PATHS at the eChallenges conference
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The PATHS project is a 3-year EU-funded project involving 6 partners across 5 countries. The project aims to introduce personalized paths into digital cultural heritage collections to provide more engaging access to large volumes of online material. The PATHS system enriches metadata through natural language processing and links items within collections and to external resources. It provides various tools for browsing, searching and creating paths. Two rounds of user evaluations found the path creation tools and search mechanisms were well received. Outcomes include the PATHS API and potential commercialization of components and consultancy services.
PATHS at the eChallenges conference
- 1. PATHS: Personalising access to digital cultural heritage spaces Kate Fernie MDR Partners (Consulting) Ltd UK Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 2. 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 3. Motivation 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 4. 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 5. Research Objectives • 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 6. User-centred development methodology What do people want from digital libraries / how might they use paths? Users 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 7. PATHS system The system consists of web-services, data storage and an end-user interface. Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 8. Enriched metadata The PATHS system is based on content from Europeana that has been processed and enriched. Our aims were to: • Linguistic processing – enrich text metadata with additional keywords and index terms • Thematic organisation – find a vocabulary to use to organise the items in the collection automatically • Intra-collection links – to create a network of links between related items in the collection • Links to Wikipedia – create links to contextual information in Wikipedia • Links to websites – use Sentiment Analysis to establish links to closely related external websites Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 9. Demo • Two cycles of user evaluation of prototype systems have been completed • Here follows a quick demo of the main features Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 10. Published Paths Paths can be created by experts or any registered user Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 11. Path following Continue on this path Description by path creator Users can simply follow a path in a similar way to reading a narrative or viewing an exhibition. Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 12. Encouraging exploration of the collection Going off the path and exploring the links Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 13. Different user scenarios Classroom activities Curated collections Leisure users Local historians Paths Researchers • PATHS system incorporates tools to support different activity levels from path following to active exploration and use of the contents Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 14. Searching the collections There is a conventional keyword search Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 15. Tools for browsing: thesaurus Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 16. Browsing the collection as a tag cloud Same taxonomy, different view Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 17. Collection overviews: topic map Same taxonomy different view Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 18. Case 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.” eCult Dialogue Day, 19th September 2013, Dubrovnik Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 19. Creating paths Users who have registered and logged into the system can add items to their workspace and create their own paths Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 20. 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 21. Workspace You can add items to your workspace until you’re ready to start creating a path or editing one of your existing paths Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 22. Editing paths You can drag and drop items from your workspace to your path, add and edit nodes Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 23. 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 Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 24. 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. Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 25. Outcomes • 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 • A hybrid model combines RDF/SPARQL with RDB/SQL to deliver performance and robustness • Web services support users, path creation and editing, querying, interacting with topic hierarchies and a SolrProxy service. • Published set of results from the user evaluation trials Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 26. Outcomes • Potential business benefits include: – Improving user experiences when searching large collections of data (more than a million items) and to help users discover content which is more relevant – To implement tools which automatically improve and enrich the quality of the item metadata that is available – Provision of tools that enable users to collect content, annotations and background material to create a story, trail or exhibition, or to document the sources used in a piece of research Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 27. Route from research to market • We’re currently in the final stage of our research and development cycle • The PATHS API is available for testing and system documentation is available • Market study is currently underway to understand the future market potential. Initial findings suggest: • Potential demand is for stand-alone components • and for consultancy services on NLP and evaluation studies • Suggests that the route to market will be as a suite of tools for implementation in digital library systems Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS
- 28. Thanks for your attention! [email protected] http://www.paths-project.eu Twitter @PATHS_project The research leading to these results was carried out as part of the PATHS project funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme. Session 8b: 10th October 2013 eChallenges e-2013 Copyright 2013 PATHS