisting in the implementation of investment and tax incentives,
  • Enlarging the human resource pool of the innovative and managerial talent needed by the industry,
  • Accelerating the development of key technologies and products,
  • Assisting companies to enhance their international marketing capability and competitiveness, and
  • Implementing broad applications of digital content in Taiwan [11].

References

[1] National Digital Archives Program Office (2004). National Digital Archives Program 2004. National Digital Archives Program Office, Taipei, Taiwan. p.2.

[2] Council of Economic Planning and Development (2002). Challenge 2008 – National Development Plan (in Chinese), pp. 155-201. Retrieved September 28, 2006, from Council of Economic Planning and Development. Available from <http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/glance/ch11.htm>.

[3] Council of Economic Planning and Development (2002). Challenge 2008: The Six-year National Development Plan. Retrieved September 28, 2006, from Council of Economic Planning and Development. Available from <http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/4-oa/20020521/2002052101.html>.

[4] Chen, Hsueh Hua, Chen, Chao Chen (2001). "Metadata Development for Digital Libraries and Museums – Taiwan's Experiences." Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2001, October 25-26, 2001. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan: 200-207.

[5] Digital Museum Project Extension, National Science Council (1999). National Science Council Digital Museum Project summary: Digital Museum Project Extension, National Science Council (In Chinese). Retrieved September 28, 2006, from <http://mars.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~dlm/plan/1st/intro12.htm>.

[6] National Digital Archives Program, Taiwan. National Digital Archives Program. Retrieved September 28, 2006, from <http://www.ndap.org.tw/index_en.php>.

[7] National Digital Archives Program Office (2004). National Digital Archives Program 2004. National Digital Archives Program Office, Taipei, Taiwan. p.3.

[8] National Digital Archives Program Office (2004). National Digital Archives Program 2004. National Digital Archives Program Office, Taipei, Taiwan. p.5.

[9] Chen, Hsueh Hua, Chen, Chao Chen (2001). "Metadata Development for Digital Libraries and Museums – Taiwan's Experiences." Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2001, October 25-26, 2001. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan: 200-207.

[10] National Digital Archives Program, Taiwan. Research & Development of Technology Division. Retrieved September 28, 2006, from <http://www.ndap.org.tw/1_org_en/p_research.php>.

[11] Ministry of Economic Affairs (2002) Enhancement of Digital content Industry Development Promotion Plan. Taipei: The Bureau.

 

© Copyright 2006 Hsueh-hua Chen

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