Using string-matching to analyze hypertext navigation

A method of using string-matching to analyze hypertext navigation was developed, and evaluated using two weeks of website logfile data. The method is divided into phases that use: (i) exact string-matching to calculate subsequences of links that were repeated in different navigation sessions (common trails through the website), and then (ii) inexact matching to find other similar sessions (a community of users with a similar interest). The evaluation showed how subsequences could be used to understand the information pathways users chose to follow within a website, and that exact and inexact matching provided complementary ways of identifying information that may have been of interest to a whole community of users, but which was only found by a minority. This illustrates how string-matching could be used to improve the structure of hypertext collections

Reflections on Mira : interactive evaluation in information retrieval

Evaluation in information retrieval (IR) has focussed largely on noninteractive evaluation of text retrieval systems. This is increasingly at odds with how people use modern IR systems: in highly interactive settings to access linked, multimedia information. Furthermore, this approach ignores potential improvements through better interface design. In 1996 the Commission of the European Union Information Technologies Programme, funded a three year working group, Mira, to discuss and advance research in the area of evaluation frameworks for interactive and multimedia IR applications. Led by Keith van Rijsbergen, Steve Draper and myself from Glasgow University, this working group brought together many of the leading researchers in the evaluation domain from both the IR and human computer interaction (HCI) communities. This paper presents my personal view of the main lines of discussion that took place throughout Mira: importing and adapting evaluation techniques from HCI, evaluating at different levels as appropriate, evaluating against different types of relevance and the new challenges that drive the need for rethinking the old evaluation approaches. The paper concludes that we need to consider more varied forms of evaluation to complement engine evaluation

mSpace meets EPrints: a Case Study in Creating Dynamic Digital Collections

In this case study we look at issues involved in (a) generating dynamic digital libraries that are on a particular topic but span heterogeneous collections at distinct sites, (b) supplementing the artefacts in that collection with additional information available either from databases at the artefact's home or from the Web at large, and (c) providing an interaction paradigm that will support effective exploration of this new resource. We describe how we used two available frameworks, mSpace and EPrints to support this kind of collection building. The result of the study is a set of recommendations to improve the connectivity of remote resources both to one another and to related Web resources, and that will also reduce problems like co-referencing in order to enable the creation of new collections on demand

Towards memory supporting personal information management tools

In this article we discuss re-retrieving personal information objects and relate the task to recovering from lapse(s) in memory. We propose that fundamentally it is lapses in memory that impede users from successfully re-finding the information they need. Our hypothesis is that by learning more about memory lapses in non-computing contexts and how people cope and recover from these lapses, we can better inform the design of PIM tools and improve the user's ability to re-access and re-use objects. We describe a diary study that investigates the everyday memory problems of 25 people from a wide range of backgrounds. Based on the findings, we present a series of principles that we hypothesize will improve the design of personal information management tools. This hypothesis is validated by an evaluation of a tool for managing personal photographs, which was designed with respect to our findings. The evaluation suggests that users' performance when re-finding objects can be improved by building personal information management tools to support characteristics of human memory

Integrating information seeking and information structuring: spatial hypertext as an interface to the digital library.

Information seeking is the task of finding documents that satisfy the information needs of a person or organisation. Digital Libraries are one means of providing documents to meet the information needs of their users - i.e. as a resource to support information seeking. Therefore, research into the activity of information seeking is key to the development and understanding of digital libraries. Information structuring is the activity of organising documents found in the process of information seeking. Information structuring can be seen as either part of information seeking, or as a sepárate, complementary activity. It is a task performed by the seeker themselves and targeted by them to support their understanding and the management of later seeking activity. Though information structuring is an important task, it receives sparse support in current digital library Systems. Spatial hypertexts are computer software Systems that have been specifically been developed to support information structuring. However, they seldom are connected to Systems that support information seeking. Thus to day, the two inter-related activities of information seeking and information structuring have been supported by disjoint computer Systems. However, a variety of research strongly indicates that in physical environments, information seeking and information structuring are closely inter-related activities. Given this connection, this thesis explores whether a similar relationship can be found in electronic information seeking environments. However, given the absence of a software system that supports both activities well, there is an immédiate practical problem. In this thesis, I introduce an integrated information seeking and structuring System, called Garnet, that provides a spatial hypertext interface that also supports information seeking in a digital library. The opportunity of supporting information seeking by the artefacts of information structuring is explored in the Garnet system, drawing on the benefits previously found in supporting one information seeking activity with the artefacts of another. Garnet and its use are studied in a qualitative user study that results in the comparison of user behaviour in a combined electronic environment with previous studies in physical environments. The response of participants to using Garnet is reported, particularly regarding their perceptions of the combined system and the quality of the interaction. Finally, the potential value of the artefacts of information structuring to support information seeking is also evaluated

A Molecular Biology Database Digest

Computational Biology or Bioinformatics has been defined as the application of mathematical and Computer Science methods to solving problems in Molecular Biology that require large scale data, computation, and analysis [18]. As expected, Molecular Biology databases play an essential role in Computational Biology research and development. This paper introduces into current Molecular Biology databases, stressing data modeling, data acquisition, data retrieval, and the integration of Molecular Biology data from different sources. This paper is primarily intended for an audience of computer scientists with a limited background in Biology

The Descriptive Challenges of Fiber Art

published or submitted for publicatio

Interoperability between Multimedia Collections for Content and Metadata-Based Searching

Artiste is a European project developing a cross-collection search system for art galleries and museums. It combines image content retrieval with text based retrieval and uses RDF mappings in order to integrate diverse databases. The test sites of the Louvre, Victoria and Albert Museum, Uffizi Gallery and National Gallery London provide their own database schema for existing metadata, avoiding the need for migration to a common schema. The system will accept a query based on one museum’s fields and convert them, through an RDF mapping into a form suitable for querying the other collections. The nature of some of the image processing algorithms means that the system can be slow for some computations, so the system is session-based to allow the user to return to the results later. The system has been built within a J2EE/EJB framework, using the Jboss Enterprise Application Server

Spotlight browsing of resource archives

Many organizations, particularly in the heritage sector, have large archives of digital content that they could make available to the general public or special interest groups if they had the appropriate mechanisms. Currently, these organizations can develop pre-crafted web sites, simple database-driven web sites or search facilities for accessing the content. However, none of these can be expected to appropriately present this content or scaffold its effective use. Our proposed solution is an approach to navigation that we term spotlight browsing. It has the following key features: (i) Users can select a collection of resources from the archive, shining a spotlight on this area of the archive; (ii) The collection is structured in a number of ways to support its exploration and convey interesting properties of the collection; (iii) Users can see what is on the periphery of their current collection in order to encourage further exploration; (iv) Users can redefine the collection in order to move their spotlight to another area of the archive; (v) Any item viewed while browsing can be bookmarked into a personal collection that can be built up using resources from many different spotlights. The approach has been implemented and tested using an archive of content from a heritage institution