Services for Knowledge Resource Sharing & Management in an Open Source
Infrastructure for Lifelong Competence Development
*


Elena Demidova
1
, Philipp Kärger
1
, Daniel Olmedilla
1
, Stefaan Ternier
2
, Erik Duval
2
,
Michele Dicerto
3
, Carlos Mendez
4
and Krassen Stefanov
5
1
L3S Research Center, Hannover, Germany, {demidova,kaerger,olmedilla}@L3S.de
2
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, {stefaan.ternier,erik.duval}@cs.kuleuven.be
3
GIUNTI ILABS, Sestri Levante, Italy, m.dicerto@giuntilabs.it
4
Altran SDB, Madrid, Spain, cmendez@altransdb.com
5
Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria, krassen@fmi.uni-sofia.bg

Abstract
Access to learning information is still restricted due to
the lack of technical and semantic interoperability,
locking knowledge resources in disconnected islands.
This situation does not provide learners with a
motivating environment in which to access and share
learning information. In order to target emerging
needs for lifelong competence development, a flexible
and open source environment for management and
sharing of knowledge resources must be built on top of
an infrastructure that maximizes the amount of
information available, therefore integrating
centralised repositories and user desktop resources as
well as emergent Web 2.0 applications. This paper
describes the challenges and requirements that need to
be addressed and presents a set of interfaces and our
current implementation of the Knowledge Resource
Sharing and Management service oriented
architecture.

1. Introduction
Traditionally, instructional learning has covered the
needs of people searching for new labour
opportunities, be it in the form of improvements or
upgrades in current jobs or as a way to be able to apply
for new ones. Nowadays, there is a growing need for
more flexible and cost-effective solutions for learners
in order to provide lifelong competence development.
TENCompetence [1] addresses this need and aims at
supporting individuals, groups and organizations by
establishing the most appropriate technical and
organizational infrastructure, using open source,
standards-based, sustainable and innovative
technology. Such an infrastructure requires a
knowledge resource sharing and management
middleware as basis to ensure availability of resources
as well as the ability to exchange and (re-)use them.
Knowledge resources
1
are spread over the web, in
centralised repositories, web servers and user desktops.
On the one hand, centralised and monolithic
repositories (on which e.g., Learning Management
Systems rely) represent the traditional and old-
fashioned approach for resource sharing. On the other
hand, completely decentralised networks like P2P
allow users to share content without relying on a third
party repository, therefore without loosing control over
it. This appealing alternative, which is successfully in
use (e.g., Edutella [2] and LionShare [3]), allows
learners to share e.g., their desktop resources. Lately, a
successful integration of these two kinds of
information sources has been demonstrated [4].
However, it does not provide other services (e.g.,
publishing of knowledge resources).
Currently, emergent Web 2.0 applications (e.g.,
Flickr [5] and YouTube [6]) provide new means for
users to share information with a higher level of
motivation than the more old-fashioned repository-like
and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. A flexible
knowledge resource infrastructure must not only allow
searching through heterogeneous information sources
but must also provide services like resource
publishing, information source and user management
as well as resource rating. Unfortunately, there is no
standard interface that serves this purpose in a way that
all information sources could be easily targeted. This
lack of interoperability represents a challenging task:
building an infrastructure for sharing and management
of knowledge resources, that integrates all relevant
services and makes them interoperable over
heterogeneous information sources.
In order to achieve the integration of models and

*
The work on this paper has been partially sponsored by the
TENCompetence Integrated Project. Contract 027087.
1
With knowledge resources we mean the containers that store the
explicit knowledge for sharing purposes. Examples are learning
objects, articles, books, software programs, informal messages, etc.
Seventh IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2007)
0-7695-2916-X/07 $25.00 ' 2007