Using semantic indexing to improve searching performance in web archives

The sheer volume of electronic documents being published on the Web can be overwhelming for users if the searching aspect is not properly addressed. This problem is particularly acute inside archives and repositories containing large collections of web resources or, more precisely, web pages and other web objects. Using the existing search capabilities in web archives, results can be compromised because of the size of data, content heterogeneity and changes in scientific terminologies and meanings. During the course of this research, we will explore whether semantic web technologies, particularly ontology-based annotation and retrieval, could improve precision in search results in multi-disciplinary web archives

The First International Conference on Building and Exploring Web Based Environments-WEB2013

he sheer volume of electronic documents being published on the Web can be overwhelming for users if the searching aspect is not properly addressed. This problem is particularly acute inside archives and repositories containing large collections of web resources or, more precisely, web pages and other web objects. Using the existing search capabilities in web archives, results can be compromised because of the size of data, content heterogeneity and changes in scientific terminologies and meanings. During the course of this research, we will explore whether semantic web technologies, particularly ontology-based annotation and retrieval, could improve precision in search results in multi-disciplinary web archives

Mining Authoritativeness in Art Historical Photo Archives. Semantic Web Applications for Connoisseurship

The purpose of this work is threefold: (i) to facilitate knowledge discovery in art historical photo archives, (ii) to support users' decision-making process when evaluating contradictory artwork attributions, and (iii) to provide policies for information quality improvement in art historical photo archives. The approach is to leverage Semantic Web technologies in order to aggregate, assess, and recommend the most documented authorship attributions. In particular, findings of this work offer art historians an aid for retrieving relevant sources, assessing textual authoritativeness (i.e. internal grounds) of sources of attribution, and evaluating cognitive authoritativeness of cited scholars. At the same time, the retrieval process allows art historical data providers to define a low-cost data integration process to update and enrich their collection data. The contributions of this thesis are the following: (1) a methodology for representing questionable information by means of ontologies; (2) a conceptual framework of Information Quality measures addressing dimensions of textual and cognitive authoritativeness characterising art historical data, (3) a number of policies for metadata quality improvement in art historical photo archives as derived from the application of the framework, (4) a ranking model leveraging the conceptual framework, (5) a semantic crawler, called mAuth, that harvests authorship attributions in the Web of Data, and (6) an API and a Web Application to serve information to applications and final users for consuming data. Despite findings are limited to a restricted number of photo archives and datasets, the research impacts on a broader number of stakeholders, such as archives, museums, and libraries, which can reuse the conceptual framework for assessing questionable information, mutatis mutandi, to other near fields in the Humanities

Pattern-based design applied to cultural heritage knowledge graphs

Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) have become an established and recognised practice for guaranteeing good quality ontology engineering. There are several ODP repositories where ODPs are shared as well as ontology design methodologies recommending their reuse. Performing rigorous testing is recommended as well for supporting ontology maintenance and validating the resulting resource against its motivating requirements. Nevertheless, it is less than straightforward to find guidelines on how to apply such methodologies for developing domain-specific knowledge graphs. ArCo is the knowledge graph of Italian Cultural Heritage and has been developed by using eXtreme Design (XD), an ODP- and test-driven methodology. During its development, XD has been adapted to the need of the CH domain e.g. gathering requirements from an open, diverse community of consumers, a new ODP has been defined and many have been specialised to address specific CH requirements. This paper presents ArCo and describes how to apply XD to the development and validation of a CH knowledge graph, also detailing the (intellectual) process implemented for matching the encountered modelling problems to ODPs. Relevant contributions also include a novel web tool for supporting unit-testing of knowledge graphs, a rigorous evaluation of ArCo, and a discussion of methodological lessons learned during ArCo development

Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem

With the contributions of international experts, the book aims to explore the new boundaries of universal bibliographic control. Bibliographic control is radically changing because the bibliographic universe is radically changing: resources, agents, technologies, standards and practices. Among the main topics addressed: library cooperation networks; legal deposit; national bibliographies; new tools and standards (IFLA LRM, RDA, BIBFRAME); authority control and new alliances (Wikidata, Wikibase, Identifiers); new ways of indexing resources (artificial intelligence); institutional repositories; new book supply chain; “discoverability” in the IIIF digital ecosystem; role of thesauri and ontologies in the digital ecosystem; bibliographic control and search engines

Semantic enrichment for enhancing LAM data and supporting digital humanities. Review article

With the rapid development of the digital humanities (DH) field, demands for historical and cultural heritage data have generated deep interest in the data provided by libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). In order to enhance LAM data’s quality and discoverability while enabling a self-sustaining ecosystem, “semantic enrichment” becomes a strategy increasingly used by LAMs during recent years. This article introduces a number of semantic enrichment methods and efforts that can be applied to LAM data at various levels, aiming to support deeper and wider exploration and use of LAM data in DH research. The real cases, research projects, experiments, and pilot studies shared in this article demonstrate endless potential for LAM data, whether they are structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, regardless of what types of original artifacts carry the data. Following their roadmaps would encourage more effective initiatives and strengthen this effort to maximize LAM data’s discoverability, use- and reuse-ability, and their value in the mainstream of DH and Semantic Web

Medieval Manuscripts: Media Archaeology and the Digital Incunable

This chapter assesses the evolution of the digitized manuscript from fragmented data to increasingly accessible and interoperable forms. The long view of media history and the tenets of the emerging field of media archaeology frame this exploration, considering how digital representations of manuscripts function as a kind of incunable – an extended media moment caught between old and nascent methods and practices. Archaeologically, the medieval manuscript functioned as a convergence of media forms existing in partnership with larger ecologies of material expression. Today, increasingly agile digital architectures create the potential not only for excavation of historical forms, but for significant new ecologies of media. As a touchstone for such ideas, this chapter considers the critical and technological treatment of a single Anglo-Saxon manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius MS B.v) from the eleventh century until the present day, and over the course of three media ages: manuscript, print, and digital. The complicated and protean nature of this manuscript's form, content, and interpretation over these ages, along with the fractured way it now exists digitally, serves as a starting point for considering how future digital applications might enable more capacious architectures for studying medieval manuscripts in both time and media

Providing context to Web collections: A survey of Archive-It users

This study describes a survey to users of the Internet Archive's Archive-It Web-archiving tool, aiming to examine the descriptive metadata practice of archivists of the Web, how Web archives are accessed, and what variables facilitate or impede metadata implementation in Web collections. Whereas books often contain contextual information bound between their covers, archival materials require additional explanation of context. The Web is the most transient of electronic records, and although it is currently being preserved at a higher rate than ever before, treatment of Web collections is still not up to archival standards. Through better understanding of current Web archiving metadata practices, this study hopes to help lay groundwork for future best practices.Master of Science in Information Scienc