Digital objects have become the dominant way that we create, shape, and exchange information. They form a central part of our economy, and are becoming increasingly important for a longer period of time. The evergrowing heterogeneity and complexity of digital object formats together with rapid technological changes turn the preservation of digital information into a pressing challenge. The chal...

Evaluating the results of a digital preservation action, be it migration or emulation, is a complex task. The usual approach for migration is to evaluate object properties after the migration. For emulation strategies the result of the rendering of the object is evaluated. In this paper we argue that the change of object properties when migrating is not sufficient evidence if a digital preserva...

The concept of learning object appears as a mean to improve the reuse of educational resources in digital format.The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a common model for learning objects that makes easy the reutilization of educational contents between different systems. The objective of this paper is to show how an educational content in form of learning object packaged under ...

This state of the art report covers reconstruction methods for transparent and specular objects or phenomena. While the 3D acquisition of opaque surfaces with Lambertian reflectance is a well-studied problem, transparent, refractive, specular and potentially dynamic scenes pose challenging problems for acquisition systems. This report reviews and categorizes the literature in this field. Despit...

Prior to digital reference the peculiarity about reference service in German libraries in general has to be explained. Only then can the delays of German libraries concerning Digital Reference in comparison with libraries in the US, Great Britain or Scandinavia be understood. The different kinds of digital reference that have emerged so far will be described briefly then. Afterwards the actual ...

This article presents a research agenda for the study of digital reference. The agenda stems from a research symposium held at Harvard in August 2002. The agenda defines digital reference as " the use of human intermediation to answer questions in a digital environment. " The agenda also proposes the central research question in digital reference-" How can human expertise be effectively and eff...

This paper examines the domain of digital reference services for and by the primary and secondary education community. Data is provided to demonstrate the current understanding of education question types and education users in digital reference. It is believed this data will be of wide utility for digital library builders geared toward primary and secondary users (K-12) such as the Internation...