visualizing search results from metadata-enabled repositories in cultural domains lynne c. howarth...

Visualizing Search Results from Metadata-EnabledRepositories in Cultural Domains

Lynne C. HowarthThea Miller

University of Toronto

The project

TMRA '05, Leipzig, 7 October 2005

● project start May 2003, follow-up to earlier project Modelling a Metalevel Ontology● principal investigator: Lynne C.Howarth● research assistants:

doctoral: Thea Millermasters: Christopher Cronin, Christine Dumovich, Julie Hannaford, Annie Ng, Suzan Poyraz, Alison Sterling

● funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC SRG 410-03-1413)

Metadata-enabled cultural repositories: the situation


● need for systems that obviate the requirement of understanding underlying metadata structures and tagging (Buckland et al., 1999)

● current research focus in metadata arena has tended to be on syntax -- less focus on semantics

● while cross-schema crosswalks have been developed, cross-domain search tools have not

Research objectives


Building on previous research (Howarth, Cronin, Hannaford, 2002; 2003; Howarth 2004), the goal is to develop and refine a common set of labelled categories to serve as a natural language "gateway" to metadata-enabled resources, enhancing:

● semantic interoperability● language interoperability● multilingual access● cross-domain searching

Cognitive model


1. Perceptual phaseresults from repository/-ies are presented to the user

2. Orientation / sense-making phaseuser sorts results according to categories

3. Understanding / contextualisation phaseuser interpretation of results, facilitated bytopic map

Orientation/sense-making: the 17 common categories


● Contact Information: Information on how to communicate witth someone about a work, i.e., names, phone numbers, etc.

● Date & Time Period: Dates associated with a work, as well as time period information regarding a work's content.

● Edition: Information on a work's version.

● Genre / Type: The nature or style of a work's intellectual content.

● Identifiers: Unique names or numbers assigned to a work so that it can be distinguished from others, for example, its ISBN.

● Language: The language or dialect of a work.

● Methodology: The procedures / techniques used to make or change a work.

● Names: Names of individuals or organizations associated with a work, such as creators, publishers, sponsors, etc.

● Physical format: The physical appearance of a work.

Orientation/sense-making: the 17 common categories (continued)


● Place: Locations associated with a work, for example, where a work was created, published, is housed, etc.

● Rights & Restrictions on Use: Legal limitations / rules that affect how you can use a work after you have been given access to it.

● Roles: The function of an individual or organization associated with a work.

● Sources, References & Related Works: Other works that are related to the work you are seeking or were used to develop the work you are looking for.

● Subject: The topic of a work; its intellectual content.

● Summary & Description: Details about a work that illustrate its main points.

● Terms of Access & Availability: The legal limitations / rules that affect your ability to access a work. This relates to privacy or intellectual property concerns.

● Title: The name or phrase assigned to a work for identification purposes.

Focus group testing


– potential clarity and utility of labeled categories tested using quantitative (assigned activities) and qualitative (focus group discussions) approaches

– categorization exercises - purpose:

● resolve any semantic ambiguities (“fuzzy” terms that defied ready assignment to any one category)

● refine category definitions to ensure that categories contain the kinds of concepts the end user expects

– once categories validated in English – can broaden to multilingual environments

Focus group findings


What's in a name?

● Ambiguity and confusion: “Well, it was interesting, challenging. It really makes you realize how much terminology we're all tied by and how troubling it really is (general agreement). I mean, people, you know … like us that are allegedly finding information (laughs) and doing research all the time and we're going "what does this mean?", "I don't know what this is" so imagine the role of the user who is more baffled, presumably.”

● The importance of context: “It is kind of hard, just looking at it sort of abstractly, sort of broken apart like this without being able to look at a few records or something, you know, because when you're actually using it, the context always does help. I mean that's part of understanding it, so you know, just because it's sometimes hard to understand then, how some of the things relate to one another cuz you don't know how they're going to be put together on the screen, that made it harder in some places.”

Results display: the prototype and topic maps


OverviewSwish-e(applying CMECR metadata categories)

Query ("Baillie")

Repository

Index

Results

XTM (topic

map)

SVG

sent to results output as

transformed todisplayedon screen

D U C K



results

XTM

SVG

XSL

output(browser)

inserted into

Individual HTMLresults files for each

category

inserted into

XTM

category topiccounters set

converted toHTML

embedded in

links to

Perl-cgi script

Processing



Search interface



Search results display (XTM)

(clickable)



Search results display (node clicked)



Retrieved document

Future work, and Implications of research


● assess relevance of categories to search results● evaluate display variables

● integration of heterogeneous domains in resource discovery● extends application of topic maps in area of user interpretation/understanding

future research will include:

some implications of this research:

visualizing search results from metadata-enabled repositories in cultural domains lynne c. howarth...

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