Multimedia retrieval in MultiMatch: The impact of speech transcript errors on search behaviour

This study discusses the findings of an evaluation study on the performance of a multimedia multimodal information access sub-system (MIAS), incorporating automatic speech recognition technology (ASR) to automatically transcribe the speech content of video soundtracks. The study’s results indicate that an information-rich but minimalist graphical interface is preferred. It was also discovered that users tend to have a misplaced confidence in the accuracy of ASR-generated speech transcripts, thus they are not inclined to conduct a systematic auditory inspection (their usual search behaviour) of a video’s soundtrack if the query term does not appear in the transcript. In order to alert the user to the possibility that a search term may be incorrectly recognised as some other word, a matching algorithm is proposed that searches for word sequences of similar phonemic structure to the query term

Initial specification of the evaluation tasks "Use cases to bridge validation and benchmarking" PROMISE Deliverable 2.1

Evaluation of multimedia and multilingual information access systems needs to be performed from a usage oriented perspective. This document outlines use cases from the three use case domains of the PROMISE project and gives some initial pointers to how their respective characteristics can be extrapolated to determine and guide evaluation activities, both with respect to benchmarking and to validation of the usage hypotheses. The use cases will be developed further during the course of the evaluation activities and workshops projected to occur in coming CLEF conferences

Multilingual search for cultural heritage archives via combining multiple translation resources

The linguistic features of material in Cultural Heritage (CH) archives may be in various languages requiring a facility for effective multilingual search. The specialised language often associated with CH content introduces problems for automatic translation to support search applications. The MultiMatch project is focused on enabling users to interact with CH content across different media types and languages. We present results from a MultiMatch study exploring various translation techniques for the CH domain. Our experiments examine translation techniques for the English language CLEF 2006 Cross-Language Speech Retrieval (CL-SR) task using Spanish, French and German queries. Results compare effectiveness of our query translation against a monolingual baseline and show improvement when combining a domain-specific translation lexicon with a standard machine translation system

Domain-specific query translation for multilingual access to digital libraries

Accurate high-coverage translation is a vital component of reliable cross language information access (CLIR) systems. This is particularly true of access to archives such as Digital Libraries which are often specific to certain domains. While general machine translation (MT) has been shown to be effective for CLIR tasks in information retrieval evaluation workshops, it is not well suited to specialized tasks where domain specific translations are required. We demonstrate that effective query translation in the domain of cultural heritage (CH) can be achieved by augmenting a standard MT system with domain-specific phrase dictionaries automatically mined from the online Wikipedia. Experiments using our hybrid translation system with sample query logs from users of CH websites demonstrate a large improvement in the accuracy of domain specific phrase detection and translation

When to cross Over? Cross-language linking using Wikipedia for VideoCLEF 2009

We describe Dublin City University (DCU)'s participation in the VideoCLEF 2009 Linking Task. Two approaches were implemented using the Lemur information retrieval toolkit. Both approaches rst extracted a search query from the transcriptions of the Dutch TV broadcasts. One method rst performed search on a Dutch Wikipedia archive, then followed links to corresponding pages in the English Wikipedia. The other method rst translated the extracted query using machine translation and then searched the English Wikipedia collection directly. We found that using the original Dutch transcription query for searching the Dutch Wikipedia yielded better results

Domain-specific query translation for multilingual information access using machine translation augmented with dictionaries mined from Wikipedia

Accurate high-coverage translation is a vital component of reliable cross language information access (CLIA) systems. While machine translation (MT) has been shown to be effective for CLIA tasks in previous evaluation workshops, it is not well suited to specialized tasks where domain specific translations are required. We demonstrate that effective query translation for CLIA can be achieved in the domain of cultural heritage (CH). This is performed by augmenting a standard MT system with domainspecific phrase dictionaries automatically mined from the online Wikipedia. Experiments using our hybrid translation system with sample query logs from users of CH websites demonstrate a large improvement in the accuracy of domain specific phrase detection and translation

Multimodal indexing of digital audio-visual documents: A case study for cultural heritage data

This paper describes a multimedia multimodal information access sub-system (MIAS) for digital audio-visual documents, typically presented in streaming media format. The system is designed to provide both professional and general users with entry points into video documents that are relevant to their information needs. In this work, we focus on the information needs of multimedia specialists at a Dutch cultural heritage institution with a large multimedia archive. A quantitative and qualitative assessment is made of the efficiency of search operations using our multimodal system and it is demonstrated that MIAS significantly facilitates information retrieval operations when searching within a video document

Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda

Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed

Multilingual Multimedia Thesaurus for Conservation and Restoration - Collaborative Networked Model of Construction

Standardization and systematization of terminology within the area of cultural heritage preservation in Croatia will be done by a construction of a model of multilingual multimedia thesaurus through collaboration of experts for conservation and restoration implying the participation of different competences in a community of practice in a network based environment by use of information technologies. A model of controlled dynamic vocabulary with hierarchically connected concepts will be constructed. The source language for thesaurus construction will be Italian, based on three basic relationships terms: equivalence, hierarchical and associative. The number of terms will be limited to cca. 500 preferred terms subdivided into hierarchies. The hypertextual and hypermedial thesaurus would be placed on a web for online browsing and upgrading. The multilingual lexical organization followed by multimedia presentations could be a benefit for the development of conservation and restoration profession in the field of cultural heritage preservation and for joining future European cultural projects. It could also play a significant role in the mobility initiatives aimed at study, conservation, restoration and the appreciation of historic and artistic heritage