Sally Jo Cunningham

Towards the digital music library: tune retrieval from acoustic input

Music is traditionally retrieved by title, composer or subjectclassification. It is possible, with current technology, toretrieve music from a database on the basis of a few notes sung orhummed into a microphone. This paper describes the implementationof such a system, and discusses several issues pertaining to musicretrieval. We first describe an interface that transcribes acousticinput into standard music notation. We then analyze string matchingrequirements for ranked retrieval of music and present the resultsof an experiment which tests how accurately people sing well knownmelodies. The performance of several string matching criteria areanalyzed using two folk song databases. Finally, we describe aprototype system which has been developed for retrieval of tunesfrom acoustic input.

A transaction log analysis of a digital library

Abstract.As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behavior can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We have conducted a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues. Specifically, we present the user demographics available with our library, discuss the use of operators and search options in queries, and examine patterns in query construction and refinement. We also describe common mistakes in searching, and examine the distribution of query terms appearing in the logs.

Scalable browsing for large collections: a case study

Phrase browsing techniques use phrases extracted automatically from a large information collection as a basis for browsing and accessing it. This paper describes a case study that uses an automatically constructed phrase hierarchy to facilitate browsing of an ordinary large Web site. Phrases are extracted from the full text using a novel combination of rudimentary syntactic processing and sequential grammar induction techniques. The interface is simple, robust and easy to use. To convey a feeling for the quality of the phrases that are generated automatically, a thesaurus used by the organization responsible for the Web site is studied and its degree of overlap with the phrases in the hierarchy is analyzed. Our ultimate goal is to amalgamate hierarchical phrase browsing and hierarchical thesaurus browsing: the latter provides an authoritative domain vocabulary and the former augments coverage in areas the thesaurus does not reach.

Usage analysis of a digital library

ABSTRACT We analyse transaction logs for a large full-text documentcollection for Computer Science researchers. We reportinsights gained from this analysis and identify resulting searchinterface design issues. KEYWORDS: transaction log analysis, search interface,usage analysis. INTRODUCTION There is extensive literature on transaction log analysis ofOPACs (see [3] for an overview). However, little work of thisnature has been applied to digital libraries—likely becausemany digital libraries have only recently attained a usage levelsuitable for log analysis. Since log analysis provides insightinto user search behaviour it is useful in the design andconsideration of query interfaces.We apply transaction log analysis techniques to the NewZealand Digital Library (http://www.nzdl.org). We focus onthe Computer Science Technical Reports (CSTR) collectionwhich contains almost 46000 publically available ComputerScience technical reports from around the world. Because thecollection is not formally catalogued users carry out keywordsearches within the

An Analysis of Usage of a Digital Library

As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behaviour can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We conduct a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues.

Authorship patterns in information systems

This paper examines the patterns of multiple authorship in five information systems journals. Specifically, we determine the distribution of the number of authors per paper in this field, the proportion of male and female authors, gender composition of research teams, and the incidence of collaborative relationships spanning institutional affiliations and across different geographic regions.

Looking for a picture: an analysis of everyday image information searching

There is at present a dearth of information on the everyday image information behavior of ordinary people. Analysis of a set of 64 image-related searches provides insight into potentially useful facilities for an image digital library

Book selection behavior in the physical library: implications for ebook collections

Little is known about how readers select books, whether they be print books or ebooks. In this paper we present a study of how people select physical books from academic library shelves. We use the insights gained into book selection behavior to make suggestions for the design of ebook-based digital libraries in order to better facilitate book selection behavior.

Search Behavior in a Research-Oriented Digital Library

This paper presents a transaction log analysis of ResearchIndex, a digital library for computer science researchers. ResearchIndex is an important information resource for members of this target group, and the collection sees significant use worldwide. Queries from over six months of usage were analyzed, to determine patterns in query construction and search session behavior. Where appropriate, these results are compared to earlier studies of search behavior in two other computing digital libraries.

A public library based on full-text retrieval

•We avoid manual processing of source material, and avoid making assumptions about the document repositories from which it is collected; for example, we do not require bibliographic metadata. •Access is via a full-text index of the entire contents of each document, rather than document surrogates. •We are concerned with user interface aspects and the real needs of library users. •Our systems must operate in geographically remote locations with high Internet costs—an environment in which the benefits of networked library technology is especially striking. •We aim to produce a library scheme that operates on small, inexpensive servers.