The Galician virtual library
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520710764104 |
| Pages | 333-352 |
| Published date | 26 June 2007 |
| Date | 26 June 2007 |
| Author | Ángeles S. Places,Nieves R. Brisaboa,Antonio Fariña,Miguel R. Luaces,José R. Paramá,Miguel R. Penabad |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The Galician virtual library
A
´ngeles S. Places, Nieves R. Brisaboa, Antonio Farin
˜a,
Miguel R. Luaces, Jose
´R. Parama
´and Miguel R. Penabad
Department of Computer Science, Facultade de Informa
´tica,
University of Corun
˜a, Corun
˜a, Spain
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to present the digital library Galician virtual library (BVG, for
“Biblioteca Virtual Galega”) in Galician.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows the objectives pursued by the BVG, its
development, putting special emphasis on the main technological challenges, and presents some data
about its usage.
Findings – A digital library can be used to stimulate a lesser-used language and to promote the
culture and tourism of a region.
Originality/value – The paper shows how a digital library can be used to strengthen the Galician
language, which is currently categorised as a “Lesser Used Language” in the European Community
and to contribute to the preservation and spreading of Galician culture and literary works, either from
current authors or from previous documents. It also provides a digital publishing house for new
authors and opens a communication channel between current authors and their readers. Finally, it
helps to connect a scattered community like the Galician, offering a centralised access point to any
information about Galicia. This work also presents some technological innovations included in the
BVG, especially from the viewpoint of user interface design and search by content.
Keywords Digital libraries,User interfaces, Text retrieval,Geographic information systems, Spain
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Digital libraries have attracted much attention during the last decade (Baeza-Yates and
Ribeiro-Neto, 1999; Borgman, 1999; Gonc¸alves et al., 2001; Gonc¸alves et al., 2002; Lesk,
1997). However, there is still no consensus on the definition of a digital library. From a
very general point of view, Lesk (1997) defines it as a “collection of information that is
both digitized and organised”. Borgman (1999) offers a thorough revision of the
definitions of a digital library. Among them, the following is one of the most
interesting, since it includes the technical point of view, but it also considers the people
that create it and reflects the information they use. According to her, a digital library is
a collection of electronic resources – its content – and the infrastructure to manage
search and use the information. The content of a digital library includes the
information itself that can be as simple as plain text or more complex data (audi o,
video, pictures, etc.), but it also includes metadata such as bibliographic information,
the format of the document, copyright, or links to related documents. Furthermore, it is
usually built for a community of users to fulfil their information needs. A digital
library can be seen as an enhancement and complement of physical places and
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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This work is partially supported by Grants TIC2003-06593 and TIN2006-15071-C03-03 of
Ministerio de Educacio
´n y Ciencia and PGIDIT05SIN10502PR of Xunta de Galicia.
The Galician
virtual library
333
Refereed article received
3 October 2006
Approved for publication
10 November 2006
Online Information Review
Vol. 31 No. 3, 2007
pp. 333-352
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520710764104
institutions for the interaction among a community of users that takes advantage of the
information collected and organised in the digital library.
According to the previous definition, it seems appropriate to consider two different
types of issues that affect the development of digital libraries: technological issues that
affect its architecture and functionalities, and sociological and cultural aspects related
with the community that will use it.
Among the technological aspects, besides the design of the data model and the
global architecture of the digital library, we pay special attention to the detailed
analysis of the design of the user interface and the search by content (text retrieval)
service. We consider the user interface a fundamental part of a digital library
(especially if it is a web site), because if users do not find it intuitive and friendly they
will not use it. With respect to searches, although BVG has metadata to perform the
typical searches we believe that an advanced digital library should provide the
capability of seeking literary works also by their content, taking advantage of the
digital nature of the literary works.
We shall describe in this paper the ambitious project that led to the development of
the Galician Virtual Library (BVG, for “Biblioteca Virtual Galega” in Galician,
available at http://bvg.udc.es/). Such a description includes the main goals and
requirements, as well as the special characteristics of the architecture, content, services,
and user interface of the BVG. An early version of the BVG project was published in
Spanish (Brisaboa et al., 2002).
Regarding technological aspects, we shall describe in this paper the most interesting
challenges such as the Geographical Information System included in BVG, and the
connection of BVG as a data provider of the standard architecture of Open Archives
Initiative with the EMILL (European Minority Languages Library) project. We have
also considered BVG’s user interface a fundamental issue and we have followed some
general guidelines and approaches for its design like the systematic use of cognitive
metaphors (Zetie, 1995) and the browsing approach (which has already been
successfully used (Brisaboa et al., 2000; Parama
´et al., 2006) to help users navigate in
our library. Finally, we show the search by content service built for the BVG. This
service uses two technologies. First, an inverted index was built, adapting open source
libraries from the Lucene project (Lucene, 2006). Second, we modified and implemented
several pattern matching algorithms that are suitable for the different types of searches
included in the BVG. As we will show, both technologies are combined to obtain
optimum response times.
Considering sociological and cultural aspects, a digital library like BVG can be
considered an excellent medium for connecting scattered communities, as well as
promoting heritage, cultural or linguistic values. The special characteristics of the
Galician culture and language influenced the design of the digital library. The Galician
community is dotted among many different countries, mainly due to the emigration
that happened during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but even second or third
generation Galicians feel a strong tie with their home country. The Galician language
on the other hand is widely understood in Galicia and by the Galician Diaspora but it is
not used as frequently as it should be.
The rest of this paper is organised as follows. First, we provide a brief description of
the history of Galicia and Galician culture. The next section details the goals of our
project; this is followed by discussion of the contents, architecture and services offered
by BVG. BVG’s user interface is treated in a separate, subsequent section due to its
OIR
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