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 Issue 2 : October 2004 |
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Each issue of the DELOS Newsletter carries a report from the clusters working within the DELOS Network of Excellence. In this issue clusters are reporting events and meetings which have taken place over the summer and autumn of 2004.
In addition to introducing The Work and Vision of Work Package 1, Can Türker has provided us with information on the main event in WP1's summer calendar, the Sixth Thematic Workshop on Digital Library Architectures.
This summer period was dominated by the Sixth Thematic Workshop of the EU Network of Excellence DELOS on Digital Library Architectures, which was held at S. Margherita di Pula, Cagliari, Italy, over 24-25 June 2004. This first workshop in DELOS FP6 was co-organized by the WP1 members Maristella Agosti (UNIPD), Hans-Jörg Schek (ETHZ/UMIT), and Can Türker (ETHZ). The workshop was co-located with the 12th Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems (SEBD 2004) facilitating the exchange of research results and information at European and Italian level between the digital library and database communities. The local organization of the workshop was carried out jointly by the DELOS Network of Excellence and the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua, Italy.
The objective of the workshop was to bring together researchers interested
in the architecture and related basic services which form the basis of building
and operating DLs to identify ongoing research directions. In particular, the
impact of newer computing paradigms, such as peer-to-peer, grid, and service-oriented
computing, on future DL architectures was the focus of the workshop. Many lively
discussions arose around the opportunities and challenges of applying these
technologies for digital library architectures.
We had more than forty participants, twenty regular talks and three invited
speakers. Nearly all WP1 cluster members were represented at the workshop by
one or more attendees.
The papers accepted for this workshop were published in the following pre-proceedings:
Maristella Agosti, Hans-Jörg Schek, Can Türker (eds): Digital Library Architectures: Peer-to-Peer, Grid, and Service-Orientation, Pre-Proceedings of the Sixth Thematic Workshop of the EU Network of Excellence DELOS, S. Margherita di Pula, Cagliari, Italy, 24-25 June 2004. Edizioni Progetta Padua, 2004. ISBN 88-87331-60-X.
Springer has recently agreed to publish post-proceedings of this workshop in the LNCS series. The papers of the pre-proceedings will undergo a second reviewing phase. Selected papers will then move into these post-proceedings in an extended, revised form. The post-proceedings will also include papers from the workshop’s invited speakers.
For further details about this workshop, please refer to http://ii.umit.at/research/delos_website/6thworkshop.html. There you will also find the pre-proceedings mentioned above ready for download in PDF format.
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DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leader: |
Network of Excellence Digital Library Architecture Hans-Jörg Schek |
email: schek@inf.ethz.ch phone: +30 210 727-5224 fax: +30 210 727-5214 url: http://www.dbs.ethz.ch/ |
Harald Krottmaier, currently participating in the DELOS researcher exchange programme at ETHZ, provides an overview of current activity in a subtask of the Information Access and Personalization workpackage concerning metadata.
To reach the objectives of the DELOS WP2 cluster, several tasks and subtasks have already been defined. We at the IICM (Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media) are working on one of these tasks. This short report will outline the study on metadata models currently being undertaken. The study will promote the knowledge of available technologies in the context of metadata and digital libraries.
Within our community the short-hand expression is generally well known: that metadata is data about data. You may find this statement several thousand times on the Web as a definition of metadata. There are however many different models available, and depending on the application, slightly different implementations exist.
MARC, Dublin Core, MPEG-7, RDF etc. are just some of the currently available models used in the field of digital libraries. One goal of the study is to list the standards and link to the responsible institutions. It should also give a comprehensive overview of these models and point to existing applications using the models. Since this is 'old hat' in the field of digital libraries, we do not intend to replicate existing material, but instead point to definitions available, for example, at UKOLN (e.g. Metadata, BIBLINK), W3C and other research bodies.
Metadata in the field of services offered by digital libraries is, on the other hand, relatively new. It is necessary to describe services and put these descriptions into repositories. A short exploration of currently available services will be provided as an impetus to increase interest in this subject. To furnish one instance: we are going to examine in detail OSIRIS (http://www.osiris.ethz.ch/), an Open Services Infrastructure for Reliable and Integrated process Support.
The technologies used in OSIRIS and other systems will be explored and described. WSDL (Web Service Description Language), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language), are just a few of the items to be covered in the study. Historically important developments, such as RPC (Remote Procedure Calls) will also be listed. Additionally, initiatives have been established to promote sharing and reuse of metadata. A short overview in this respect those will also be provided.
Questions and current answers regarding service registries will complete the study.
To make it possible for all members of DELOS to participate in the creation of the study and to make it possible to reuse this content in lectures and other dissemination events, we are going to use a WIKI-system.
Currently we are exploring several implementations of WIKI-systems (JSPWiki, MediaWiki to mention just two). If such a system is deployed, we will distribute the URL and invite you to participate actively and contribute to the survey.
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DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leader: |
Network of Excellence Information Access and Personalization Yannis Ioannidis |
email: yannis@di.uoa.gr phone: +30 210 727-5224 fax: +30 210 727-5214 url: http://www.di.uoa.gr/~yannis |
Nektarios Moumoutzis scopes the work and describes the current activity of WP3 - Audio/Visual and Non-traditional Objects.
The cluster is co-ordinated by Professor Stavros Christodoulakis of the Technical University of Crete, Greece and Professor Alberto Del Bimbo of the University of Florence, Italy. The cluster comprises seventeen organizations, (see the list of the organizations and contact details)
The major objective of the Audiovisual and Non-Traditional Objects Cluster of DELOS II NoE (http://delos.music.tuc.gr) is to focus on research activities related to the management of the lifecycle of Audiovisual and Non-Traditional Objects including:
The scope of the work of the cluster is two-fold: The first part is to develop common foundations for:
The second part of the scope of work within the cluster is to support common research activities in specific areas identified by the partners, taking into account the current trends and the future directions in the field emphasizing the development of innovative solutions for emerging digital libraries which are integrating Audiovisual and Non-Traditional Objects.
Research activities identified by the technical annex and currently being investigated include:
During the eight months from the official start of the project, an effective management structure for the cluster has been established which began with the cluster kick-off meeting in January 2004. The meeting also nominated a Steering Committee for the cluster. In addition, the skill sets of cluster members have been identified in detail and mapped to the activities of the cluster.
Cluster workshops have been scheduled for the dissemination of cluster results and for the discussion and development of new proposals, solutions and achievements for audiovisual digital libraries. An internal workshop will be held in Chania, Crete, during November 2004.
Cluster 3 - Audio/Visual and Non-Traditional Objects - is organizing a joint workshop with cluster 4 - User Interfaces and Visualization - entitled "Seventh International Workshop of the EU Network of Excellence DELOS on AUDIO-VISUAL CONTENT AND INFORMATION VISUALIZATION IN DIGITAL LIBRARIES (AVIVDiLib'05)". Detailed information about this workshop can be found at http://delos.dis.uniroma1.it/Workshops/default.aspx
To facilitate communication between the cluster members as well as the dissemination of cluster information to the other Delos II NoE members and to the outside world, a site was established at the address http://delos.music.tuc.gr. The site is being updated on a daily basis with new material and news related to the activities of the cluster.
The co-ordination with the other relevant Delos II NoE clusters is a matter of major importance. To support closer co-ordination and collaboration, liaison partners have been nominated as follows:
A major activity since the beginning of the project has been the development of State of the Art reports in the major axis of interest of the cluster. These are:
The State of the Art reports are also intended to map the expertise and recent research of cluster members in the international research framework.
An important task under way is the development of a website offering the demonstrators and test datasets to be used during the project. Demonstrators can be on-line or off-line. With the former, a link to the demonstrator is given ro provideimmediate use. With the latter, case a link is provided to downloadable software which users can then install on their machines. Different types of test datasets will be chosen to be made available for evaluation purposes, including datasets for images, videos, 3D graphics, audio, music, etc.
The cluster is currently finalizing the State of the Art reports including previous research by the cluster in the field. The reports will include a section on the future directions that will guide the work of the cluster.
In order to schedule the work in the next 18-month phase of the project and take decisions regarding the funding of the participating partners, the cluster co-ordinators have issued a request to the cluster members for joint research proposals . The proposals will be evaluated on the basis of their interest and will serve to identify the work to be done over the next 18 months. The next 18-month plan will also take account of the Technical Annex, the State of the Art reports and the proposals submitted.
| DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leaders: |
Network of Excellence Audio/Visual and Non-traditional Objects Stavros Christodoulakis Alberto del Bimbo |
email: stavros@ced.tuc.gr phone: +30-2821-037399 fax: +30-2821-037399 url: http://www.music.tuc.gr email: delbimbo@dsi.unifi.it phone: +39-055-479 6262 fax: +39-055-479 6363 url: http://viplab.dsi.unifi.it/ |
Stephen Kimani reports on a major item of activity by his cluster based on four case studies on digital libraries.
The DELOS WP4 User Interfaces and Visualization cluster has carried out an analysis of a number of case studies of digital libraries. The analysis was headed up by Risoe National Library which is responsible for Task 1, the provision of an empirical basis.
The case studies analyzed were:
This analysis specifically concentrated on the following overall aspects of digital libraries: domain(s), users, tasks/services, methodology (empirical perspective)as well as input for a digital library taxonomy.
As far as the domains are concerned, they are divided into two categories: work domains and collection content domains. The work domain refers to the primary territory of work at which the digital library is targeted. The collection content domain refers to the primary types of knowledge that are accessible in the digital library. COLLATE and LAURIN address the work domains of archives and libraries, i-dove covers the work domain of development of virtual environments, and SCHOLNET addresses the work domain of development of digital library environments. With regard to the collection content domains, COLLATE addresses film knowledge, LAURIN covers newspaper content, i-dove covers ergonomic virtual environment knowledge, and SCHOLNET addresses development knowledge.
The DELOS WP4 technical annex identifies three classes of digital library users: experts in knowledge mediation, experts in knowledge content and end-users. In COLLATE, experts in knowledge mediation are film archive staff; experts in knowledge content are film archive staff, film researchers, and university students; whereas end-users are almost any type of user (from experts to 'lay' users). In LAURIN, experts in knowledge mediation are librarians in public libraries; experts in knowledge content are professionals (e.g., journalists and researchers); whereas end-users are public library users. In i-dove, experts in knowledge mediation are knowledge creators/reviewers (e.g. moderators); experts in knowledge content are managers and producers of sources of knowledge; whereas end-users are developers of industrial virtual environment applications. In SCHOLNET, experts in knowledge content and end-users are digital library developers and managers; it is not evident however who the experts in knowledge mediation are.
Each of the four digital library cases was analyzed in terms of tasks and services. In COLLATE, the primary tasks are integration of knowledge through indexing; cataloguing and annotation; and access to knowledge. LAURIN also provides access to knowledge and supports the integration of knowledge through thesaurus-building. In i-dove, the primary tasks are development and management of distributed knowledge; access to knowledge; and knowledge exploitation for the creation of virtual environments. SCHOLNET supports the management of distributed digital library knowledge and provides access to knowledge.
As for the methodology, the empirical aspect of the digital library and user interface development were analyzed. In particular, the kind of data gathered and used to define user requirements, design and evaluation, how the data are gathered and analyzed, and the kinds of supporting technology (guidelines/available technology) that are used, etc. The analysis presents an overview of the main digital library characteristics that are derived from the dimensions: user domain and knowledge domain. As far as the user domain is concerned, the most common unit of analysis is individual users, viewed as representative of particular professions or stakeholders. Study methods vary from participant observation, interviews and questionnaires to testbeds and interactive prototyping. Dialogue between users and developers appears to be important in analysis of user needs. As for the knowledge domain, the gathering of knowledge content has two phases (which may iterate): creating an initial knowledge content base, and maintaining/revising the knowledge content base. The four digital library efforts have approached the creation of an initial knowledge base in quite different ways.
With regard to the input for a digital library taxonomy (in a thesaural tree-structure format), the analysis produced a tree structure with the following top terms: domain, user, task, services. Task and service categories cover the so-called “functional requirements”. Among the case studies examined, the following general non-functional requirements were identified: scalability, platform independence, reliability, strength, flexibility, adaptability, customizability, and usability. All case studies have featured the importance of reliability, flexibility, and usability. However, none of the digital libraries analyzed has been designed in a manner so as to support accessibility.
The case studies analyzed presented significant differences in terms of domains, users, and tasks but they all were developed following user-focused approaches. Iterations of design solutions and evaluations involving users were features identified in most of the reported DL development lifecycles. However, the analysis did not provide insights sufficient to identify definitively the various phases in the DL usage lifecycle in general. The digital library lifecycle phases that just one of the case studies supports include: the acquisition process, the clipping archive management (indexing, thesaurus), the access to the selected clippings through the queries, data retrieval access, maintenance of the database and future exploitation. Further studies are needed to arrive at a general characterization of such lifecycle phases.
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DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leader: |
Network of Excellence User Interfaces and Visualization Tiziana Catarci |
email: catarci@dis.uniroma1.it phone: +39-06-4991 8331 fax: +39-06-4991 8331 url: http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~catarci/ |
Michael Day and Manjula Patel report on the WP5 KESI Workshop on Semantic Interoperability in Digital Libraries, held at the University of Bath, 17 September 2004.
Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN and co-ordinator of the DELOS research cluster on Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability (WP5), welcomed delegates to the University of Bath for the cluster's first workshop on the 17 September 2004. The objectives of the workshop were as follows:
The workshop consisted of three presentations by members who had recently joined the cluster together with a description of DELOS activities on semantic interoperability.
Colleagues from WP5 who attended the KESI Workshop:
(back row, left to right) Traugott Koch, Lund University; Les Carr, University
of Southampton; (middle row, left to right) Jane Hunter, University of Queensland;
Michael Day, UKOLN; David Alsmeyer, BT; Doug Tudhope, University of Glamorgan;
Martin Doerr, ICS-FORTH; (front row, left to right) Manjula Patel, UKOLN;
Liz Lyon, UKOLN; Koraljka Golub, Lund University.
The first speaker was Jane Hunter of the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), Brisbane, Australia, who introduced tools and approaches for enhancing semantic interoperability based on research being undertaken at DSTC. Key topics in this area included the description of Web-based resources and services, query mediation between different metadata formats, metadata lifecycles, and provenance. She introduced the MAENAD (Multimedia Access across Enterprises, Networks And Domains) Project, which is concerned with the development of tools that can facilitate the discovery, use and management of multimedia regardless of domain. Key components include common data models, ontologies and metadata schemas. The project also has an interest in metadata generation and capture, e.g. through the statistical generation of e-science workflows or the semantic indexing of multimedia. Other important issues include presentation interfaces and visualisation, annotation, and preservation tools.
Within DSTC, they have been using a version of the ABC ontology [1] refined with reference to the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) (http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/) to harmonise a number of domain specific ontologies [2]. Jane then spoke in more detail about a joint project with the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian (http://www.nmai.si.edu/) concerning the management of indigenous knowledge [3]. This had developed software tools that could be used by members of indigenous communities to annotate and control access to digitised cultural resources. Annotation tools allow the members of indigenous communities to document the meaning and significance of resources from their own perspectives. For some resources, the question of access could be quite complex, e.g. it could be dependent on the time of year, the tribe or gender of the user. In the interface, access constraints are indicated by logos and it is possible to generate different views of the same database based on different access conditions. The implementation was based on Vannotea, an application for the collaborative indexing and annotation of video, also developed at DSTC [4].
In terms of forthcoming activity, Jane spoke very briefly about a DSTC project concerned with the assimilation of the different kinds of data used to help optimise Hydrogen fuel cell design and efficiency [5].
The next presentation was by David Alsmeyer of British Telecommunications plc, who introduced the SEKT (Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies) Project (http://www.sekt.semanticweb.org/), an EUR 12.5m project funded as part of the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme. He began his presentation by invoking what he called the Eastbourne Test; i.e. making sure that Semantic Web technologies addressed the real questions that people wanted answering. He felt that one key issue was the 'bottleneck' of creating annotation or metadata. Solutions might include the use of human language technologies, e.g. for the automatic extraction of metadata from articles or to support on-the-fly metadata creation. SEKT were investigating some of these issues through three case studies, covering the requirements of newly appointed judges in Spain, IT consultants in Germany and a corporate digital library in the UK.
David noted the transformation of BT's own library into a digital library where the majority of services are delivered online directly to engineers at their desks. The aim ought to be to apply semantic thinking in the library context. Examples might be personalised services, e.g. to document search terms used to build up a framework of users' interests or mapping between thesauri and personal profiles to help find colleagues with the same interests.
Doug Tudhope of the Hypermedia Research Unit at the University of Glamorgan, UK then spoke on "Recent developments from the perspective of networked knowledge organisation systems and services". He started by emphasising that Glamorgan's approach mainly concentrated on doing better with existing thesauri and using these to build towards the Semantic Web, the development of terminology services or semantic terminology services. He thought that one thing that the DELOS cluster could do would be to revisit the useful taxonomy of knowledge organisation systems devised by Hodge [6].
Doug then introduced the FACET Project, which had experimented with integrating thesauri into user interfaces, e.g. for semantic query expansion and disambiguation [7]. The project had developed a Web demonstrator (http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/~FACET/webdemo/) using the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and the collections of the UK National Museum of Science and Industry to show how thesauri could be used for query expansion in a realistic application. A live demonstration showed how some of the features of the FACET system worked.
Looking to the future, important work was proceeding on revisions to the BSI's thesaurus standards (BS 8723) and the definition of a Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabulary for describing thesaurus data as part of the SWAD-Europe thesaurus activity. Doug finally noted some key differences between ontologies and thesauri - one reflecting scientific precision, the other cost-effectiveness - but suggested that there should be some convergence.
Manjula Patel of UKOLN then gave an overview of key issues for semantic interoperability from the perspective of the cluster. DELOS Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability (WP5) was preparing a state-of-the art report on semantic interoperability in digital library systems, identifying why it was important and noting key gaps. She started by introducing the authors of the report and their affiliations (Manjula Patel, UKOLN; Traugott Koch, Netlab, Lund University; Martin Doerr, ICS FORTH; Chrisa Tsinaraki, Technical University of Greece). An outline structure of the report in terms of a table of contents was distributed to the delegates for reference.
The current state of the report is such that all sections that have been allocated to authors have been completed to first draft stage. The report needs some work with regard to improving consistency and coherence between the various sections. A major aim of the report is to integrate views from overlapping communities working in the area of semantic interoperability, these include: Semantic Web, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, ontology, library and information science and computer science. The types of issue that the report is trying to address include:
In examining such issues, the authors developed a broad outline of the report:
Definitions of interoperability, syntactic interoperability and semantic interoperability were then presented noting that SI is very much about matching concepts as a basis. SI has been identified as being of primary importance in DL research by the NSF Post Digital Libraries Futures Workshop: Wave of the Future [8]. The overall goal of SI is to support complex and advanced, context-sensitive query processing over heterogeneous information resources. The report examines several areas in which SI is important in DLs, these include: improving the precision of search, enabling advanced search, facilitating reasoning over document collections and knowledge bases, integration of heterogeneous resources, and its relevance in the information life-cycle management process. The report also investigates some theoretical issues such as clarification and selection of relevant terminology, standardisation and interpretation and the differing levels of SI in DL environments. It notes that information structure, language and identifiable semantics are prerequisites to SI, as is consensus building and standardisation.
Other important areas include the role of foundational and core ontologies, knowledge organisation systems (KOS), syntactic interoperability and encoding systems and the role of semantic registries, tools and architectures. Rights issues are also relevant in the integration and reuse of information. The final sections of the report on enhancing SI in DLs and SI in DL services are still being addressed, although an outline of areas to be covered appears in the table of contents. Manjula welcomed participants to comment on the structure and content of the report and to identify any obvious gaps.
A lively discussion ensued with regard to the issues raised in the report and the presentation. On closing the workshop, Liz Lyon thanked participants for their contributions and summarised the key issues as being: harmonisation, integration, bridging gaps, migration, integration of heterogeneous information and ontologies.
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DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leader: |
Network of Excellence Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability Elizabeth Lyon |
email: e.lyon@ukoln.ac.uk phone: +44 1225 386580 fax: +44 1225 386838 url: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk |
Sarantos Kapidakis provides a summary of activity for the Evaluation cluster and describes the objectives and proposed content on the Work Package's forthcoming workshop.
After our Kick-off meeting in Duisburg, Germany on 23 Jan 2004, the next Work Package meeting took place in Corfu, over 3-4 May 2004 in which we planned the WP activities mentioned as well as our workshop.
The Evaluation - WP7 website http://dlib.ionio.gr/wp7 is working and shows the aims and the objectives of the Work Package, the WP7 partners, related events, our publications, bibliography and useful links. It also includes a discussion forum to enable communication on evaluation issues. The design of the website is an iterative process and the collection of its content is a continuous WP activity.
INEX has seen intense activity during the last few months. We looked at the issue of accessing the INEX testbed. DELOS members can get access to the documents and queries, but not the relevance assessments. Approximately 50 groups are now registered to use it this year and there were 4 evaluation tracks. We have selected the CO topics for INEX 2004. 40 queries were selected this year. Many topics need modifications or corrections to be usable for the various tracks including the ad hoc retrieval task. Topic Assignment has been finalized and two topics are assigned to each participant keeping in view the topic authors. The deadline is 8 October 2004.
After the detailed design of evaluation tracks, approximately 60 groups registered for one or more of the 8 evaluation tracks. 50 topics are prepared for mono- / bi- / multilingual tracks in 13 languages and 25 topics for Structured Scientific Data in 3 languages. Finally, CLEF is organizing a 3-day Workshop, co-located with the ECDL2004 conference, at Bath University, UK (15-17 September 2004), where the results will be presented.
The DELOS Workshop on the Evaluation of Digital Libraries http://dlib.ionio.gr/wp7/events.html is going to be held at the Department of Information Engineering (http://www.dei.unipd.it/), University of Padua, Via Gradenigo 6/a, 35131 Padova, Italy over 4-5 October 2004.
The objective of the workshop is to formulate a new model for DL evaluation and the results and recommendations emerging from the workshop will provide input for the production of a White paper (which will be ready by mid-December 2004). The workshop will cover a discussion on all components of a DL. We have invited representatives from each DELOS WP, and also a few speakers to cover different areas including some people from FP6 DL projects. Participation in the workshop will be by invitation only.
The Workshop is co-located with the DIALOGUES conferences (http://thepadovadialogues.dei.unipd.it) Padova Dialogues 2004 comprises three conferences:
and satellite meetings for exchange and integration in the modelling, design and implementation of advanced tools for the representation, encoding, storage, search, retrieval and discovery of information and knowledge.
The workshop will focus on the definition of a workable evaluation framework. Specifically, this workshop will try to find answers to the following questions:
In addition, two general issues are to be addressed:
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DELOS Name of Cluster: Name of Leader: |
Network of Excellence Evaluation Norbert Fuhr |
email: fuhr@uni-duisburg.de phone: +49-203-379-2524 fax: +49-203-379-2549 url: http://www.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de/staff/index.html |
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