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 research and knowledge workers
Just had a very interesting conversation on how my research could help knowledge workers, e.g., people responsible for producing documentation in large corporations.
I have to say, I am glad that whatever I wrote here helped someone make this association with their work to my research. To be frank, when I invented notitio.us 2 years ago, knowledge workers were among those people I was thinking about.
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.
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.
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.
Looking for a Researcher – Software Developer [JeromeDL project] (position closed)
The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) is the largest semantic research organisation in the world. DERI offers a stimulating, dynamic, multi-cultural research environment with excellent ties to research groups worldwide. This is a unique opportunity to join the effort of bringing research prototypes to industry ready within DERI, in collaboration with our research and industrial partners will play a key role in making next-generation semantic computing systems a reality. DERI offers a unique opportunity to develop one’s career in the world-wide renown and industry strong research environment.
The Person
• Ability and willingness to work in a international team based environment developing state of the art software solutions on time and to specification
• Motivated and proactive attitude to take ownership and initiative in all work assignments
• Excellent analysis and problem solving skills
• Strong design, development & testing skills
• Excellent communication skills, verbal and written
• Excellent command of English, both verbal and written
• Ability to tackle wide and varied tasks
• Creative Thinking
Essential Skills
• Solid industry experience using many of the following:
• Very strong core Java
• Web based UI: JSP/Servlets/Applets/JavaScript/AJAX
• Good expertise with automated testing frameworks such as JUnit
• Good knowledge and experience with Semantic technologies
• Good knowledge of object-oriented design principles and design patterns with an understanding of their application within Java
Desirable Experience & Background (inc. qualifications):
• Knowledge/Experience with distributed systems and service-oriented design principles
• Knowledge of user interface design principles
• Experience/Knowledge of document processing and search techniques
• Experience/Knowledge of XML processing and related technologies
• A relevant post graduate degree (MSc) or relevant industrial experience
The position is full-time, located at DERI Galway. The duration of the post will be for 9 months in the first instance. The salary is commensurable with qualifications and experience. An early start date is preferable as the position is now open. A panel for future similar positions may be formed.
Informal enquiries about these positions may be made to:
Sebastian Ryszard Kruk, Researcher and Project Manager, Tel +353-91-495213 sebastian.kruk@deri.org
Application procedure: Candidates are requested to submit a covering letter, CV (Word or PDF format only) and the names and addresses of at least three and not more than five referees via e-mail to;
hr.ie@deri.org
