Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

Identifying and managing asbestiform minerals in geological collections

Asbestos is widely recognised as a serious hazard, and its industrial use is now banned within the UK, and EU, and strict regulations govern the use of older manufactured materials which may contain asbestos. However, asbestos is also a natural geological material, and may occur in museum collections as minerals or constituents of rock specimens. In the UK the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR 2012) provides the legal framework for the safe identification, use and disposal of asbestos. However, these regulations, and other EU regulations, provide no specific guidance on dealing with potentially asbestos-containing natural materials. CAR 2012 specifies just six asbestos minerals although a number of other minerals in museum collections are known to have asbestiform structures and be hazard-ous, including other amphiboles, and the zeolite erionite. Despite the lack of specific guid-ance, museums must comply with CAR 2012, and this paper outlines the professional ad-vice, training and procedures which may be needed for this. It provides guidance on identifi-cation of potential asbestos-bearing specimens and on procedures to document them and store them for future use, or to prepare them for professional disposal. It also makes sug-gestions how visitors, employees and others in a museum can be protected from asbestos as incoming donations and enquiries, managed in the event of an emergency, and safely included in displays

Life Beyond the Mailbox: A Cross-Tool Perspective on Personal Information Management

Email interfaces provide poor support for the personal information management (PIM) activities that users have adopted them for. This paper reports a user study that highlights how two aspects of PIM, information management and task management, cut across a range of tools, including email. We argue that effective support for such cross-tool activities cannot be provided through a focus on one interface such as email alone. Instead, a cross-tool approach is needed in PIM-related research and design. We present a prototype aimed at improving cross-tool support for information management, and report the results from an initial evaluation

My digital photos: where and when?

In recent years digital cameras have seen an enormous rise in popularity, leading to a huge increase in the quantity of digital photos being taken. This brings with it the challenge of organising these large collections. We preset work which organises personal digital photo collections based on date/time and GPS location, which we believe will become a key organisational methodology over the next few years as consumer digital cameras evolve to incorporate GPS and as cameras in mobile phones spread further. The accompanying video illustrates the results of our research into digital photo management tools which contains a series of screen and user interactions highlighting how a user utilises the tools we are developing to manage a personal archive of digital photos

What makes re-finding information difficult? A study of email re-finding

Re-nding information that has been seen or accessed before is a task which can be relatively straight-forward, but often it can be extremely challenging, time-consuming and frustrating. Little is known, however, about what makes one re-finding task harder or easier than another. We performed a user study to learn about the contextual factors that influence users' perception of task diculty in the context of re-finding email messages. 21 participants were issued re-nding tasks to perform on their own personal collections. The participants' responses to questions about the tasks combined with demographic data and collection statistics for the experimental population provide a rich basis to investigate the variables that can influence the perception of diculty. A logistic regression model was developed to examine the relationships be- tween variables and determine whether any factors were associated with perceived task diculty. The model reveals strong relationships between diculty and the time lapsed since a message was read, remembering when the sought-after email was sent, remembering other recipients of the email, the experience of the user and the user's ling strategy. We discuss what these findings mean for the design of re-nding interfaces and future re-finding research

Context-aware person identification in personal photo collections

Identifying the people in photos is an important need for users of photo management systems. We present MediAssist, one such system which facilitates browsing, searching and semi-automatic annotation of personal photos, using analysis of both image content and the context in which the photo is captured. This semi-automatic annotation includes annotation of the identity of people in photos. In this paper, we focus on such person annotation, and propose person identification techniques based on a combination of context and content. We propose language modelling and nearest neighbor approaches to context-based person identification, in addition to novel face color and image color content-based features (used alongside face recognition and body patch features). We conduct a comprehensive empirical study of these techniques using the real private photo collections of a number of users, and show that combining context- and content-based analysis improves performance over content or context alone

Multiple multimodal mobile devices: Lessons learned from engineering lifelog solutions

For lifelogging, or the recording of one’s life history through digital means, to be successful, a range of separate multimodal mobile devices must be employed. These include smartphones such as the N95, the Microsoft SenseCam – a wearable passive photo capture device, or wearable biometric devices. Each collects a facet of the bigger picture, through, for example, personal digital photos, mobile messages and documents access history, but unfortunately, they operate independently and unaware of each other. This creates significant challenges for the practical application of these devices, the use and integration of their data and their operation by a user. In this chapter we discuss the software engineering challenges and their implications for individuals working on integration of data from multiple ubiquitous mobile devices drawing on our experiences working with such technology over the past several years for the development of integrated personal lifelogs. The chapter serves as an engineering guide to those considering working in the domain of lifelogging and more generally to those working with multiple multimodal devices and integration of their data

Striking a Balance Between Physical and Digital Resources

In various configurations—be they academic, archival, county, juvenile, monastic, national, personal, public, reference, or research, the library has been a fixture in human affairs for a long time. Digital — meaning, content or communication that is delivered through the internet, is 20 years old (but younger in parts). Basically, both approaches to organizing serve to structure information for access. However, digital is multiplying very fast and libraries all-round contemplate an existential crisis; the more hopeful librarians fret about physical and digital space. Yet, the crux of the matter is not about physical vs. digital: without doubt, the digital space of content or communication transmogrifies all walks of life and cannot be wished away; but, the physical space of libraries is time-tested, extremely valuable, and can surely offer more than currently meets the eye. Except for entirely virtual libraries, the symbiotic relationship between the physical and the digital is innately powerful: for superior outcomes, it must be recognized, nurtured, and leveraged; striking a balance between physical and digital resources can be accomplished. This paper examines the subject of delivering digital from macro, meso, and micro perspectives: it looks into complexity theory, digital strategy, and digitization