Holger Brocks

Document-Centered Collaboration for Scholars in the Humanities - The COLLATE System

In contrast to electronic document collections we find in contemporary digital libraries, systems applied in the cultural domain have to satisfy specific requirements with respect to data ingest, management, and access. Such systems should also be able to support the collaborative work of domain experts and furthermore offer mechanisms to exploit the value-added information resulting from a collaborative process like scientific discussions. In this paper, we present the solutions to these requirements developed and realized in the COLLATE system, where advanced methods for document classification, content management, and a new kind of context-based retrieval using scientific discourses are applied.

COLLATE – A collaboratory supporting research on historic European films

In the COLLATE project, we aim to design and implement a Web-based collaboratory for archives, scientists, and end users working with digitized cultural material. Our example domain is the historic film documentation comprising digitized material about European films of the early 20th century. Designed as a content- and context-based knowledge working environment for distributed user groups, the COLLATE system supports both individual work and collaboration of domain experts who are analyzing, evaluating, indexing, and annotating material in the data repository. The system provides appropriate task-based interfaces for indexing and annotating. As a multifunctional means of in-depth analysis, annotations can be made individually but also collaboratively, for example in the form of annotation of annotations. Combining results from manual and automatic indexing procedures, elaborate content- and context-based information retrieval mechanisms can be applied.

Customizable Retrieval Functions Based on User Tasks in the Cultural Heritage Domain

The cultural heritage domain dealing with digital surrogates of rare and fragile historic artifacts is one of the most promising areas for establishing collaboratories, i.e. shared virtual working environments for groups of users. However, in order to be considered a useful tool, such a system must reflect and support the specific tasks which are typical for the domain. The system design presented here takes into account a variety of activities, e.g., source analysis, which are supported by a task-specific selection of appropriate retrieval functions, e.g., access to OCR results and annotations. The tasks are explicitly modeled, thus the corresponding user interfaces can be automatically generated.

Queries in context: access to digitized historic documents in a collaboratory for the humanities

In contrast to standard digital libraries, systems addressing the specific requirements of cultural heritage need to deal with digitized material like scanned documents instead of borne digital items. Such systems aim at providing the means for domain experts, e.g. historians, to collaboratively work with the given material. To support their work, automatic indexing mechanisms for both textual and pictorial digitized documents need to be combined with retrieval methods exploiting the content as well as the context of information items for precise searches. In the COLLATE project we devised several access methods using textual contents, feature extraction from images, metadata, and annotations provided by the users.