Digital Libraries: Cyberinfrastructure for Research and Education. Denver, CO, June 7 – 11, 2005

Wed June 8th

Keynote: 8:45- 10:00 (Colorado E/F)
Welcome: Mary Marlino (15 min)
Keynote: Deanna Marcum (60 min)

Comprehensive Personalized Information Access in an Educational Digital Library
Peter Brusilovsky, Rosta Farzan, Jaewook Ahn

Abstract: This paper explores two ways to help students locate most relevant resources in educational digital libraries. One is a more comprehensive access to educational resources through several ways of information access including browsing and information visualization. Another is personalized information access through social navigation support. The paper presents the details of the Knowledge Sea III system for comprehensive personalized access to educational resources and presented results of a classroom study. The study delivered a convincing argument for the importance of providing several ways of information showing that only about 10% of all resource accesses were made through the traditional search interface. We have also collected some good evidence in favor of the social navigation support.

A New Framework for Building Digital Library Collections
George Buchanan, David Bainbridge, Katherine Don, Ian H. Witten

Abstract: This paper introduces a new framework for building digital library collections and contrasts it with existing systems. It describes a significant new step in the development of a widely-used open-source digital library system, Greenstone, which has evolved over many years. It is supported by a fresh implementation, which forced us to rethink the entire design rather than making incremental improvements. The redesign capitalizes on the best ideas from the existing system, which have been refined and developed to open new avenues through which digital librarians can tailor their collections. We demonstrate its flexibility by showing how digital library collections can be extended and altered to satisfy new requirements.

 

HiBO: A System for Automatically Organizing Bookmarks
Pavlos Kokosis, Vlassis Krikos, Sofia Stamou, Dimitris Christodoulakis

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce the HiBO bookmark management system. HiBO aims at extending the populated personal repositories (aka bookmarks) by automatically organizing their contents into topics, through the use of a built-in subject hierarchy. HiBO offers customized personalized services, such as the meaningful grouping and ordering of bookmarks within the hierarchy's topics in terms of the bookmarks' conceptual similarity to each other. HiBO also provides a framework that allows the user to customize and assist the categorization process.

A Generic Alerting Service for Digital Libraries
George Buchanan, Annika Hinze

Abstract: Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. So far, no sophisticated service has been proposed that covers heterogeneous and distributed collections and is integrated with the digital library software.

This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the diffing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service.

Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services for digital libraries, their design and use is greater than one may anticipate. We also show that, conversely, the requirements for an alerting service have considerable impact on the concepts of DL design. Our findings should be of interest for librarians as well as system designers. We highlight and discuss the far-reaching implications for the design of, and interaction with, libraries. This paper discusses on the lessons learned from building such a distributed alerting service. We present our prototype implementation as a proof-of-concept for an alerting service for open DL software

Detecting and Supporting Known Item Queries in online public access catalogs
Min-Yen Kan , Danny C. C. Poo

Abstract: When users seek to find specific resources in a digital library, they often use the library catalog to locate them. These catalog queries are defined as known item queries. As known item queries search for specific resources, it is important to manage them differently from other search types, such as area searches. We study how to identify known item queries in the context of a large academic institution's online public access catalog (OPAC). We also examine how to recognize when a known item query has retrieved the item in question. Our approach combines techniques in machine learning, language modeling and machine translation evaluation metrics to build a classifier capable of distinguishing known item queries with an accuracy of 72% and correctly classifies titles for whether they are the known item sought with an accuracy of 86%. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such work, which has the potential to streamline the user interface of both OPACs and digital libraries in support of known item searches.

5:30 – 6:30
Minute Madness – Colorado A-D (60 minutes)

TCDL Exec session, Silverton

6:30 – 9:00pm
Posters and Demonstrations
(Colorado E/F) (Appetizers and Cash Bar)


Thurs June 9th

Keynote: 8:45- 10:00 (Colorado E/F)
Banquet Update and Plenary Town Hall Announcement: Holly / Mary (15 min)
Keynote: Bud Tribble (60 min)

Digital Libraries support for the user's ‘Information Journey'
Adams, A. Blandford

Abstract: The temporal elements of users' information requirements are a continually confounding aspect of digital library design. No sooner have users' needs been identified and supported than they change. This paper evaluates the changing information requirements of users through their ‘information journey' in two different domains (health and academia). In-depth analysis of findings from interviews, focus groups and observations of 150 users have identified three stages to this journey: information initiation, facilitation (or gathering) and interpretation. The study shows that, although digital libraries are supporting aspects of users' information facilitation, there are still requirements for them to better support users' overall information work in context. Users are poorly supported in the initiation phase, as they recognize their information needs, especially with regard to resource awareness; in this context, interactive press-alerts are discussed. Some users (especially clinicians and patients) also required support in the interpretation of information, both satisfying themselves that the information is trustwortA Usability Evaluation Study of a Digital Library Self-Archiving Service
Lena Veiga e Silva, Alberto H. F. Laender, Marcos Andre Goncalves

Abstract: In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a self-archiving service for the Brazilian Digital Library of Computing (BDBComp). We focus on design decisions given the specific context of the Brazilian CS community, the implementation details that follow those decisions, and the evaluation of the implemented features. For evaluation, we conducted an extensive usability experiment with several potential users, including graduate students, professors, and archivists/librarians. The results of that study and their implications for similar services are described and analyzed, following sound statistical principles. Finally, a comprehensive comparison of the features of ours and similar services is also performed.

In the Company of Readers: The DL Book as “ Practiced Place ”
Nancy Kaplan, Yoram Chisik

Abstract: In this article we describe a system for annotating digital books in a digital library for young adult readers and discuss a first field test of the system with a small group of young adults together with their families and a few friends. We argue that most studies of digital libraries and their patrons' needs or desires look at adult users pursuing work-related goals such as collaborative writing task encountered in college or in professional work places. Most studies also examine the problems and issues of research libraries rather than public libraries. Yet children who are growing up digital may not only have different and heretofore unrecognized needs but also may have insights into the needs future library patrons may have. And public libraries, which support a broader public's reading habits, may also need different kinds of tools for their patrons. Because we are working with younger readers, we have focused on supporting active reading but in the context of reading for pleasure. Our results show that the digital library book for young adults can become a "practiced place," by which we mean a site of shared, constructed meaning through the traces that individuals' reading and writing create.

Using Concept Maps in Digital Libraries as a Cross-Language Resource Discovery Tool
Ryan Richardson, Edward A. Fox

Abstract: The concept map, first suggested by Joseph Novak, has been extensively studied as a way for learners to increase understanding. We are automatically generating and translating concept maps from electronic theses and dissertations, for both English and Spanish, as a DL aid to discovery and summarization.

FRIDAY

Keynote: 10:45- 12:15 (Colorado E/F)
Keynote: Hector Garcia-Molina (60 min)
Closing and Hand-off to JCDL 2006: Mary and Gary (30 min)

A Multi-Timeline Interface for Historical Newspapers
Robert B. Allen

Abstract: Events may be are best understood in the context of other events. Because of the temporal ordering, we can call a set of related events a timeline. Even such timelines are best understood in the context of other timelines. To facilitate the exploration of a collection of timelines and events, a visualization tool has been developed that structures the user's browsing. In this model, each event is accompanied by a text description and links to related resources. In particular, this system can provide a browsing interface of digitized historical newspapers.

To Grow in Wisdom: Vannevar Bush, Information Overload, and the Life of Leisure
David M. Levy

Abstract: It has been nearly sixty years since Vannevar Bush's essay, “As We May Think,” was first published in The Atlantic Monthly, an article that foreshadowed and possibly invented hypertext. While much has been written about this seminal piece, little has been said about the argument Bush presented to justify the creation of the memex, his proposed personal information device. This paper revisits the article in light of current technological and social trends. It notes that Bush's argument centered around the problem of information overload and observes that in the intervening years, despite massive technological innovation, the problem has only become more extreme. It goes on to argue that today's manifestation of information overload will require not just better management of information but the creation of space and time for thinking and reflection, an objective that is consonant with Bush's original aims.

Toward a Metadata Standard for Digitized Historical Newspapers
Ray L. Murray

Abstract: This paper is a case study of metadata development in the early stages of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a twenty-year digital initiative to expand access to historical newspapers in support of research and education. Some of the issues involved in newspaper metadata are examined, and a new XML-based standard is described that is suited to the large volume of data, while remaining flexible into the future.