Exploring Digital Libraries: Integrating Browsing, Searching, and

Visualization

Paper by: Rao Shen, Naga Srinivas Vemuri, Weiguo Fan, Ricardo da S. Torres, Edward A. Fox

Slides by fox@vt.edu http://fox.cs.vt.edu with some modifications by lillian.cassel@villanova.edu

Original version presented at JCDL 2006

Acknowledgements (Selected)

• Sponsors: NSF grant ITR-0325579, ASOR, CWRU, ETANA, Vanderbilt U., Virginia Tech

• Faculty/Staff: Lillian Cassel, Debra Dudley, Manuel Perez, …

• VT (Former) Students: Marcos A. Gonçalves, Doug Gorton, Aaron Krowne, Ming Luo, …

Introduction What’s exploring?

searching, browsing, investigating, studying, or analyzing for purposes of discovery, pursuing truth or facts about something

Are browsing and searching duals or can they be converted to each other when certain conditions are met?

Can we generalize these DL exploring services within a formal DL framework?

Can the formal generalization guide development of exploring services for domain focused DLs?

Related Work on Integrating Services in DLs

has an example

I3R

systemsIn 1980s

found in

RABBIT

integrating searching and browsing

systemsIn 1990s

systemsIn 2000s

CODER

DataWeb

has an example

PESTO SenseMaker

has an example

MIX ScentTrailsBBQ

ODLMARIAN

integrating searching and browsing with other services

clustering and visualization

has examples

Stepping Stones& Pathways

CitiViz

includes

Cat-a-Cone

WebBook Hieraxes

RB++ Grouper

EtanaViz…

Kartoo Flamenco

Generalize DL exploring services such as browsing, searching, clustering, and visualization

Exploration Space (Espa) is a Space

Espa=(Q, Contents, OP_Set)Q is a set of conceptual representations for user information needs

Contents: associated with collection C

OP_Set is a set of operations on Q and Contents• {OPviz, OPclu, OPs, OPb} OP_Set

Exploring Services Formalization

⊆

Sample OP_Set: {OPviz , OPclu, OPs, OPb}

OPviz: maps a set of digital objects to a visual mark

OPclu: gets similarity of a pair of subsets of collection and their associated contents

– OPs: associates a query with a digital object and its contents

– OPb: associates a traverse link with contents of the target node (i.e., follows a hypertext link)

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

An Exploring Service (Eser) is a set of scenarios over an exploration space (Espa).

Eser=(sc1, sc2, …, sci, …, scn),

where sci is a sequence of eventseach event is associated with one or more of the operations in Espa

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

…

…

ei

OP_Set

Searching: Ops

Browsing: Opb

Clustering: Opclu

Visualization: Opviz

…

State Diagram

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

Reading the paper

Overview first

• What is this paper about?

• What is the main point or are the main points?

• What is the structure of the paper?– Is this what you would expect to see in any

well-organized conference paper?– Are there sections that are specific to this

project?

Related work

• What is the oldest work cited?• What is the most recent work cited?• How large a body of work contributed to this

project?• How closely related are the works that this paper

cites?• Is there a good reason for each reference?• How many of the cited works are by the same

author (or some of the same authors) or from the same research laboratory?

Definitions and notations

• What specific terms are defined?– Are these general terms that have particular

meanings in this paper or are they new terms with no known meaning?

– Are there general terms defined, or notations that provide shorthand for use in the later discussions?

– List the terms. Discuss the meaning of each with a classmate. Is anything unclear? Try to answer each other’s questions or formulate a question for the class to address together.

– Note: the reference #10 is one we read earlier in the semester.

• Definition 2: A structure is a tuple (G,L, F), where G=(V,E) is a directed graph with vertex set V and edge set E, L is a set of label values, and F is a labeling function F: (V E) L

• Definition 16: A digital object is a tuple do = (h, SM, ST, Structured-Streams) where– h H, where H is a set of universally unique handles (labels)– SM = {sm1, sm2, …, smn} is a set of streams– ST = {st1, st2, …, stm} is a set of structural metadata

specifications;– StructuredStreams={stsm1, stsm2, …, stsmp} is a set of

StructuredStream functions defined from the streams in the SM set (the second component) of the digital object and from the structures in the ST set (the third component.)

The operations

• Exactly what operations are defined and are of interest in this paper?

• What relationships exist between and among the operations defined?

New understanding

• The paper states: Our theory-based approach to describing DL exploring services allows us to understand browsing and searching in a new way.

• What are all the exploring services discussed in the paper?

• How are these explored in the context of the ETANA-DL (which we initially looked at early in the semester).

The Author’s presentation

• The paper as presented by the author

• Slides provided by Dr. Edward A. Fox

Exploring Digital Libraries: Integrating Browsing, Searching, and Visualization

Excerpt fromJCDL 2006, Chapel Hill, NC, June 12, 2006

Rao Shen, Naga Srinivas Vemuri, Weiguo Fan, Ricardo da S. Torres, and Edward A. Fox

fox@vt.edu http://fox.cs.vt.edu

Some adaptations by lillian.cassel@villanova.edu

For CSC 9010-Special Topics - Digital Libraries and other Web-based information presentation

Acknowledgements (Selected)

• Sponsors: NSF grant ITR-0325579, ASOR, CWRU, ETANA, Vanderbilt U., Virginia Tech

• Faculty/Staff: Lillian Cassel, Debra Dudley, Manuel Perez, …

• VT (Former) Students: Marcos A. Gonçalves, Doug Gorton, Aaron Krowne, Ming Luo, …

Introduction What’s exploring?

searching, browsing, investigating, studying, or analyzing for purposes of discovery, pursuing truth or facts about something

Are browsing and searching duals or can they be converted to each other when certain conditions are met?

Can we generalize these DL exploring services within a formal DL framework?

Can the formal generalization guide development of exploring services for domain focused DLs?

Related Work on Integrating Services in DLs

has an example

I3R

systemsIn 1980s

found in

RABBIT

integrating searching and browsing

systemsIn 1990s

systemsIn 2000s

CODER

DataWeb

has an example

PESTO SenseMaker

has an example

MIX ScentTrailsBBQ

ODLMARIAN

integrating searching and browsing with other services

clustering and visualization

has examples

Stepping Stones& Pathways

CitiViz

includes

Cat-a-Cone

WebBook Hieraxes

RB++ Grouper

EtanaViz…

Kartoo Flamenco

Generalize DL exploring services such as browsing, searching, clustering, and visualization

Exploration Space (Espa) is a Space

Espa=(Q, Contents, OP_Set)Q is a set of conceptual representations for user information needs

Contents: associated with collection C

OP_Set is a set of operations on Q and Contents• {OPviz, OPclu, OPs, OPb} OP_Set

Exploring Services Formalization

⊆

Sample OP_Set: {OPviz , OPclu, OPs, OPb}

OPviz: maps a set of digital objects to a visual mark

OPclu: gets similarity of a pair of subsets of collection and their associated contents

– OPs: associates a query with a digital object and its contents

– OPb: associates a traverse link with contents of the target node (i.e., follows a hypertext link)

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

An Exploring Service (Eser) is a set of scenarios over an exploration space (Espa).

Eser=(sc1, sc2, …, sci, …, scn),

where sci is a sequence of eventseach event is associated with one or more of the operations in Espa

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

…

…

ei

OP_Set

Searching: Ops

Browsing: Opb

Clustering: Opclu

Visualization: Opviz

…

State Diagram

Exploring Services Formalization (Cont.)

Theory-based approach to describing DL Exploring Services

— guides us to design and implement exploring services for ETANA-DL

• Multi-dimensional browsing• Searching and browsing integration• Visualization• Usability evaluation

An Integrated DL

• Etana brings together several separate and different collections of materials into an integrated DL.– Virtual Nimrin (http://www.case.edu/affil/nimrin/menu/nimrin.htm)

– Madaba Plains (http://www.madabaplains.org/home.html)

– Lahav Website (http://www.cobb.msstate.edu/dig/lahav/)

– Megiddo (http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/megiddo/index.html)

– And others

ETANA-DL approach

• Applying and extending Digital Library (DL) techniques to solve key problems: making primary data available, data preservation, and interoperability

• Modeling archaeological information systems using 5S to better understand the domain and design the system and the supporting services

• Rapidly prototyping DLs that handle heterogeneous archaeological data using componentized frameworks:– eliciting requirements– refining metamodel and union schema– modeling sites– mapping– harvesting– providing useful services

ETANA-DL ArchitectureDigBase and DigKit

Lahav

Nimrin

Umayri

Hisban

Megiddo

Jalul

New Sites

DATABASE

WRAPPERS

ETANA-DLUNION

CATALOG

SearchUSER

INTERFACE

Browse

Recommend

Note

Personalize

Review

Visualizations

ArchaeologySpecific

Work in progress

…

ETANA-DL Website

http://digbase.etana.org:8080/etana/servlet/Start

View Records

Exploring Service in ETANA-DL—Multi-dimensional Browsing

Tomb # 056 in Area A of Bab edh-Dhra

Tomb #056 in Area A of Bab edh-Dhra, Time Period: EARLY BRONZE III

View Records

Tomb #056 in Area A of Bab edh-Dhra, Time Period: EARLY BRONZE III

Save navigation path

Go to saved navigation paths

View Records

Searching and Browsing Integration

Search Saucer Records within

the Context

12 saucer records in tomb #056 in area A of Bab edh-Dhra'

retrieve 88 equus records through basic search

organize searching results

Organize searching results into 3 dimensions

The Important Point

• These are independent digital libraries or databases

• The idea is to give an appearance of a single, integrated site with access to all the information in all the sources.

• Harvesting -- OAI- PMH

• Then how to make it all appear like one collection of materials?

DL Integration

• What is “DL Integration”– Hide distribution– Hide heterogeneity– Enable autonomy of individual component

• Why Integration– island-DLs– inability to seamlessly and transparently

access knowledge across DLs

Use various autonomous DLs in concert

3 new sites

2 new types of artifacts

EtanaViz: Initial Interface

Query: bone records from Nimrin

EtanaViz: Bone records from Nimrin

EtanaViz: Total Number of Animal Bones

across Nimrin Culture Phrases

EtanaViz: Percentages of Animal Bones

across Nimrin Culture Phrases

Browse Search EtanaViz

Save navigation

path(SNP)

Search within browsingcontext (SWBC)

4.0 4.0 4.0 4.5 4.5

Impression about ETANA-DL services