ImageSieve: Exploratory search of museum archives with named entity-based faceted browsing

Over the last few years, faceted search emerged as an attractive alternative to the traditional "text box" search and has become one of the standard ways of interaction on many e-commerce sites. However, these applications of faceted search are limited to domains where the objects of interests have already been classified along several independent dimensions, such as price, year, or brand. While automatic approaches to generate faceted search interfaces were proposed, it is not yet clear to what extent the automatically-produced interfaces will be useful to real users, and whether their quality can match or surpass their manually-produced predecessors. The goal of this paper is to introduce an exploratory search interface called ImageSieve, which shares many features with traditional faceted browsing, but can function without the use of traditional faceted metadata. ImageSieve uses automatically extracted and classified named entities, which play important roles in many domains (such as news collections, image archives, etc.). We describe one specific application of ImageSieve for image search. Here, named entities extracted from the descriptions of the retrieved images are used to organize a faceted browsing interface, which then helps users to make sense of and further explore the retrieved images. The results of a user study of ImageSieve demonstrate that a faceted search system based on named entities can help users explore large collections and find relevant information more effectively

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Keyword-based object search and exploration in multidimensional text databases

We propose a novel system TEXplorer that integrates keyword-based object ranking with the aggregation and exploration power of OLAP in a text database with rich structured attributes available, e.g., a product review database. TEXplorer can be implemented within a multi-dimensional text database, where each row is associated with structural dimensions (attributes) and text data (e.g., a document). The system utilizes the text cube data model, where a cell aggregates a set of documents with matching values in a subset of dimensions. Cells in a text cube capture different levels of summarization of the documents, and can represent objects at different conceptual levels. Users query the system by submitting a set of keywords. Instead of returning a ranked list of all the cells, we propose a keyword-based interactive exploration framework that could offer flexible OLAP navigational guides and help users identify the levels and objects they are interested in. A novel significance measure of dimensions is proposed based on the distribution of IR relevance of cells. During each interaction stage, dimensions are ranked according to their significance scores to guide drilling down; and cells in the same cuboids are ranked according to their relevance to guide exploration. We propose efficient algorithms and materialization strategies for ranking top-k dimensions and cells. Finally, extensive experiments on real datasets demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach

Ontology-based end-user visual query formulation: Why, what, who, how, and which?

Value creation in an organisation is a time-sensitive and data-intensive process, yet it is often delayed and bounded by the reliance on IT experts extracting data for domain experts. Hence, there is a need for providing people who are not professional developers with the flexibility to pose relatively complex and ad hoc queries in an easy and intuitive way. In this respect, visual methods for query formulation undertake the challenge of making querying independent of users’ technical skills and the knowledge of the underlying textual query language and the structure of data. An ontology is more promising than the logical schema of the underlying data for guiding users in formulating queries, since it provides a richer vocabulary closer to the users’ understanding. However, on the one hand, today the most of world’s enterprise data reside in relational databases rather than triple stores, and on the other, visual query formulation has become more compelling due to ever-increasing data size and complexity—known as Big Data. This article presents and argues for ontology-based visual query formulation for end-users; discusses its feasibility in terms of ontology-based data access, which virtualises legacy relational databases as RDF, and the dimensions of Big Data; presents key conceptual aspects and dimensions, challenges, and requirements; and reviews, categorises, and discusses notable approaches and systems

Next Generation Catalogue: A User’s expectation

Paper presented at International CALIBERSince the days of Cutter, tools to access the resources of libraries are changing their structure and interface rapidly and dramatically to fulfill the dynamic user needs. Today almost every library user comes with expectations set and defined by their experience of using the Web. So the catalogues, which are offered by the libraries, need to operate at the same level of sophistication as other popular Web destinations. The “next generation” library catalog is a tool designed to fit into this shifting environment and move librarianship into a more active role when it comes to increasing the sphere of knowledge. The purpose of the paper to examine the present developments and explores the likely future developments in re-designing the OPAC to support resource discovery. The different ongoing developments follow a unique approach, but one thread that is common in all of them is that they involve a desire to go far beyond the capabilities of legacy catalogues and give library users more powerful and appealing tools

From Keyword Search to Exploration: How Result Visualization Aids Discovery on the Web

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney). We also consider the both traditional and novel ways in which these strategies have been evaluated. From our review of cognitive processes, browser design, and evaluations, we reflect on the future opportunities and new paradigms for exploring and interacting with Web search results

The Ontology for Parasite Lifecycle (OPL): towards a consistent vocabulary of lifecycle stages in parasitic organisms.

BACKGROUND: Genome sequencing of many eukaryotic pathogens and the volume of data available on public resources have created a clear requirement for a consistent vocabulary to describe the range of developmental forms of parasites. Consistent labeling of experimental data and external data, in databases and the literature, is essential for integration, cross database comparison, and knowledge discovery. The primary objective of this work was to develop a dynamic and controlled vocabulary that can be used for various parasites. The paper describes the Ontology for Parasite Lifecycle (OPL) and discusses its application in parasite research. RESULTS: The OPL is based on the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and follows the rules set by the OBO Foundry consortium. The first version of the OPL models complex life cycle stage details of a range of parasites, such as Trypanosoma sp., Leishmaniasp., Plasmodium sp., and Shicstosoma sp. In addition, the ontology also models necessary contextual details, such as host information, vector information, and anatomical locations. OPL is primarily designed to serve as a reference ontology for parasite life cycle stages that can be used for database annotation purposes and in the lab for data integration or information retrieval as exemplified in the application section below. CONCLUSION: OPL is freely available at http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/opl.owl and has been submitted to the BioPortal site of NCBO and to the OBO Foundry. We believe that database and phenotype annotations using OPL will help run fundamental queries on databases to know more about gene functions and to find intervention targets for various parasites. The OPL is under continuous development and new parasites and/or terms are being added.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Is question answering fit for the Semantic Web? A survey

With the recent rapid growth of the Semantic Web (SW), the processes of searching and querying content that is both massive in scale and heterogeneous have become increasingly challenging. User-friendly interfaces, which can support end users in querying and exploring this novel and diverse, structured information space, are needed to make the vision of the SW a reality. We present a survey on ontology-based Question Answering (QA), which has emerged in recent years to exploit the opportunities offered by structured semantic information on the Web. First, we provide a comprehensive perspective by analyzing the general background and history of the QA research field, from influential works from the artificial intelligence and database communities developed in the 70s and later decades, through open domain QA stimulated by the QA track in TREC since 1999, to the latest commercial semantic QA solutions, before tacking the current state of the art in open userfriendly interfaces for the SW. Second, we examine the potential of this technology to go beyond the current state of the art to support end-users in reusing and querying the SW content. We conclude our review with an outlook for this novel research area, focusing in particular on the R&D directions that need to be pursued to realize the goal of efficient and competent retrieval and integration of answers from large scale, heterogeneous, and continuously evolving semantic sources