Irina Sens

The PROBADO project: approach and lessons learned in building a digital library system for heterogeneous non-textual documents

The PROBADO project is a research effort to develop and operate advanced Digital Library support for non-textual documents. The main goal is to contribute to all parts of the Digital Library work flow from content acquisition over indexing to search and presentation. While not limited in terms of supported document types, reference support is developed for classical digital music and 3D architectural models. In this paper, we review the overall goals, approaches taken, and lessons learned so far in a highly integrated effort of university researchers and library experts. We address the problem of technology transfer, aspects of repository compilation, and the problem of inter-domain retrieval. The experiences are relevant for other project efforts in the nontextual Digital Library domain.

VisInfo: a digital library system for time series research data based on exploratory search--a user-centered design approach

To this day, data-driven science is a widely accepted concept in the digital library (DL) context (Hey et al. in The fourth paradigm: data-intensive scientific discovery. Microsoft Research, 2009). In the same way, domain knowledge from information visualization, visual analytics, and exploratory search has found its way into the DL workflow. This trend is expected to continue, considering future DL challenges such as content-based access to new document types, visual search, and exploration for information landscapes, or big data in general. To cope with these challenges, DL actors need to collaborate with external specialists from different domains to complement each other and succeed in given tasks such as making research data publicly available. Through these interdisciplinary approaches, the DL ecosystem may contribute to applications focused on data-driven science and digital scholarship. In this work, we present VisInfo (2014) , a web-based digital library system (DLS) with the goal to provide visual access to time series research data. Based on an exploratory search (ES) concept (White and Roth in Synth Lect Inf Concepts Retr Serv 1(1):1–98, 2009), VisInfo at first provides a content-based overview visualization of large amounts of time series research data. Further, the system enables the user to define visual queries by example or by sketch. Finally, VisInfo presents visual-interactive capability for the exploration of search results. The development process of VisInfo was based on the user-centered design principle. Experts from computer science, a scientific digital library, usability engineering, and scientists from the earth, and environmental sciences were involved in an interdisciplinary approach. We report on comprehensive user studies in the requirement analysis phase based on paper prototyping, user interviews, screen casts, and user questionnaires. Heuristic evaluations and two usability testing rounds were applied during the system implementation and the deployment phase and certify measurable improvements for our DLS. Based on the lessons learned in VisInfo, we suggest a generalized project workflow that may be applied in related, prospective approaches.

Approach for a joint global registration agency for research data

The scientific and information communities have largely mastered the presentation of, and linkages between, text-based electronic information by assigning persistent identifiers to give scientific literature unique identities and accessibility. Knowledge, as published through scientific literature, is often the last step in a process originating from scientific research data. Today scientists are using simulation, observational, and experimentation techniques that yield massive quantities of research data. These data are analyzed, synthesized, interpreted, and the outcome of this process is generally published as a scientific article. Access to the original data as the foundation of knowledge has become an important issue throughout the world and different projects have started to find solutions. Global collaboration and scientific advances could be accelerated through broader access to scientific research data. In other words, data access could be revolutionized through the same technologies used to make textual literature accessible. The most obvious opportunity to broaden visibility of and access to research data is to integrate its access into the medium where it is most often cited: electronic textual information. Besides this opportunity, it is important, irrespective of where they are cited, for research data to have an internet identity. Since 2005, the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) has offered a successful Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration service for persistent identification of research data. In this white paper we discuss the possibilities to open this registration to a global consortium of information institutes and libraries.

A visual digital library approach for time-oriented scientific primary data

Digital Library support for textual and certain types of nontextual documents has significantly advanced over the last years. While Digital Library support implies many aspects along the whole library workflow model, interactive and visual retrieval allowing effective query formulation and result presentation are important functions. Recently, new kinds of non-textual documents which merit Digital Library support, but yet cannot be accommodated by existing Digital Library technology, have come into focus. Scientific primary data, as produced for example, by scientific experimentation, earth observation, or simulation, is such a data type. We report on a concept and first implementation of Digital Library functionality, supporting visual retrieval and exploration in a specific important class of scientific primary data, namely, time-oriented data. The approach is developed in an interdisciplinary effort by experts from the library, natural sciences, and visual analytics communities. In addition to presenting the concept and discussing relevant challenges, we present results from a first implementation of our approach as applied on a real-world scientific primary data set.

3D@Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)

Immer mehr digitale Wissensobjekte finden Eingang in Bibliotheken. Innerhalb der Future Internet Initiative ist die TIB Mitglied der Arbeitsgruppe Internet of

Personalized information spaces: improved access to chemical digital libraries

Today digital libraries provide access to a vast, but largely unstructured, amount of document collections. Facing the ever increasing challenge of the information overload content providers have to focus on new ways in user-centered retrieval, not only providing tools for searching information, but tools for personalizing, managing, evaluating and working with the returned search results. Within the ViFaChem II research project the TIB and the L3S Research Center, Hannover, have developed an enhanced retrieval platform for chemical digital libraries. The prototypical interface processes full text and bibliographic metadata collections to create semantically enriched document collections with chemical metadata. Processing steps include text mining for chemical entities, reaction types and chemical structure reconstruction. However, the ViFaChem digital library does not only offer the classical document access via a text or chemical structure search, but also semantic search based on the faceted browsing paradigm. In particular it includes the Semantic GrowBag algorithm, which automatically creates facets for navigational access and query refinement using the relationship between documents and author keywords. Based on higher-order co-occurrences of keywords in documents these graphs hierarchically arrange all related topics dynamically with respect to the underlying content collection. Having different personal views on the document collection the user now can search and navigate through search results using individual retrieval strategies. Facets for chemical reactions, chemical entities or topics combined with an underlying ontology thus allow a semantic driven access to documents. Combined with Web 2.0 features the interface of ViFaChem II provides the user with a new experience in searching large document collections, where the user can navigate through query results based on his personalized knowledge space.

Das PROBADO-Projekt: Integration von nicht-textuellen Dokumenten am Beispiel von 3D-Objekten in das Dienstleistungsangebot von Bibliotheken

Digital libraries find themselves confronted with new challenges as reflected in the quantitative increase of relevant information and the qualitative change of available information through new, non-textual media formats, such as 3 D models of architecture. A project titled PROBADO (Prototypical Operation of Common Documents) which is based at the Center for Scientific Library Services and Information Systems and funded by the German Research Society since February 2006, has developed a procedure for automated indexing, storage, searching and retrieval of such types of media. The Technical Information Library of Hannover (TIB), as the main special library for technology, as well as for architecture, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics, is using PROBADO to expand its services for architects and engineers. Additional project partners are the Bavarian State library in Munich, and three computer science departments at the universities of Bonn, Graz and Darmstadt.

Neues Urheberrecht und seine Konsequenzen für die Dokumentlieferdienste der Technischen Informationsbibliothek (TIB)

This article deals with the operational problems confronting large libraries in seeking to fulfill their national mandate to provide access to information in their areas of specialization due to the enactment of Germanys new copyright law. The abolishment of a legal basis for providing electronic delivery of documents in PDF format has made it necessary to acquire the requisite licenses, In addition to an extensive re-structuring of IT systems, it has been necessary to re-design delivery services and their fee schedules, organize extensive in-house training for the help desk and reference service, as well as to make use of legal expertise for the negotiations with legal proprietors.

Leihverkehr. Das Online-Fernleihsystem im GBV

Auf der Basis der Verbunddatenbank der Verbundzentrale in Göttingen werden ursprünglich von dem Fachpersonal der Bibliotheken Bestellungen in das System gegeben, die über einen hochparametrisierten Algorithmus an eine besitzende Bibliothek online weitergereicht werden. Dabei können frei definierbare Leihverkehrskreise und -regionen ebenso Berücksichtigung finden wie eine individuell für jedes Bibliotheksprofil einstellbare Maximalzahl von Bestellungen auf Kopien und Bücher. Bestellungen, die nicht erledigt werden können, werden negativ quittiert und an die nächste besitzende Bibliothek weitergeleitet. Bestellungen aus dem Online-Fernleihsystem sind qualifiziert, d.h. sie sind mit der Signatur der besitzenden Bibliothek versehen. Dieser betriebswirtschaftlich bedeutsame Umstand ist wesentliche Voraussetzung für die Effizienz des Systems: Femleihe im GBV ist wesentlich schneller, als man allgemein vom Leihverkehr in Deutschland (zu Recht) annimmt. Durchschnittlich wird eine Bestellung in weniger als einer Woche erledigt.