On the interplay between search behavior and collections in digital libraries and archives

Log analysis is an unobtrusive technique used to better understand search behavior and evaluate search systems. However, in contrast with open web search, in a vertical search system such as a digital library or media archive the collection is known and central to its purpose. This drives different, more collection-oriented questions when studying the logs. For example, whether users need different support in different parts of the collection.In a digital library, the collection is categorized using professionally curated metadata. We conjecture that using this metadata can improve and extend the methods and techniques for log analysis. We investigate how to identify different types of search behavior using the metadata explicitly, how to explain and predict user interactions for the different types of behavior found, and finally how to communicate our research results to domain experts.</p

SWISH DataLab: A Web Interface for Data Exploration and Analysis

SWISH DataLab is a single integrated collaborative environment for data processing, exploration and analysis combining Prolog and R. The web interface makes it possible to share the data, the code of all processing steps and the results among researchers; and a versioning system facilitates reproducibility of the research at any chosen point. Using search logs from the National Library of the Netherlands combined with the collection content metadata, we demonstrate how to use SWISH DataLab for all stages of data analysis, using Prolog predicates, graph visualizations, and R

Introduction to RISC-KIT: Resilience-increasing strategies for coasts

Recent and historic low-frequency, high-impact events have demonstrated the flood risks faced by exposed coastal areas in Europe and beyond. These coastal zone risks are likely to increase in the future which requires a re-evaluation of coastal disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies and a new mix of PMP (prevention, e.g., dike protection; mitigation, e.g., limiting construction in flood-prone areas and eco-system based solutions; and preparedness, e.g., Early Warning Systems, EWS) measures. In response to these challenges, the RISC-KIT project has delivered a set of open-source and openaccess methods, tools and management approaches to reduce risk and increase resilience to lowfrequency, high-impact hydro-meteorological events in the coastal zone (the “RISC-toolKIT”). These products enhance forecasting, prediction and early warning capabilities, improve the assessment of long-term coastal risk and optimise the mix of PMP-measures. In this paper an introduction is provided to the objectives, products, applications and lessonslearned of the RISC-KIT project, which are the subjects of this Special Issue. Subsequent papers provide details on the tools and their application on 10 case study sites in Europe

Metadata categorization for identifying search patterns in a digital library

Purpose: For digital libraries, it is useful to understand how users search in a collection. Investigating search patterns can help them to improve the user interface, collection management and search algorithms. However, search patterns may vary widely in different parts of a collection. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to identify these search patterns within a well-curated historical newspaper collection using the existing metadata.Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyzed search logs combined with metadata

Searching for old news: User interests and behavior within a national collection

Modeling user interests helps to improve system support or refine recommendations in Interactive Information Retrieval. The aim of this study is to identify user interests in different parts of an online collection and investigate the related search behavior. To do this, we propose to use the metadata of selected facets and clicked documents as features for clustering sessions identified in user logs. We evaluate the session clusters by measuring their stability over a six-month period. We apply our approach to data from the National Library of the Netherlands, a typical digital library with a richly annotated historical newspaper collection and a faceted search interface. Our results show that users interested in specific parts of the collection use different search techniques. We demonstrate that a metadata-based clustering helps to reveal and understand user interests in terms of the collection, and how search behavior is related to specific parts within the collection.</p

On the reproducibility and repeatability of laser absorption spectroscopy measurements for δ2H and δ18O isotopic analysis

The aim of this study was to analyse the reproducibility of off-axis integrated cavity output spectroscopy (OA-ICOS)-derived δ2H and δ18O measurements on a set of 35 water samples by comparing the performance of four laser spectroscopes with the performance of a conventional mass spectrometer under typical laboratory conditions. All samples were analysed using three different schemes of standard/sample combinations and related data processing to assess the improvement of results compared with mass spectrometry. The repeatability of the four OA-ICOS instruments was further investigated by multiple analyses of a sample subset to evaluate the stability of δ2H and δ18O measurements. Results demonstrated an overall agreement between OA-ICOS-based and mass spectrometry-based measurements for the entire dataset. However, a certain degree of variability existed in precision and accuracy between the four instruments. There was no evident bias or systematic deviations from the mass spectrometer values, but random errors, which were apparently not related to external factors, significantly affected the final results. Our investigation revealed that analytical precision ranged ±from ±0.56‰ to ±1.80‰ for δ2H and from ±0.10‰ to ±0.27‰ for δ18O measurements, with a marked variability among the four instruments. The overall capability of laser instruments to reproduce stable results with repeated measurements of the same sample was acceptable, and there were general differences within the range of the analytical precision for each spectroscope. Hence, averaging the measurements of three identical samples led to a higher degree of accuracy and eliminated the potential for random deviations