Math-Net — попытка создания распределенной информационной системы по математике Math-Net — an Approach for a Distributed Information System in Mathematics Math-Net — спроба створення розподіленої інформаційної системи з математики

Math-Net — попытка создания распределенной
информационной системы по математике

Math-Net — an Approach for a Distributed Information System in Mathematics

Math-Net — спроба створення розподіленої інформаційної системи з математики
Юрген Каллис

Математический институт Кельнского университета, Кельн, Германия

Вольфрам Шпербер

Компания по информационным технологиям Konrad-Zuse, Берлин, Германия

Jürgen Kallies

Mathematical Institute at Cologne University, Cologne, Germany

Wolfram Sperber

Konrad-Zuse for Information Technology, Berlin, Germany

Юрген Калліс

Математичний інститут Кельнського університету, Кельн, Німеччина

Вольфрам Шпербер

Компанія по інформаційних технологіях Konrad-Zuse, Берлін, Німеччина

Представлен обзор программы Math-Net Initiative, ее целей, заложенных в ее основу концепций и принципов, а также первых шагов по реализации сети, которая является попыткой на международном уровне создать и поддерживать глобальную электронную информационно-коммуникационную систему в области математики. Целью Math-Net является предоставление эффективного доступа к высококачественной математической информации непосредственно ее пользователям.

Проект получил поддержку как частных лиц, так и математических организаций и институтов. Он реализуется под эгидой Международного математического союза (ММС).

Представлена общая информация о проекте, подробно рассматривается деятельность, осуществляемая в рамках проекта, и услуги, реализуемые в Math-Net:

Math-Net Page является централизованным порталом с доступом к базовой информации математических отделений и институтов

Служба Math-Net MPRESS предоставляет доступ к препринтам математической тематики, подготовленным математическими учреждениями и организациями

Служба PERSONA MATEMATICA Math-Net представляет собой поисковый указатель информации о математиках

Распределенная информационно-коммуникационная система базируется на стандартах анализа содержания документов и использует для этого концепции метаданных, разработанные в рамках Дублинской инициативы Dublin Core Metadata Initiative и, в частности, RDF в качестве технологической и синтаксической основы. Метамодемы настроены под конкретные виды математических документов, например, Math-Net Pages, препринты, профессиональные домашние страницы.

The talk will give an overview about the Math-Net Initiative, its objectives, concepts and principles of and first practical steps towards Math-Net. Math-Net is an international effort to establish, maintain, and continue to develop a global electronic information and communication system for mathematics. The aim of Math-Net is to place efficient access to high quality mathematical information at the fingertips of the user.

Math-Net is supported and fostered by individuals, mathematical organisations and institutions. It acts under the aegis of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), the worldwide mathematical society.

After giving some general information about Math-Net some concrete activities and services will be discussed in more detail:

the Math-Net Page as a standardised portal to the core information of mathematical departments and institutes

the Math-Net Service MPRESS providing a qualified access to mathematical preprints offered by the mathematical community

the Math-Net Service PERSONA MATHEMATICA as a search index for information about mathematicians

A distributed information and communication system bases on standards for the content analysis of the documents. Math-Net uses therefore the metadata concepts developed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and especially RDF as technical and syntactical base. Metadata sets were customised for specific classes of mathematical documents, e.g. the presented Math-Net Pages, preprints or professional homepages.

A short outlook about the technique used by Math-Net, especially the Harvest concept, will be given at the end of the talk.

Представлено огляд програми Math-Net Initiative, її цілей, закладених у її основу концепцій і принципів, а також перших кроків по реалізації мережі, що є спробою на міжнародному рівні створити і підтримувати глобальну електронну інформаційно-комунікаційну систему в галузі математики. Метою Math-Net є надання ефективного доступу до високоякісної математичної інформації безпосередньо її користувачам.

Проект одержав підтримку як приватних осіб, так і математичних організацій і інститутів. Він реалізується під егідою Міжнародного математичного союзу (ММС).

Представлено загальну інформацію про проект, докладно розглядається діяльність, що здійснюється у рамках проекту, і послуги, які реалізуються в Math-Net:

Math-Net Page є централізованим порталом з доступом до базової інформації математичних відділень та інститутів

Служба Math-Net MPRESS надає доступ до препринтів математичної тематики, підготовлених математичними установами та організаціями

Служба PERSONA MATEMATICA Math-Net являє собою пошуковий покажчик інформації про математиків

Розподілена інформаційно-комунікаційна система базується на стандартах аналізу змісту документів і використовує для цього концепції метаданих, розроблені в рамках Дублінської ініціативи Dublin Core Metadata Initiative і, зокрема, RDF у якості технологічної і синтаксичної основи. Метамодеми настроєно під конкретні види математичних документів, наприклад, Math-Net Pages, препринти, професійні домашні сторінки.

The International Mathematical Union, the world-wide society of the mathematical community, has started in 2000 the Math-Net activity: http://www.math-net.org.

It is an initiative for a new type of scholarly information and communication.

Math-Net, from the concept and a technical point of view, is a

structured,

distributed,

interoperable,

user-driven,

and high quality

electronic information and communication system.

The Math-Net activity is organised as a user-driven and not-for-profit activity open for all willing to provide mathematical information electronically.

Math-Net is based on voluntary contributions of organisations or individuals, the Math-Net Members. The Math-Net Members, e.g. a mathematical department or a mathematical research institute, should provide their information in a structured and standardised fashion on their own Web servers.

The Math-Net Members are responsible for the quality, accuracy, timeliness, and appropriateness of their contribution.

Math-Net Service Providers combine these data into several services. These services aim at providing fast and well-structured access to the mathematical resources within Math-Net (and possibly beyond).

The Math-Net initiative will be steered by CEIC, the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication of the IMU. The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) will focus its activities on the development of the technical base for Math-Net.

Math-Net Members should organise themself in Math-Met Member Associations, e.g. as regional or subject-specific associations.

Math-Net Members and their Math-Net Member Associations, Math-Net Services Providers, CEIC and TAB form the technical backbone of Math-Net.

Math-Net activities

The present Math-Net activities are focused to

Math-Net Pages

preprints

professional homepages

In the following these topics will be discussed in more detail.

Math-Net Page

The Math-Net Page for departments or mathematical research institutes is an attempt to standardize the presentation of departmental information.

Picture 1: The Math-Net Page of the University of Cologne

The Math-Net Page is not intended to replace a nicely designed “primary homepage”. It is an additional homepage for an department or a research institute. The Math-Net Page is a standard portal to the “core” information offered by a department or institute. It contains the relevant information of and about the department , including information about

the institution,

the people working at the institution

research activities of the institution

teaching activities of the institution

locally available information resources

The Math-Net Page provides the core of the available departmental information in a standardized fashion, structured by groups and, for each group, by categories, see picture 1.

Beyond this, the Math-Net Page provides access to “global” Math-Net Services.

The Math-Net Page is focused to two main things:

a friendly entry point to the local information for the human user

a standardised entry point supporting search engines that collect information offered by the mathematical department with the goal to provide high quality information services for the global mathematical community

Basing on the Resource Description Framework a metadata scheme and an application profile was developed

http://www.iwi-iuk.org/material/RDF/1.1/

For a broad international acceptance Unicode UTF-8 is used as basis character set..

The Math-Net PageMaker is a tool to generate and change Math-Net Pages in an easy way:

http://www.math-net.org/Pagemaker

Math-Net Pages will be harvested by the Math-Net Navigator

http://www.math-net.de/navigator/

Preprints

More and more scientific results will be published as preprints. Preprints servers (locally or subject-specific organised) are a cheap and efficient way to make prepints accessible.

MPRESS, the Mathematical Preprint Search System, is an index and search engine for mathematical preprints

http://MathNet.preprints.org/

MPRESS is a concept and an service providing quality indexing of mathematical preprints offered by the mathematical community.

MPRESS improves access to the full texts of preprints in mathematics by the concept of metadata and aspires a comprehensive and easily searchable information on the preprints available.

MPRESS is an index of mathematical preprints and not a full text archive. It is in itself operated in a distributed way.

In more detail, this means

the institutions provide their preprints on their own servers

the authors are pleased to describe their preprints by standardised metadata sets

the metadata will be gathered and indexed by MPRESS

the search engine component on MPRESS allows a fast and efficient access

MPRESS is running at the Institute of Scientific Information in Osnabrück as a cooperative activity of different mathematical institutions, e.g. the European Mathematical Society is a member of this consortium.

MPRESS covers information for more than 40.000 mathematical preprints. It is the most comprehensive preprint index in Mathematics worldwide.

Professional Homepages

Information about people are a important resource for the academic community. More and more mathematicians provide their Web pages with curriculum vitae, research interests, ...

The Math-Net Service PERSONA MATHEMATICA helps you to find information on people in Mathematics.

http://www.mi.uni-koeln.de/Math-Net/persona_mathematica/

Up to now information from more than 100 mathematical websites in Germany and Austria are searchable here.

The functionality of PERSONA MATHEMATICA is similar to MPRESS:

a concept for a standardised description for professional homepages was defined (this means a set of metadata describing the relevant data for persons)

all their information will be provided locally

the metadata information will be collected and indexed by a robot

the information is accessible and searchable by the user interface of PERSONA MATHEMATICA

Technical Concept

In the following a short outline of the technical background of Math-Net is given.

Content Analysis and metadata

A structured description of the document is the base for a good retrieval. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has started to develop models for the bibliographic description of digital documents in the mid of nineties:

http://dublincore.org/

The simple Dublin Core is a set of 15 elements covering the creator, the title, the description and further important data. The elements can be refined by qualifiers DC Qualifiers).

The metadata concept is flexible. Further metadata e.g. describing terms and conditions for the use of documents can be added in further packages (containers).

The Extensible Markup Language (XML)

http://www.w3.org/XML/

and the Resource Description Framework (RDF)

http://www.w3.org/RDF/

are the technical and syntactical base for the use of metadata.

Especially, the graph model of RDF allows a user customised description of networked objects.

The content analysis in Math-Net is basing on these international developments.

The Math-Net Initiative has developed metadata sets for the different document types on the base of RDF. Beyond this, Math-Net provides tools for an easy generating of metadada. The authors of the documents should use the tools and provide metadata for their documents. Generating of metadata by authors is one of the principles of Math-Net.

Further Aspects

Math-Net is a distributed information system. This means the original documents are presented on local servers of the Math-Net Members.

A Math-Net Service

gathers the local information classified by different types (substantially the metadata) ,

index the gathered information

and make it searchable.

Therefore the Harvest software, a public domain software developed in a project of the University of Colorado at Boulder is used . The CARMEN project in Germany has the aim to extend this software for the needs of Math-Net. Especially it should allow to process high structured metadata sets given by RDF.