CiteULike: acer's library [8 articles]

Metadata aggregation and "automated digital libraries": A retrospective on the NSDL experience

Carl Lagoze — 2006-07-03T11:30:45-00:00

(30 Jan 2006)

Over three years ago, the Core Integration team of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) implemented a digital library based on metadata aggregation using Dublin Core and OAI-PMH. The initial expectation was that such low-barrier technologies would be relatively easy to automate and administer. While this architectural choice permitted rapid deployment of a production NSDL, our three years of experience have contradicted our original expectations of easy automation and low people cost. We have learned that alleged "low-barrier" standards are often harder to deploy than expected. In this paper we report on this experience and comment on the general cost, the functionality, and the ultimate effectiveness of this architecture.

Reintroducing Input Method - A Non-Intrusive Plug-In Framework of Text Services

Tien-Chien Chiang — 2006-05-26T07:16:29-00:00

(4 Aug 2005)

Input method (IM) is a sine qua non for text entry of many Asian languages, but its potential applications on other languages remain under-explored. This paper proposes a philosophy of input method design by seeing it as a nonintrusive plug-in text service framework. Such design allows new functionalities of text processing to be attached onto a running application without any tweaking of code. We also introduce OpenVanilla, a cross-platform framework that is designed with the above-mentioned model in mind. Frameworks like OpenVanilla have shown that an input method can be more than just a text entry tool: it offers a convenient way for developing various text service and language tools.

Information Anxiety 2

Richard Wurman — 2006-05-10T10:10:58-00:00

(14 December 2000)

Information might want to be free; but, why should we free it? We've got enough trouble keeping track of all the petabits that already run around untethered, and risk a computer counterrevolution if we let the situation get much crazier. Information architect Richard Saul Wurman swept the field clear in 1989 with his groundbreaking book that foresaw the problems of data clutter and proposed a radical new means of organizing and presenting knowledge humanistically; for the new century, he has revised it substantially as <I>Information Anxiety 2</I>. This book is sparklingly clear and readable--it'd better be, after all--and offers insight not only to designers, educators, and content developers, but also to anyone who needs to communicate effectively through dense clouds of facts. If Wurman occasionally indulges in New Age-y pop psychology, his analysis is never muddy, and the more hardheaded reader will forgive him soon enough. The discussion alternates between describing the deeply stressful task of absorbing poorly organized data and exploring solutions that require a bit of rethinking, but that reward such an investment with improved understanding and, maybe, a state change from information to wisdom. We could do worse--if we don't pay attention to Wurman and his colleagues, we almost certainly will. <I>--Rob Lightner</I> <HTML>A follow up to the first edition, Information Anxiety 2 teaches critical lessons for functioning in today's Information Age. In this new book, Wurman examines how the Internet, desktop computing, and advances in digital technology have not simply enhanced access to information, but in fact have changed the way we live and work. In examining the sources of information anxiety, Wurman takes an in-depth look at how technological advances can hinder understanding and influence how business is conducted.</HTML>

Collaboration-Based Usability Training for Developers

Markus Latzina — 2006-06-29T13:40:17-00:00

Mensch & Computer (2002), pp. 285-291.

Applying user-centered design methodology, we developed a usability training workshop for beginning developers which has remarkable impact on participants’ attitudes towards the collaboration with nontechnical professions. Mainly through a simulation game we let course participants experience typical pitfalls of and opportunities for collaboration with non-technical professions in the development team, with the primary focus on User Interface Designers. Rather than teaching abstract high-level usability principles we induce learning by insight and social forms of learning.

Social Bookmarking Tools (I): A General Review

2005-04-17T03:49:46-00:00

Learning to integrate web taxonomies

Dell Zhang — 2005-04-05T10:07:37-00:00

Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, Vol. 2, No. 2. (15 December 2004), pp. 131-151.

We investigate machine learning methods for automatically integrating objects from different taxonomies into a master taxonomy. This problem is not only currently pervasive on the Web, but is also important to the emerging Semantic Web. A straightforward approach to automating this process would be to build classifiers through machine learning and then use these classifiers to classify objects from the source taxonomies into categories of the master taxonomy. However, conventional machine learning algorithms totally ignore the availability of the source taxonomies. In fact, source and master taxonomies often have common categories under different names or other more complex semantic overlaps. We introduce two techniques that exploit the semantic overlap between the source and master taxonomies to build better classifiers for the master taxonomy. The first technique, Cluster Shrinkage, biases the learning algorithm against splitting source categories by making objects in the same category appear more similar to each other. The second technique, Co-Bootstrapping, tries to facilitate the exploitation of inter-taxonomy relationships by providing category indicator functions as additional features for the objects. Our experiments with real-world Web data show that these proposed add-on techniques can enhance various machine learning algorithms to achieve substantial improvements in performance for taxonomy integration.

RDF, Topic Maps, and the Semantic Web

MS Lacher — 2005-03-23T23:49:39-00:00

Markup Languages: Theory and Practice, Vol. 3, No. 3. (10 December 2001), pp. 313-331.

Topic Maps and RDF are two independently developed proposals for the representation, interchange, and exploitation of model-based data on the Web. Each proposal has established its own user communities. Each of the proposals allows data to be represented as a graph with nodes and labeled arcs which can be serialized in one or more XML- or SGML-based syntaxes. However, the two data models have significant conceptual differences. A central goal of both proposals is to define a format for the exchange of knowledge on the Web. In order to prevent a partition of the Web into collections of incompatible resources, it is necessary to investigate ways to integrate Topic Maps and RDF data. This paper presents a first step by representing Topic Maps as RDF data and thus allowing Topic Maps to be queried by an RDF-aware infrastructure. We achieve this by mapping a Topic Map graph model to the RDF graph model. All information from the Topic Map is preserved, such that the mapping is reversible. The mapping is performed by modeling the graph features of a Topic Map graph model with an RDF graph. The result of the mapping is an RDF-based representation of Topic Maps data that can be queried as an RDF data source by an RDF-aware query processor.

Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web

2005-01-20T00:29:54-00:00