Maria Gäde

Overview of the CLEF 2015 Social Book Search Lab

The Social Book Search SBS Lab investigates book search in scenarios where users search with more than just a query, and look for more than objective metadata. Real-world information needs are generally complex, yet almost all research focuses instead on either relatively simple search based on queries or recommendation based on profiles. The goal is to research and develop techniques to support users in complex book search tasks. The SBS Lab has two tracks. The aim of the Suggestion Track is to develop test collections for evaluating ranking effectiveness of book retrieval and recommender systems. The aim of the Interactive Track is to develop user interfaces that support users through each stage during complex search tasks and to investigate how users exploit professional metadata and user-generated content.

Automatic Enrichments with Controlled Vocabularies in Europeana: Challenges and Consequences

Automatic enrichment of metadata is one option for digital libraries to add multilingual terms to their resources. Adding links to external vocabularies further contextualizes the metadata in a linked data environment. This paper reports on a case study using the digital library Europeana, which implements this type of automatic contextualization and enrichment strategy. A group of content and metadata experts analyzed seven datasets in Europeana and evaluated the successes and challenges of the implemented enrichment strategy. For each of the three enrichment process stages (analysis, linking and augmentation), common problems and errors were identified. The paper further categorizes the enrichment challenges by original cause and describes consequences of the enrichment errors for the user interactions within digital libraries. Results serve as best practice examples for analyzing enrichment challenges and provide insights and recommendations for other large digital libraries implementing similar enrichment or contextualization strategies.

Report on the Second Workshop on Supporting Complex Search Tasks

There is broad consensus in the field of IR that search is complex in many use cases and applications, both on theWeb and in domain specific collections, and both in our professional and in our daily life. Yet our understanding of complex search tasks, in comparison to simple look up tasks, is fragmented at best. The workshop addressed many open research questions: What are the obvious use cases and applications of complex search? What are essential features of work tasks and search tasks to take into account? And how do these evolve over time? With a multitude of information, varying from introductory to specialized, and from authoritative to speculative or opinionated, when to show what sources of information? How does the information seeking process evolve and what are relevant differences between different stages? With complex task and search process management, blending searching, browsing, and recommendations, and supporting exploratory search to sensemaking and analytics, UI and UX design pose an overconstrained challenge. How do we know that our approach is any good? Supporting complex search tasks requires new collaborations across the whole field of IR, and the proposed workshop brought together a diverse group of researchers to work together on one of the greatest challenges of our field. The workshop featured three main elements. First, a keynote on an emerging theory of task difficulty by Diane Kelly. Second, a lively boaster and poster session in which seven contributed papers were presented. Third, three breakout groups on: 1) user interfaces and user experience, 2) tasks and users, and 3) information needs on controversial topics. There was an general feeling that the discussion made progress, and built new connections between related strands of research in IR.

Multilingual interface preferences

The most common level of multilinguality in information systems is the adaptation of the interface language. In this paper, the usage of multilingual interfaces is investigated and a comparison between interface language preferences for daily versus occasional usage as well as automatic versus user-triggered interface language change settings is drawn. The study presents the results of a log file analysis of 10 months of Europeana usage data, the digital library for Europes cultural institutions such as libraries, audio-visual archives, and museums. In total, 1,071,872 sessions from 21 countries are analyzed with respect to their browser, Google referrer and Europeana interface language preferences. Both browser and search engine result page referrer language indicate a strong preference for native language use. In contrast, the analysis of the Europeana interface language use and interface language change indicates weaker preferences for native languages and a stronger acceptance of the default English version. Instead, language information from the query, facet usage as well as objects viewed could reveal language preferences.

Which log for which information? gathering multilingual data from different log file types

In this paper, a comparative analysis of different log file types and their potential for gathering information about user behavior in a multilingual information system is presented. It starts with a discussion of potential questions to be answered in order to form an appropriate view of user needs and requirements in a multilingual information environment and the possibilities of gaining this information from log files. Based on actual examples from the Europeana portal, we compare and contrast different types of log files and the information gleaned from them. We then present the Europeana Clickstream Logger, which logs and gathers extended information on user behavior, and show first examples of the data collection possibilities.

Supporting Complex Search Tasks

There is broad consensus in the field of IR that search is complex in many use cases and applications, both on the Web and in domain specific collections, and both professionally and in our daily life. Yet our understanding of complex search tasks, in comparison to simple look up tasks, is fragmented at best. The workshop addressed the many open research questions: What are the obvious use cases and applications of complex search? What are essential features of work tasks and search tasks to take into account? And how do these evolve over time? With a multitude of information, varying from introductory to specialized, and from authoritative to speculative or opinionated, when to show what sources of information? How does the information seeking process evolve and what are relevant differences between different stages? With complex task and search process management, blending searching, browsing, and recommendations, and supporting exploratory search to sensemaking and analytics, UI and UX design pose an overconstrained challenge. How do we know that our approach is any good? Supporting complex search task requires new collaborations across the whole field of IR, and the proposed workshop will bring together a diverse group of researchers to work together on one of the greatest challenges of our field.

Is tagging multilingual?: a case study with BibSonomy

This paper investigates the occurrence of tags in different languages in a collaborative bookmarking and publication sharing service - BibSonomy. Social tags assigned to URLs in multiple languages and users tagging these URLs multilingually are the main focus of this study. The results show that multilingual tags occur for the same URL and that users tag in different languages. Furthermore, the results give indications that the language of the content of a URL does not imply that its tags are in the same language.

Workshop on Barriers to Interactive IR Resources Re-use

The goal of this workshop is to serve as a starting point for a community-driven effort to design and implement a platform for the collection, organization, maintenance, and sharing of resources for IIR experimentation. As in all scientific endeavors, progress in IIR research is contingent on the ability to build on previous ideas, approaches, and resources. However, we believe there to be a number of barriers to reproducibility and re-use of resources in IIR research: the fragmentary nature of how the community»s resources are organized, the lack of awareness of their existence, documentation and organization of the resources, the nature of the typical research publication cycle, and the effort required to make such resources available. We believe that an online platform dedicated to the collection and organization of IIR resources could be a promising way of overcoming these barriers. The workshop therefore aims to serve both as a brainstorming opportunity about the shape this iRepository should take, as well as a way of building support in the community for its implementation.

Ten Months of Digital Reading: An Exploratory Log Study

We address digital reading practices in Russia analyzing 10 months of logging data from a commercial ebook mobile app. We describe the data and focus on three aspects: reading schedule, reading speed, and book abandonment. The exploratory study proves a high potential of the data and proposed approach.

Supporting Complex Search Tasks ECIR 2015 Workshop

There is broad consensus in the field of IR that search is complex in many use cases and applications, both on the Web and in domain specific collections, and both professionally and in our daily life. Yet our understanding of complex search tasks, in comparison to simple look up tasks, is fragmented at best. The workshop addressed the many open research questions: What are the obvious use cases and applications of complex search? What are essential features of work tasks and search tasks to take into account? And how do these evolve over time? With a multitude of information, varying from introductory to specialized, and from authoritative to speculative or opinionated, when to show what sources of information? How does the information seeking process evolve and what are relevant differences between different stages? With complex task and search process management, blending searching, browsing, and recommendations, and supporting exploratory search to sensemaking and analytics, UI and UX design pose an overconstrained challenge. How do we know that our approach is any good? Supporting complex search task requires new collaborations across the whole field of IR, and the proposed workshop will bring together a diverse group of researchers to work together on one of the greatest challenges of our field.