austraLasia #2221
Take a careful look at SDL
ROME: 9th August 2008 -- If you have not recently consulted the
Salesian Digital Library (SDL) at http://sdl.sdb.org or available from
the www.sdb.org home page, you might like to do so again. SDL has
been quietly but consistently making progress.
The first thing you will note is the altered
presentation. SDL is now much more clearly integrated in design terms
with sdb.org. It has also developed in content and ease of
use. Some statistics:
- Now occupying 30 GB of disk pace, SDL contains
some 217,000 digital objects in 19 languages, covered by 30
collections. More than half of these collections are
language-based, but there are a range of special topic
collections. The three largest of these in order of collection
size are Cimatti (6,000 letters plus other items), Rua (5,700 letters
plus other items) and Don Bosco's writings and other resources
including hundreds of DB images.
- Other than Italian, English, Spanish, French and
Portuguese, the largest language collection is Russian.
Confrères in that part of the world have found accessing items
such as the Rector Major's letters and other documentation far easier
via SDL than relying on the Russian - or is it the Italian? -
postal system!
One of the most useful features of SDL is the
complete text search within collections, and in several instances
across collections. The search result is instantaneous without
any adjustment of parameters. If you know something of search
features, you can fiddle and twiddle to your heart's content to achieve
specific results. One search parameter you ought know about, of course,
is that if you are searching a phrase, even of two words, it needs to
be enclosed in quotation marks, otherwise it will return the results
for the individual words. If you already know what you might be
looking for, then the categories under which items are labelled (such
as 'title', 'author', 'keyword', 'date') in a collection should help
you quickly locate an item.
All text-based items, including most pdf files, are
converted into a text format for quick reference purposes. The
original format is always available for reference or download. Indeed,
what SDL achieves for the long-term is the safe preservation of texts,
since all digital objects are actually converted into an archive format
that is platform independent and open, while the original is also
preserved in its often proprietary format. What you see as an
'original' is in fact a copy.
And at this point, a request. It is quite possible that
confrères around the region have Salesian material in digital
form that would be of benefit to others. Some may have done
studies on Salesian topics and, as a result, may have scanned or
retyped or otherwise digitized materials that are not currently
available. Some may have written books, magazine articles,
prepared presentations, taken photos.......
We have, at least theoretically speaking, no
limitations on disk space, and no language or format limitations.
SDL can handle right to left, left to right, vertical direction and any
script covered by Unicode standards - which as far as I know is
practically every scripted language on the planet. It can handle any
known digital format. And since SDL is open source, if an existing
format appears to be unconvertible, then we write our own
converter. So, over to you. Hope to hear from you!
jbf.
_________________
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Title: australasia 2221
Subject and key words: SDB General SDL
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2221
