PATHS at the eCult dialogue day 2013

Personalised paths through digital library collec4ons

Kate Fernie, MDR Partners (Consulting) Ltd

eCult Dialogue Day, 19th September 2013, Dubrovnik

PATHS: project basics

•  A STREP funded under the FP7 programme •  36 month project - 1/1/2011 to 31/12/2013 •  6 partners in 5 countries

•  University of Sheffield •  Universidad del Pais Vasco •  i-sieve technologies Ltd •  Asplan Viak Internet Ltd •  MDR Partners •  (Alinari 24 Ora Spa)

http://www.paths-project.eu

Introduction

Large quantities of digital cultural heritage material have become available online


Museum exhibitions offer narratives organised by theme yet digital libraries are often limited to a simple keyword search

Introducing paths

We’re introducing the idea of paths into digital library collections

This is not a new idea – some online examples are Walden’s Paths, Trailmeme and Timelines


We think we can do more

PATHS Research areas: •  Information access: Methods for exploring and

navigating digital cultural heritage collections, including paths, topic maps, tag-clouds, hierarchical concept structures and recommender services.

•  Natural Language Processing: analysing item metadata to improve indexing, enable use of ontologies, and generating links between items in the collection and with external background material.

•  Educational informatics: adapting to individual learners in relation to being directed and being allowed the freedom to explore autonomously


User-centred development

Users

What do people want from digital libraries / how might they use paths?

Gather user requirements and behaviours

Develop prototype system

Evaluate and test system with potential end users

http://www.paths-project.eu/eng/Resources/User-Requirements-Analysis

Prototype

http://explorer.paths-project.eu/

The content is from Europeana, enriched by the project team using NLP techniques

So what are paths?

Paths can be created by experts or any registered user on any topic or theme they can be linear or include branches and they can intersect with other paths

User interpretations of paths

Paths

Search history

Information seeking journey

Linked metadata

Starting point / way in

Through route

Augmented reality

Learning process

Transaction process

Hypertext trails

Encouraging exploration and enriching data

Process oriented


Path following

Description by path creator

Continue on this path

Users can simply follow a path in a similar way to reading a narrative or viewing an exhibition.

Encouraging exploration of the collections

Tempting users to deviate from the path by exploring the links

Different user scenarios

Paths

Classroom activities

Leisure users

Local historians

Curated collections

Researchers


•  PATHS system incorporates tools to support different activity levels from path following to active exploration and use of the contents

Searching the collections


The prototype includes keyword searches

Tools for browsing: thesaurus


Browsing the collection as a tag cloud

Same taxonomy, different view


Collection overviews: topic map

Same taxonomy different view


User study

“Imagine you are a student who has been asked to create a path as part of a university assignment. You have been asked to use primary source materials to create a mini online exhibition suitable for a target group within the general public and/or school visitor categories. Your goal is to introduce a historical or art-focussed topic in a popular, accessible way, and to encourage further use and exploration of cultural heritage resources.”


Creating paths

Users who have registered and logged into the system can add items to their workspace and create their own paths

Finding items

Users can find items to include in their path by any of the methods above – selecting from paths, search results or by browsing using the thesaurus, tag cloud or topic map

Workspace

You can add items to your workspace until you’re ready to start creating a path or editing one of your existing paths

Editing paths

This is an unpublished path that I’m still working on

Drag and drop from workspace

I’ve created a new branch by dragging and dropping an item from the workspace

Editing nodes

Users can add their own descriptions of the item nodes on a path which can include links to external resources, notes or exercises

Adding text nodes

Users can also add text only nodes to a path for example exercises, notes, discussion

User evaluation


•  Second round of evaluation trials just completed •  User feedback on the prototype systems has been very

good: very positive feedback on path creation tools and search mechanisms

•  About to start field trials and evaluation of a mobile app.

Technology and exploitation

•  PATHS has a flexible modular architecture consisting of web-services, data storage and end-user interfaces

•  Natural language processing of the metadata allows search capabilities to be enhanced

•  Web services support users, path creation and editing, querying, interacting with topic hierarchies and a recommender service

•  Components intended to be suitable for implementation in any digital library system

•  Market study and exploitation this autumn


[email protected]

Thanks for your attention!

http://www.paths-project.eu

Twitter @PATHS_project


PATHS at the eCult dialogue day 2013

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