No description available.

ABSTRACT The orally transmitted tradition of Lobolo is a common and widely practiced cultural tradition and an established marriage institution within African societies in Southern Africa, differing only in terms and minor variations of practice. Lobolo therefore has the status of being an intangible heritage and is acknowledged as such by South Africa’s National Heritage Resource Act of 1999. Its role in society today on the one hand and its oral way of transmission on the other has placed it in the center of an ongoing post-colonial discourse, particularly around the standing of the African intangible heritage in post-1994 South Africa. The Heritage Transformation Charter, following its mandate by the National Heritage Council, intended to attend to and correct existing imbalances in the Heritage sector and its institutions. It also aimed to identify and establish ways for the preservation and continuation of African heritage. The study reviews the literature on Lobolo, highlighting the ways in which it has been described as a multifaceted cultural and social institution. In consideration of these findings it critically engages in a discussion of the Draft Heritage Transformation Charter, to assess its acknowledgement of the characteristics of living heritage. In doing so the study probes the ability of a policy guiding document such as the Heritage Transformation Charter, to accommodate and guide the survival of oral traditions such as Lobolo, as part of the intangible heritage of South Africa.

This paper examines the feasibility of establishing reliable repositories intended for the use of the average individual for the preservation of personal digital objects. Observers of technological change warn of the coming of a "digital dark age." Rather than being systematic, the attempts of the average individual to preserve his or her personal digital objects - photos, documents, music - are ad hoc, at best. Digital archiving involves challenges both in terms of hardware reliability and software obsolescence, and requires a blend of technology platforms, legal and public policies, and organizational structure. These three areas must be combined in a cohesive manner in order to facilitate the preservation of personal digital objects for periods of decades or even centuries. Regarding the issue of technological feasibility, I present an examination of work that has already been performed in the field of digital preservation, including an assessment ofDSpace, an open source platform used in institutional repositories to encapsulate data for long term archival. I then introduce my development of Alexandria@CyberStreet.com as an exploration of how a DSpace installation may be modified to suit the needs of personal archiving. Next, I present an examination of the legal and public policy issues concerning such a repository. Finally, I examine organizations that are devoted to the oversight of long-term endeavors and draw conclusions as to an appropriate administrative structure. I conclude that there are sufficient technological tools, public policies and organizational models in place to enable establishment of reliable, long term repositories for personal digital objects.

Understanding of place is fundamental to architects, a complex topic with many layers. The purpose of this research is to explore how architects can answer to the given conditions of a specific site and through the act of making, explore and provide insights as input for a series of Pioneers (design proposals).  This investigation takes place in a rural coastal village forty kilometers north om Umeå, a  tranquil place named Ratan. Six in-situ artifacts are identified and analysed through an extensive iterative process where drawings and models are made along with reflections and theory, constituting an archive.  A pioneer is among the first to explore and to settle in new territory, it can also be groundbreaking in utilizing new methods or areas of knowledge or activities.These pioneers are just that, objects that pushes boundaries and are willing to try new things. The focus lies in unfolding that process and to explore how that understanding can be achieved through a specific process of making an archive. The archive has been used as a conscious tool to reflect and learn. In turn, it has provided insights into the three pioneers to be placed back in Ratan on three specific locations representing different typologies.   The aim has been to find methods and strategies of providing insights to be used into creating thoughtful born-out-of-place architecture that reflects back to its location and surroundings, to learn through the act of making and to involve all senses into the process.  For architects, the outlined process is relevant as it proposes alternative approaches and methods to understanding space. To make meaningful architecture with character, that is both rooted into the past and the future. Perhaps it is true as expressed by Christer Hollinder that we need a historical foundation as not to be fluttery and rootless.

Starting from an analysis of the character of the city of Turin (Italy), the project intervenes in the historical urban context with ta proposal for a multimedia library and archive space in a plot left vacant after WW2 bombings. The project includes the reuse of an existing building, formerly a theatre but currently in a state of ruin after the war destructions, as well as the creation of a new wing and public spaces. Its aim is to develop an architectural language that can be an interpretation of the city’s features, sitting halfway between contemporaneity and tradition. The main sources of inspiration are baroque architecture, porticoed public spaces, formal front facades in contrast with more messy and autonomous internal courtyards. The resulting building mixes these influences in a complex combining archive spaces for the nearby Museum of Cinema, offices connected to it, a public library and consultation spaces, multifunctional and lecture rooms, and an independent café with indoor and outdoor seating.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Current web search engines retrieve relevant results only based on the latest content of web pages stored in their indices despite the fact that many web resources update frequently. We explore possible techniques and data sources for improving web search result ranking using web page historical content change. We compare web pages with previous versions and separately model texts and relevance signals in the newly added, retained, and removed parts. We particularly examine the Internet Archive, the largest web archiving service thus far, for its effectiveness in improving web search performance. We experiment with a few possible retrieval techniques, including language modeling approaches using refined document and query representations built based on comparing current web pages to previous versions and Learning-to-rank methods for combining relevance features in different versions of web pages. Experimental results on two large-scale retrieval datasets (ClueWeb09 and ClueWeb12) suggest it is promising to use web page content change history to improve web search performance. However, it is worth mentioning that the actual effectiveness at this moment is affected by the practical coverage of the Internet Archive and the amount of regularly-changing resources among the relevant information related to search queries. Our work is the first step towards a promising area combining web search and web archiving, and discloses new opportunities for commercial search engines and web archiving services. / Master of Science / Current web search engines show search documents only based on the most recent version of web pages stored in their database despite the fact that many web resources update frequently. We explore possible techniques and data sources for improving web search result ranking using web page historical content change. We compare web pages with previous versions and get the newly added, retained, and removed parts. We examine the Internet Archive in particular, the largest web archiving service now, for its effectiveness in improving web search performance. We experiment with a few possible retrieval techniques, including language modeling approaches using refined document and query representations built based on comparing current web pages to previous versions and Learning-to-rank methods for combining relevance features in different versions of web pages. Experimental results on two large-scale retrieval datasets (ClueWeb09 and ClueWeb12) suggest it is promising to use web page content change history to improve web search performance. However, it is worth mentioning that the actual effectiveness at this point is affected by the practical coverage of the Internet Archive and the amount of ever-changing resources among the relevant information related to search queries. Our work is the first step towards a promising area combining web search and web archiving, and discloses new opportunities for commercial search engines and web archiving services.

Digital Libraries (DLs) are software systems specifically designed to assist users in information seeking activities. Stemming from the intersection of library sciences and computer networking, traditional DL systems impose library philosophies of structure and management on the sprawling collections of data that are made possible through the Internet. DLs evolve to keep pace with innovation on the Internet so there is little standardization in the architecture of such systems. However, in attempting to provide users with the highest possible levels of service with the minimum possible effort, many systems work collaboratively with others, e.g., meta-search engines. This type of system interoperability is encouraged by the emergence of simple data transfer protocols such as the Open Archives Initiative?s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Open Digital Libraries are an extension of the work of the OAI. It is proposed in this dissertation that the philosophy and approach adopted by the OAI can easily be extended to support inter-component interaction within a componentized DL. In particular, DLs can be built by connecting small components that communicate through a family of lightweight protocols, using XML as the data interchange mechanism. In order to test the feasibility of this, a set of protocols was designed based on a generalization of the work of the OAI. Components adhering to these protocols were implemented and integrated into production and research DLs. These systems were then evaluated for simplicity, reusability, and performance. On the whole, this study has shown promise in the approach of applying the fundamental concepts of the OAI protocol to the task of DL component design and implementation. Further, it has shown the feasibility of building componentized DL systems using techniques that are a precursor to the Web Services approach to system design. / Ph. D.