Information Access and Personalization

Georgia Koutrika provides a general description of the Information Access and Personalization cluster, its objectives and the current activities towards the completion of these objectives.

Introduction

Information stored in digital libraries needs to be accessed, integrated and individualized for any user anytime and anywhere in possibly multiple comprehensive and efficient ways. Within DELOS, Information Access in Digital Libraries is studied from three different aspects:

Information Access: interaction with a single information provider

Information stored in a source comes in different types and formats, each one with its own characteristics and peculiarities. Organization of data within an individual source and efficient and effective search performance are the key issues and are actually very closely related to each other. Different approaches exist but there is a general trend towards richer representations and languages both at the structural and at the semantic level.

Information Integration: interaction with multiple information providers

Integrated access of different sources presents particular problems due to information heterogeneity, redundancy etc. Issues such as source selection and results fusion must be considered in a range of different settings. Data provenance is often crucial to the trust that is placed in data; hence it has to be managed on a very sound basis.

Personalization: customization of information and interaction to the user

Different users have different characteristics and preferences concerning the information in which they are interested when they access a digital library. Even users with a common information need can expect to receive different results, different functionality or a different interface. Moreover, the relevant contents and interface of a digital library may be dependent on other factors as well, for example there may be device- or network-specific issues to consider.

Cluster Objectives

The cluster's objectives with respect to the aforementioned aspects are the following:

1. Promotion of knowledge about available practices in the fields of information access and personalization in digital libraries is the first goal being pursued. This will lead to a uniform understanding of problems among researchers.
2. Construction of a common, comprehensive framework for information access and personalization approaches is essential. This framework is intended to serve as a reference point for the DL area and to stimulate research.
3. Promotion of research on new information access and personalization models and methodologies.

Current Activities

The cluster has begun work towards the establishment of a common foundation for European researchers in all the aforementioned areas. Current activities are organized into the following tasks:

Task 1: Creation of Common Foundation for Information Access. Leader: CNR

This task seeks to create a common conceptual and infrastructural foundation in respect of Information Access, and is subdivided into three sub-tasks.

1. T1.1: Information and Interaction Models and Processing Schemes (CNR/ UPSXI)
2. T1.2: Metadata Models (IICM)
3. T1.3: Accessing time/locality information (CWI)

Task 2: Creation of Common Foundation for Information Integration. Leader: FORTH-ISL

Here the aim is to achieve a common conceptual and infrastructural foundation in respect of Information Integration which deals with multiple, heterogeneous DLs that need to be treated in a cohesive fashion. It is subdivided into three sub-tasks.

1. T2.1: Integrated Interaction Management Schemes (FORTH-ISL)
2. T2.2: Integrated Metadata (FORTH-ISL)
3. T2.3: Data Provenance (UEDIN)

Task 3: Creation of Common Foundation for Personalization. Leader: UOA

This task aims to create a common conceptual and infrastructural foundation with regard to Personalisation and Customisation of the behaviour of a DL system. It is subdivided into two sub-tasks.

1. T3.1: User Modelling for Personalization (TUC)
2. T3.2: Content, Service, and Interaction Personalization (UOA)

Important activities within the above tasks include the organisation of two thematic workshops. The first one will be on Personalization, (dates and location to be determined), while the second one will be on Information Access and Integration and will be organised in cooperation with the Digital Library Architecture Cluster in Dagstuhl over 29 March to 1 April 2005.

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