A Concept for Using Combined Multimodal Queries in Digital Music Libraries

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοIn this paper, we propose a concept for using combined multimodal queries in the context of digital music libraries. Whereas usual mechanisms for content-based music retrieval only consider a single query mode, such as query-by-humming, full-text lyrics-search or query-by-example using short audio snippets, our proposed concept allows to combine those different modalities into one integrated query. Our particular contributions consist of concepts for query formulation, combined content-based retrieval and presentation of a suitably ranked result list. The proposed concepts have been realized within the context of the PROBADO Music Repository and allow for music retrieval based on combining full-text lyrics search and score-based query-by-example search

General guidelines for designing bilingual low cost digital library services suitable for special library users in developing countries and the Arabic speaking world

The World is witnessing a considerable transformation from print based-formats to elec-tronic-based formats thanks to advanced computing technology, which has a profound impact on the dissemination of nearly all previous formats of publications into digital formats on computer networks. Text, still and moving images, sound tracks, music, and almost all known formats can be stored and retrieved on computer magnetic disk. Over the last two decades, a number of special libraries and information centres in the Arab world have introduced electronic resources into their library services. Very few have implemented automated and integrated systems. Despite the im-portance of designing digital libraries not merely for accessing to or retrieval of information but rather for the provision of electronic services, hardly any special library has started the design of digital library services. Managers of special libraries and information centres in developing countries in general and in the Arab world in particular should start building their local digital libraries, as the benefit of establishing such electronic services is considerably massive and well known for expansion of re-search activities and for delivering services that satisfy the needs of targeted end-users. The aim of this paper is to provide general guideline for design of special low cost digital library providing ser-vices that are most frequently required by various categories of special library users in developing countries. This paper also aims at illustrating strategies and method approaches that can be adopted for building such projects. Seeing the importance of designing an inexpensive digital li-brary as basic principle for the design accordingly, the utilisation of today's ICTs and freely avail-able open sources software is the right path for accomplishing such goal. The paper intends to de-scribe the phases and stages required for building such projects from scratch. It also aims at high-lighting the barriers and obstacles facing Arabic content and how could such problems overcome

Automatic Classification of Digital Music by Genre

Presented at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC’12) Research Poster, Baltimore, MD, USA and also presented at the Women in Machine Learning Workshop (WiML ’12), Research Poster, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA.Over the past two decades, advances in the digital music industry have resulted in an exponential growth in music data sets. This exponential growth has in turn spurred great interest in music information retrieval (MIR) problems, organizing large music collections, and content-based search methods for digital music libraries. Equally important are the related problems in music classification such as genre classification, music mood analysis, and artist identification. Music genre classification is a well-studied problem in the music information retrieval community and has a wide range of applications. In this project we address the problem of genre classification by representing the MFCC feature vectors in an extended semantic space. We combine this audio representation with machine learning techniques to perform genre classification with the goal of obtaining higher classification accuracy

Searching digital music libraries

There has been a recent explosion of interest in digital music libraries. In particular, interactive melody retrieval is a striking example of a search paradigm that differs radically from the standard full-text search. Many different techniques have been proposed for melody matching, but the area lacks standard databases that allow them to be compared on common grounds––and copyright issues have stymied attempts to develop such a corpus. This paper focuses on methods for evaluating different symbolic music matching strategies, and describes a series of experiments that compare and contrast results obtained using three dominant paradigms. Combining two of these paradigms yields a hybrid approach which is shown to have the best overall combination of efficiency and effectiveness

Characterizing the Landscape of Musical Data on the Web: State of the Art and Challenges

Musical data can be analysed, combined, transformed and exploited for diverse purposes. However, despite the proliferation of digital libraries and repositories for music, infrastructures and tools, such uses of musical data remain scarce. As an initial step to help fill this gap, we present a survey of the landscape of musical data on the Web, available as a Linked Open Dataset: the musoW dataset of catalogued musical resources. We present the dataset and the methodology and criteria for its creation and assessment. We map the identified dimensions and parameters to existing Linked Data vocabularies, present insights gained from SPARQL queries, and identify significant relations between resource features. We present a thematic analysis of the original research questions associated with surveyed resources and identify the extent to which the collected resources are Linked Data-ready

An examination of automatic video retrieval technology on access to the contents of an historical video archive

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an initial understanding of the constraints that historical video collections pose to video retrieval technology and the potential that online access offers to both archive and users. Design/methodology/approach – A small and unique collection of videos on customs and folklore was used as a case study. Multiple methods were employed to investigate the effectiveness of technology and the modality of user access. Automatic keyframe extraction was tested on the visual content while the audio stream was used for automatic classification of speech and music clips. The user access (search vs browse) was assessed in a controlled user evaluation. A focus group and a survey provided insight on the actual use of the analogue archive. The results of these multiple studies were then compared and integrated (triangulation). Findings – The amateur material challenged automatic techniques for video and audio indexing, thus suggesting that the technology must be tested against the material before deciding on a digitisation strategy. Two user interaction modalities, browsing vs searching, were tested in a user evaluation. Results show users preferred searching, but browsing becomes essential when the search engine fails in matching query and indexed words. Browsing was also valued for serendipitous discovery; however the organisation of the archive was judged cryptic and therefore of limited use. This indicates that the categorisation of an online archive should be thought of in terms of users who might not understand the current classification. The focus group and the survey showed clearly the advantage of online access even when the quality of the video surrogate is poor. The evidence gathered suggests that the creation of a digital version of a video archive requires a rethinking of the collection in terms of the new medium: a new archive should be specially designed to exploit the potential that the digital medium offers. Similarly, users' needs have to be considered before designing the digital library interface, as needs are likely to be different from those imagined. Originality/value – This paper is the first attempt to understand the advantages offered and limitations held by video retrieval technology for small video archives like those often found in special collections

Indexing, browsing and searching of digital video

Video is a communications medium that normally brings together moving pictures with a synchronised audio track into a discrete piece or pieces of information. The size of a “piece ” of video can variously be referred to as a frame, a shot, a scene, a clip, a programme or an episode, and these are distinguished by their lengths and by their composition. We shall return to the definition of each of these in section 4 this chapter. In modern society, video is ver

Usability of Musical Digital Libraries: a Multimodal Analysis.

There has been substantial research on technical aspects of musical digital libraries, but comparatively little on usability aspects. We have evaluated four web-accessible music libraries, focusing particularly on features that are particular to music libraries, such as music retrieval mechanisms. Although the original focus of the work was on how modalities are combined within the interactions with such libraries, that was not where the main difficulties were found. Libraries were generally well designed for use of different modalities. The main challenges identified relate to the details of melody matching and to simplifying the choices of file format. These issues are discussed in detail. 1