University Park, Pa. -- As the use of information technology expands in higher education, many faculty increasingly maintain collections of digital media that they use to inspire their students in the classroom. Some collections consist of a few hundred images, but some number in the thousands. Many of the repositories include digital images, but others might contain audio, video and scientific simulations as well. Regardless of the size of the collection or the type of media stored, the purpose is pretty much the same -- to create an environment where students want to learn.
"Digital media is being used more frequently in universities to enhance curricula, excite students and improve performance," said Mike Halm, senior researcher in Information Technology Services at Penn State. "Data, such as digital images, audio, simulations and video, can be used in creative ways to ignite classroom learning and motivate students to achieve."
Halm and other interested developers at Penn State began looking at ways faculty used digital media to engage their students and manage their electronic files. "What we found was a desire for better tools and services that would help faculty find, store and retrieve their resources easily."
By talking to Penn State educators who owned electronic collections, the developers also identified some of the overwhelming obstacles involved in discovering, organizing and distributing digital media. "Barriers were everywhere," said Halm. "Finding just the right information and managing it so it could be easily retrieved was a challenge. Sharing it with peers was next to impossible."
Realizing that peer-to-peer (P2P) technology offered unique opportunities to manage and exchange files, Halm and his team of researchers set out to develop an open-source software that could be used within the academic community to simplify the use of digital information by educators. Last week, that goal came one step closer to fruition, when Penn State and Internet2 developers released the open-source code for a new academic file-sharing technology, called LionShare, at the Internet2 Member Meeting in Austin, Texas.
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "LionShare merges electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools into a dynamic software application that promises to significantly improve the way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic endeavors," said Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology. "In addition, LionShare will simultaneously ensure a secure authenticated computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing capabilities."
According to Augustson, last week's LionShare source code release will provide programmers around the globe with the opportunity to contribute valuable feedback and suggestions, while team partners (Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) fine-tune the project software -- slated for universities and institutions to officially begin testing this upcoming January.
Penn State's efforts already are gaining public recognition. President Graham B. Spanier testified before Congress yesterday (Oct. 4) in an update on efforts to combat peer-to-peer piracy on university campuses. (See http://live.psu.edu/story/8351 for background.) Afterward, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, commented on Penn State's efforts in developing a legitimate peer-to-peer network for educational purposes.
"I applaud Penn State for undertaking its LionShare project," he said. "As I understand it, the LionShare project at Penn State is attempting to establish P2P networks optimized for scientific and research purposes. The hope is to connect scientists directly to one another and to the otherwise unavailable research, notes, data and unpublished material residing on their hard drives. In assessing the needs of scientists and researchers, the LionShare project has apparently found that they will share their materials most freely on closed networks with some level of security and authentication. The LionShare project will hopefully achieve its goal of establishing just such networks."
Berman's praise is welcomed by the developers. "We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated," said Halm, who currently serves as the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations from around the world have contacted us with questions about the technology and requests for the release date, and many groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the code is now available for testing."
Several educational and research institutions have expressed interest in LionShare's unique capabilities for resource exchange, including its ability to transfer audio, video, scientific simulations, text, documents, research papers, Web resources and a variety of other learning activities.
"LionShare has enormous potential," said Loukas Kalisperis, professor of architecture at Penn State. "With this single application, collaborating faculty can build digital repositories such as 3-D architectural image collections, Web-based video archives and art collections. Faculty will also have a range of tools at their fingertips for managing and exchanging their own personal collections, in addition to having access to large-scale data repositories throughout the United States and Europe."
Kalisperis is among a number of scholars and scientists who have offered their suggestions to team members as project plans unfolded this past year. Feedback from faculty at Penn State and other institutions is enabling developers to enhance the software's features with cutting-edge security, authentication and password-handling capabilities -- plus a high-performance text search engine and a technology developed by Simon Fraser that will make secure, single-search inquiries of certain worldwide digital repositories possible.
The continual dialogue with developers and potential network users has furthered significantly the development of the technology.
"With the source code release on Sept. 30, interested programmers and application developers can now access the code to use and/or modify for their needs and specifications," added Halm. "Feedback from programmers, as well as our peer institutions, will be essential in our efforts to further the development of the software. These efforts will culminate in the launch of an academic file-sharing network that researchers will be able to test and use this January."
To learn more about LionShare and to access the new source code, go to http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/
About LionShare
The LionShare project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a collaboration among Penn State and partner organizations including Internet2; Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The LionShare project grew out of the Visual Image User Study (VIUS), an experimental software development project designed to assist Penn State faculty with digital file management.