Integrated content presentation for multilingual and multimedia information access

For multilingual and multimedia information retrieval from multiple potentially distributed collections generating the output in the form of standard ranked lists may often mean that a user has to explore the contents of many lists before finding sufficient relevant or linguistically accessible material to satisfy their information need. In some situations delivering an integrated multilingual multimedia presentation could enable the user to explore a topic allowing them to select from among a range of available content based on suitably chosen displayed metadata. A presentation of this type has similarities with the outputs of existing adaptive hypermedia systems. However, such systems are generated based on “closed” content with sophisticated user and domain models. Extending them to “open” domain information retrieval applications would raise many issues. We present an outline exploration of what will form a challenging new direction for research in multilingual information access

Applying digital content management to support localisation

The retrieval and presentation of digital content such as that on the World Wide Web (WWW) is a substantial area of research. While recent years have seen huge expansion in the size of web-based archives that can be searched efficiently by commercial search engines, the presentation of potentially relevant content is still limited to ranked document lists represented by simple text snippets or image keyframe surrogates. There is expanding interest in techniques to personalise the presentation of content to improve the richness and effectiveness of the user experience. One of the most significant challenges to achieving this is the increasingly multilingual nature of this data, and the need to provide suitably localised responses to users based on this content. The Digital Content Management (DCM) track of the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) is seeking to develop technologies to support advanced personalised access and presentation of information by combining elements from the existing research areas of Adaptive Hypermedia and Information Retrieval. The combination of these technologies is intended to produce significant improvements in the way users access information. We review key features of these technologies and introduce early ideas for how these technologies can support localisation and localised content before concluding with some impressions of future directions in DCM

A workbench to support development and maintenance of world-wide web

The World-Wide Web is one of the most dominant features of the Internet. In its short life it has become an important part of information technology, having a role to play in all sectors. Unfortunately, it has many problems too. Due to its fast evolution, World-Wide Web document development is undisciplined and has resulted in the appearance of much poor quality work. This is also widely due to the inexperience of authors, the lack of conventions, standards or guidelines and useful tools for development and maintenance of Web documents. One solution to the major problems of poor quality of World-Wide Web documents is the improved maintenance of such documents. Maintenance is an important area that, similar to software engineering, receives little attention compared with development. In order to address the problems of World-Wide Web document maintenance, research into the area was carried out through a literature survey and case studies of the organisations that manage World-Wide Web sites. The results of this research led to producing a workbench which provides support to both developers and maintainers of Web documents. This workbench consists of methods, guidelines and tools for World-Wide Web development and maintenance

Web Engineering: An Assessment of Empirical Research

Web engineering is the process used to create high-quality Web-based systems and applications that deliver a complex array of content and functionality to a broad population of end-users. As Web Engineering continues to grow in popularity with practitioners and academics alike, so far, there hasn\u27t been any assessment of its accumulated body of knowledge in terms of academic research. Because Web engineering was established as a new discipline some five years ago, it is perhaps time to take stock of the efforts made in this field. Using the Web Engineering Process Model developed by Pressman, this paper organizes and map progress made so far. The results suggest a significant need for theory-based research in Web Engineering. The paper discusses some of the managerial and research implications of the findings

Getting Noticed: College Recruiting Using a New Media

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HyperManual a hypermedia construction and browsing system in Smalltalk/V Mac

The process of locating needed information in a paper document is often frustrating and time consuming. The information may be available but, since the basic access method is often linear, the information is not readily available. Hypermedia systems offer a computer-based mechanism that can simplify the search process and increase the ratio of useful information found to time expended. Such systems also support the creation of alternate views on the same data base of information. This thesis describes some current hypertext systems and the overall structure of the HyperManual system. This system includes both the tools needed to create and traverse a web of links within a database of documents, and an environment that supports these link construction and information browsing activities. The system differs from other hypermedia systems in that it provides a variety of modes of access to the documents in a hyperdocument. The HyperManual system was written in Smalltalk/V for the Macintosh