Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program or TELDAP is a program initiated January 1, 2008, to offer a centralized and integrated platform where “All Things Taiwan” can be found in digital form. This is an enormous and ambitious undertaking which is designed to bring together a wealth of information from existing sources of digital information as well as digitized input from older, pre-digital sources including everything from museums to individual histories and contributions from the general public in Taiwan.

TELDAP is designed to make e-learning and digital archives knowledge based and accessible to users everywhere and to make Taiwan a more informed and knowledgeable society. The main overall objectives of TELDAP are archiving the diversity of Taiwan and deepening e-learning in Taiwan, with the ultimate benefit being to strengthen national competitiveness

The story begins in 2002 when the National Digital Archives Program (NDAP) was set up to collect digital data on the archives kept in Academia Sinica, the National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University and many other public and private cultural institutions in Taiwan. In 2003, the National Science and Technology Program for e-Learning (ELNP) was launched. These two national programs of science and technology have successfully integrated developments in information technology while incorporating contents from nature and culture, as well as showing their applications in industry. These programs have also brought together experts in different fields to exchange ideas and consider how to create, organize and disseminate knowledge.

In the first phase, NDAP and ELNP concentrated on digitizing national cultural treasures including archaeology, archives, artifacts, calligraphy and paintings, flora and fauna, rare books, and similar subjects. This served to cultivate popular e-learning culture, encourage innovation in e-learning research, and lay the cornerstone for Taiwan’s e-learning and digital content industries. Developers soon realized that archives digitization was only a starting point towards establishing the digital content industry, and the digital archives merely the first step in the development of digital contents. The next major challenges will be the systematic promotion and application of the products of NDAP and ELNP to culture, education, research and commerce.

The people behind TELDAP hope that it will contribute to the development of the information society, promote Taiwan’s cultural identity based on its rich culture, and help Taiwan to catch up with the advanced Western countries in the era of digital globalization and the knowledge society. The program is being developed under the watchful eyes of a Program Director and two Deputy Program Directors. Academician Ts'ui-jung Liu, the Vice President of Academia Sinica, serves as Program Director for TELDAP. Academician Der-Tsai Lee, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation and Institute of Information Science at Academia Sinica, and Professor Shing-Tsaan Huang from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Central University serve as the two Deputy Program Directors.

To date eight core sub-projects have been established as part of TELDAP. These are the Taiwan Digital Archives Expansion Project; the Research and Development for Digital Archives and e-Learning Technologies Project; the. Core Platforms for Digital Contents Project’ the Academic and Social Promotions and Applications for Digital Archives and e-Learning Project; the Industrial Development and Promotion of Digital Archives and e-Learning Project; the Digital Education and e-Learning Project; the e-Learning for Chinese Language Project; and the International Collaboration and Promotion of Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program

To check on the progress these programs have made, click onto the TELDAP website and check out the Showcase Platforms section under the English section of the site. Here you will find areas that offer insights into the world of Taiwan and digital learning. To date seven platforms have been developed including the Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Portal; the Union Catalog of Digital Archives; Digital Taiwan: Culture and Nature; Exhibition of Cyber Island Taiwan, the Learning Object Repository in Taiwan; the e-Learning Standards Website; and the e-Learning Quality Certification Center.

Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Portal

The Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Portal is a growing collection of data from a wide variety of sources including Academia Sinica, the National Palace Museum, the National Museum of Natural Science, National Taiwan University, the National Museum of History, Academia Historica, Taiwan Historica, the National Central Library, the Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council, the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, the Council of Indigenous Peoples, and the National Archives Administration. Data here is grouped under three main themes dealing with treasures, tours and experience.

The Union Catalog of Digital Archives represents the collaboration of hundreds of Taiwanese experts in the sciences and humanities. It presents millions of collected artifacts in a single catalog to eliminate the need to spend hours searching for information on the Internet. The catalog provides a variety of search modes, enabling users to access collections, consult quick guides and search for certain themes or locations. It also functions as a browsing platform for academic research, educational development and applications in business and industry. Public access is governed by the articles of the ‘Creative Commons Taiwan’ Legal Code.

Digital Taiwan: Culture and Nature

Working from another angle, Digital Taiwan: Culture and Nature showcases the cultural heritage and natural resources of Taiwan to the world while complementing the Chinese-language portal at http://digitalarchives.tw which demonstrates TELDAP’s accomplishments. The English-language portal provides the global community with an in-depth and convenient way of appreciating Taiwan’s culture and digitization achievements.

Planned content in the future will include “Collection Level Descriptions” with contextual information to give users a more complete understanding when they browse this collection. “Facets of Taiwan” is a selection of some of TELDAP’s best exhibitions, presenting a series of stories and detailed background information regarding special features and collections, for example the calligraphy in Mi Fu’s art or the physics involved in the works of old glass artists. “A Slice of Wonder” presents priceless items in digitized form from TELDAP's collection in order to give users an opportunity to view them close-up and in detail. These include ancient documents too fragile to handle physically as well as species of animals and plants which can be studied through the Internet as a preliminary or a complement to field studies.

This also offers a second chance to those who miss exhibitions, such as the National Palace Museum’s "The Treasures of Eight Thousand Years" and Academia Sinica’s "Riding the Currents of History – Four Thousand Years of Civilization and Technology." It also includes a photo gallery and a multi-media section for a wider look at the contents, plus work that has been funded by Taiwan’s Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) and the Culture Mondo Network. It shares biological information from the Union Catalog of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), sets up a Chinese version of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), and provides English information on Taiwanese endemic species.

Exhibition of Cyber Island Taiwan

Cyber Island is a platform which has been established to encourage the general public to contribute digital contents to the TELDAP project. This allows room for a broad range of materials including the flora, fauna, and ecology of Taiwan’s natural environment; social movements and activities; architecture and landscape; daily life; and a virtually unlimited variety of other topics. Cyber Island adds diversity to the contents of the Taiwan Digital Archives and displays the vitality of Taiwan and the multitude of aspects that can be explored on the island. In this section you will run across everything from cultural relics and historical documents to specimens, photographic works, archival collections, and artistic and creative images, as well as photography showing daily life in Taiwan. General users can participate simply by registering on-line and then logging on.

The Learning Object Repository in Taiwan

The Learning Object Repository in Taiwan (LORT) was set up in line with the international trend toward sharing learning resources. The repository integrates input from governmental organizations in Taiwan such as the Industrial Development Bureau, the Ministry of Education, CCA, the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission, and the Council of Labor Affairs. It also incorporates data from leading e-learning companies including the Taiwan Knowledge Bank, Gjun Information Co., Ltd., Hebron Soft Limited, Hikids Inc., the National Education Union, Over-Paradigm Technology Inc., and IQ Technology Inc., as well as national universities pioneering in the sharing of e-learning courses. LORT is interlinked with domestic and international teaching material repositories including the Union Catalog of Digital Archives, and Edshare (Taiwan), and Education Network Australia, making global learning resources available and added value applications possible.

Current materials and courses are related to art and culture, health care, professional skills, entrance exams, on-the-job training, language learning, information technologies and Chinese language resources.

The e-Learning Standards Website

This website integrates current e-learning standards and related resources as a reference for the e-learning industry and academic fields. The website offers an introduction to standards including the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), Taiwan-Learning Object Metadata (TW-LOM), and Content Package.

The e-Learning Quality Certification Center

The e-Learning Quality Certification Center (ELQCC) serves both the supply and demand sides of e-learning by working to establish a high quality environment, improve the quality of the current e-learning industry, promote e-learning quality certification and enlarge the international market. The center has established regulations and certification procedures to provide more services to industry, improve marketing strategies, and expand the influence of certification.

More to Come

The Taiwan Digital Archives Expansion Project is working to collect and archive diverse digital content that displays Taiwan’s culture, society and natural environment. This database will be used to provide basic digitized output to other projects for expansion and application (including education, business and academic research) or for international exchange. The main missions of the project are to provide convenient and ready access, increase the number of participants, promote digital standardization and experience sharing, and increase the added value and influence of digital archives through cross-institutional collaboration.

In presenting the diversity of Taiwan’s culture, society and natural environment in digital form, we have collected digital content from private and public bodies and by non-solicited projects. The fields of Taiwan research involved include natural sciences, archaeology, languages, geography, ethnic cultures, history, economy, democratization, art, aesthetics, life and culture. In the future TELDAP hopes to achieve systematic integration of domestic digital resources in natural sciences, humanities, cultures and technologies, provide digitized content in various areas of knowledge that can be downloaded free or used for non-commercial purposes and improve Taiwanese people’s level of identification with their own culture while increasing Taiwan’s visibility in the international sphere.

TELDAP’s website is located at http://teldap.tw and the headquarters of the program are located in the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica in Nankang.