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The Project relies in an essential way on the convergence of information - processing, communication and new media, meeting the main policy issue of - the IST programme. In fact, due to its very nature, mathematical - information is particularly suited to an integrated analysis under the - different perspectives of elaboration, communication and (hyper)media - publishing, providing a main arena for innovative experiments and - solutions, especially in view of the new technological frontier of the - Semantic Web.
-The Project also tries to answer to a clear need for wider - interoperability and coherence in the realm of mathematics over the Web, - especially for educational, scientific and commercial purposes.
-Electronic textbooks are rapidly becoming a main tool for education and - knowledge dissemination. Electronic textbooks must be interactive, - allowing intercommunication between the text and scientific software and - graphics. This is very hard to achieve starting form a mere presentational - description of the information, clearly requiring a sophisticated - semantical description of the content.
-Similarly, the academic and commercial research communities generate large - volume of dense scientific material. Increasingly, research publications - are being stored in databases, especially for those areas of physics and - mathematics where academic journal prices have been growing at an - unsustainable rate. Still, however, the information is stored in a format - which is machine readable but not machine understandable; in particular it - is not suitable for any form of elaboration other than its rendering. - MOWGLI's content and metadata levels are exactly meant to address complex - elaboration requirements, and to facilitate the maintenance and - operability of large document collections, for which automatic searching - and indexing are crucial.
-Corporate and academic scientists and engineers also use technical - documents in their work to collaborate, to record results of experiments - and computer simulations, and to verify calculations. The Web is, - potentially, the natural media for sharing this information; MOWGLI is - meant to provide the basic technology to transform this potentiality into - an actual possibility.
-Commercial publishers are also involved with mathematics on the Web at all - levels from electronic versions of printed books to interactive textbooks - and academic journals. In this case, MOWGLI offers support for advanced - capabilities, such as browsing, interactivity, presentational and - stylistic customisation, and advanced searching and retrieving - features.
-The project deals with problems traditionally belonging to different - scientific communities: digital libraries, Web publishing, automation of - mathematics and computer aided reasoning. Any serious solution needs a - coordinated effort of all these groups and a synergy of their different - expertise. The members of the consortium have been also carefully chosen - for their experience in the above mentioned areas. From this interaction, - we expect to develop new technologies and solutions, fostering - innovation towards the construction of the Semantic Web.
-MOWGLI contributes in the spread of information and know-how, since - new information technologies will be applied to realms such as education - and publishing, which are traditionally not very inclined to innovation. - More competitiveness will be acquired both by the end users of the - system and by the technology providers, which will eventually profit by - the expertise gained by applying new and emerging technologies to the huge - and compelling problem of the management of mathematical documents over - the Web.
-By opening new perspectives in the domains of interactive publishing and - education, MOWGLI suggests new job-profiles in these domains, and - increases job opportunities in the Information Society sector.
-Finally, the social and cultural cohesion of Europe is eventually - strengthened by the creation of a large distributed repositories of - scientific knowledge.
- -The quality of life, in a civilised country, strictly depends on the - quality of its services, and in particular on the attention devoted to - those services aimed to preserve, increase and make accessible to a wider - audience its cultural and scientific heritage. Building a user friendly - Information Society, with particular emphasis on digital heritage, - cultural content and education is indeed a main social objective of the - European Community.
-The new Information Society is essentially based on the convergence of - information, communication and networking technologies and takes - advantage of infrastructures like the Internet and the Web.
-Our project builds on these grounds, to create the technological - infrastructure required for the creation and maintenance of a digital - knowledge base of structured mathematical information, universally - and seamlessly accessible to all people, and in particular to students and - professionals, through interoperable, dependable and affordable products - and services.
-From the educational point of view, our system could easily become a main - tool for a wider and more friendly dissemination of mathematical - knowledge. Indeed, its interactive nature, and the possibility to access - single information units, and possibly applying them, provides a more - operational and far less abstract comprehension of mathematical entities, - and should naturally induce the user to play with the knowledge base, - assembling components in the development of new theorems and results. - From the educational point of view, our system could easily become a main - tool for a wider and more friendly dissemination of mathematical - knowledge. Indeed, its interactive nature, and the possibility to access - single information units, and possibly applying them, provides a more - operational and far less abstract comprehension of mathematical entities, - and should naturally induce the user to play with the knowledge base, - assembling components in the development of new theorems and results.
-From the point of view of employment and development of individual skills, - there are two different aspects to be considered, according to the - objectives and the methodology of the project.
-From the methodological point of view, the project makes an essential use - of technologies which are the very foundations of the information society, - driving their development, enhancing their applicability, and accelerating - their take up in Europe. In particular, we shall build on most of the - recent recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), like XML, - DOM, XSL, XLL, MathML, RDF, etc. testing their applicability to the - definition of a comprehensive, integrated description of a given field of - knowledge.
-This kind of tools and techniques is of crucial importance in the - development of the Web and of the Information Technology of the next - years, and our project could play a major role in their dissemination in - Europe, and in training people in their use.
-On the other side, MOWGLI itself could become a major source of - inspiration for the re-invention of existing activities, and in particular - for the exploitation of new business in the publishing market. Currently, - digital journals just offer purely textual objects: our project could - help to define new market possibility for content-based publishing (i.e. - structured, possibly formal mathematical developments), with all the - potentialities offered by this approach, from browsing facilities, to the - personalisation of the style, from enhanced forms of searching, to more - or less arbitrarily complex forms of elaboration.
-Our system also opens new perspectives on the mechanisation of mathematics - and the automation of formal reasoning. The growing complexity of advanced - technological projects (in the areas of electronic and avionic - engineering, for example) has recently arose a renewed interest in formal - methods. From this respect, our project contributes to build an essential - infrastructure for the exploitation of these methods, providing a major - help for professionals, and fostering their skills.
-Let us finally remark that the project has no negative impact on the - natural environment. We could even claim a few benefits, related to the - electronic distribution of documents, such as the minimisation in the use - of means of conveyance and the saving of paper.
-The possible customisation via suitable style-sheets of structured - electronic documents could also meet the needs of particular users, such - as disabled (in particular, disabled students) or elderly (as retired - researchers who would like to continue their professional activity), - providing at the same time comfortable working conditions (e.g. at home). - Another general design requirement is the ability to render mathematical - material in other media such as speech or braille, which is extremely - important for the visually impaired.
-In conclusion, the aim of our work is to contribute to the creation of the - next generation of user-friendly, dependable and interoperable - general-interest services, meeting user demands for flexible access, for - everybody, from anywhere, at any time.
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