Supporting the Exploration of Online Cultural Heritage Collections:The Case of the Dutch Folktale Database

This paper demonstrates the use of a user-centred design approach for the development of generous interfaces/rich prospect browsers for an online cultural heritage collection, determining its primary user groups and designing different browsing tools to cater to their specific needs. We set out to solve a set of problems faced by many online cultural heritage collections. These problems are lack of accessibility, limited functionalities to explore the collection through browsing, and risk of less known content being overlooked. The object of our study is the Dutch Folktale Database, an online collection of tens of thousands of folktales from the Netherlands. Although this collection was designed as a research commodity for folktale experts, its primary user group consists of casual users from the general public. We present the new interfaces we developed to facilitate browsing and exploration of the collection by both folktale experts and casual users. We focus on the user-centred design approach we adopted to develop interfaces that would fit the users' needs and preferences

Evaluating semantic search query approaches with expert and casual users

Abstract. Usability and user satisfaction are of paramount importance when designing interactive software solutions. Furthermore, the optimal design can be dependent not only on the task but also on the type of user. Evaluations can shed light on these issues; however, very few studies have focused on assessing the usability of semantic search systems. As semantic search becomes mainstream, there is growing need for standardised, comprehensive evaluation frameworks. In this study, we assess the usability and user satisfaction of different semantic search query input approaches (natural language and view-based) from the perspective of different user types (experts and casuals). Contrary to previous studies, we found that casual users preferred the form-based query approach whereas expert users found the graph-based to be the most intuitive. Additionally, the controlled-language model offered the most support for casual users but was perceived as restrictive by experts, thus limiting their ability to express their information needs

User-centered semantic dataset retrieval

Finding relevant research data is an increasingly important but time-consuming task in daily research practice. Several studies report on difficulties in dataset search, e.g., scholars retrieve only partial pertinent data, and important information can not be displayed in the user interface. Overcoming these problems has motivated a number of research efforts in computer science, such as text mining and semantic search. In particular, the emergence of the Semantic Web opens a variety of novel research perspectives. Motivated by these challenges, the overall aim of this work is to analyze the current obstacles in dataset search and to propose and develop a novel semantic dataset search. The studied domain is biodiversity research, a domain that explores the diversity of life, habitats and ecosystems. This thesis has three main contributions: (1) We evaluate the current situation in dataset search in a user study, and we compare a semantic search with a classical keyword search to explore the suitability of semantic web technologies for dataset search. (2) We generate a question corpus and develop an information model to figure out on what scientific topics scholars in biodiversity research are interested in. Moreover, we also analyze the gap between current metadata and scholarly search interests, and we explore whether metadata and user interests match. (3) We propose and develop an improved dataset search based on three components: (A) a text mining pipeline, enriching metadata and queries with semantic categories and URIs, (B) a retrieval component with a semantic index over categories and URIs and (C) a user interface that enables a search within categories and a search including further hierarchical relations. Following user centered design principles, we ensure user involvement in various user studies during the development process

AN INVESTIGATION INTO ONTOLOGY BASED ENHANCEMENT OF SEARCH TECHNOLOGIES FOR E-GOVERNMENT

The field of e-government has always been a distinct area of standard testing for software research. To expound further, the e-government field presents a variety of principled elements, which makes the system more challenging and further encouraging than other electronic scenarios (e.g., e-business and e-commerce). To a certain extent, selecting an appropriate Web modelling technique (e.g., ontology) illustrates the critical role of establishing a successful e-government system. Ontology has been used in e-government to describe and define services provided to citizens. In addition, ontology technology is expected to play a pivotal role in enabling semantic web services.\ud While creating the ontology for e-government remains a significant task concerning its planning and implementation, there are still a few investigations to deal with the ontology technology’s effect on the government’s capability to deliver its due services. Because of the noticeable failure in large parts of e-government projects, the current study stands out as an attempt to improve their performance in terms of service delivery, appropriateness of applying modern technologies, and finally, a research-driven application. Factors for conducting academic research will lead to refining knowledge-building related to design procedures and setting up the ontological framework within the e-government domain. This research aims to verify whether the ontology technology can be described and considered a reference technology for providing e-government services over the Internet. Consequently, the research presents a practical method established on experimental research that moves nearer to the fact of the true function of ontological procedure in the field of e-government. In this study, the educational system in Singapore is used to represent the domain of e-government in which research questions are raised and addressed; also, general impressions can be tested and originated. The research methodology utilised in the research has the advantage of being consistent in the case study. Inside the case study, both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied to collect data and gain access to an answer to the research question