Evaluating tag-based information access in image collections

The availability of social tags has greatly enhanced access to information. Tag clouds have emerged as a new "social" way to find and visualize information, providing both one-click access to information and a snapshot of the "aboutness" of a tagged collection. A range of research projects explored and compared different tag artifacts for information access ranging from regular tag clouds to tag hierarchies. At the same time, there is a lack of user studies that compare the effectiveness of different types of tag-based browsing interfaces from the users point of view. This paper contributes to the research on tag-based information access by presenting a controlled user study that compared three types of tag-based interfaces on two recognized types of search tasks - lookup and exploratory search. Our results demonstrate that tag-based browsing interfaces significantly outperform traditional search interfaces in both performance and user satisfaction. At the same time, the differences between the two types of tag-based browsing interfaces explored in our study are not as clear. Copyright 2012 ACM

Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

Folksonomy: the New Way to Serendipity

Folksonomy expands the collaborative process by allowing contributors to index content. It rests on three powerful properties: the absence of a prior taxonomy, multi-indexation and the absence of thesaurus. It concerns a more exploratory search than an entry in a search engine. Its original relationship-based structure (the three-way relationship between users, content and tags) means that folksonomy allows various modalities of curious explorations: a cultural exploration and a social exploration. The paper has two goals. Firstly, it tries to draw a general picture of the various folksonomy websites. Secundly, since labelling lacks any standardisation, folksonomies are often under threat of invasion by noise. This paper consequently tries to explore the different possible ways of regulating the self-generated indexation process.taxonomy; indexation; innovation and user-created content

No és la meva competència intercultural, soc jo.’ La identitat intercultural del professorat de llengües estrangeres en formació

This article examines the intercultural identity of pre-service foreign language teachers to determine whether they are aware of their intercultural stance and that of others, and whether they portray an identifiable emergent professional persona in relation to interculturality. The ultimate goal of this study is to identify common traits on which to focus future teacher training. The results show that these prospective teachers display an incipient intercultural identity characterised by a tendency to avoid agency and a certain shortage of intercultural knowledge, yet they are notably concerned about their professional image and their responsibility in work environmentsEste artículo indaga en la identidad intercultural del profesorado de lenguas extranjeras en formación para averiguar si es consciente de su postura intercultural y de la de otros, y si presenta una imagen profesional emergente reconocible en relación con la interculturalidad. El objetivo final de este estudio es identificar rasgos comunes en los que podría centrarse la formación del profesorado. Los resultados demuestran que este futuro profesorado muestra una identidad intercultural incipiente caracterizada por su tendencia a evitar la intervención y por una cierta falta de conocimiento intercultural, aunque está notablemente preocupado por su imagen profesional y su responsabilidad en contextos laboralesAquest article indaga en la identitat intercultural del professorat de llengües estrangeres en formació per esbrinar si és conscient de la seva postura intercultural i de la dels altres, i si presenta una imatge professional emergent recognoscible en relació amb la interculturalitat. L’objectiu final d’aquest estudi és identificar trets comuns en els quals es podria centrar la formació del professorat. Els resultats demostren que aquest futur professorat té una identitat intercultural incipient caracteritzada per la seva tendència a evitar la intervenció i per una certa falta de coneixement intercultural, encara que està notablement preocupat per la seva imatge professional i la seva responsabilitat en els contextos laboralsThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition under Grant FFI2016-77540

ArchiVISTA: A New Horizon in Providing Access to Visual Records of the National Archives of Canada

published or submitted for publicatio

Fashion Conversation Data on Instagram

The fashion industry is establishing its presence on a number of visual-centric social media like Instagram. This creates an interesting clash as fashion brands that have traditionally practiced highly creative and editorialized image marketing now have to engage with people on the platform that epitomizes impromptu, realtime conversation. What kinds of fashion images do brands and individuals share and what are the types of visual features that attract likes and comments? In this research, we take both quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer these questions. We analyze visual features of fashion posts first via manual tagging and then via training on convolutional neural networks. The classified images were examined across four types of fashion brands: mega couture, small couture, designers, and high street. We find that while product-only images make up the majority of fashion conversation in terms of volume, body snaps and face images that portray fashion items more naturally tend to receive a larger number of likes and comments by the audience. Our findings bring insights into building an automated tool for classifying or generating influential fashion information. We make our novel dataset of {24,752} labeled images on fashion conversations, containing visual and textual cues, available for the research community.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, This paper will be presented at ICWSM'1

Flickr: A case study of Web2.0

The “photosharing” site Flickr is one of the most commonly cited examples used to define Web2.0. This paper explores where Flickr’s real novelty lies, examining its functionality and its place in the world of amateur photography. The paper draws on a wide range of sources including published interviews with its developers, user opinions expressed in forums, telephone interviews and content analysis of user profiles and activity. Flickr’s development path passes from an innovative social game to a relatively familiar model of a website, itself developed through intense user participation but later stabilising with the reassertion of a commercial relationship to the membership. The broader context of the impact of Flickr is examined by looking at the institutions of amateur photography and particularly the code of pictorialism promoted by the clubs and industry during the C20th. The nature of Flickr as a benign space is premised on the way the democratic potential of photography is controlled by such institutions. Several optimistic views of the impact of Flickr such as its facilitation of citizen journalism, “vernacular creativity” and in learning as an “affinity space” are evaluated. The limits of these claims are identified in the way that the system is designed to satisfy commercial purposes, continuing digital divides in access and the low interactivity and criticality on Flickr. Flickr is an interesting source of change, but can only to be understood in the perspective of long term development of the hobby and wider social processes