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)

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)

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.

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.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 2 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 3 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 4 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 5 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 6 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 7 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 8 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Sebastian’s PhD Defence 9 from Lukasz Porwol on Vimeo.

Now, you can grill me ….

If you are interested in doing a PhD yourself check a collection online PhD programs.

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.

I have been promoting the idea of Semantic Digital Libraries for 7 years, which is almost as long as any attempts where made in that subject. No wonder, this conference was an important milestone in my research (and evangelization) agenda. Together with my team, I built one of the first (if not the first) prototypes of a semantic digital libraries – the JeromeDL system, gathered a small community around it, presented a series of tutorials on the subject and eventually, published a book on Semantic Digital Libraries. Invitation to this conference was a very nice closure to my PhD research, an important period in the life of each researcher.

I am very pleased with the overall outcome of this edition of my tutorial:

• The turnout for both sessions (presentation and hands-on) was quite nice.
• The questions were very interesting and encouraging.
• I was surprised how smootly the hands-on session went: usually we had all sorts of problems trying to set up JeromeDL/BRICKS/Fedora in such a short time.

I wish there was a video recorded (maybe next time ?), but I hope the slides will do.

Tutorial on Semantic Digital Libraries at ICSD’09

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.

On the Monday morning, May 18th, 2009, we were all set for the viva.

At first there were only few people, including my reviewers.

The presentation went smoothly;

Then the questions came: first from the audience. However, there was only one from Maciej. I still wonder why? Were people afraid to ask difficult questions (if yes – thanks guys&gals) ? Or, was I talking rubbish all along ?

And then, that was where the rubber actually hit the road (to be frank, what happened so far was just a pony-tail show) – reviewers (cross-)examination.

After a short break (for the committee to agree on the “roasting strategy”) …

I was invited to answer many tough (and most often quite just) questions. But the result was as expected, although it gave me some sweat to get through to it anyway,

I have passed the PhD exam.

The events that followed were all about saying “thank you” to those who supported me and showing how glad I was to have it all finished (well almost, do read on).

There was also a side effect of my PhD viva voce: prof. Kraczyk, the president of the Gdansk University of Technology, Poland, visited DERI NUI Galway and met with all PhD students and interns that worked with me in the Corrib Cluster project I set up.

Corrib project ran for few years based on the collaboration agreement between GUT and DERI NUI Galway. I have to confess it was a very nice wrap up of this project, and a chance to set foundations for the future collaboration.

• To update presented ontologies to reflect issues risen during the exam.
• To provide a section describing what changes (to the collection of ontologies and the proposed architecture of SemDL) are required to use semantic digital library system, e.g., JeromeDL, in a different domain – for example medical domain.
• To extend the conclusions chapter with questions that remained unanswered regarding the SemDL domain, and wrap them into a set of research topics that could be picked up by other PhD students, including those doing online PhD programs.

It was very encouraging to hear that the results of my research were so cool, and that I should make sure people will read about them in my manuscript (and the book that will be published afterwords).
Once I got to implementing these corrections and had the manuscript checked by the copy editor, the next thing I heard was “I left your hard-bound copy of the thesis manuscript with our secretary at DERI”

I would like to once again thank everyone who supported me, Stefan (my supervisor), Daniel and prof. Krawczyk (my reviewers), and the whole DERI team and my family.

I made it – eventually

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.

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:

1. find the RDF files
2. prepare grep command
3. 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.

1) Take this pile of almost 100 articles on digital libraries architectures, read them, annotate them

DL Arch (source)
Originally uploaded by skruk

2) Compile all this information into a mindmap

DL Arch (mindmap)
Originally uploaded by skruk

3) Write up the results into a missing chapter in my thesis

My Thesis [minus] SemDL Arch (yet)
Originally uploaded by skruk