Digital Silkroad Document Library at NII: The Design of the Multilingual Annot

ation Support System

Takeo YAMAMOTO, Asanobu KITAMOTO, Sonoko SATO and Kinji ONO

National Institute of InformaticsTokyo, Japan

In this presentation:

National Institute of Informatics (NII) : Its research, services, and education 　

Digital SilkRoads (DSR) Project

Toyo-Bunko Document Archive

Multilingual Annotation Support System (MASS)

NACSIS(est. 1986) →ＮＩＩ(est.2000)　

NII Research6 ResearchDivisions 2 Research Centers

Foundation of Informatics

Infrastructure Systems Software Multimedia Information Intelligent Systems Human and Social

Information Research Information

Research Center for Testbeds and Prototyping

Research Center for Information Resources

ＮＩＩ　Ｓｅｒｖｉｃｅｓ

On-Line Library Cataloging Service (NACSIS-CAT)

Information Service (GeNii)

Network Backbone Service (SINET/SUPER-SINET)

NII Services on the Web(Accessible from GeNii)

Books and journals: Webcat (http://webcat.nii.ac.jp/webcat_eng.html)

Japanese books: Webcat Plus (http://webcatplus.nii.ac.jp/)

Japanese academic societies: Academic Society Home Village (http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/index-e.html)

etc.

Education at NII

Ph. D course in informatics (accepts only those with master degrees or equivalent)

NII Scholarship for promising foreign students

Classes in English (Japanese not required)

http://www.nii.ac.jp/graduate/

Digital SilkRoads Project

A joint research project centered at NII with UNESCO, Hitachi, Toyo Bunko and several other universities and institutions

By using IT, preserve, restore, and facilitate access to Silkroad research information

International Workshops: DSR2001(Tokyo) and DSR2003(Nara)

Homepage: http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/

Toyo Bunko Document Archive

Digital archive of rare books related to Silkroads owned by Toyo Bunko (“The Oriental Library”)

Presently 5,623 pages (27 books) and increasing (ca. 3,000 pages/year)

Original high-res color (4000*4000), medium-res grayscale(2000*2000), low-res color(900*900)

Web page will be open to the public soon (http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/)

Multilingual access to the database:Requirements

Original language: German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese (classic), English, etc.

Searchable in the original language (words) Searchable by a technical term thesaurus

(names of places, artifacts, etc.) constructed from the database, with terms in the original language PLUS corresponding Japanese and English terms

Searchable from maps and a timeline

Database creation process

Multimedia Annotation Support System (MASS) Requirements

Ease of use-Copy & paste/right click/selection Multilingual data within same table Fuzzy (expanded) search that tolerates OCR

error and variation with languages Cooperative work possible Front-end to DBMS

MASS Initial State

ja en zh fr de it ru note

Enter query and right-click

MASS query input

ja en zh fr de it ru note

Bāmiyān

Enter query and right-click

MASS search response

ja en Zh fr de it ru note

バーミヤン Bāmiyān Bamiyan (Bāmiyān, Bamiyan)

パミヤール Ｐａｍｉｙａｒ

The above records match your query “Bāmiyān (fr)” with extended search. Right-click and choose action.

MASS Right-Click Menu

Undo

Cut

Copy

Paste

Finalize Update

Expand Search

New Query

Delete Selected Line

Conclusion

Digital archive and its ACTIVE USAGE is important for research and cultural material

We have to change the mind-set of owners/managers/inheritors

Used, shared information increases in value

Multilingual access is important for universal usability and international cooperation