eJewish'info An initiative of the Jewish Agency

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eJewish.info An initiative of the Jewish Agency

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• Developing Jewish Networking Infrastructures
• Dov Winer
• Establishing a Shared Jewish Market through
  Semantic Web Technologies
• ILA Israel Association for Information
  Technologies
• Conference Tel-Aviv November, 13 2002

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eJewish.info

• An example of what we are doing
• Some new starts
• What we would like to do later on
• Know how sources
• Some tools
• Awareness and dissemination

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Purpose of eJewish.info

• Create a Joint Jewish Market that will provide
  clear advantages, by its size, ease of use and
  speed of access, for providers of services and
  goods of Jewish interest.

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The New Internet

• CONVERGENCE
• Information in Context
• Semantic Web Concepts

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Jewish Networking Parameters

• Jewish Networking and Internet Penetration

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What we are doing

• Project approved in July and started in
  September 2001
• Controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus) developed by
  Rochelle Kedar
• Metadata Set has been reviewed by a panel of
  prime international experts
• Requirements for the Registry Software defined
• Registry is working http//www.ejewish.info
• Agreement with the ODP (Open Directory Project)
  that powers Google

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Tools

• Development of Controlled Vocabularies for
  Jewish Networking
• Creation of a Metadata Sets for the description
  of Jewish resources CONTEXT
• Registration of resources on the level of
  Collections for allocating Metadata
• Registry of Persons, Institutions and
  corporations that deal or have an interest in
  Jewish networking
• Development of participatory mechanisms Working
  Groups and MOU

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An example The Dinur Centre for Jewish History
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Dinur Centre for Jewish History
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Dinur Centre for Jewish History
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Dinur Centre for Jewish History
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The Registry

• Collections
• Institutions and corporations
• Persons
• Metadata set
• Services
• Search
• Advanced Search slicing by all fields
• Export of Metadata as regular tags and RDF
• Browsing by ODP categories
• Browsing by Thesaurus accepted terms

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Jewish Networking Thesaurus

• 1,000 to 1,500 terms for indexing Jewish People
  sites
• Rochelle Kedar leading the development
• Agreement with the INDIRE-BDP Institute in
  Firenze, Italy for use of Thesaurus Management
  Software and support of Hebrew
• The Thesaurus is live available for browsing
  those collections which are indexed by a
  particular term

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Agreement with the Open Directory Project
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Agreement with the Open Directory Project

• Powers Google, AOL Search, AskJeeves, HotBot,
  Lycos and other 200 engines
• 2.3 million URLs
• self governance
• Open Source inspired
• Recognition of Jewish networking and possible
  emulation of a leading collaborative project
• Jewish Web sites will access one stop entry into
  main search engines. So that ? Web surfers
  interested in Jewish matters will have the most
  sophisticated search engines available

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Filling the Registry

• 1,202 Publishers registered (29.10.2002)
• 1,248 Collections approved 186 Pending
• Agreement with Dinur Center for Jewish History
  which manages 6,000 Collections
• Agreement with Snunit largest educational
  repository in Israel for direct transfer of data
• Agreement with JewishGen the most popular
  non-news Jewish Site. Implementation depends on
  funding
• ORT Israel one of the largest educational
  networks in Israel

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Next Steps

• Multi lingual support Thesaurus and Web site
• Hebrew Russian French Spanish
• Specialized Registries by Language or Subject
• Filling the Registry
• Dinur Snunit ORT JewishGen
• Shamash Denominations

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Filling the Registry

• Implementation of the afore mentioned agreements
  will result in an impressive number of resources
  in the Registry
• We will have achieved the largest and most
  varied repository of Jewish resources in the
  Internet.

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Some new starts

• Survey of Digital Repositories in view of
  setting up a integrative pilot
• Identification of collections that are outside
  the Web pictures, music, archives, video, radio
• Readiness to cooperate
• We identified the need to help develop
  appropriate business models for the repositories

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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Examples of Digital Repositories
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Near future program regarding Digital Repositories

• Pilot for the experimental integration of
  heterogeneous Digital Repositories
• Identifying successful models
• Defining an specific content area
• Developing the partnership
• Developing the necessary Ontologies and other
  tools

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Medium term plans

• EML Education Modeling Language application
  distributed Jewish Virtual University?
• Jewish Agents?
• Examples
• Yenta
• Retsina calendar and group coordination

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Yenta

• Yenta can figure out what youre interested in
• Yenta knows you have many interests
• You can send messages to people who share one
  of your interests
• Yenta can introduce you to others
• Yenta has a built-in reputation system
• You can filter messages you dont want to see
• Yenta protects your privacy

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Yenta

• Every user runs their own copy
• Yenta automatically deduces your interests from
  your files
• Yenta never transmits information to a central
  place
• Yenta searches for other, like-minded Yentas all
  over the net
• Yenta form clusters when they find others with
  common interests
• These clusters are the basis for messaging
• You can build a reputation by having other
  people to agree with things you say about
  yourself
• Yenta runs forever
• Yenta assumes that you are permanently on the net

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Know How

• Participation in EC RTD Projects
• ETB Ministries of Education Digital Library
  http//etb.eun.org
• CELEBRATE Learning Objects program
  establishing an European educational market
• BDP/INDIRE Thesaurus Development
• http//www.bdp.it

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Know How
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Know How
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Know How (Planned)

• AgentLink Europes Network of Excellence for
  Agent-Based Computing
• MINERVA
• VISION Towards Next Generation Knowledge
  Management

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Awareness/Dissemination

• World Congress of Jewish Networking
• Way to channel expressions of support
• Summing up 10 years of Jewish Networking
• Creating awareness for the new technological
  environment
• Mapping an agenda for future development

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Awareness/Dissemination

• RoadMap to the World Congress
• Internet Forum
• Semantic Web Seminar
• Training of moderators
• Establishing Working Groups
• ILA Conference with the Jewish
  Networking/Semantic Web Session
• Seminar for educators from abroad Jan 2003
• MOAH Conference
• .

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World Association for Jewish Networking

• Correspondence with the Internet Society
  http//www.isoc.org
• International organizational framework that
  oversees the overall Internet development and
  the establishment of standards.
• Agreement on establishment of an iSIG for
  Jewish Networking International Special
  Interest Group
• Upgrades the Institutional partnerships in
  Jewish Networking.
• Implementation depends on solid Jewish
  institutional support.

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What is in there for me

• The user of Jewish networking
• The most sophisticated search engines like
  Google will cover most of the Jewish collections
• He will get access to pinpointed resources by
  language, target population, age, quality
  control, keywords
• The site manager
• Increased exposure to search engines
• Formatted Metadata for his site
• A large assembly of Jewish resources he may
  wish to link to or emulate
• The Online Education Producer
• Learning objects for inclusion in his courses
• Well defined
• The Foundation Manager
• Wide discussed agendas for promotion of Jewish
• Networking in different areas in which he may
  decide to invest

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Program for the Development of Jewish Networking
Infrastructuresan initiative of the Jewish
Agency for Israel

• Contact Dov Winer, Director
• P.O.Box 92 Jerusalem 91000 Israel
• .dovw_at_jazo.org.il
• .phone [phone] fax [phone]
• http//www.ejewish.info/reka

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eJewish.info

• Thank you !