Event Based Retrieval From Digital Libraries Containing Data Streams

The objective of this research is to study the issues involved in building a digital library that contains data streams and allows event-based retrieval. “Digital Libraries are storehouses of information available through the Internet that provide ways to collect, store, and organize data and make it accessible for search, retrieval, and processing” [29]. Data streams are sources of information for applications such as news-on-demand, weather services, and scientific research, to name a few. A data stream is a sequence of data units produced over a period of time. Examples of data streams are video streams, audio stream, and sensor readings. Saving data streams in digital libraries is advantageous because of the services provided by digital libraries such as archiving, preservation, administration, and access control. Events are noteworthy occurrences that happen during data streams. Events are easier to remember than specific time instances at which they occur; hence using them for retrieval is more commensurate with human behavior and can be more efficient via direct accessing instead of scanning. The focus of this research is not only on storing data streams in a digital library and using event-based retrieval, but also on relating streams and playing them back at the same time, possibly in a synchronized manner, to facilitate better understanding in research or other working situations. Our approach for this research starts by considering digital libraries for: stock market, news streams, census bureau statistics, weather, sports games, and the educational environment. For each of these applications, we form categories of possible users and the basic requirements for each of them. As a result, we identify a list of design goals that we take into consideration in developing the architecture of the library. To illustrate and validate our approach we implement a medical digital library containing actual Computed Tomography (CT) scan streams. It also contains sample medical text and audio streams to show the heterogeneity of the library. Streams are displayed in a concise, yet complete, way that makes it unproblematic for users to decide whether or not to playback a stream and to set playback options. The playback interface itself is organized in a way that accommodates synchronous and asynchronous streams and enables users to control the playback of these streams. We study the performance of the specialized search and retrieval processes in comparison to traditional search and retrieval processes. We conclude with a discussion on how to adapt the library to additional stream types in addition to suggesting other future efforts in this area

Extending the 5S Framework of Digital Libraries to support Complex Objects, Superimposed Information, and Content-Based Image Retrieval Services

Advanced services in digital libraries (DLs) have been developed and widely used to address the required capabilities of an assortment of systems as DLs expand into diverse application domains. These systems may require support for images (e.g., Content-Based Image Retrieval), Complex (information) Objects, and use of content at fine grain (e.g., Superimposed Information). Due to the lack of consensus on precise theoretical definitions for those services, implementation efforts often involve ad hoc development, leading to duplication and interoperability problems. This article presents a methodology to address those problems by extending a precisely specified minimal digital library (in the 5S framework) with formal definitions of aforementioned services. The theoretical extensions of digital library functionality presented here are reinforced with practical case studies as well as scenarios for the individual and integrative use of services to balance theory and practice. This methodology has implications that other advanced services can be continuously integrated into our current extended framework whenever they are identified. The theoretical definitions and case study we present may impact future development efforts and a wide range of digital library researchers, designers, and developers

SportsAnno: what do you think?

The automatic summarisation of sports video is of growing importance with the increased availability of on-demand content. Consumers who are unable to view events live often have a desire to watch a summary which allows then to quickly come to terms with all that has happened during a sporting event. Sports forums show that it is not only summaries that are desirable but also the opportunity to share one’s own point of view and discuss the opinions with a community of similar users. In this paper we give an overview of the ways in which annotations have been used to augment existing visual media. We present SportsAnno, a system developed to summarise World Cup 2006 matches and provide a means for open discussion of events within these matches

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Semantic user profiling techniques for personalised multimedia recommendation

Due to the explosion of news materials available through broadcast and other channels, there is an increasing need for personalised news video retrieval. In this work, we introduce a semantic-based user modelling technique to capture users’ evolving information needs. Our approach exploits implicit user interaction to capture long-term user interests in a profile. The organised interests are used to retrieve and recommend news stories to the users. In this paper, we exploit the Linked Open Data Cloud to identify similar news stories that match the users’ interest. We evaluate various recommendation parameters by introducing a simulation-based evaluation scheme

The importance of context for Digital Libraries.

The concept of "context" has great importance in digital preservation. This paper analyzes the meaning of context from the point of view of access to digital objects, combining linguistics, terminological disambiguation in information retrieval and text categorization aspects. In these areas, the context is a key element for successful disambiguation and thus get better results. Therefore, the preservation and subsequent access of digital objects should also consider the preservation of appropriate information about the terminology and social context in which these objects were generated

A Platform for the Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Data about the Built Environment and its Users

There are many scenarios in which it is necessary to collect data from multiple sources in order to evaluate a system, including the collection of both quantitative data - from sensors and smart devices - and qualitative data - such as observations and interview results. However, there are currently very few systems that enable both of these data types to be combined in such a way that they can be analysed side-by-side. This paper describes an end-to-end system for the collection, analysis, storage and visualisation of qualitative and quantitative data, developed using the e-Science Central cloud analytics platform. We describe the experience of developing the system, based on a case study that involved collecting data about the built environment and its users. In this case study, data is collected from older adults living in residential care. Sensors were placed throughout the care home and smart devices were issued to the residents. This sensor data is uploaded to the analytics platform and the processed results are stored in a data warehouse, where it is integrated with qualitative data collected by healthcare and architecture researchers. Visualisations are also presented which were intended to allow the data to be explored and for potential correlations between the quantitative and qualitative data to be investigated