Second Workshop on "Very Large Digital Libraries"

CALL FOR PAPERS

*** Apologies for cross-posting***

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Second Workshop on "Very Large Digital Libraries"
Corfu, Greece, October 1-2, 2009
Sponsored by DELOS association
Web site: http://www.delos.info/vldl2009
E-mail: vldl2009@isti.cnr.it

In conjunction with ECDL 2009
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###### Workshop Objectives ######

The implementation of nowadays Digital Libraries is more demanding than in the past. Information consumers are facing with the need to access ever growing, heterogeneous, possibly federated Information Spaces while information providers are interested in satisfying such needs by sharing rich and organised views over their information deluge. Because of their fundamental role of information production and dissemination vehicle, Digital Libraries are also expected to provide information society with services that must be available 24/7 and guarantee the expected quality of service. This scenario leads to the development of ?Very Large Digital Libraries? in terms of number of Information Objects and Collections to be made available, users to be served and potentially distributed resources needed to implement such systems. Such systems have to confront with new challenges in a context having scalability, interoperability and sustainability as focal points.

Interestingly, however, there is no clear and well-accepted definition of Very Large Digital Library (VLDL). Some, in an attempt to give one, blur the separation between Very Large Databases (VLDBs) and VLDLs and regard the latter as VLDBs storing Digital Library content. Since in databases the adjective ?Very large? strictly refers to ?size of content?, the implication is that, similarly, VLDLs ought to be DLs storing digital content beyond a given storage threshold. Despite being intuitively correct, this explanation does not fully satisfy DL practitioners. Indeed, DL content design paradigms cannot be conceptually separated by the relative functionalities as it happens for DBs. DLs are of use to peculiar user communities whose functionality needs, best practices and behaviour are well-accepted DL systems requirements. As captured by the DELOS reference model for DLs, user management, content management, functionality management, and policies are equally important in the definition of a DL. Accordingly, as demonstrated by real DL system experiences, VLDLs should be described as DLs featuring ?very large features? in one or more of such aspects.

The goal of this workshop is to provide researchers, practitioners and application developers with a forum fostering a constructive exchange among all key actors in the field of Very Large Digital Libraries. The workshop will also be the opportunity to answer the open questions that had arisen during VLDL first successful edition at ECDL 2008 (ref. VLDL2008 Workshop Report, published in SIGMOD Records 2009).

###### Workshop topics ######

Topics of this workshop are of interest to, but not limited to, the following research avenues:

Foundational topics
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Definitional models, for VLDL content, functionality, users, and policies (DELOS reference model):

- Architectural models for VLDL systems;
- Data models for VLDL content;
- Design methodologies for VLDLs.

System topics
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Ideas, experiments and practical experiences in system design and
implementation:

- Integration and federation of existing DLs;
- User management in VLDLs;
- Security issues in VLDLs;
- Sustainability issues in VLDLs;
- Scalability issues in VLDLs;
- Distribution issues for VLDLs;
- Interoperability issues for VLDL content and functionalities;
- Quality of Service measures and operation of VLDLs;
- Storing and indexing issues in VLDL content;
- Preservation issues for VLDL content.

###### Important Dates ######

Paper submission deadline: June 29th, 2009

Notification of acceptance: July 31st, 2009

Submission of camera-ready papers: September 6, 2009

###### Paper Submission ######

Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers.
Submitted manuscripts will have to be limited to 8 pages, following the guidelines for the LNCS format provided by Springer. Preferred formats are PDF or Microsoft Word. Papers should be submitted via email to vldl2009@isti.cnr.it. Papers submitted to the workshop will undergo a peer-review process by Program Committee members. For every accepted contribution, at least one author will be required to attend the workshop and present the paper. Accepted papers will be published as a volume in the DELOS workshop proceedings series (ISBN), which will also be made available in the DELOS digital library.

###### Workshop Organisers ######

- Yannis Ioannidis, Department of Informatics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece;
- Paolo Manghi, Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (ISTI), National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy;
- Pasquale Pagano, Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (ISTI), National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy.

###### Program Committee ######

- Stavros Christodoulakis, Technical University of Crete (MUSIC/TUC), Greece;
- Stefan Gradmann, Institut f?r Bibliotheks und Informationswissenschaft, Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, Germany;
- Kate Hagedorn, OAIster System, University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service, USA;
- Dean B. Krafft, National Science Digital Library Project, Cornell Information Science, USA;
- Yosi Mass, IBM Research Division, Haifa Research Laboratory, University Campus, Haifa, Israel;
- Peter Wittenburg, Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands.