Leveraging the Legacy of Conventional Libraries for Organizing Digital Libraries

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοWith the significant growth in the number of available electronic documents on the Internet, intranets, and digital libraries, the need for developing effective methods and systems to index and organize E-documents is felt more than ever. In this paper we introduce a new method for automatic text classification for categorizing E-documents by utilizing classification metadata of books, journals and other library holdings, that already exists in online catalogues of libraries. The method is based on identifying all references cited in a given document and, using the classification metadata of these references as catalogued in a physical library, devising an appropriate class for the document itself according to a standard library classification scheme with the help of a weighting mechanism. We have demonstrated the application of the proposed method and assessed its performance by developing a prototype classification system for classifying electronic syllabus documents archived in the Irish National Syllabus Repository according to the well-known Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) scheme

Resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments

The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice.The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice

Classification management and use in a networked environment : the case of the Universal Decimal Classification

In the Internet information space, advanced information retrieval (IR) methods and automatic text processing are used in conjunction with traditional knowledge organization systems (KOS). New information technology provides a platform for better KOS publishing, exploitation and sharing both for human and machine use. Networked KOS services are now being planned and developed as powerful tools for resource discovery. They will enable automatic contextualisation, interpretation and query matching to different indexing languages. The Semantic Web promises to be an environment in which the quality of semantic relationships in bibliographic classification systems can be fully exploited. Their use in the networked environment is, however, limited by the fact that they are not prepared or made available for advanced machine processing. The UDC was chosen for this research because of its widespread use and its long-term presence in online information retrieval systems. It was also the first system to be used for the automatic classification of Internet resources, and the first to be made available as a classification tool on the Web. The objective of this research is to establish the advantages of using UDC for information retrieval in a networked environment, to highlight the problems of automation and classification exchange, and to offer possible solutions. The first research question was is there enough evidence of the use of classification on the Internet to justify further development with this particular environment in mind? The second question is what are the automation requirements for the full exploitation of UDC and its exchange? The third question is which areas are in need of improvement and what specific recommendations can be made for implementing the UDC in a networked environment? A summary of changes required in the management and development of the UDC to facilitate its full adaptation for future use is drawn from this analysis.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Federating Heterogeneous Digital Libraries by Metadata Harvesting

This dissertation studies the challenges and issues faced in federating heterogeneous digital libraries (DLs) by metadata harvesting. The objective of federation is to provide high-level services (e.g. transparent search across all DLs) on the collective metadata from different digital libraries. There are two main approaches to federate DLs: distributed searching approach and harvesting approach. As the distributed searching approach replies on executing queries to digital libraries in real time, it has problems with scalability. The difficulty of creating a distributed searching service for a large federation is the motivation behind Open Archives Initiatives Protocols for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAI-PMH supports both data providers (repositories, archives) and service providers. Service providers develop value-added services based on the information collected from data providers. Data providers are simply collections of harvestable metadata. This dissertation examines the application of the metadata harvesting approach in DL federations. It addresses the following problems: (1) Whether or not metadata harvesting provides a realistic and scalable solution for DL federation. (2) What is the status of and problems with current data provider implementations, and how to solve these problems. (3) How to synchronize data providers and service providers. (4) How to build different types of federation services over harvested metadata. (5) How to create a scalable and reliable infrastructure to support federation services. The work done in this dissertation is based on OAI-PMH, and the results have influenced the evolution of OAI-PMH. However, the results are not limited to the scope of OAI-PMH. Our approach is to design and build key services for metadata harvesting and to deploy them on the Web. Implementing a publicly available service allows us to demonstrate how these approaches are practical. The problems posed above are evaluated by performing experiments over these services. To summarize the results of this thesis, we conclude that the metadata harvesting approach is a realistic and scalable approach to federate heterogeneous DLs. We present two models of building federation services: a centralized model and a replicated model. Our experiments also demonstrate that the repository synchronization problem can be addressed by push, pull, and hybrid push/pull models; each model has its strengths and weaknesses and fits a specific scenario. Finally, we present a scalable and reliable infrastructure to support the applications of metadata harvesting

Developing Marketing Personas with Machine Learning for Educational Program Finder

The motivation for the work is to see if marketing personas can be created with an educational Program Finder using machine learning. The research questions for the master’s thesis are “By using machine learning to process user behaviour, will the marketing personas improve in quality?” and “Can marketing and sales benefit from machine learning made personas?”. With the first research question, the thesis uses existing marketing personas created by Aalto University Executive Education and references them with the marketing personas created with machine learning. The second research question is answered by conducting three end-user interviews. The end-users all had marketing and sales working context and were chosen from Aalto University Executive Education. The approach for the thesis is to create a hypothesis of machine learning algorithms that could create marketing personas. The machine learning framework chosen for the thesis is semi-structured that implements labelled clusters to which build the user behaviour to. User behaviour is collected from users interacting with the filters of an educational Program Finder. The thesis introduces a marketing persona, Generic Marketing Persona and for a deeper analysis, the Data Behind the Persona. The Generic Marketing Persona uses the machine learning algorithms and is created from the labelled clusters. The Generic Marketing Persona has a template for which to build on and uses the cluster data to enrich the template with the data. The Data Behind the Persona is a presentation of charts that are extracted from the cluster data. The results for the thesis are that the machine learning personas increased the quality when referenced to the existing ones. The machine learning personas were more detailed, based on data and communicated the needs of the target groups more efficiently. However, the Generic Marketing Persona was proven to be unusable for taking marketing and sales actions because the information was too generic. Interviewees though found many possible use cases for the Data Behind the Persona, including content producing, target group revision, lead valuing and market trend analysis

Developing Marketing Personas with Machine Learning for Educational Program Finder

The motivation for the work is to see if marketing personas can be created with an educational Program Finder using machine learning. The research questions for the master’s thesis are “By using machine learning to process user behaviour, will the marketing personas improve in quality?” and “Can marketing and sales benefit from machine learning made personas?”. With the first research question, the thesis uses existing marketing personas created by Aalto University Executive Education and references them with the marketing personas created with machine learning. The second research question is answered by conducting three end-user interviews. The end-users all had marketing and sales working context and were chosen from Aalto University Executive Education. The approach for the thesis is to create a hypothesis of machine learning algorithms that could create marketing personas. The machine learning framework chosen for the thesis is semi-structured that implements labelled clusters to which build the user behaviour to. User behaviour is collected from users interacting with the filters of an educational Program Finder. The thesis introduces a marketing persona, Generic Marketing Persona and for a deeper analysis, the Data Behind the Persona. The Generic Marketing Persona uses the machine learning algorithms and is created from the labelled clusters. The Generic Marketing Persona has a template for which to build on and uses the cluster data to enrich the template with the data. The Data Behind the Persona is a presentation of charts that are extracted from the cluster data. The results for the thesis are that the machine learning personas increased the quality when referenced to the existing ones. The machine learning personas were more detailed, based on data and communicated the needs of the target groups more efficiently. However, the Generic Marketing Persona was proven to be unusable for taking marketing and sales actions because the information was too generic. Interviewees though found many possible use cases for the Data Behind the Persona, including content producing, target group revision, lead valuing and market trend analysis

Hábitos de recuperación de información en motores de búsqueda sobre lectura, libro y bibliotecas en España (2004-2016)

Este estudio ha tenido como objetivo principal, determinar si los procesos y expresiones de búsqueda de información usados por los usuarios en motores de búsqueda, pueden considerarse como indicadores válidos para el análisis y estudio de los hábitos de lectura y posible interés en otros contenidos ofrecidos por las bibliotecas en España (como videojuegos o películas).Para ello se propone un modelo de análisis con el que caracterizar el lenguaje de búsqueda de información de los usuarios de internet que utilizan Google desde España como motor de búsqueda, durante el período 2004 - 2016, al recuperar información sobre la temática de el libro, la lectura y las bibliotecas, desde una perspectiva histórica. De esta forma, se pretende aportar otra dimensión de análisis a los estudios que hay sobre los hábitos lectores en general, y en España en particular.La investigación tiene distintas áreas de aplicación del análisis del lector online, como son el apoyo a la indización y la clasificación bibliotecaria, la evaluación de colecciones y evaluación de la biblioteca, los estudios de necesidades de usuarios, la evaluación de OPACs, la analítica digital de sedes web bibliotecarias o de entidades de la industria del libro como editoriales, librerías online, metabuscadores o páginas web de autores y aficionados a la literatura en general, márketing bibliotecario y promoción de la lectura, márketing editorial, altmetría y Cibermetría, y SEO (posicionamiento en buscadores).El análisis de los hábitos lectores tiene una larga tradición en el mundo offline, especialmente en España, donde el estudio de hábitos lectores es parte importante de la investigación estratégica en la industria del libro. Se han observado distintas metodologías, desde las encuestas y entrevistas a lectores y no lectores, el análisis de las ventas de los libros y la prensa, a los análisis de logs de préstamos en las bibliotecas. Al entrar la lectura en e-book, y en plena era de internet, la lectura en papel ha sufrido una transformación, donde los usuarios leen por internet, y buscan su lectura (ya sea online, en e-book y/o en papel) a través de internet, especialmente utilizando motores de búsqueda, de los que en España el más utilizado desde principios de siglo hasta al menos su segunda década, es el buscador Google. Es este cambio en las formas de localizar la lectura la que impulsa a investigar cómo se busca información sobre lectura en un buscador. Anteriormente se han investigado distintos aspectos de esas conductas con distintas técnicas, dentro del paradigma cognitivo, y especialmente dentro de la disciplina de Information Seeking, de difícil traducción al castellano. Tras consignar modelos de búsqueda por parte de los usuarios, como el modelo Berrypicking de Marcia Bates, el modelo de Ellis, el modelo de Marchionini, o el modelo de Information Search Process de Kulthau, entre otros, se han estudiado otros modificadores de las conductas de búsqueda, llegando a los estudios sobre User Search Behaviour (conductas de búsqueda de los usuarios en motores de búsqueda) especialmente en lo concerniente a desambiguación y expansión de búsquedas, análisis longitudinal de la búsqueda y de Query Intent, el Análisis de la Intención de Búsqueda. Es precísamente en la combinación de las últimas subdisciplinas hacia donde se ha orientado este estudio. Para la investigación, en 2010 se obtuvieron de Google Keywords Planner, el log de búsquedas del motor de búsqueda, más de 30.000 expresiones de búsqueda (denominadas también como frases de búsqueda, queries, keywords o palabras clave), relacionadas con el libro, la lectura y las bibliotecas, segmentando la búsqueda de palabras clave en lenguaje español y de búsquedas realizadas desde España. Posteriormente se extrajo de Google Trends la serie de datos histórica de 2004 a 2016, para conformar un dataset con el que realizar un análisis longitudinal. Las palabras clave fueron clasificadas en 27 facetas distintas de intención de búsqueda, contando también con aspectos modificadores y aspectos lingüísticos. Por tanto, no se clasificó en categorías mutuamente excluyentes, sino de forma que una expresión de búsqueda pudiera pertenecer a varias clases simultáneamente, por lo que se realizó un estudio del grado de co-ocurrencia entre las distintas facetas y los aspectos identificados. Posteriormente se dividió las palabras clave, previamente clasificadas, en una nueva dimensión de análisis, según si era atemporales (tenían una larga vida en la serie histórica) o temporales, aquellas que nacían en algún momento de la serie, y tenían una vida más o menos corta. Como resultado del análisis, se han estudiado las posibilidades de la facetación como mejora o complemento de otras técnicas de análisis de las intenciones de búsqueda (query intent analysis); se ha validado el modelo de estudio, de forma que sirva como corpus inicial de futuros análisis de los hábitos de lectura en España, a través del estudio de la demanda de información en motores de búsqueda; se han descubierto subtipos de intenciones de búsqueda propias del sector de la lectura, dentro de las clasificaciones clásicas de intención de búsqueda (navegacional, informacional, transaccional); se han identificado facetas adicionales, distintas a las meramente temáticas, como modificadores y características del lenguaje, que sirvan para completar las facetas halladas desde una dimensión de análisis complementaria; se ha descubierto distintos patrones de uso, nuevas abreviaturas y formas de expresión de las necesidades de búsqueda de los usuarios mediante lenguaje natural, se han relacionado distintos media y/o formatos, así como, tras una selección mediante una muestra intencionada, de distintos ejemplos paradigmáticos de estas tendencias de búsqueda y sus posibles relaciones causales, observando los efectos producidos en la evolución de la demanda de información en torno a la lectura a través de la búsqueda de la misma en Google en España, durante el período 2004-2016.Finalmente, y además de constatar su utilidad para completar otras técnicas de análisis de los hábitos lectores mediante una técnica inédita hasta la fecha en el sector del libro y bibliotecas, se ha observado cómo la demanda de información sobre lectura en España realizada a través de motores de búsqueda, ha decaído de forma paulatina en la segunda década del siglo XXI, coincidiendo con otras investigaciones y datos de estudios de hábitos lectores realizadas a través de otras técnicas. <br /

Semantic and pragmatic characterization of learning objects

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201