Hugo Manguinhas

Extracting and Exploring the Geo-Temporal Semantics of Textual Resources

Geo-temporal criteria are important for filtering, grouping and prioritizing information resources. This presents techniques for extracting semantic geo-temporal information from text, using simple text mining methods that leverage on a gazetteer. A prototype system, implementing the proposed methods and capable of displaying information over maps and timelines, is described. This prototype can take input in RSS, demonstrating the application to content from many different online sources. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approaches.

A geo-temporal Web gazetteer integrating data from multiple sources

This paper presents a geo-temporal gazetteer Web service that provides access to names of places and historical periods, together with the associated geo-temporal information. Within the DIGMAP project, this gazetteer serves as the unified repository of geographic and temporal information, assisting in the mining of geo-temporal expressions over text, as well as in resource searching and indexing. We describe the data integration methodology and some of the applications that use the gazetteer. Initial evaluation results show that the proposed system can adequately support several tasks related to geo-temporal information extraction and retrieval.

REPOX: a framework for metadata interchange

This demonstration presents an XML framework for metadata interchange. REPOX has two goals: to be a means for libraries and other cultural institutions to provide OAI-PMH access to their metadata records, independently of their original format, with a tool that is easy to install, use and deploy; and to be used as an aggregator of OAI-PMH Data Sources. The records are stored internally in XML and there is a metadata transformation service that allows for translation to desired formats. This demonstration will show the usage scenarios, technologies and current results.

Exploring Comparative Evaluation of Semantic Enrichment Tools for Cultural Heritage Metadata

Semantic enrichment of metadata is an important and difficult problem for digital heritage efforts such as Europeana. This paper gives motivations and presents the work of a recently completed Task Force that addressed the topic of evaluation of semantic enrichment. We especially report on the design and the results of a comparative evaluation experiment, where we have assessed the enrichments of seven tools (or configurations thereof) on a sample benchmark dataset from Europeana.

DIGMAP: A Digital Library Reusing Metadata of Old Maps and Enriching It with Geographic Information

The DIGMAP service reuses metadata from European national libraries and other relevant third party metadata sources. The gathered metadata is enhanced locally with geographical indexing, leveraging on geographic gazetteers and authority files. When available, the images of the maps are also processed to extract potentially relevant features. This made it possible to develop a rich integrated environment for searching and browsing services based mainly in enriched metadata.

Metadata Aggregation: Assessing the Application of IIIF and Sitemaps Within Cultural Heritage

In the World Wide Web, a very large number of resources is made available through digital libraries. The existence of many individual digital libraries, maintained by different organizations, brings challenges to the discoverability and usage of the resources. A widely-used approach is metadata aggregation, where centralized efforts like Europeana facilitate the discoverability and use of the resources by collecting their associated metadata. This paper focuses on metadata aggregation in the domain of cultural heritage, where OAI-PMH has been the adopted solution. However, the technological landscape around us has changed. With recent technological accomplishments, the motivation for adopting OAI-PMH is not as clear as it used to be. In this paper, we present the first results in attempting to rethink Europeana’s technological approach for metadata aggregation, to make the operation of the aggregation network more efficient and lower the technical barriers for data providers. We (Europeana and data providers) report on case studies that trialled the application of some of the most promising technologies, exploring several solutions based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and Sitemaps. The solutions were trialled successfully and leveraged on existing technology and knowledge in cultural heritage, with low implementation barriers. The future challenges lie in choosing among the several possibilities and standardize solution(s). Europeana will proceed with recommendations for its network and is actively working within the IIIF community to achieve this goal.

Digmap: a service for searching and browsing old maps

DIGMAP aims to become the main international resource discovery service for digitized old maps existing in libraries. The service reuses metadata from European national libraries and other relevant third party metadata sources. The gathered metadata is enhanced locally with geographical indexing and with record linking/clustering, leveraging on geographic gazetteers and authority files. When available, the images of the maps are also processed to extract potentially relevant features. This made it possible to develop a rich integrated environment for searching and browsing services with four perspectives: images features, textual, geographic and temporal information.

Supporting multilingual bibliographic resource discovery with functional requirements for bibliographic records

This paper describes an experiment exploring the hypothesis that innovative application of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) principles can complement traditional bibliographic resource discovery systems inorder to improve the user experience. A specialized service was implemented that, when given a plain list of results from a regular online catalogue, was able to process, enrich and present that list in a more relevant way for the user. This service preprocesses the records of a traditional online catalogue in order to build a semantic structure following the FRBR model. The service also explores web search features that have been revolutionizing the way users conceptualize resource discovery, such as relevance ranking and metasearching. This work was developed in the context of the TELPlus project. We processed nearly one hundred thousand bibliographic and authority records, in multiple languages, and originating from twelve European national libraries. This paper describes the architecture of the service and the main challenges faced, especially concerning the extraction and linking of the relevant FRBR entities from the bibliographic metadata produced by the libraries. The service was evaluated by end users, who filled out a questionnaire after using a traditional online catalogue and the new service, both with the same bibliographic collection. The analysis of the results supports the hypothesis that FRBR can be implemented for resource discovery in a non-intrusive way, reusing the data of any existing traditional bibliographic system.

User interface for a geo-temporal search service using DIGMAP components

This demo presents a user interface for a Geo-Temporal search service built in the sequence of DIGMAP project. DIGMAP was a co-funded European Union project on old digitized maps and deals with resources rich in geographic and temporal information. This search interface followed a mashup approach using existing DIGMAP components: a metadata repository, a text mining tool, a Gazetteer, and a service to generate geographic contextual thumbnails. Google Maps API is used to provide a friendly and interactive user interface. This demo will present the resulting geo-temporal search engine functionalities, whose interface uses WEB 2.0 capabilities to provide contextualization in time and space and text clustering.

Cultural heritage metadata aggregation using web technologies: IIIF, Sitemaps and Schema.org

In the World Wide Web, a very large number of resources are made available through digital libraries. We (Europeana and data providers) report on case studies that tested the application of some of the most promising Web technologies, exploring several solutions based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and Sitemaps. We also describe an analysis of the Schema.org vocabulary for application in the context of cultural heritage and metadata aggregation. The solutions were tested successfully and leveraged on existing technology and knowledge in cultural heritage, with low implementation barriers. The future challenges lie in choosing among the several possibilities and standardizing solution(s). Europeana will proceed with recommendations for its network and is actively working within the IIIF community to achieve this goal.