LAKH

LAKH Glossary

Content

Everything that is included in a collection. It can describe any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the use of the information.

Cross-disciplinary knowledge communities

Communities built for sharing cross-disciplinary knowledge, integrating different areas and contents of knowledge.

Database

A collection of information organized in such a way that a computer program can quickly select desired pieces of data. You can think of a database as an electronic filing system. Traditional databases are organized by fields, records, and files. A field is a single piece of information; a record is one complete set of fields; and a file is a collection of records. For example, a telephone book is analogous to a file. It contains a list of records, each of which consists of three fields: name, address, and telephone number. (Quoted from Webopedia Computer Dictionary)

Data Provider

A Data Provider maintains one or more repositories (web servers) that support the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata. (Quoted from FAQ on OAI Web site)

DSpace

The DSpace digital repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material. Research institutions worldwide use this open source system in a variety of ways -- as an institutional repository, a learning object repository, for records management, and more. DSpace is freely available as open source software you can customize and extend. DSpace was developed with an Hewlett-Packard (HP) grant by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). (Quoted from DSpace web Site)

Dublin Core

Dublin Core (DC) is a metadata format defined on the basis of international consensus. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set defines fifteen elements for simple resource description and discovery, all of which are recommended (Title, Creator, Subject, Description, Publisher, Contributor, Date, Type, Format, Identifier, Source, Language, Relation, Coverage, and Rights). DC has been extended with further optional elements, element qualifiers and vocabulary terms. (Quoted from UKOLN's metadata glossary, Wikipedia, and “Metadata in Nutshell" by Michael Day)

E-print

An e-print (electronic print) is a digital draft of a research document (usually a journal article, but could also be a thesis, conference paper, book chapter, or even a book) that is accessible online, usually from a local Institutional or a central (subject- or discipline-based) Digital Repository. The term "e-prints" (or "e-prints") covers both preprints (before peer review) and post-prints (after peer review) of research journal articles: "e-prints" = preprints + post-prints. (The digital objects themselves, "e-prints" are not to be confused with the Open Access Institutional Repository-creating software, GNU E-prints. (Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eprint")

Harvester

In OAI-PMH a harvester is a service provider application issuing OAI-PMH requests. (Quoted from "OAI for Beginners", the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Harvesting

In the OAI context, harvesting refers specifically to the gathering together of metadata from a number of distributed repositories into a combined data store. (Definition quoted from the Glossary in the OAI for Beginners, the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Hypertext

An alternative concept in database design is known as Hypertext. In a Hypertext database, any object, whether it be a piece of text, a picture, or a film, can be linked to any other object. Hypertext databases are particularly useful for organizing large amounts of disparate information, but they are not designed for numerical analysis. (Quoted from Webopedia Computer Dictionary)

Institutional Repositories (IR)

The Institutional Repository, as a concept, is to capture and make available as much of the research output of an institution (i.e. a university) as possible. In the first instance this might include material such as research papers and electronic versions of documents such as theses, but may also include many of the digital assets generated by normal campus life, such as administrative documents, course notes, or learning objects. (Quoted from Wikipedia)

Interface

A property of a software component upon which other components may rely. (Quoted from Wikipedia)

K-12 Education

K-12 signifies primary and secondary education from Kindergarten (age 5) through 12th grade (last grade before post-secondary education), the standard US public education span.

Metadata

Any kind of standardized descriptive information about resources, including non-digital ones. So, for example, library catalogues, abstracting and indexing services, archival finding aids and museum documentation might all be seen as containing metadata. The advantages of this are twofold. Firstly, it allows librarians, archivists and museum documentation specialists to co-operate usefully across professional boundaries. Secondly, it enables the cultural heritage professions to communicate more effectively with those domains that also have an interest in metadata: e.g., software developers, publishers, the recording industry, television companies, the producers of digital educational content and those concerned with geographical and satellite-based information. (Quoted from "Metadata in Nutshell" by Michael Day)

Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

OAI is an initiative to develop and promote interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. (Quoted from "OAI for Beginners", the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Open Archives Initiative Community

A partnership composed by institutions and individuals who are creating a worldwide virtual library of resources. It includes a specific metadata format and instructions for data providers. (Quoted from OAI web site)

OAI E-prints

E-prints is a free, open source software for generating an "Open Access" (OA) "Institutional Repository" (IR) that is compliant with the "Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting" (OAI-PMH). The OA/IR-creating software, E-prints, is not to be confused with the primary target contents of OA IRs, namely, "e-prints" (or "e-prints"), which are preprints (before peer review) and post-prints (after peer review), of research journal articles: "e-prints" = preprints + post-prints. (Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eprint")

OAI-PHM

OAI Protocol for Harvesting Metadada.

Partners

Institutions and their individuals that, in a spirit of cooperation, agree to carry on an enterprise, contribute to it, by sharing knowledge or activities. Partners may establish a formal agreement.

Protocols

A protocol is a set of rules defining communication between systems. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) are examples of other protocols used for communication between systems across the Internet. (Quoted from "OAI for Beginners", the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Service Provider

A Service Provider, also known as harvester, issues OAI-PMH requests to data providers and uses the metadata as a basis for building value-added services. (OAI definition quoted from FAQ on OAI Web site). In this sense, a service provider is collecting metadata exposed by data providers. (Quoted from "OAI for Beginners", the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Software

Any computer instructions or data that can be stored electronically is software. The storage devices and display devices are hardware. The terms software and hardware are used as both nouns and adjectives. The distinction between software and hardware is sometimes confusing because they are so integrally linked. Clearly, when you purchase a program, you are buying software. But to buy the software, you need to buy the disk (hardware) on which the software is recorded

TICFIA

Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (U.S. Department of Education Program under Title VI for International Higher Education)