Building Web Directories in Different Languages for Decision Support: A Semi-Automatic Approach

Web directories organize voluminous information into hierarchical structures, helping users to quickly locate relevant information and to support decision-making. The development of existing Web directories either relies on expert participation that may not be available or uses automatic approaches that lack precision. As more users access the Web in their native languages, better approaches to organizing and developing non-English Web directories are needed. In this paper, we have proposed a semi-automatic approach to building domain-specific Web directories in different languages by combining human precision and machine efficiency. Using the approach, we have built Web directories in the Spanish business (SBiz) and Arabic medical (AMed) domains. Experimental results show that the SBiz and AMed directories achieved significantly better recall, F value, and satisfaction rating than benchmark directories. These encouraging results show that the approach can be used to build high-quality Web directories to support decision-making

A usability approach to improving the user experience in web directories

PhDWeb directories are hierarchically organised website collections that offer users subjectbased access to the Web. They played a significant part in navigating the Web in the past but their role has been weakened in recent years due to their cumbersome expanding collections. This thesis presents a unified framework combining the advantages of personalisation and redefined directory search for improving the usability of Web directories. The thesis begins with an examination of classification schemes that identifies the rigidity of hierarchical classifications and their suitability for Web directories in contrast to faceted classifications. This leads on to an Ontological Sketch Modelling (OSM) case study which identifies the misfits affecting user navigation in Web directories from known rigidity issues. The thesis continues with a review of personalisation techniques and a discussion of the user search model of Web directories following the suggested directions of improvement from the case study. A proposed user-centred framework to improve the usability of Web directories which consists of an individual content-based personalisation model and a redefined search model is then implemented as D-Persona and D-Search respectively. The remainder of the thesis is concerned with a usability test of D-Persona and D-Search aimed at discovering the efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction of the solution. This involves an experimental design, test results and discussions for the comparative user study. This thesis extracts a formal definition of the rigidity of hierarchies from their characteristics and justifies why hierarchies are still better suited than facets in organising Web directories. Second, it identifies misfits causing poor usability in Web directories based on the discovered rigidity of hierarchies. Third, it proposes a solution to tackle the misfits and improve the usability of Web directories which has been experimentally proved to be successful

WebDocBall : a graphical visualisation tool for web search results

In the Web search process people often think that the hardest work is done by the search engines or by the directories which are entrusted with finding the Web pages. While this is partially true, a not less important part of the work is done by the user, who has to decide which page is relevant from the huge set of retrieved pages. In this paper we present a graphical visualisation tool aimed at helping users to determine the relevance of a Web page with respect to its structure. Such tool can help the user in the often tedious task of deciding which page is relevant enough to deserve a visit

Design Options for Service Directories in Business Networks

Web services and service oriented architectures (SOA) are spreading in many organizations toachieve business interoperability of their intra- and inter-organizational business processes. SOA isbased on the idea that service providers develop and publish web services via standardized interfacesin directories (registries) where the services will be found and bound by service consumers. Whilethese registry structures have emerged into a standard for local SOA implementations, the questionremains how service directories should be organized in a business network, i.e. when multiple companieswith individual SOA solutions interact. This research develops a framework for the analysis ofservice directories in business networks and provides design options for combining separate and distributedservice directories. These design options are based on the range, reach, and richness of webservice markets in the business network. The framework is applied to two business network cases

Guide to AC015 - Student Directories

Student Directories, 1992-1994 The Student Directory was published with information provided by the office of the Registrar in cooperation with the Office of Administration, Finance and CLE. Directories published the names, addresses, and phone numbers of registered students as a service intended to foster close relationships among students. The dates of the first and last paper directories are unknown. A directory of current students is now accessible via the Web for Students portal on the IIT Chicago-Kent website

DO WEB SERVICES FOSTER SPECIALIZATION? AN ANALYSIS OF WEB SERVICE DIRECTORIES

Web service technologies are expected to foster the creation of networks of specialists which expose their digital services over the internet for the dynamic discovery of services by other organizations. Although the idea of a global Web service directory, which was considered a key enabler of e-commerce in the dot.com era, has failed with the shutdown of the Universal Business Registry in 2006, the vision of an open market for Web services has regained popularity lately in the context of the SOA and Web 2.0 concepts. Given these latest developments, the interesting question is whether there is empirical evidence of an emerging market for Web services. Based on a longitudinal study of Web services directories, this paper aims at analyzing the evolving offering and market structure of B2B Web services. The study suggests that commercial Web services which enable companies to out-task discrete, repetitive tasks to specialized service providers continue to be relatively scarce. However, Web services specialists emerge in specific domains, such as compliance, online validation and alerting. In addition, Web services directories are extending their scope beyond service discovery and evolve into either ‘real’ electronic marketplaces or infomediaries

Symbolic Links in the Open Directory Project

We present a study to develop an improved understanding of symbolic links in web directories. A symbolic link is a hyperlink that makes a directed connection from a web page along one path through a directory to a page along another path. While symbolic links are ubiquitous in web directories such as Yahoo!, they are under-studied, and as a result, their uses are poorly understood. A cursory analysis of symbolic links reveals multiple uses: to provide navigational shortcuts deeper into a directory, backlinks to more general categories, and multiclassification. We investigated these uses in the Open Directory Project (ODP), the largest, most comprehensive, and most widely distributed human-compiled taxonomy of links to websites, which makes extensive use of symbolic links. The results reveal that while symbolic links in ODP are used primarily for multiclassification, only few multiclassification links actually span top- and second-level categories. This indicates that most symbolic links in ODP are used to create multiclassification between topics nested more than two levels deep and suggests that there may be multiple uses of multiclassification links. We also situate symbolic links vis à vis other semantic and structural link types from hypermedia. We anticipate that the results and relationships identified and discussed in this paper will provide a foundation for (1) users for understanding the usages of symbolic links in a directory, (2) designers to employ symbolic links more effectively when building and maintaining directories and for crafting user interfaces to them, and (3) information retrieval researchers for further study of symbolic links in web directories

Effective Internet Search Strategies: Internet Search Engines, Meta-Indexes and Web Directories

Searching the World Wide Web can be a daunting task. The Web has expanded at such a rapid pace that nobody knows exactly how large it is, but it is safe to say that there are many billions of web pages residing on servers all over the world. Add to this scenario the hundreds of different search tools available to choose among – including directories, search engines, meta-searchers, and specialized search engines – and the situation begins to feel overwhelming. Fortunately, learning a few essential concepts of Web searching, along with mastering a handful of the top-rated search tools, can make the picture much brighter. Simply knowing how to choose the right tool for your information need can make all the difference. This paper will first discuss basic concepts and terms you must know to be an effective searcher. Next, it will in turn examine each of the major categories of search tools, and recommend the best search engines and directories currently availabl