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Designing Metadata Surrogates for Search Result Interfaces of Learning Object Repositories: Linear versus Clustered Metadata Design
No full textThis study reports the findings of a usability test conducted to examine users\u27 interaction with two different learning object metadata-driven search result interfaces. The first was a clustered metadata surrogate interface (where metadata elements were divided into sections), and the second a linear or single metadata surrogate interface (where all metadata elements were listed in a single record). The objectives of this research were: firstly, to investigate the time needed by learners to identify a relevant learning object, using both interfaces; secondly, to examine learners\u27 subjective satisfaction for both interfaces; and finally, to study the impact of task complexity on users\u27 interaction with both interfaces. To facilitate the objectives of the study, twelve postgraduate students participated in a user study which employed a multi-method approach and involved observation of users\u27 interactions, subjective satisfaction questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Data collected included the time needed for users to identify relevant learning objects in both interfaces and the rating of users\u27 subjective satisfaction. In addition, qualitative data were collected based on interviews and the think aloud protocol. Parametric analysis (ANOVA tests) was conducted to identify statistically significant differences between the two interfaces in terms of time, user satisfaction and the impact of task complexity. The data analysis revealed that users needed less time to perform the tasks using the clustered metadata surrogate interface. This difference, however, was not significant. In addition, there was no significant impact of task complexity on user\u27s performance. In terms of subjective satisfaction, however, the participants perceived the clustered metadata surrogate interface to be significantly more satisfying, stimulating and easy to use (F=89.690, p.<0.01). The findings of this study provide useful recommendations for the design of search result interfaces in learning object repositories
Towards an Ontology of ElPub/SciX: A Proposal
No full textA proposal is presented for a standard ontology language defined as ElPub/SciX Ontology, based on the content of a web digital library of conference proceedings. This content, i.e., ElPub/SciX documents, aims to provide access to papers presented at the total editions of the International Conference in Electronic Publishing (ElPub). After completing its 10th years in 2006, ElPub/SciX is now a comprehensive repository with over 400 papers. Previous work has been used as a basis to build up the ontology described here. It has been presented at Elpub2004 and it dealt with an Information Retrieval System using Computational Linguistics (SiRILiCo). ElPub/SciX ontology constitutes a lightweight ontology (classes and just some instances) and is the result of two basic procedures. The first one is a syntactic analysis carried out through the Syntactic Parser-VISL. This free tool, based on lingsoft\u27s ENGCG parser, is made available through the Visual Interactive Syntactic Learning, a research and development project at the University of Southern Denmark, Institute of Language and Communication (ISK). The second one, carried out after that, is a semantic analysis (concept extraction) conducted through GeraOnto, an acronym that stands for ?generating an ontology?, which extracts the concepts needed in order to build up the ontology. The program has been developed by Gottschalg-Duque, in 2005, in Brazil. The ensuing ontology is then edited via Prot?g?, a free, open source ontology editor. The motivation to carry out the work reported here came from problems faced during the preparation of a paper to Elpub2006, which aimed to present data about a number of aspects regarding the ElPub/SciX collection. While searching the collection, problems with the lack of standardization of authors and institutions names and the non-existence of any control of keywords had been identified. Such problems seem to be related to an apparent absence of ?paper preparation? before entering into the SciX database. Lack of preparation, in turn, has brought about the desire of finding a solution, which is expected to support the work of those interested in searching the collection to retrieve information. ElPub/SciX ontology, therefore, is seen as that helping solution to support ElPub information retrieval
The Fight against Spam - A Machine Learning Approach
No full textThe paper presents a brief survey of the fight between spammers and antispam software developers, and also describes new approaches to spam filtering. In the first two sections we present a survey of the currently existing spam types. Some well-mapped spammer tricks are also described, although the imagination of spam distributors is endless, and therefore only the most common tricks are covered. We present some up-to-date spam blocking techniques currently integrated into today\u27s spam filters. In the Methodology and Results sections we describe our implementation of Itemsets-based, Na?ve Bayes and LSI classifiers for classifying email messages into spam and non-spam (ham) categories
Open Access Publishing in High-Energy Physics
No full textThe goal of Open Access (OA) is to grant anyone, anywhere and anytime free access to the results of scientific research. The High-Energy Physics (HEP) community has pioneered OA with its ?pre-print culture?: the mass mailing, first, and the online posting, later, of preliminary versions of its articles. After almost half a century of widespread dissemination of pre-prints, the time is ripe for the HEP community to explore OA publishing. Among other possible models, a sponsoring consortium appears as the most viable option for a transition of HEP peer-reviewed literature to OA. A Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) is proposed as a central body which would remunerate publishers for the peer-review service, effectively replacing the ?reader-pays? model of traditional subscriptions with an ?author-side? funding. Funding to SCOAP3 would come from HEP funding agencies and library consortia through a re-direction of subscriptions. This model is discussed in details together with a quantitative description of the HEP publishing landscape leading to a practical proposal for a seamless transition of HEP peer-reviewed literature to OA publishing
Disclosing Freedom of Information Releases
No full textThe Freedom of Information (FOI) Acts passed in 2000 in England and Wales and in 2002 in Scotland require organisations, including UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI), to provide requested information within certain conditions. The JISC Information Governance Gateway (JIGG) project aims to provide a single online gateway into information and resources related to HEIs\u27 compliance with information governance legislation, including FOI. One of the project\u27s objectives is to provide dissemination of the FOI disclosure logs by a web search within the gateway and also using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). It is hoped this will assist HEI records management practitioners in sharing their experiences of dealing with FOI requests, and lead to future collaborations within a wider community. This paper describes the development of a JIGG FOI Application Profile as a \u27template\u27 for FOI disclosure log entries, and its subsequent translation into a practical application
Automatic Sentiment Analysis in On-line Text
No full textThe growing stream of content placed on the Web provides a huge collection of textual resources. People share their experiences on-line, ventilate their opinions (and frustrations), or simply talk just about anything. The large amount of available data creates opportunities for automatic mining and analysis. The information we are interested in this paper, is how people feel about certain topics. We consider it as a classification task: their feelings can be positive, negative or neutral. A sentiment isn\u27t always stated in a clear way in the text; it is often represented in subtle, complex ways. Besides direct expression of the user\u27s feelings towards a certain topic, he or she can use a diverse range of other techniques to express his or her emotions. On top of that, authors may mix objective and subjective information about a topic, or write down thoughts about other topics than the one we are investigating. Lastly, the data gathered from the World Wide Web often contains a lot of noise. All of this makes the task of automatic recognition of the sentiment in on-line text more difficult. We will give an overview of various techniques used to tackle the problems in the domain of sentiment analysis, and add some of our own results
The Project of the Italian Culture Portal and its Development. A Case Study: Designing a Dublin Core Application Profile for Interoperability and Open Distribution of Cultural Contents
No full textIn September 2004 the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) committed to Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (SNS) the scientific and technical project for the Italian Culture Portal. The project was delivered during 2005, together with a prototype which had the function to verify and test the project\u27s issues and has been provided as reference for the implementation. In 2006 MiBAC selected, through a public competition, the IT company Reply for developing the Portal and Electa Napoli for providing the editorial office and plan. The Portal is now under development and will be delivered during 2007. SNS is presently working as consultant of MiBAC to give support to the whole staff employed in the fulfilment of the Portal and to help in the difficult activity of the mapping of various resources to be harvested and published in the Portal. This paper illustrates the project of the Italian Culture Portal delivered by SNS, describing in particular the solutions adopted for guaranteeing the interoperability, accessibility and usability tasks. One of the main objectives of the Portal is to offer open access to information on the ?Italian Culture?, which is a wide, evolving concept comprehensive of tangible and un-tangible cultural patrimony. Resources pertaining to this vast and complex domain are therefore of very different kinds and formats, moreover, they are codified following different schemas. For guaranteeing the interoperability among such cultural resources, a Dublin Core Application Profile has been specifically designed for the Portal. An official publication of this AP is currently under development: it has been recently refined and improved on the basis of the first mapping experiences and is anticipated in this contribute in this updated form
On the Evolution of Computer Terminology and the SPOT On-Line Dictionary Project
No full textIn this paper we discuss the issue of ICT terminology and translations of specific technical terms. We also present SPOT - a new on-line dictionary of computer terminology. SPOT\u27s web platform is adaptable to any language and/or field. We hope that SPOT will become an open platform for discussing controversial computer terms (and their translations into Czech) among professionals. The resulting on-line computer dictionary is freely available to the general public, university teachers, students, editors and professional translators. The dictionary includes some novel features, such as presenting translated terms used in several different contexts - a feature highly appreciated namely by users lacking technical knowledge for deciding which of the dictionary terms being offered should be used
Enhancing Traditional Media Services Utilising Lessons Learnt from Successful Social Media Applications - Case Studies and Framework
No full textThe paper presents a framework for describing electronic media services. The framework was created by utilising earlier models and case studies of successful social media applications. Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace were analysed because they are among the most popular sites in the world and they highlight different aspects of social media applications. The proposed model consists of two main parts: Concept and system, and Content and user. Both of them were further divided into four subgroups. With the help of a radar view, various applications can be described and compared and their further development opportunities identified. A prototype application, StorySlotMachine, is used as a case example, where the framework is used
Multimedia Modular Training Packages by EUAIN
No full textThe European Accessible Information Network (EUAIN) was established to support the move to incorporate accessibility within mainstream content processing environments. EUAIN has brought together a considerable base of knowledge that has now been structured into a series of training modules and curricula which are intended to meet the real needs at this point in time.In this paper we outline how the EUAIN training and learning framework is primarily intended to provide support for everyone who is directly involved in digital content creation and document distribution channels. This target audience requires general courses and training materials as well as domain-specific materials. These general training materials include information about digital document standards and formats, accessibility guidelines and different kinds of publishers and distribution channels. Also important is knowledge about accessibility and alternative forms of presentation that fulfil special requirements for print impaired people. The curricula are illustrated by good practices of accessible content publishing and good examples of accessible digital documents. The specific training materials are addressed to different branches of publishing (books, newspapers, magazines, etc) and content creators (multimedia content designers, web designers, authors of e- learning content). A significant part of the materials are curricula that demonstrate tools and techniques for accessible content processing. Additionally, the training materials are in modular form to allow them to be adopted within courses and programs to meet the requirements of particular groups. These modular materials are also extensible and scalable, and it is our intention that many new curricula will be developed using this ever-growing resource base. Indeed, the newly-established PRO-ACCESS project is disseminating this information across the publishing industries