1. Commonwealth Educational
Media Centre for Asia
Visioning Knowledge
Commons
Issues of interoperability and standards
Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA
28 November 2013
2. From Physical Library to Digital
Library
Finding documents in my library
Finding information and documents in a
cooperative network
Finding digital multimedia resources on the
Internet
Finding just-in-time knowledge and
expertise, any time, any place
3. Shift in Information Search
From few search points (author, title, subject
headings) to combinational search and now
semantic search
From text only search to multimedia search
From single language search to multi-lingual
search
4. Knowledge Commons
A virtual system where information on any
topic is available in any format through
network technology without constraints of
copyrights for any lawful purpose of learning
and research
Is the present day web similar to this?
Can digital libraries with open content
contribute significantly?
5. Challenges
Connected digital libraries of open content
Interoperability (technical)
– Many systems, many technologies
Standards
–
–
–
–
For author descriptions (eg. ORCID)
For metadata (eg. DC)
For content (eg. Subject thesauri/ontologies)
For media – many types, many standards
6. Challenges
Digital Media
Preservation issues
– ephemeral
– technology changes and up-gradation
– technology failure
Economics of digitization and scale
Economies of scale through connecting digital
libraries
7. Vision of Knowledge Commons
Can we create common understanding and
common knowledge for digitization of existing
knowledge in such a way to facilitate KC?
What different types of interoperability issues
need to be addressed?
Which different types of standards will facilitate
KC?
Can the existing knowledge facilitate a KC using
existing protocols and standards?
What more research and development may be
needed to see KC happening?
