Interoperability of eLearning Applications with Digital Libraries

The most important application of Digital Libraries (DL) is to support knowledge and learning purposes. However, DLs and their standards have been developed independently of eLearning applications and their standards. For that, interoperability issues between digital libraries and eLearning applications are risen (complex and multilevel problem). In order to enable the construction of eLearning applications that easily exploit DL contents it is crucial to bridge the interoperability gap between digital libraries and eLearning applications. Task 5.4 is exploring the interoperability of eLearning applications and Digital Libraries looking particularly at data models, standards and workflows. The aim is to study the major standards for digital libraries (e.g. METS), eLearning (e.g. SCORM) and audio-visual content description (e.g. MPEG-7), and to produce mappings among them. Based on this, the objective is to develop an integration framework and a service-oriented architecture which will be validated by a specific demonstrator. Task Objectives and Followed Approach The task has sought to answer the following questions: (a) What are the major architectural requirements and workflows for effectively supporting eLearning applications running over digital libraries? (b) What are the major interoperability requirements for DL and eLearning standards? (c) What are the management requirements and tools for audiovisual material and 3D object representations, which form the basis for many collections of learnin