BRICKS (software) Totally Explained

Everything about Bricks Software totally explained

BRICKS (Building Resources for Integrated Cultural Knowledge Services) is an open-source software framework for the management of distributed digital assets. BRICKS has been deployed on a number of cultural institutions under the umbrella of the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network, a community of cultural heritage, scientific and industrial organizations across Europe. The software itself is shared under the LGPL license.

History

The BRICKS project released the first prototype of its software framework (v0.1) in December 2005. In February 2007, the third prototype release was made available. The next release is planned in July 2007. The BRICKS project work is partly funded by a research grant from the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme under the Information Society Technologies priority, action line “Technology. Enhanced Learning and Access to Cultural heritage.” The BRICKS Consortium invested an overall 12.2 million Euros in the project, including funding from the European Commission and consortium partners. The European Commission funding will end in June 2007. The BRICKS Consortium announced in February 2007 the launch of a BRICKS Developer Community

to host BRICKS development and documentation activities beyond the EC project lifespan.

The BRICKS consortium

The BRICKS project consortium includes 22 partners from 9 different European countries. The project is led by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA

, an Italian ICT company, while the scientific and technical lead is Fraunhofer IPSI

from Germany.

List of consortium partners

BRICKS software

The BRICKS network infrastructure uses the Internet as a backbone, and is made of decentralized BRICKS Nodes (BNode), in order to avoid central points whose failure or overload could stop or slowdown the whole Network. BNodes communicate among each other and use available resources for content and metadata management.
Every BNode knows directly only a subset of other BNodes in the system. However, if a BNode wants to reach another member that's directly unknown to it, it'll forward a request to some of its known neighbour BNodes that will deliver the request to the final destination or forward it again. BRICKS users access the system only through a local BNode available at their institution. Hence every user request is primarily sent to the institution's BNode and then the request is routed via other BNodes to the final destination.
Search requests behave like that; the BNode pre-selects a list of BNodes where a search request can be fulfilled, and then the BNode routes it there. When the location of the content is known, for example as a result of the query, the BNode is directly contacted.

BNode

A BNode could be seen as a set of services that are required to manage an institution's presence in the system, and to provide services for the rest of the community. A BNode consists of three types of components: fundamental, core, and basic Bricks. Most of them are standard Web services, described by WSDL documents and registered with a UDDI compatible repository used also for discovering appropriate services.
   Since the BNode architecture is service-based, a BNode installation can be spread on more than one machine at the installation site. In such cases fundamental Bricks are needed on every machine that's part of the local installation, and core and basic Bricks can be present only on some machines. As their name suggests, core Bricks provide core system functionalities to users, for example a minimal set of services that enables users to use the system. On the other side, basic Bricks are optional and they must not be present on every installation site.
   BNode, for example all installed services, run within a Web-service framework (embedding, among others Apache Axis) that provides a standard set of functionalities: service deployment/undeployment, service invocation, and parameters serialisation/deserialisation.
   The BNode software is mainly written in Java and JSP, using an embedded version of Apache Tomcat application Server. The BNode services re-use a large number of open-source libraries and frameworks including: Jena, Apache Axis, Apache Lucene, Apache Jackrabbit, Ant, JUnit, HSQLDB.
   The BNode exposes all of its services through a SOAP web-service API. A Java Server Pages web-based GUI is provided for the administrative tasks including configuration of the network settings, security, and user management.
   Users interact with a BNode through the BRICKS Pillar applications, described in the next section.

BRICKS applications

The BRICKS Workspace is a Java Server Pages web application based on the Struts framework. It offers a view of the BRICKS Network, allowing to search and browse available collections of digital objects, group objects into logical collections, annotate objects, manage, and import them. BRICKS Workspace must be installed along the BNode software.
The BRICKS Desktop is an Eclipse-RCP application providing a more advanced access to the BNode services. It features a fully configurable user application framework allowing advanced metadata editing, ontology browsing, extensive searching, and interactive content creation.
Many other applications based on the BRICKS platform exist, including specific applications for the Cultural Heritage sector. The EMYA (European Museum of the Year) application, for example allows the management of an award for museum institutions across Europe, belonging to the European Museum Forum association.

Finds Identifier

The Finds Identifier

application helps members of the general public classify archaeological objects they find. The user is presented with a set of questions, like the material of the object, dimensions, etc. allowing the application to retrieve matching objects from reference collections and present an image of the objects and a description to the user so he/she can further narrow down the classification.

Living Memory

The Living Memory

application deals with the creation of a "living memory," where visitors of cultural exhibitions can create and exhibit their personal contributions by interacting with the cultural objects shown in an exposition or museum. Living Memory helps curators and visitors to interact with each other, by sharing their content and enabling both to participate and create exhibitions. This prosumer paradigm is also reflected in the Annotation Tool

which enables curators as well as visitors to create annotations on content. Annotating content helps to identify parts of content as well as employing a group of interest about the topic.

BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network (BCHN)

The BRICKS Project has established a network among cultural institutions for the sharing of digital cultural resources. This network, called the BRICKS Cultural Heritage Network, connects some of the major providers of cultural digital content and prominent players in the field of Digital Libraries, such as: The European Library, the MICHAEL Project, the British Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and the Russian Culture Heritage Network to name a few. By installing a Bnode and joining this network, even smaller cultural institutions and other digital content providers may contribute to the building of an unprecedented shared digital memory spanning over Europe and beyond.

Further Information

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