June M. Abbas

Middle school children's use of the ARTEMIS digital library

A case study of middle school students interaction within a digital library, the differential use of interface features by students, and the issues of representation and retrieval obstacles are examined. A mechanism for evaluating users search terms and questions is explained. Findings of a current case study indicate that students interaction with the system varied between individual classes and between different achievement levels. Terms used by the system to represent the resources do not adequately represent the user groups information needs.

Out of the mouths of middle school children: I. Developing user-defined controlled vocabularies for subject access in a digital library

Representation and retrieval obstacles within a digital library designed for use by middle school children are presented. Representation of objects is key to retrieval. Tools used to create representations for childrens resources, such as controlled vocabularies, need to be more age appropriate. Development of age-appropriate controlled vocabularies requires us to learn more about the ways children interact with systems and form search strategies to represent their information needs. Childrens search terms and questions are a rich resource for learning more about their information seeking process, their question state, and their formulation of searches. A method for gathering and using childrens own search terms and the benefits of their utilization in developing more age-appropriate controlled vocabularies are discussed.

Teaching digital library concepts using digital library applications

Many digital library topics may be taught using digital library applications, in the context of project-based digital library courses. Several digital library applications exist, and these applications are used as teaching tools to illustrate the functionality of digital libraries as well as the design decisions that go into them. Using digital library applications as teaching tools provides a valuable learning experience for students, and may provide useful feedback to the developers of DL applications. This paper identifies and explores DL topics that may most effectively be taught using DL applications, in the context of project-based DL courses.

UB at GeoCLEF 2006

This paper summarizes the work done at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) in the GeoCLEF 2006 track. The approach presented uses pure IR techniques (indexing of single word terms as well as word bigrams, and automatic retrieval feedback) to try to improve retrieval performance of queries with geographical references. The main purpose of this work is to identify the strengths and shortcomings of this approach so that it serves as a basis for future development of a geographical reference extraction system. We submitted four runs to the monolingual English task, two automatic runs and two manual runs, using the title and description fields of the topics. Our official results are above the median system (auto=0.2344 MAP, manual=0.2445 MAP). We also present an unofficial run that uses title description and narrative which shows a 10% improvement in results with respect to our baseline runs. Our manual runs were prepared by creating a Boolean query based on the topic description and manually adding terms from geographical resources available on the web. Although the average performance of the manual run is comparable to the automatic runs, a query by query analysis shows significant differences among individual queries. In general, we got significant improvements (more that 10% average precision) in 8 of the 25 queries. However, we also noticed that 5 queries in the manual runs perform significantly below the automatic runs.

Analyzing middle school students' use of the ARTEMIS Digital Library

Research into student use of scaffolding features and representation issues encountered while using the ARTEMIS Digital Library is discussed. Research agenda, methods, preliminary findings, and future research directions are presented. Preliminary findings indicate that students exhibit some commonalities in their patterns of system and scaffold use.

Who is tagging information

As Web 2.0 aims to be a more dynamic, interactive, information-rich environment, social tagging, or the creation of user-defined metadata by users, (as well as the outcome of tagging, folksonomies or the development of user-centered vocabularies or lists of keywords that can be used for searching and subject access) (Dye, 2006), is a practice developing to foster online collaboration, independent information sharing and distribution, as well as open communication. Systems that enable social tagging are becoming more common. In the Web 2.0 environment, tagging and folksonomies have been used in different contexts such as photo sharing sites like Flickr, video sharing sites like YouTube, blog search engines like Technorati, and in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and LibraryThing (Etches-Johnson, 2006) . It is generally assumed that more users are learning about and actually tagging resources. Academic articles on tagging are becoming more common (for example, Golder & Huberman, 2005; Marlow, Naaman, Boyd & Davis, 2006). However, little has been reported about taggers motivations (Abbas, 2007; Abbas & Graham, 2006), the different contexts of tagging, and the the implications for practices and for the library and information science profession (Abbas & Graham, 2006). n n n nWhile the Web 2.0 environment has become a virtual laboratory for exploring the efficacy and utility of social tagging, as well as tagging practices, integrating social tagging into current business and professional practices at different institutions and professions deserves a reality check. The purposes of the panel are: 1) to explore the different contexts in which tagging is being used, 2) to examine how well social tagging has been adopted by several professions such as newspapers, libraries, museums, and within different contexts such as the Web (image and digital video sharing sites), corporations, medical professions, and other information professions, and 3) to discuss implications tagging may have to the library and information science profession. The panelists will present their observations and research results and discuss future trends for different fields.

So, let's talk about tagging, user-defined/supplied descriptors … A research and curricular agenda

As Ellyssa Kroski (Kroski, 2005) so correctly describes, “there is a revolution happening on the Internet that is alive and building momentum with each passing tag”, a revolution that, like the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), has the potential to change the traditional ways that information is organized, found, and used. Information science professionals have long understood that good metadata shrinks the chasm between user and resource. Tagging (or metadata creation by the user) is bringing people and information together in a revolutionary fashion. Putting metadata creation into the hands of users enables users to browse for desired topics without needing to know an often outdated, Anglo-centric controlled vocabulary that librarians and users alike do not always know or understand. However, like the early emergence and development of the Internet and WWW, this potential might not currently be informed by library and information science research, practice, or even involvement. Will this be another case where LIS researchers and professionals might feel “left behind” or “out of the loop”? Is there a role for information science professionals to educate and inform the use of folksonomies and tagging so that, in this vast world of digital information, users are even more connected with useful information, whether it be recreational, scholarly, or social?

Tagging the tags… Process, observations and analysis of conversations in metatagging at an ASIST interactive poster session

Results from a 2006 ASIST poster session on taggers motivations are presented. Researchers conducted short conversations with conference participants as they viewed the researchers poster and tagged its contents. Using a content analysis method, researchers conversations with participants were analyzed. Content analysis revealed six broad themes or “clusters” of interest: 1) General, 2) Observations, 3) Specific Uses/Suggestions, 4) Curricular, 5) Concerns and 6) Opportunities/Potentials. Within those clusters various specific points were ranked by frequency of occurrence. Overall findings indicate the ASIST community is interested in seeing what happens with this phenomenon, but voiced very real concerns about the longevity of tagging, specific uses in scholarly environments, and the effect it will have on annotation, bibliographic, and subject analysis.