The Digital Library in China
by George Wang
The IBM China Research Laboratory (CRL), working jointly with its
world-wide sister IBM Research labs, has brought IBM's Digital Library technology
to China. Since September 1995, CRL has been conducting pilot programmes
with three major customers in China - Tsinghua University Central Library,
the National Petroleum Corporation of China, and Fudan University. Major
IBM technologies deployed in these pilots include RS/6K WWW servers, InfoSearch,
ATM switch, DB2/6K, CD/ROM library and VisualAge, etc. Initial versions
of these solutions have been operational since 1996.
The Tsinghua University Central Library
Tsinghua University is one of the best universities in China. CRL has worked
jointly with Tsinghua University Central Library to design and develop a
Digital Library service since September 1995. The system was demonstrated
on the 85th anniversary of the University in April 1996. The Tsinghua University
Digital Library is the first Internet based full function Digital Library
system in China. It integrates traditional library management systems, legacy
online information services (based on DOS, NetWare), newly developed online
services and presents them in a single Web page. The first online Chinese
full-text search public service is also demonstrated on the Dissertation
Retrieval Information System - a new application of this Digital Library
system This Chinese full-text search capability is provided by InfoSearch,
a new IBM product that supports the Double Byte Character Set. The resultant
Chinese full-text search function has high performance, and supports powerful
search functions such as fuzzy search, wildcard, location limitation and
ranking.
This integrated Web based solution uses IBM hardware and software such as
RS/6K and DB2/6K. IBM's ATM technology is an integral and significant part
of this system. This is the first demonstration of a major application on
CERNET (the Campus Education and Research Network), a Chinese national effort
to link hundreds of top universities in China by the Chinese information
superhighway.
The National Petroleum Corporation of China
The Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has chosen CRL as its
partner to design and develop a Digital Library system to support oil exploration
and production management data, currently on paper. The amount of data is
huge, some 640 MB per well and 400,000 wells in total. This calls for a
very high capacity and performance data management system. CRL has provided
the architecture and system design for a CD/ROM based Digital Library system
that meets the requirements of CNPC. This system uses DB2/6K, RS/6K server
and adapts VisualAge as the major development environment. With VisualAge,
CNPC was able to complete the development of the initial release in three
months - a remarkable productivity for such a complex system. We have invented
a special header format for CDs with indexing information encoded so that
CD archives can be imported to databases automatically. This technique is
incorporated in the CNPC Digital Library System. The initial version of
this CNPC Digital Library has been operational since April 1996.
Fudan University
The Digital Library of the Chinese National Historical Maps (DL/CNHM) is
a joint research project between CRL and Fudan University. The objective
of this project is to apply IBM's advanced Digital Library technology to
explore flexible and powerful mechanisms to capture, represent and present
the vast volume of Chinese heritage both spatially and over time. The contents
- Chinese national treasure - come from years of research by Fudan University
sponsored by the Chinese national government. Our research focus includes
Chinese content, Chinese language support and use of Object Oriented technology.
We have completed our initial multimedia DL/CNHM demo which presents the
national and regional geographical and historical information of the Qing
and Ming Dynasty with graphical maps, explanatory text and narration.
Chinese Historical Maps: the Ming Dynasty.
Future Research
Our future research focus in the Digital Library area will include hierarchical
storage management and DVD storage subsys-tems, text mining and data management.
Please contact:
George Wang - IBM China Research Laboratory Beijing
Tel.: +86 10 6298 2449
E-mail: wang@watson.ibm.com
