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eJewish.infoAn initiative of the Jewish Agency

היוזמה לפיתוח תשתיות בתקשוב

יהודי

Bringing Jewish Networking to

the Semantic Web Age

A Start Up

JAFI

Board of Governors

JAFI Internet Initiative

Steering Committee

Chairman: Sami Friedrich

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

eJewish.info Purposes of the Initiative

Benefits for target populations

Advantages for investors

Needs

Capabilities

Time line

What has been achieved so far

Feedback

Work Program

Sources of support

Indexes of success

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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.

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

The Jewish Agency

Commitment

Context of the Initiative

To increase the relations and the inter-dependence

between different parts of the Jewish people.

To advance the unity of the Jewish People while expressing the existing diversity.

Additional Considerations

Commercial attempts to concentrate Jewish networking activities failed

No other institution can be the catalyst for an infrastructure initiative of such scope

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Jewish Networking

Parameters

Jewish Networking and Internet

Penetration

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Why infrastructures are needed

The Jewish People is very small: 13 million with a very small span of Jewish Time

When the target population is small, market fragmentation is an obstacle to the offer of high quality services/content.

A lot of good Jewish content is available in the Deep Web outside the present Web reach : Music, Video, Photographs, Documents in Archives, Multimedia, Virtual Exhibits.

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Advantages of being Small

The Jewish domain being small may enable to achieve Quality of Contents targets that otherwise are unreachable.

Smallness enables the domain to become special: pioneering the integration of content sources

presently outside the Web reach;

getting a strong involvement of specific communities of interest

Good navigation devices are specially needed for part time Jews who are occasional users of Jewish networking.

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

The New Internet

CONVERGENCE

Information in Context

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Benefits

The New Internet is an external eventthat requires appropriate measures if Jewish Networking is expected to continue and flourish

This external event creates an opportunity, to create:A Common Jewish Market

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Benefits for target populations

8,000 Jewish Web Sites: they should participate in the transition to the Semantic Web through applications of RDF, Schema Registries and XML based communities: Metadata, Cooperation, Trust.

Structured support for communities of interest to define their agendas and priorities: e.g. genealogy, music, history, education, elearning.

Funding sources may better identify key areas for supporting Jewish networking ventures.

Commercial and Institutional Jewish networking: create conditions for offering services in an enlarged market.

Facilitate Jewish resources access and enhance their re-use by producers: Distributed Education, Curators of Virtual Exhibitions, Educators, Multimedia and CD Producers, Publishers, WebTV

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Work Programme

Development of a Controlled Vocabularyfor Jewish Networking

Creation of a Metadata Set 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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Work Programme

Identification of collections that are outside the Web: pictures, music, archives, video, radio

Dialogue in the framework of WG s to define relevant content areas for the development of integrative tools like ontologies for Jewish networking

World Congress of Jewish Networking for a summary of achievements, identification of problems and to get energy for continuing the process started up.

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Capabilities

Experienced team:

Dov Winer http://makash.org.il/dovw.htm

Rochelle Kedar – Israel Thesaurus builder specialist (Bar Ilan University)

Mazi Fraguela – System Person

Jewish Agency Specialized Resources:

e.g. Pedagogic Center Web managed by Dr. Motti Friedman

LALAN – JA Systems Service Provider

Tigersoft Systems provider

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Capabilities

Direct access to knowledge resources from EC RTD Projects – Education and Cultural Heritage

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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Member of Hi-Tech Consortia

OntoWeb *Ontology-based information exchange for

knowledge management and electronic commerce

http://www.ontoweb.org/infoboard.htm

DELOSNetwork of Excellence on Digital Librarieshttp://delos-noe.iei.pi.cnr.it/

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

What has been accomplished so far

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

Seminar for consultation and first steps towards World Congress of Jewish Networking

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Agreement with the Open

Directory Project

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Filling the Registry

1,189 Publishers registered (31.8.2002)

986 Collections approved – 127 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

Educational Partner Registry – Dr Motti Friedman, Pedagogical Center and BJE New York (Sep. 02)

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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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Working Groups in Jewish

Networking

The Registry enable us to reach most of those doing the day to day work of Jewish Networking in thousands of sites and distribution lists

Working groups leaded by those with specific interests in different areas may enable us to present a Jewish networking agenda for those interested in supporting its implementation

Good examples: the Jewish National Library Digitization Project, the CZA, the State of Israel Archivar, The Central Archives for the Jewish People, Center for Jewish Art with 250 objects photographed and well indexed

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

New Global Membership Category – no fees.

Upgrades the Institutional partnerships in Jewish Networking.

Implementation depends on solid Jewish institutional support.

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

Partnering and proposal writing

Semantic Web Workshop in October

World Congress in Julyl 2003

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Indexes of Success

8,000 Collections indexed in the Registry by November 2002; 20,000 Collections by April 2003

Two proposals developed, presented and approved by foundations/EC by December 2002

Two partner registries (Language or Subject Focused) established by February 2003

World Congress of Jewish Networking taking place in the first half of 2003 with a substantial part of its success parameters achieved

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Sources of Support

eContent Calls from the European Commission

Dialogue with AIU, IJPR and European Association for Jewish Culture

Prof. Barry Kozmin – Jean-Jacques Wahl

IST 5FP – Supporting Measures –Workshop on the Semantic Web for Jewish Networking

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Sources of Support

People are offering help, e.g.

Prof. Dov Levin, HUJI – Mobilized: Prof. Menashe Harel (Israel Prize);

Prof. Hayim Avni; Dr. Meir Litman; Adv. Joseph A. Melamed;

Joel Alpert (Harvard);

Mike Gertz (Washington)

Jason Chudnofski – COMDEX Owner

Paul Freedman - Denominations

Reuven Koret – People of the Network, Inc.

David Stein Detailed feedback on the Registry

High professional consultancy

Eventual business interest

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Sources of Support

World Congress of Jewish Networking

Way to channel expressions of support

Rotschild Foundation

Proposal with Dinur Center for Jewish History – end of 2002

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Marketing Advantages

The most advanced networking technologies at the service of Jewish Networking.

Potentially, we are the best filter for Jewish Resources in the Internet

Cutting edge knowledge being developed by the European Commission (Information Society Technologies) and the US Department of Defense DARPA is applied to Jewish Networking.

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Benefits for the Investor

Investing in a leading edge project

Long term benefits for an extensive segment of Jewish Life

Access to the technologies molding the evolving information, cultural and education markets

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

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

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

Consortium for Development of Jewish

Networking Infrastructures

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for

Israel

Contact: Dov Winer, Director

P.O.Box 92 Jerusalem 91000 Israel

[email protected]

.phone: +972.2.6204194 fax: +972.2.5333269

.personal page: http://www.makash.org.il/dovw.htm

an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel

eJewish.info

Thank you !