Peter Weinstein

Ontology-based metadata: transforming the MARC legacy

We propose a new catalog based on a formal ontological model of bibliographic relations. A hierarchy of five central concepts describes the creation of work. Each kind of relation between works occurs at a particular level in the hierarchy. Related works share data at some level of the hierarchy, yielding a tree structure that reduces redundant representation of shared attributes. To show that ontology-based metadata is practical, we generated a knowledge base of metadata from a sample of MARC records. We implemented the ontology in description logic (Loom), mapped Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) attributes and values to the ontology, and loaded the data into Loom with all values treated its separate instances. We then unified matching instances, and deduced relations between works. This process thus converts relationships implicit in MARC into explicit relations that arc easy to utilize with computers. Our web interface permits browsing by navigating relations between works. Ontology-based metadata can also support user inquiry and digital-library operation in other important ways.

Social Structure and the Development of Self-Esteem in Young Children*

We investigate the nature of self-esteem in a large mixed-race sample of urban children over theirfirst four years of schooling, using a confirmatory factor analytic model. The rationale and the conceptual basis for this model lead us to posit a five-dimensional structure (character, personal responsibility, academic, appearance, athletic). Estimating the model for separate age, gender, race, and SES subsamples suggests that this structure applies well to all children and that the dimensions become differentiated more clearly with time. Children differ, however, in their average levels on the five dimensions: boys are higher than girls on the athletic and appearance dimensions, and girls are higher than boys on the others. Blacks surpass whites in the athletic and appearance domains. Differences in level by socioeconomic status are negligible.

Seed ontologies: growing digital libraries as distributed, intelligent systems

Ontologies are more than a particularly elaborate approach to the description and classification of information. They can be used to support the operation and growth of a new kind of digital library, implemented as a distributed, intelligent system. We describe the design and use of ontologies in the University of Michigan Digital Library. These ontologies will model all aspects of the digital library, including content, services, and licenses. We have refined and extended the IFLA hierarchy for the realization of work, and are starting to use ontologies to support reasoning about content search. We have also used the ontologies to classify the capabilities of computational elements of the system (agents), in a dynamic way that sustains functionality as new agents are added to the system.

Agent based digital libraries: decentralization and coordination

This article describes agent-based systems and explains why digital libraries should be built with this type of architecture. The primary advantage of agent-based architecture is decentralization, which enables scaling, flexibility, and extensibility. The corresponding requirement is the need to coordinate agent activity. We describe the approach taken by the University of Michigan Digital Library project.

The Dynamics of the UMDL Service Market Society

One of our goals when building the University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) has been to prototype an architecture that can continually reconfigure itself as users, contents, and services come and go. We have worked toward this goal by developing a multi-agent infrastructure with agents that buy and sell services from each other using our commerce and communication protocols. We refer to the services and protocols offered by this infrastructure as the Service Market Society (SMS). Within the SMS, agents are able to find, work with, and even try to outsmart each other, as each agent attempts to accomplish the tasks for which it was created. When we open the door to decentralized decision-making among self-interested agents, there is a risk that the system will degenerate into chaos. In this paper, we describe the protocols, services, and agent abilities embedded in the SMS infrastructure that combat such chaos while permitting flexibility, extensibility, and scalability of the system.

Strategic Reasoning and Adaptation in an Information Economy

One of our goals when building the University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) has been to prototype an architecture that can continually reconfigure itself as users, contents, and services come and go. We have worked toward this goal by developing a multi-agent information economy, where agents buy and sell information goods and services from each other using our commerce and communication protocols. We refer to the services and protocols offered by this economic infrastructure as the Service Market Society (SMS). Within the SMS, agents are able to find, work with, and even try to outsmart each other, as each agent attempts to accomplish the tasks for which it was created. When we open the door to decentralized decision-making among self-interested agents, there is a risk that the system will degenerate into chaos. In this chapter, we describe the protocols, services, and agent abilities embedded in the SMS infrastructure that combat such chaos while permitting flexibility, extensibility, and scalability of the system.

Sift and sort: climbing the semantic pyramid

Information processing operations in support of intelligence analysis are of two kinds. They may sift relevant data from a larger body, thus reducing its quantity, or sort that data, thus reducing its entropy. These two classes of operation typically alternate with one another, successively shrinking and organizing the available data to make it more accessible and understandable. We term the resulting construct, the “semantic pyramid.” We sketch the general structure of this construct, and illustrate two adjacent layers of it that we have implemented in the Ant CAFE.

Hypothesis corroboration in semantic spaces with swarming agents

Our poster describes the architecture and innovative Swarm Intelligence algorithms of the Ant CAFE system that extracts and organizes textual evidence that corroborates hypotheses about the state of the world to support Intelligence analysts.

The University of Michigan digital library service market society (poster)

One of our goals when building the University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) was to provide an architecture for a digital library that can continually reconfigure itself as users, contents, and services come and go. This has been achieved by the development of a multi-agent infrastructure with agents that buy and sell services from each other using our commerce and communication protocols. We describe the protocols, services and agents that embody the UMDL Service Market Society (SMS).