Chaos & OrderChaos & Order

University of Oslo Library

Using visualization as a means to

explore large heritage collections

Hugo Huurdeman @timelessfuture

Visual Navigation Project

University of Oslo Library

bit.ly/VisualNavigationProject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ojz0jO8Moc

Stream 2: Physical

Interaction

• Stream 1 & 3 build on top of

existing work and infrastructure

• Approach Stream 2:

experiment with novel ways of

interaction in physical space

• with library’s book collections

• experiments with a touch

table (Science Library)

• Includes an INF2260 project &

INF Master project Yaron Okun

Physical

interaction

(2)

Visualiza-

tion (1)

Visual

navigation

prototypes

Picture: Marina Tofting

Visual Navigation Project

University of Oslo Library

bit.ly/VisualNavigationProject

in collaboration with Department of Informatics

by support of the National Library of Norway

start: Sept. 2016. duration two years

1 Introduction

One motivation: ‘underuse’ of

Web archives

• Web archives preserve the fast-

changing Web. By now containing

Petabytes of valuable Web data

• This could be a valuable resource,

however, archives have not

frequently been used for research

[DoughertyMeyer14], e.g. due to access issues.

• Presentation focus: using

visualization as a means to explore

large heritage collections

2 Theoretical framework

• Information seeking as a process of construction

• E.g. [Kuhlthau91, Vakkari01]

Inf. seeking process 2.1

+ u

nce

rtain

ty -

feelings

thoughts

actions

vague focused

seeking general

information (exploring)seeking pertinent

information (documenting)

uncertainty optimism confusion clarity confidence (dis)satisfaction

doubt direction

FormulationInitiation Selection Exploration Collection Presentation

Stage-based search support

• Stage-based support [Huurdeman&Kamps14/15,HuurdemanWilson&Kamps16, Huurdeman17a/b]

Re/search as a constructive

process 2.3

• Mapping Kendall’s (2012) Research Process Model

• to Kuhlthau’s ISP Model (1991) [Huurdeman17b]

• Today: look at the initial (prefocus) phases

• How does one get curious, inspired, interested?

What support for this phase currently exists?

Research as a constructive

process 2.3

3. Exploratory Interfaces

[Ahlberg&Shneiderman94]

[Google Wonder Wheel]

[ClusterMap]

[Epicurious]

[Donato10]

[Hearst&Degler13]

[Proulx et al., 2006]

• SUIs may aid users to:

• express needs, formulate queries, provide

understanding & to track progress [Hearst09]

• Complexity of designing effective SUIs[Shneiderman05]

• Many proposed interactive features:

• search suggestions [Niu14], facets [Tunkelang09], item

trays [Donato10], ..

Search User Interfaces 3.1

Few features have made it to the general search engines, however

Some turned up in specific context, e.g. online shopping, analytics

Access to heritage collections

3.2

• Some developments have been incorporated in

systems to access cultural heritage collections

• Libraries, Museums, Archives

• Web archives

Web Archives 3.3

• Wayback Machine: URL as starting point

• Search Systems: Query as starting point

Assumptions of Wayback

Machine 3.4

• Assumption that you know what you are looking

for…

!!!

Assumptions of search

3.5

• Searching (even exploratory) assumes that you

have an initial idea what you would like to look for

— however rough

image:

Google

Web archive Access

Issues 3.7

• Problems* of

• scale (large size)

• dimensions (temporal and hierarchical)

• Hence, the data is too much and too complex for

regular URL browsing & basic searching (e.g. how

to convey all this in 10 blue links?)

Towards Visualization? 3.8

• Any kind of visual representation of information

designed to enable exploration, discovery,

communication, etc. (Cairo, 2016)

• Visualization - can be used throughout (re)search

process

• initial exploration, get a grasp (exploration)

• as an artefact of ongoing research (discovery)

• as an end product (science communication)

Guiding Questions

3.9

• Can we devise alternatives* to the Query and

URL approach for web archive access?

• To what extent can we provide more visual

approaches for browsing web archives?

[Ahlberg&Shneiderman94]

[Pe

jte

rsen

89]

4. Initial explorations

[Part presented as HuurdemanSamarEtAl16 (IIPC)]

Flickr: koninklijkebibliotheek

Statistics (2016):

•10,000+ websites

•35,000+ harvests

•16+ Terabyte

•Categorized using

UNESCO classification

National Library of the Netherlands: Web archive since 2007

Data: extraction and

processing 4.1

extracting all homepages + 1

level deep

matching with seedlistadding KB metadata

cleaning, processing, data

enrichment (e.g. NER)generate visualizations~900K XML

files

thanks: Thaer Samar

Web sphere

Page element

Web site

Web page

2010 2015

eyefilm.nl

[Brügger][Huurdeman15]

Example: eyefilm.nl (2010-

2015)

redesign redesign

content links images overall

Example: escherinhetpaleis

.nl (2010-2015)

content links images overall

Web sphere

Page element

Web site

Web page

2010 2015

unesco classifications

Changerate

(type of site)

Changes per unesco category (all p/quarter harvests, n=~600, 2009-2015)

MeteorologyLaw & government

History

Sports

Agriculture

Web sphere

Page element

Web site

Web page

2010 2015

nu.nl

Exploring content (news)

per year

2014

2015

Jan’13 Feb’13 Mar’13 Apr’13

May’13 Jun’13 Jul’13 Aug’13

Sep’13 Oct’13 Nov’13 Dec’13

Daily (2012)

5. ‘CollectionXplorer’

CollectionXplorer

Characteristics

• Using d3js as a basis

• “Playful”, short-form development

• Different visualizations as a ‘lens’ to the archive

• As a starting point to rethink web archive access

• How to induce interest, inspiration & curiosity in

the context of web archives?

Clusters color: representations of websites, size: number of crawls

Clusters color: representations of websites, size: number of crawls

Word Cloudssize: number of sites

Bar Chartscolor: unesco category, size: avg change %

Bar Chartscolor: unesco category, size: avg change %

Network (Force-directed)connetions: unesco category, size: number of crawls

Scatterplotshorizontal: category, vertical: user rating (books)

So, lots of opportunitiesdistinct properties of each type of visualization

CollectionXplorer -

some char’istics

• “Playful” - engage potential users, encourage to interact

• Easy to add new types of visualizations

• Various modalities to explore

• Initial testing on touch table (swipe!)

• Next steps: further explore dimensions of the archive

• Develop a “design language”

• Infrastructural demands, user testing. Evaluation.

7. Conclusion

Conclusion

• Looking at initial stages of the complex

(re)search process - open-ended browsing

• Exploring temporal and hierarchical dimensions

• Short-form prototypes - how to visualize web

archive content in “engaging” ways?

• …further infrastructure, dev and testing is needed

Closing off: conveying

complexity

• “I want [people] to use the visualizations I provide

as a starting point for their own explorations”

• They should expose “the complexity, the inner

contradictions, the manifold nature of the

underlying phenomenon. (Moritz Stefaner)

In a web archive context, a simple results list

hides a lot of complexities…

References

• Ben-David A. & Huurdeman H. (2014). Web Archive Search as Research: Methodological and Theoretical Implications. Alexandria Journal, Volume 25, No. 1 (2014)

• Brügger, N. (2013). Historical Network Analysis of the Web. Social Science Computer Review, 31(3), 306–321

• Dougherty, M., & Meyer, E. T. (2014). Community, tools, and practices in web archiving: The state-of-the-art in relation to social science and humanities research needs. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(11), 2195–2209. http://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23099

• Hearst M. A.. Search User Interfaces. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

• Huurdeman, H. C. (2017). Dynamic Support for the Complex Dynamics of the Information Seeking Process, PhD thesis (exp.2017)

• Huurdeman, H. C. (2017). Dynamic Compositions: Recombining Search User Interface Features for Supporting Complex Work Tasks. In SCST@ CHIIR (pp. 21–24).

• Huurdeman, H. C., Wilson, M. L., & Kamps, J. (2016). Active and Passive Utility of Search Interface Features in Different Information Seeking Task Stages. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM on Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (pp. 3–12). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2854946.2854957

• Huurdeman, Samar, Kamps, De Vries (2016). Towards Multidimensional Web Archive Access. Presented at IIPC conference ‘16

• Hugo C. Huurdeman and Jaap Kamps (2015). Supporting the Process: Adapting Search Systems to Search Stages. In: S. Kurbanoğlu, S. Špiranec, J. Boustany, E. Grassian, D. Mizrachi, & L. Roy (Eds.), Information Literacy: Moving towards sustainability, Communication in Computer and Information Science series (Vol. 552, pp. 394-404).

• Huurdeman, H. (2015). Towards Research Engines: Supporting Search Stages in Web archives. In Two-day conference at Aarhus University, Denmark.

• Huurdeman, H., & Kamps, J. (2014). From Multistage Information-seeking Models to Multistage Search Systems. In Proceedings of the 5th Information Interaction in Context Symposium (pp. 145–154). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

• C. C. Kuhlthau. Inside the search process: Information seeking from the user’s perspective. JASIS, 42:361–371, 1991.

• B. Shneiderman and C. Pleasant. Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Pearson Education, 2005.

• P. Vakkari. A theory of the task-based information retrieval process: a summary and generalisation of a longitudinal study. Journal of Documentation, 57:44–60, 2001.

Acknowledgements

• Thaer Samar & Jaap Kamps & Arjen & others in WebART

• NWO grant

• Colleagues at University of Oslo (Science Lib)

• NB grant

• René Voorburg & Kees Teszelsky at the KB

Chaos & Order

University of Oslo Library

Using visualization as a means to

explore large heritage collections

Hugo Huurdeman @timelessfuture