elfx helps transform information into knowledge
About
The growing number of newsfeeds, blogs, on-line presentations, training courses, tutorial videos, guidelines, scientific papers and other documents makes it increasingly difficult for individuals to filter out just the information they will retain, particularly if the scope is not limited to a single discipline.
How best to extract the information you need from all the material you receive and then find it again?
elxf helps transform digital information into practical knowledge
elxf is the electronic library exchange format for personal use and a simple collaborative solution for all content providers (including OpenAccess publishers and organizations with smaller publishing budgets) and freely accessible by users.
elxf enables health professionals to collect all information of interest to them (without having to join dozens of networks), from any speciality field and regardless of who provided it, and display it in a single list for a better overview and to quickly re-find information in the mass of material that accumulates over time. Users control what they want to investigate further (rather than having search engines deciding on their behalf) and allowing them to
· selectively acquire just the information that is useful to them· suppress duplicate, outdated, overlapping and conflicting information· reduce application clutter with multiple front ends and proprietary indices· update the collection frequently and consult it on-line and off-line (in low bandwidth situations)
elxf is not about another global repository with a central authority, just an open specification (see http://elxf.info) that facilitates the exchange of information and allows users to dynamically build up their own searchable knowledge base from downloaded documents and other digital assets as well as links to online resources.
How it works:
Content providers publish their material on their web site or on removable media along with a manifest (typically named “library.elxf”) containing all metadata pertaining to that material. Users, upon opening the manifest, see instantly more than just cryptic file names to decide which items are relevant and worth downloading for future reference.
Core to this system is catalogue data (aka metadata) that travels with each document, either embedded, in an accompanying data list or attached as dMeta bundle (data + metadata zip file - useful in cases where metadata cannot directly be embedded in the digital resource.
elxf builds on proven standards and technologies such as Dublin Core for parameter naming and Adobes' XMP format for metadata exchange (as already used in PDF files) plus an extensible topics definition to accommodate varying taxonomies.
While the filename itself, the title and the description are the most obvious metadata that have to be meaningful, topics and keywords are equally important for providing useful search results.
Topics, a unique element in elxf, arranged hierarchically, provide a better overview, faster access to articles and allow keeping groups of coherent content (i.g. per provider or subject) together. This list evolves in cooperation with interested content providers.
digi-libris Reader can read such metadata and automatically classify incoming documents in the users’ knowledge base. Thus all digital resources become instantly searchable, even off-line.
digi-libris Platinum for professionals automates all required steps to compile elxf compliant data lists (aka manifests) and facilitates embedding metadata in existing files, allows building and running macros to generate web pages with links to dozens or hundreds of downloadable and/or remote digital resources, complete with an interactive index. This is ideal for of-line use on mobile devices.