55,771 research outputs found
Towards personalization in digital libraries through ontologies
In this paper we describe a browsing and searching personalization system for digital libraries based on the use of ontologies for describing the relationships between all the
elements which take part in a digital library scenario of use. The main goal of this project is to help the users of a digital library to improve their experience of use by means of two complementary strategies: first, by maintaining a complete history record of his or her browsing and searching activities, which is part of a navigational user profile which includes preferences and all the aspects related to community involvement; and second, by reusing all the knowledge which has been extracted from previous usage from other users with similar profiles. This can be accomplished in terms of narrowing and focusing the search results and browsing options through the use of a recommendation system which organizes such results in the most appropriate manner, using ontologies and concepts drawn from the semantic web field. The complete integration of the experience of use of a digital library in the learning process is also pursued. Both the usage and information organization can be also exploited to extract useful knowledge from the way users interact with a digital library, knowledge that can be used to improve several design aspects of the library, ranging from internal organization aspects to human factors and user interfaces. Although this project is still on an early development stage, it is possible to identify all the desired functionalities and requirements that are necessary to fully integrate the use of a digital library in an e-learning environment
BioCatalogue: a universal catalogue of web services for the life sciences
The use of Web Services to enable programmatic access to on-line bioinformatics is becoming increasingly important in the Life Sciences. However, their number, distribution and the variable quality of their documentation can make their discovery and subsequent use difficult. A Web Services registry with information on available services will help to bring together service providers and their users. The BioCatalogue (http://www.biocatalogue.org/) provides a common interface for registering, browsing and annotating Web Services to the Life Science community. Services in the BioCatalogue can be described and searched in multiple ways based upon their technical types, bioinformatics categories, user tags, service providers or data inputs and outputs. They are also subject to constant monitoring, allowing the identification of service problems and changes and the filtering-out of unavailable or unreliable resources. The system is accessible via a human-readable ‘Web 2.0’-style interface and a programmatic Web Service interface. The BioCatalogue follows a community approach in which all services can be registered, browsed and incrementally documented with annotations by any member of the scientific community
NaviCell: a web-based environment for navigation, curation and maintenance of large molecular interaction maps
Molecular biology knowledge can be systematically represented in a
computer-readable form as a comprehensive map of molecular interactions. There
exist a number of maps of molecular interactions containing detailed
description of various cell mechanisms. It is difficult to explore these large
maps, to comment their content and to maintain them. Though there exist several
tools addressing these problems individually, the scientific community still
lacks an environment that combines these three capabilities together. NaviCell
is a web-based environment for exploiting large maps of molecular interactions,
created in CellDesigner, allowing their easy exploration, curation and
maintenance. NaviCell combines three features: (1) efficient map browsing based
on Google Maps engine; (2) semantic zooming for viewing different levels of
details or of abstraction of the map and (3) integrated web-based blog for
collecting the community feedback. NaviCell can be easily used by experts in
the field of molecular biology for studying molecular entities of their
interest in the context of signaling pathways and cross-talks between pathways
within a global signaling network. NaviCell allows both exploration of detailed
molecular mechanisms represented on the map and a more abstract view of the map
up to a top-level modular representation. NaviCell facilitates curation,
maintenance and updating the comprehensive maps of molecular interactions in an
interactive fashion due to an imbedded blogging system. NaviCell provides an
easy way to explore large-scale maps of molecular interactions, thanks to the
Google Maps and WordPress interfaces, already familiar to many users. Semantic
zooming used for navigating geographical maps is adopted for molecular maps in
NaviCell, making any level of visualization meaningful to the user. In
addition, NaviCell provides a framework for community-based map curation.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitte
The other side of the social web: A taxonomy for social information access
The power of the modern Web, which is frequently called the Social Web or Web 2.0, is frequently traced to the power of users as contributors of various kinds of contents through Wikis, blogs, and resource sharing sites. However, the community power impacts not only the production of Web content, but also the access to all kinds of Web content. A number of research groups worldwide explore what we call social information access techniques that help users get to the right information using "collective wisdom" distilled from actions of those who worked with this information earlier. This invited talk offers a brief introduction into this important research stream and reviews recent works on social information access performed at the University of Pittsburgh's PAWS Lab lead by the author. Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM)
A Study on the Open Source Digital Library Software's: Special Reference to DSpace, EPrints and Greenstone
The richness in knowledge has changed access methods for all stake holders in
retrieving key knowledge and relevant information. This paper presents a study
of three open source digital library management software used to assimilate and
disseminate information to world audience. The methodology followed involves
online survey and study of related software documentation and associated
technical manuals.Comment: 9 Pages, 3 Figures, 1 Table, "Published with International Journal of
Computer Applications (IJCA)
Collaborative semantic web browsing with Magpie
Web browsing is often a collaborative activity. Users involved in a joint information gathering exercise will wish to share knowledge about the web pages visited and the contents found. Magpie is a suite of tools supporting the interpretation of web pages and semantically enriched web browsing. By automatically associating an ontology-based semantic layer to web resources, Magpie allows relevant services to be invoked as well as remotely triggered within a standard web browser. In this paper we describe how Magpie trigger services can provide semantic support to collaborative browsing activities
Exploiting Synergy Between Ontologies and Recommender Systems
Recommender systems learn about user preferences over time, automatically finding things of similar interest. This reduces the burden of creating explicit queries. Recommender systems do, however, suffer from cold-start problems where no initial information is available early on upon which to base recommendations. Semantic knowledge structures, such as ontologies, can provide valuable domain knowledge and user information. However, acquiring such knowledge and keeping it up to date is not a trivial task and user interests are particularly difficult to acquire and maintain. This paper investigates the synergy between a web-based research paper recommender system and an ontology containing information automatically extracted from departmental databases available on the web. The ontology is used to address the recommender systems cold-start problem. The recommender system addresses the ontology's interest-acquisition problem. An empirical evaluation of this approach is conducted and the performance of the integrated systems measured
Exploiting synergy between ontologies and recommender systems
Recommender systems learn about user preferences over time, automatically finding things of similar interest. This reduces the burden of creating explicit queries. Recommender systems do, however, suffer from cold-start problems where no initial information is available early on upon which to base recommendations.Semantic knowledge structures, such as ontologies, can provide valuable domain knowledge and user information. However, acquiring such knowledge and keeping it up to date is not a trivial task and user interests are particularly difficult to acquire and maintain.
This paper investigates the synergy between a web-based research paper recommender system and an ontology containing information automatically extracted from departmental databases available on the web. The ontology is used to address the recommender systems cold-start problem. The recommender system addresses the ontology's interest-acquisition problem. An empirical evaluation of this approach is conducted and the performance of the integrated systems measured
Web 2.0 and folksonomies in a library context
This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 ElsevierLibraries have a societal purpose and this role has become increasingly important as new technologies enable organizations to support, enable and enhance the participation of users in assuming an active role in the creation and communication of information. Folksonomies, a Web 2.0 technology, represent such an example. Folksonomies result from individuals freely tagging resources available to them on a computer network. In a library environment folksonomies have the potential of overcoming certain limitations of traditional classification systems such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Typical limitations of this type of classification systems include, for example, the rigidity of the underlying taxonomical structures and the difficulty of introducing change in the categories. Folksonomies represent a supporting technology to existing classification systems helping to describe library resources more flexibly, dynamically and openly. As a review of the current literature shows, the adoption of folksonomies in libraries is novel and limited research has been carried out in the area. This paper presents research into the adoption of folksonomies for a University library. A Web 2.0 system was developed, based on the requirements collected from library stakeholders, and integrated with the existing library computer system. An evaluation of the work was carried out in the form of a survey in order to understand the possible reactions of users to folksonomies as well as the effects on their behavior. The broad conclusion of this work is that folksonomies seem to have a beneficial effect on users’ involvement as active library participants as well as encourage users to browse the catalogue in more depth
Magpie: towards a semantic web browser
Web browsing involves two tasks: finding the right web page and then making sense of its content. So far, research has focused on supporting the task of finding web resources through ‘standard’ information retrieval mechanisms, or semantics-enhanced search. Much less attention has been paid to the second problem. In this paper we describe Magpie, a tool which supports the
interpretation of web pages. Magpie offers complementary knowledge sources, which a reader can call upon to quickly gain access to any background knowledge relevant to a web resource. Magpie automatically associates an ontologybased
semantic layer to web resources, allowing relevant services to be invoked within a standard web browser. Hence, Magpie may be seen as a step towards a semantic web browser. The functionality of Magpie is illustrated using examples of how it has been integrated with our lab’s web resources
- …