The First Digital Library of Romania

Objective: facilitating readers’ access to valuable resources of the Romanian literature. The Digital Library brings online for the first time over 100 000 pages of the Romanian Classics in electronic format.

The intended users of the content available through the Digital Library are all students studying Romanian literature and also specialists focusing on Romanian language and authors. Consequently, each work is presented in two ways:

• the normal version, Internet oriented (intended for ordinary users)
• the enhanced version, respecting the original edition pagination and line numbering. In this way Romanian literature specialists can easily use the online material for further reference. This enhanced version integrates critical resources and additional material.

The content of the Digital Library will be available both on the Internet, through a dedicated website and on CD-ROM edition.

Challenge: SOFTWIN specialists had to convert a great volume of literary resources from paper to electronic format. After scanning and OCR, printed books were converted to XML format, based on a proprietary DTD specifically built for this project. The conversion process ensured 99,995% accuracy level of text. The books included in the digital library respect the original spelling in various languages like old Romanian, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic (old Russian), displayable through a special font created to this purpose (the system has Unicode support).

Accomplishments: The content of the Digital Library is intelligently structured using XML standard, enabling users to make complex operations upon the text: full-text searches, bookmarks, annotations, highlights. For the users’ convenience it has embedded dictionaries and glossaries (of old or regional terms) and multimedia elements.
Moreover, the Digital Library offers a collaborative working environment (the possibility of defining virtual work groups or joining existing groups of discussions).

The Digital Library is also a search gateway in the National Catalog containing bibliographic records of the four big libraries of Romania (the University Library, the National Library of Romania, Library of the Romanian Academy, Mihail Sadoveanu Library). End users and professional librarians can search for books existing in all these libraries in several ways: simple search after various criteria, advanced search, UNIMARC metadata.

Benefits: The Digital Library is an attractive guide for students in approaching Romanian literature and, at the same time, a useful instrument for specialists in their research activities. The Digital Library offers broad access to resources that transcends the barriers implicit in any single physical location for library material.

goReader Inc, e-book devices producer

Solution: mobile learning solution for American students

Objective: Conversion of complex textbooks from various classical-formatted books to OpenEBook (OeB) format and morphing the content to goReader dedicated e-book device.

The mobile learning system was implemented as a pilot project at University of Chicago, Wake West University and Highland Park High School.

Challenge: The books that had to be converted to electronic format were complex textbooks, containing images, tables, charts, lists. The output had to reproduce exactly the look and feel of the original printed books. SOFTWIN specialists developed conversion tools capable of performing an accurate conversion process: 100% respect of the source document layout and creation of text flow.

Accomplishments: We have established a complete production chain based on the automation tools in-house developed in order to minimize the human intervention in converting complex content.

We have introduced a two-steps workflow: translation to an intermediary XML repository and then re-purposing to a custom output, to ensure the reusability of content.

Whatever the format and the complexity of the original books (including tables, lists or images surrounded by text), the final OeB output preserved the printed page layout.

Benefits: high-quality conversion process

goReader, Inc. has been able to launch its pilot programs within 3 large American universities before the scheduled moment.

SOFTWIN provided a stable and integrated solution, allowing the American company to focus mainly on its core business.

 

Structured Content – a business unit of Hearst Corporation

Solution: e-catalog for electronic circuits field

Objective: compile over 1,000,000 records from different manufacturers in an extensive e-catalog, ready for Internet distribution.

The e-catalog included electronic circuits entries (OPNs) with all their characteristic features so that the parts could be easily ordered even by a non-specialist.

Challenge: SOFTWIN’s teams had to identify from various sources all the attributes associated to an item and fill in the fields with the required information, in terms of absolute accuracy.

Accomplishments: SOFTWIN specialists have developed a data mining application that searched and identified the relevant information from thousands of PDF documents. Finally, the attributes were automatically dropped in the appropriate field and associated with the right OPN which uniquely identified an item.

Moreover, the PDF conversion engine previously developed by SOFTWIN automatically translated this information into an XML repository.

Benefits: The final delivery to the client enables the multi-channel distribution and re-purposing of the content included the e-catalog, from backing up the e-commerce site to printing promotional material.

Moreover, the client was able to see at each moment the project status and thus update or add new requirements according to his needs. The application developed by SOFTWIN is also an interactive management system enabling client communication and total transparency of workflow.

 

Romanian Ministry of Education

Solutions: Interactive education content for Romanian high school students

Objective: Introducing computer-based learning in Romanian high schools. The interactive lessons are being implemented in over 1500 high schools in Romania.

Challenges: Teaching assisted by computer in a real classroom raises several particular problems distinct from those connected with the general context of eLearning. First of all, the teacher-class relationship, viewed from the cognitive and affective psychosocial perspective, must not be structurally deformed by an invasive virtual technique. Rather, the computer models are called to supplement the rich interaction between teacher and class so that to optimize the transfer of knowledge and abilities. In this respect, it is important to address the points (mechanisms, experiments, concepts, etc.) which are difficult to explain in a “classical” manner (including verbal description, laboratory experiments and demos, thought experiments, etc.) but are prone to visual modeling.

Accomplishments: Based on the experience acquired in education projects developed for students in USA, UK, France, SOFTWIN created a new paradigm of learning by using state of the art technology to implement the latest socio-pedagogical models in the teaching – learning process.

SOFTWIN’s dedicated team worked with teachers who conceived and organized the educational material for each object of study, to ensure observance of methodological and teaching norms, as well as adequacy and accuracy of resources for each level.

Benefits: The interactive content is intuitive, facilitating students’ understanding and learning, due to simulations, animations and multimedia elements.

The different moments of the interactive lessons are controlled and supported with teacher’s explanations by using a LMS (Learning Management System). The LMS allows the build-up of lessons including various teaching moments, the distribution of these moments to students’ computers, the management of real-time feedback from the class, etc.

Lesson modules also include interactive tests for students’ evaluation.

The interactive feature of the education content improves the efficiency of the learning process, by increasing students’ ability to acquire new skills.

 

Motor, USA

Solution: Processing car images for Motor’s automotive catalogues.
The project started with “Crash Estimating Guide”, used by the insurance companies in USA.

Objective: SOFTWIN specialists processed over 60,000 complex images that were integrated in Motor’s e-catalog.

The initial phase was to analyze and define project specifications. According to the client’s needs, SOFTWIN proposed several output options to be considered, with a particular focus on the advantages and weak points of each solution.

Challenge: SOFTWIN had to setup and train a team of professionals in the automotive field in only a couple of weeks.

Given the fact that MOTOR is one of the US leaders in publishing solutions, the success of this project was a keystone for our teams.

Accomplishments: The recruited team was trained in-house according to client’s specific requirements. The team setup process also meant establishing the necessary skills and evaluation criteria in order to meet our client’s expectations in terms of quality and deadline observance. After training, organization and production workflow design, the team was ready to process 500 images per day.

Benefits: Our client was able to structure a high quality database in due time. The outsourcing of images conversion from several formats helped Motor focus on the data acquisition and commercial issues, rather than on technical ones.

 

Palgrave – Academic Division of Macmillan Publishing Group

Solution: e-book conversion

Objective: transforming into XML all Palgrave’s printed books, mostly economics and social sciences works.

Their collections are now displayed by netLibrary– the leading provider of e-books and Internet-based content management services.

Accomplishments: We created a DTD specifically designed for Palgrave’s books. Each element identified has its own description – the client is able to change books layout and structure according to his specific needs.

The XML repository built upon the DTD created enables Palgrave to easily obtain any e-book format: OeB for netLibrary, HTML, Adobe eBook Reader and .lit.

The ongoing phase of the project has focused on consulting and validation services for already existing XML files of the client. SOFTWIN’s specialists had to validate compliance to the DTD previously created and quality of XML content.

Benefits: Palgrave’s e-books underline the high-quality publishing tradition which made them the academic publisher of choice for authors and customers around the world.

Palgrave’s readers from all over the world will be able to access the publisher’s e-books, anytime, anywhere through the Internet.
 
The XML content allows complex operations upon the text: full-text searches, annotations, content refinement, bookmarks or collaboration between users.

 

Electronic dictionaries on CD-ROM editions

SOFTWIN has partnered with famous Romanian publishers to develop dictionaries in electronic format. SOFTWIN specialists realized the dictionary application for a series of bilingual dictionaries (English-Romanian, Romanian – English, French – Romanian, Romanian – French, German – Romanian, Romanian – German, Italian – Romanian, Romanian – Italian) available to users on CD-ROM editions.

The bilingual dictionaries are efficient tools for those who wish to acquire or improve their foreign languages skills. The large number of frequently used words allows users to understand usual texts and conversations.

The dictionary application has several functions:

• the dictionary function, allowing users to enter just the beginning of the word; the application finds the closest match for the respective string and displays the definition in the corresponding area. The definition also includes the phonetic transcription of the word.
• the anagram function, allowing user to find the anagrams of a word;
• the rebus function: allows the user to find words that meet certain rules. The program can find words that include, begin with or end with a specific group of letters.
• the translation function: assists the user in translating texts from Romanian into English or from English into Romanian.