Happy Easter 2010
Guess this is a pretty special Easter holiday this year; at least for me …
Two months ago I’ve published as a book my PhD Thesis on usability of information discovery in Semantic Digital Libraries; few days ago I received my copy of the hardcover version.
This is also the iPad weekend, and my book is also published in the ePUB format, which makes it iPad-ready.
There also other things on the horizon, of which I will let you know pretty soon…
Therefore, I would like to wish you all a very Happy Easter.
(Psst, there is 25% discount on my recent book as an Easter gift)
New book on Semantic Digital Libraries
Probably you heard by now, but if you didn’t – here is the big news: I have published a second book on Semantic Digital Libraries: Improving Usability of Information Discovery with Semantic and Social Services.
Compared to the previous one, it is not a compilation of articles contributed by myself and my colleagues; this book is based on my thesis. The book covers most important aspects of what Semantic Digital Libraries are and what is that they can offer. I present a very thorough review of literature describing various advanced digital library projects and components. Based on the identified requirements I propose architecture, data model and classification of ontologies for semantic digital libraries. I describe two example information retrieval and knowledge management techniques, which utilize semantic web and social networking technologies. Finally, I briefly describe the JeromeDL system and provide very detailed and thorough analyses of evaluation comparing usability of end-user services offered by a semantic digital library with those offered by a classic digital library.
The book is available for purchase at lulu.com.
Since I understand that not everyone could afford buying a complete, hardcover version, I have prepared an array of different versions (see below) of this book, ranging from Hardcover through Paperback through E-Book. There is also a lite version of this book, which does not contain the attachments.
| Hardcover | Paperback | E-Book | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full version | ISBN: 978-1-4452-7770-7 €50 |
ISBN: 978-1-4452-8243-5 €30 |
PDF €15 |
| Lite version* | ISBN: 978-1-4452-8864-2 €40 |
Lite Paperback version €20 |
ePUB** €15
Amazon Kindle $14.99+Taxes  |
* NOTE: Lite version does not contain appendix
** Open standard format, compatible with, e.g., iPad DRM-enabled, compatible with Adobe Digital Editions
I hope your will find this book a good read and very helpful for your studies and work.
(Pssst, come and visit our Facebook group tomorrow: you will learn how to get the book cheaper over the next couple of days)
New “home” for Semantic Digital Libraries
January was madness: I was hoping for this year to be more relaxed after all the rush with thesis and the company in 2009. But it did not start like one; guess I should blame my workholic attitude. Maybe I should do what my supervisor once did: hang a note (so I can see it) saying “Just say NO”.
I have been asked many times recently about materials regarding Semantic Digital Libraries but could not really point to just one location. Yes, there are all my papers at http://library.deri.ie (which happens to be down quite often ever since I left the institute), and many of my presentations are on slideshare, and than there is my book, and my thesis, and my tutorials … I realized that there has to be (finally) a place where I can gather and reference all of that.
And here it is: http://semdl.info/. At the moment you will find there all major presentations I did related to the topic, archive information about tutorials we gave (together with complete slides from most of them), and references to two of my books on Semantic Digital Libraries. Most likely I will use our infrastructure to set up a JeromeDL with all the papers on the subject and reference them there.
But, it’s not the end: I do not want it to be a one-man show. I hope that all other people that are interested in the subject will help me to fill in the site with more materials and make it alive (someone already suggested a blog 
). Please let me know if you want to join the effort.
My PhD Viva Voce on Video
Few days ago I found enough time to write about the last stages of my PhD process, namely my viva voce and what followed afterwards.
A friend of mine, Lukasz, told me that he still had the videos he recorded during my presentation. He was so kind to publish them on Vimeo.
Here they are:
Sebastian’s PhD Deffence 1 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.
Tutorial on Semantic Digital Libraries at ICSD’09
Last week I have travelled to Trento, Italy.
I was invited by the organizers of the International Conference for the Semantic Web and Digital Libraries (ICSD’09) to give a full-day tutorial on Semantic Digital Libraries.
The key goal of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on solutions that span together these two worlds: Semantic Web and Digital Libraries. Even though these two research lines have so much in common, getting a joint mind set proved to be quite bit of a problem.
My PhD Viva Voce (a.k.a PhD thesis defense)
Few months ago (in May) I had to face the most important point on my way to PhD – the viva voce (i.e., “thesis defense”).
I could not get myself around posting about that, mostly due to many activities related to our startup and to the final procedures related to the thesis itself.
Now, as my PhD thesis manuscript has reached the camera ready version, has been copy-edited (thanks Miechelle and Andrzej), printed, hard-bound (thanks Lukasz and Iza), and submitted (thanks Hilda for taking over from there), I can finally devote some free mind-cycles to a not-so-strictly-phd-related matters, e.g., taking care about my blog, which was not “watered” for quite some time.
As it was getting closer and closer to the this point in time, I felt like I had to finally let you all know how it went. So here is the story; I will take from where I left it in May, a week before the viva voce.
We (Ewelina was with me all the way to support and help me) flew in to Cork and then went up to Galway just before the weekend (May 16th-17th). I longed to see all our friends in Galway, but … first things first – I had to polish up my presentation for the viva (thanks Stefan for your valuable comments).
On Saturday we picked up Daniel Schwabe from the Shannon airport and visited the Bunratty Castle near Limerick. On Sunday, my second reviewer – prof. Henryk Krawczyk, arrived in Galway.
Next week: my PhD defense (Semantic Digital Libraries )
The day has come to wrap up the research I have been doing for the last couple of years. After closing the write up and submitting my thesis in February this year, my PhD defense is approaching very soon.
Here is some information about it. If you are around Galway next Monday – you are welcome to come and watch my presentation at the open session.
When: May, 18th 2009
Where: Conference Room, DERI, NUI Galway (IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland)
Schedule:
- 10.00 – 10.30 – Open session
- 10.30 – 11.30 – Closed session – you & the 3 examiners (fingers crossed!)
- 11.30 – 12.00 – Closed session – examiners only
Abstract:
Until recently, libraries were the prime source of information for both students and scholars. Now this information is published using online with digital library systems. Current digital libraries have to provide efficient information discovery solutions to adapt to the fast development of new technologies; they also have to cater to the current generation of students. The research on the Semantic Web and online social networks contributes to the digital libraries domain by supporting interoperability with formal semantics, improving interlinking of information and encouraging users to contribute and share knowledge.
Semantic technologies support more flexible information management than that offered by classic digital libraries. Information on library resources can be gathered from heterogeneous sources, including contributions from the communities of library users. These annotations, combined with legacy data, build the foundations for more efficient information discovery in digital libraries.
This thesis reviews architectures, abstract models, metadata standards, and various technologies for building digital library management systems. We derive requirements for advanced digital libraries and propose an architecture model and a set of ontologies for semantic digital libraries. Finally, we present information discovery services using semantic and social technologies, and the prototype implementation of a semantic digital library that fulfills the aforementioned requirements.
Our hypothesis is that semantic and social technologies applied to a digital library management system deliver more efficient information discovery solutions, while the library users become more satisfied and can remember more of the information they have learned when using the library. We present two information discovery services that use semantic and social technologies; we also show a prototype of a semantic digital library. We support our hypothesis by discussing the results of initial evaluations of both services and a comprehensive evaluation of the semantic digital library prototype.
If you are interested in doing a PhD yourself check a collection online PhD programs.
Why do I prefer ntriples?
A thought experiment (actually I had to do that just a minute ago): you have a number of publications backed up from JeromeDL. Each publication is in a separate folder, named as an ID of this publication. Inside you will find dublin core file (XML), couple of binary files (PDFs and such), and RDF description of the resource.
The task: Map a title to each resource using anything you can get on MacOSX or Linux.
Solution: The RDF description in JeromeDL is exported using ntriples format. Which means – one statement per line. Therefore a solution is a very simple workflow:
- find the RDF files
- prepare grep command
- execute
Which on any UNIX system will translate into:
find . -name "rdf.abstract.ntriples" | awk '{print "grep \"xontology#hasTitle\"",$0}' | sh -
Teaser: Try to do that spending only as little time as I did with either RDF/XML serialization or/and Windows. Good luck.
What is keeping me so busy recently? (1)
One of the things missing in my PhD Thesis was a chapter on an architecture of a generic SemDL. But before one can move to SemDL architecture, first you need to understand the research in “classic” DLs, and what are the plans for the future. In order to do that, I had to:
1) Take this pile of almost 100 articles on digital libraries architectures, read them, annotate them
2) Compile all this information into a mindmap
3) Write up the results into a missing chapter in my thesis
Why social Internet in Poland might not be a good idea ?
The response I got at that time was – that it would be a bad ideas – as free comments will lead only to “spam” texts, or worse – comments expressed with bad language, etc. In other words useless.
Shortly after I started developing social features for JeromeDL in DERI, I have also added this “blog-around” feature. Everyone was pleased.
Why?
Because in the social Internet around the world, your comments on blogs present who you are, and people tend to express themselves politely. Hence, their comments are if not useful, at least nice to the others.
Compare comments on Flickr with comments on wp.pl (large polish information portal). Huuge difference, right?
I am in the process of evaluating my solutions (both semantic and social) for digital libraries; these that have been implemented in JeromeDL. I have sent information around, using any possible information channels I could think about. Most of them were social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, GoldenLine; and mailing lists of all known to me social and semantic web groups.
One of my colleagues, helping me with the evaluation, suggested I should also send this information to the new and fast growing social networking site called nasza-klasa.pl.
I have to confess, I was not too much convinced to this idea; but since I wanted more people to help me, reluctantly, I have sent the information also there. The fora of my universities (GUT and NUIG) and the high school.
Shortly after, a very stupid (and frustrated, if you ask me) comment appeared at the GUT forum.
For me it is a clear example that social solutions build in Poland cannot be left without moderation.
Sad, isn’t it?
—
16 January 2008 17:46
As an after match of this stupid conversation, sadly enough supported by other people with strange attitude, and having no answer from the moderators of the system, I have decided to do the only reasonable thing – remove my profile from that site, since it was impossible to continue the conversation as it went.
Shame on you nasza-klasa.pl.
—
16 January 2008 23:59
Maciej’ve just sent me a copy of the conversation that continues on nasza-klasa.pl. It is nice to see that other people share my understanding of “cultural” conversation.
I could re-register to the portal – but I will not do that.
Consider this my protest against zero-reaction from moderators.
I do not claim that people who behave wrong should be removed out of the sudden, but tuning in to close a pointless conversation would be enough.
As Jaroslaw said – I removed my account as being part of the social network means for me to identify with the people there, and use the SN for the purpose. If I cannot talk to other people without being abused for using technical language, what is the purpose of using such a SN? Good luck nasza-klasa – but you just lost a very strong supporter of social networking. I am getting back to Facebook, LinkedIn, and GoldenLine – see you all there.
—
17 January 2008 09:28
As I can see – the discussion continues. This time the feather was taken by some weird guy who cannot even spell “evaluations” – congratulations – how such a person can be subscribed to university forum? The most funny is that he claims that my evaluation was set up only for computer science; well, it was not. It was set up for people who have some more understanding of the current Internet. The truly sad is that the people who felt offended by not understanding my post were actually computer scientists (or so they claim). And of course, he could not write even a short post without using “french” (yeah, I still know what “chgw” means)
Evaluation of social and semantic technologies in digital libraries
Please feel free to enter http://q.digime.name/ and help us with evaluating our prototype solutions.
