CONVERSION SERVICES OF DOCUMENTARY RESOURCES FROM THE BIBLIOTECA VIRTUAL MIGUEL DE CERVANTES IN MULTIFORMAT EDUCATIVE RESOURCES

This communication will present the services built by the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, from now on BVMC, that aims to provide the documentary resources, in rich text formats, with scientific quality, that teachers can use in their practice.

Created in 1999, The BVMC is the largest provider of information about Latin American classic literature in digital format. A high percentage of its works are in a standard, interdisciplinary and internationally format: XML (TEI 2). The XML TEI2 allows to generate different rich formats, such as PDF’s, EPUB, etc, for scientific or teaching purposses. Based on these XML files, it is possible to generate educational material accessible from the web as open educational resources.

The process of generating the different formats has been modeled through a Bussiness Process Management tool (BPM), which allows us to arrange the different web services involved in this process, providing a workflow that guides the format transformation. A characteristic of our approach is that the final format of presentation preserves the academic standards that are required for scientific and educational practice.

The BPM tool allows to graphically design the process to be followed to perform the document transformations. The executable code is generated automatically from this graphic design that consists on different calls to web services provided by the BVMC.
To enable those transformations, the web services used by the BPM tool are:

- Getting a representation in XMLTEI2 format.
- Checking the validity of the representation obtained.
- Generating an intermediate TEX format.
- Getting a representation in the specific format requested by the user.

In contrast to other approaches to the problem of format conversion that are based on the application of XSL and XSLT templates, the proposal introduces the conversion to an intermediate format based on TEX. This allows the correct generation of multiple formats, ensuring the necessary academic format.

The communication will show how the design of workflow through the BPM tool and subsequent implementation facilitates and systematizes the use of web services discussed above to transform on the fly existing materials from the BVMC in educational resources.