The Omnipaper metadata RDF/XML prototype implementation

Omnipaper (Smart Access to European Newspapers, IST-2001-32174) is a project from the European Commission IST program (Information Society Technologies) that investigates and proposes ways for access to different types of distributed information sources. This article intends to introduce the technology Resource Description Framework - RDF, developed by W3C for the Web based on metadata, and its practical use in the Omnipaper project, which the authors are involved. We intend to achieve the implementation of a prototype that enables users (professional journalists and occasional users) to have simultaneous and structured access to the articles of a large number of digital European news providers. Omnipaper is not a project about digitalization of news, but about bringing digitized news originating from various sources (and in various formats) together. In this article will be described the procedure implemented in the description of our newspaper articles using the RDF technology, followed by a elaborated description on the manipulation process and treatment of the information structured in RDF, through the RDF Gateway

Uso de RDF y bases de datos de metadatos nativas dentro del proyecto Omnipaper

Este artículo describe el trabajo realizado para la creación de un prototipo para la búsqueda de información en archivos digitales distribuidos utilizando la tecnología RDF y una base de datos nativa. El articulo reseña los prerrequisitos para la descripción y normalización de la información de los archivos distribuidos, luego los criterios para la selección de la base de datos nativa, muestra las funcionalidades del prototipo creado y al final tiene una síntesis de las lecciones aprendidas y el trabajo futuro.Comissão Europeia - IST (OmniPaper - Smart Access to European Newspapers

Implementation of metadata for OmniPaper RDF prototype

Information Society Technologies (IST) funded OmniPaper project investigates efficient ways for access to distributed and heterogeneous digital news archives using state-of-the-art technologies such as RDF, XTM and SOAP. An approach taken is to create small prototypes based on each of them. This paper presents the first stage of the prototype development, particularly of RDF approach, including analysis on existing news text format standards and metadata vocabularies, definition of metadata elements for OmniPaper, implementation of application profile and RDF schema and development of the RDF prototype in a web-based RDF specific application. The elaborated analysis shows that Dublin Core Metadata Element Set has to be a principal vocabulary to implement the OmniPaper application profile as it provides greater interoperability. The RDF prototype provides RDF “metadatabase” with searchable interface for simple and advance search on the defined metadata elements

The instantiation of Omnipaper RDF prototype in the context of scientific publications

The purpose of this paper is to present an instance of the system developed in the OmniPaper project, regarding the mechanisms of distributed information retrieval. These mechanisms were developed for newspapers’ articles and they were then instantiated in the context of the scientific publication. Another goal concerns the use of a central metadatabase developed to accomplish the syndication of contents, through the RSS approach. Design/methodology/approach One of the steps of the system’s development was the definition of the metadata layer that supports the research and the navigation functionalities as well as the contents’ syndication. Several tasks were performed for the definition of the metadata layer, namely: (1) analysis of several metadata standard vocabularies; (2) Selection of the metadata elements; (3) Definition of an application profile and the RSS template; (4) Development of a metadatabase, through the use of a native RDF database management system to store the RSS descriptions of the scientific publications; (5) Implementation of the search and navigation processes developed in the prototype through the use of the RDFS version of the WordNet and the RDFS version of classification system of Association for Computing Machinery Computing Classification System (ACM CCS); finally (5) Tests and validation of all developed functionalities. Findings and value The OmniPaper system can be instantiated to other domains other than news published in newspapers. The RSS technology is well suited for handling the description of scientific contents. RDF records that were used in the OmniPaper RDF prototype were replaced by RSS. The subject and lexical thesauri were kept. This strong metadata layer allows the creation of several services that facilitate the conceptual search of scientific contents. Originality and value of paper This paper presents a system that uses a central metadatabase to support conceptual searching mechanisms. The metadatabase consists of RDF triples generated from: (1) RSS files that were, by their turn generated from OAI-PMH harvested metadata records; (2) a controlled vocabulary (ACM-CCS) implemented in RDF Schema and (3) an RDF version of WordNet. This is a solution for a value-added service for the scientific community that is fully based in state-of-the-art standard technologies and is fully open for integration with other systems. Moreover this could be implemented by journals to improve the current mechanisms used to access, distribute and disseminate the scientific research developments. Research limitations/implications (if applicable) The system implemented was tested but not evaluated in a real environment with specific users

Revealing the news: How online news changes without you noticing

This paper describes an ongoing design project relating to online news and how alterations to news stories are hidden from the reader. As the delivery and consumption of news content online continues to overtake other channels in reader numbers and market penetration, so methods of transparency and reliability developed over centuries continue also to be tested by digital media. We have conducted content analysis on existing stories and examined how news organisations and channels handle rapidly evolving news stories. We have proceeded to develop low-fidelity prototypes and an interaction model to test our design approach. The outcomes are in production and will result in a digital artifact that reveals editorial changes to news items (the News Inspector). These changes will be made visible within the browser. The implications of the project relate to the wider question of news truth-telling, trust and online news credibility