DSpace Goes Olympic
Researchers at China’s Beihang University in Beijing will use DSpace, the open-source digital archiving system developed by MIT and Hewlett-Packard, to create a multimedia, online museum for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The project uses technology similar to what Beihang researchers designed for the virtual collections of the China Digital Science and Technology Museum. DSpace allowed them to store high-definition 3-D digital representations of hundreds of thousands of objects from 100 Chinese museums. Those images are now freely available to anyone in the world. The technology will now be used to store more than two terabytes of information about modern and ancient Olympics and traditional Chinese sports in an interactive 3-D virtual environment. To enable the average user to access so much information, the researchers designed the system so that central servers–not users’ computers–do most of the processing.
DSpace, which turns five this year, is best known as a way to archive academic materials like MIT’s open courseware. It was designed, using open-source code, to preserve records from the digital era, including research data, lectures, and even building plans such as those for the Stata Center. DSpace has been used in about 270 projects worldwide. One of the largest, the Texas Digital Library, unites information from university libraries across the state. A project by Stuart Lewis at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth is one of the quirkiest: Lewis uses DSpace to store experimental data generated by a robot scientist.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.
Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.
Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch
Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.
How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets
When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.