Annotation Search: the FAST Way

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοThis paper discusses how annotations can be exploited to develop information access and retrieval algorithms that take them into account. The paper proposes a general framework for developing such algorithms that specifically deals with the problem of accessing and retrieving topical information from annotations and annotated documents

Annotating digital libraries and electronic editions in a collaborative and semantic perspective

The distinction between digital libraries and electronic editions is becom-ing more and more subtle. The practice of annotation represents a point of conver-gence of two only apparently separated worlds. The aim of this paper is to present a model of collaborative semantic annotation of texts (SemLib project), suggesting a system that find in Semantic Web and Linked Data the solution technologies for en-abling structured semantic annotation, also in the field of electronic editions in Digi-tal Humanities domain. The main purpose of SemLib is to develop an application so to make easy for developers the integration of annotation software in digital librar-ies, which are different both for technical implementations and managed contents, and provide to users, indifferently from their cultural backgrounds, a simple system which could be used as a front-end. We present, for this purpose, a final example of semantic annotation in a specific context: a digital edition of a literary text and the issues that an annotation task involves

Collaboratory Digital Libraries for Humanities in the Italian context

The study investigates the approach to collaboration in Humanities, within the Italian context, to test the possibility of collaborative digital library for scholars. The research hypothesis is that collaboration can foster innovation and scienti c development: therefore, within Humanities, digital libraries can be the collaborative laboratory for research. Thus, understanding perception of scholars towards collaboration, especially online, and comprehending if wiki systems could be the framework of collaboration were the objectives of the study. A qualitative approach has been adopted, using case study as research method: in-depth, semi-structured interviews to Digital Humanities scholars provide data integrated with interviews with two key informants (one of which is prof. Umberto Eco). The results of the study show that Humanities, within Italian context, do appreciate collaboration and the concept of a collaboratory digital library, though several issues need to be solved. In fact, Humanities are still tied with individual work and collaboration is not easy to pursue, for cultural, technical and political reasons. Great e ort needs to be done at many different levels to eliminate obstacles and facilitate online collaboration for scholars. The study provides a draft model for a collaborative digital library arisen from gathered data

Video annotation for studying the brain in naturalistic settings

Aivojen tutkiminen luonnollisissa asetelmissa on viimeaikainen suunta aivotutkimuksessa. Perinteisesti aivotutkimuksessa on käytetty hyvin yksinkertaistettuja ja keinotekoisia ärsykkeitä, mutta viime aikoina on alettu tutkia ihmisaivoja yhä luonnollisimmissa asetelmissa. Näissä kokeissa on käytetty elokuvaa luonnollisena ärsykkeenä. Elokuvan monimutkaisuudesta johtuen tarvitaan siitä yksinkertaistettu malli laskennallisen käsittely mahdollistamiseksi. Tämä malli tuotetaan annotoimalla; keräämällä elokuvan keskeisistä ärsykepiirteistä dataa tietorakenteen muodostamiseksi. Tätä dataa verrataan aivojen aikariippuvaiseen aktivaatioon etsittäessä mahdollisia korrelaatioita. Kaikkia elokuvan ominaisuuksia ei pystytä annotoimaan automaattisesti; ihmiselle merkitykselliset ominaisuudet on annotoitava käsin, joka on joissain tapauksissa ongelmallista johtuen elokuvan käyttämistä useista viestintämuodoista. Ymmärrys näistä viestinnän muodoista auttaa analysoimaan ja annotoimaan elokuvia. Elokuvaa Tulitikkutehtaan Tyttö (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990) käytettiin ärsykkeenä aivojen tutkimiseksi luonnollisissa asetelmissa. Kokeista saadun datan analysoinnin helpottamiseksi annotoitiin elokuvan keskeiset visuaaliset ärsykepiirteet. Tässä työssä tutkittiin annotointiin käytettävissä olevia eri lähestymistapoja ja teknologioita. Annotointi auttaa informaation organisoinnissa, mistä syystä annotointia ilmestyy nykyään kaikkialla. Erilaisia annotaatiotyökaluja ja -teknologioita kehitetään jatkuvasti. Lisäksi videoanalyysimenetelmät ovat alkaneet mahdollistaa yhä merkityksellisemmän informaation automaattisen annotoinnin tulevaisuudessa.Studying the brain in naturalistic settings is a recent trend in neuroscience. Traditional brain imaging experiments have relied on using highly simplified and artificial stimuli, but recently efforts have been put into studying the human brain in conditions closer to real-life. The methodology used in these studies involve imitating naturalistic stimuli with a movie. Because of the complexity of the naturalistic stimulus, a simplified model of it is needed to handle it computationally. This model is obtained by making annotations; collecting information of salient features of the movie to form a data structure. This data is compared with the brain activity evolving in time to search for possible correlations. All the features of a movie cannot be reliably annotated automatically: semantic features of a movie require manual annotations, which is in some occasions problematic due to the various cinematic techniques adopted. Understanding these methods helps analyzing and annotating movies. The movie Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990) was used as a stimulus in studying the brain in naturalistic settings. To help the analysis of the acquired data the salient visual features of the movie were annotated. In this work existing annotation approaches and available technologies for annotation were reviewed. Annotations help organizing information, therefore they are nowadays found everywhere. Different tools and technologies are being developed constantly. Furthermore, development of automatic video analysis methods are going to provide more meaningful annotations in the future

Um Modelo de anotações livres e semânticas para bibliotecas digitais

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação, Florianópolis, 201

Multimedia solutions for digital asset management

PRINTAUSGABE: 1 CD beigefügt! -- Annotationen bzw. Kommentare in webbasierten Anwendungen, wie zum Beispiel in Digital Libraries, können dabei helfen bestehende Medieninhalte semantisch anzureichern. Allerdings sind in vielen aktuellen Systemen die Annotationsfeatures direkt in den Plattformen integriert, weshalb Änderungen oder die Hinzunahme neuer Medientypen sehr oft zu weitreichenden Änderungen des Gesamtsystems führen. Der Beitrag dieser Arbeit ist ein unabhängiges Annotations-Framework. Eine Serverkomponente verwaltet alle Annotationsdaten einheitlich, egal für welchen Medientypen sie bestimmt sind. Er kann Annotationsdaten in andere Formate transformieren, wodurch das Framework auch bestehenden Interoperabililitätskriterien gerecht wird. Jeder Medientyp benötigt einen eigenen Clienten, der ausschließlich mit dem Annotationsserver kommuniziert. So zieht die Erweiterung oder Hinzunahme neuer Medientypen keine Änderung des bereits bestehenden Systems nach sich. Auch lässt sich, im Gegensatz zur direkten Integration der Annotationsfeatures, ein solch unabhängiges Annotations-Framework leichter in ein bereits bestehendes System integrieren.Annotations or comments of web based applications, for example in digital libraries, can help to semantically enrich Media contents. However, the annotations features of present systems are often directly integrated into the platforms themselves. This means that changes or the addition of new mediatypes often have a deep impact on the whole system. The contribution of this thesis is an independent annotation-framework. A server component administrates uniformly all annotation data irrespective of the mediatype. The server is able to transform the data into other annotation standards so that the framework comes up to the existing criteria of interoperability. Each type of media needs its own client that communicates solely with the annotation-server. This way the enhancement or the addition of new mediatypes doesn't affect the existing system. In opposition to the direct integration of the annotation features an independent annotation-framework can be integrated more easily into an already established system

A Probabilistic Framework for Information Modelling and Retrieval Based on User Annotations on Digital Objects

Annotations are a means to make critical remarks, to explain and comment things, to add notes and give opinions, and to relate objects. Nowadays, they can be found in digital libraries and collaboratories, for example as a building block for scientific discussion on the one hand or as private notes on the other. We further find them in product reviews, scientific databases and many "Web 2.0" applications; even well-established concepts like emails can be regarded as annotations in a certain sense. Digital annotations can be (textual) comments, markings (i.e. highlighted parts) and references to other documents or document parts. Since annotations convey information which is potentially important to satisfy a user's information need, this thesis tries to answer the question of how to exploit annotations for information retrieval. It gives a first answer to the question if retrieval effectiveness can be improved with annotations. A survey of the "annotation universe" reveals some facets of annotations; for example, they can be content level annotations (extending the content of the annotation object) or meta level ones (saying something about the annotated object). Besides the annotations themselves, other objects created during the process of annotation can be interesting for retrieval, these being the annotated fragments. These objects are integrated into an object-oriented model comprising digital objects such as structured documents and annotations as well as fragments. In this model, the different relationships among the various objects are reflected. From this model, the basic data structure for annotation-based retrieval, the structured annotation hypertext, is derived. In order to thoroughly exploit the information contained in structured annotation hypertexts, a probabilistic, object-oriented logical framework called POLAR is introduced. In POLAR, structured annotation hypertexts can be modelled by means of probabilistic propositions and four-valued logics. POLAR allows for specifying several relationships among annotations and annotated (sub)parts or fragments. Queries can be posed to extract the knowledge contained in structured annotation hypertexts. POLAR supports annotation-based retrieval, i.e. document and discussion search, by applying an augmentation strategy (knowledge augmentation, propagating propositions from subcontexts like annotations, or relevance augmentation, where retrieval status values are propagated) in conjunction with probabilistic inference, where P(d -> q), the probability that a document d implies a query q, is estimated. POLAR's semantics is based on possible worlds and accessibility relations. It is implemented on top of four-valued probabilistic Datalog. POLAR's core retrieval functionality, knowledge augmentation with probabilistic inference, is evaluated for discussion and document search. The experiments show that all relevant POLAR objects, merged annotation targets, fragments and content annotations, are able to increase retrieval effectiveness when used as a context for discussion or document search. Additional experiments reveal that we can determine the polarity of annotations with an accuracy of around 80%