Digital Libraries

No.7, June 1996
University of Library and Information Science
Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki 305, Japan

  1. Information Analysis in the Net: The Interspace of the Twenty-First Century
    Bruce R. Schatz, University of Illinois
  2. The Front-End and Back-End Functions of the Digital Library
    Takeo Yamamoto, University of Library and Information Science
  3. Automated Generation of Conceptual Network for Visualization of Problem Structure using Digital Library
    Konomu Dobashi, Shinichi Nakasuka, Hiroyuki Yamauchi, Koichi Hori, Ryuki Tachibana, The University of Tokyo
  4. WWW-based Digital Library for Heterogeneous Information Resources
    Shunji ICHIYAMA, Toshiyuki KAMIYA, and Haruko MIYAMOTO, NEC Corporation, Kansai C&C Research Laboratories
  5. Scholarly Publishing and Information Choice on the Internet
    Irene Langner (Bonn University), Hiromichi Hashizume (NACSIS)
  6. A Book Selection System for Children's Book from the Viewpoint of Development Task
    Koichi Tabata ,Shigeo Sugimoto ,Tetsuo Sakaguchi, University of Library and Information Science

Information Analysis in the Net: The Interspace of the Twenty-First Century

Bruce R. Schatz
University of Illinois
NCSA, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801,
phone: +1-217-244-0651, fax: +1-217-244-2909, email: bschatz@ncsa.uiuc.edu
http://www.grainger.uiuc.edu/dli/

ABSTRACT

The Net of the Twenty-First Century will have a very different character than at present, which will see the beginnings of enabling ordinary people to solve their information problems. The past ten years have seen browsing hit the masses, so that document fetching is now standard. The next ten years will see search hit the masses, so that distributed repositories will become standard. This trend is already well underway with the federal R&D program in Digital Libraries. But to be ready for the world of 2005, a plan for major R&D in Analysis Environments must be implemented, so that it will become possible for information correlation to become standard in the years beyond.

The Interspace is a vision of what the Internet will become, where the users cross-correlate information in multiple ways from multiple sources. In architecture, the Interspace is an applications environment for interconnecting spaces for manipulating information, much as the Internet is a protocol environment for interconnecting networks for transmitting data. Effectively implementing this environment will require building operating systems incorporating both computer science research on distributed objects and information science research on semantic retrieval. To realize this new technology, a federal R&D strategy will be necessary to support basic research, prototype development, and testbed deployment with the goal of demonstrating feasibility of new analysis environments in the laboratory and evaluating viability of new information applications in the field with real users and real information.

Keywords:

information retrieval, digital libraries, network information systems, analysis environments, federal R&D policy, Interspace, the Net

The Front-End and Back-End Functions of the Digital Library

Takeo Yamamoto
University of Library and Information Science

Abstract:

The "back-end" and "front-end" functions of a digital library are defined and discussed. The back-end functions are those which support the function of the library as a depository of a large amount of digital material. The front-end functions are: (1) Supplying, managing and renewing network access devices and software, (2) User education and on-line support, (3) Contract with data publishers, collecting charge, sequring fund for use charge and payment, and (4) Proxy search, SDI, and protecting privacy of use. It is pointed out that Function (3) is important for the digital library to be an active player in the future flow of information. The importance of privacy of usage information both for the individual user and for the corporate user on internet is pointed out, and the possiblity of the digital library, equipped with Function (4), becoming the protector of the privacy is discussed.

Keywords:

Digital Library, Front-End Function (of a digital library), Back-End Function (of a digital library), Information Flow, Database Usage Contract, Database Use Charge, Proxy Search, Protection of Privacy of Use.

Automated Generation of Conceptual Network for Visualization of Problem Structure using Digital Library

Konomu Dobashi, Shinichi Nakasuka, Hiroyuki Yamauchi
Interdisciplinary Course on Advanced Science and Technology,
School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo

Koichi Hori, Ryuki Tachibana
Aeronautics and Astronautics Course, School of School of
Engineering, The University of Tokyo

Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (Hori Lab)
The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153
tel:03-3481-4486, fax:03-3481-4585, dobashi@ai.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstracts

It is important to visualize problem structure in very large complex problem. For example, a key to solution of earth environmental problem is to capture the relation among problems. For this purpose, we implemented the system that generate conceptual network by eliciting terms from hyperdocuments(tagged text corpora) and maps conceptual networks to visualize the relations in two dimensional space automatically. Our system proposes how to elicit and visualize hidden relations in earth environmental problems using analysis of hyperdocuments and functions of digital library. We also show the results of the experiments by subjects.

Keywords

conceptual network, visualizaiton, digital library, problem solving, creativity

WWW-based Digital Library for Heterogeneous Information Resources

Shunji ICHIYAMA, Toshiyuki KAMIYA, and Haruko MIYAMOTO
NEC Corporation, Kansai C&C Research Laboratories
1-4-24 Shiromi Chuuou-ku Osaka 945 JAPAN
Phone: +81-6-945-3217, Fax: +81-6-945-3096,
E-Mail: {ichiyama, kamiya, miyamoto}@obp.cl.nec.co.jp

Abstract

ĦĦThis paper describes a WWW-based digital library system which has three main features: (1) multi protocol concurrent uniform retrieval method to access diverse and heterogeneous information resources such as OPAC servers and directory search servers on the network, (2) assist function for selecting suitable data from a large amount of searchable data with graphical visualization of retrieved data with automatic selection of classification axes, and title display with ranking, (3) retrieved data visualization for easy browsing by displaying data in the 3D virtual space with stacks by using VRML. Main goal of the system is to offer the users an easy information access method to get appropriate data from many kinds of huge amount of the data through the Internet.

Keywords

Digital Library, WWW, Information Retrieval, Information Visualization, VRML, Virtual Stacks, Concurrent Uniform Retrieval

Scholarly Publishing and Information Choice on the Internet


Irene Langner (Bonn University), Hiromichi Hashizume (NACSIS)

Abstract

Individual scholarly publishing on the Internet has constantly grown in recent years. This trend poses considerable challenges to the parties involved in traditional (journal type) academic publishing and gives rise to new problems of information selection and acknowledgement of academic achievements. In this paper we present a survey of different patterns of current scholarly publishing activities as well as patterns of information choice on the Internet.

We show examples of how traditional players in the publishing process such as academic societies, publishers and libraries are trying to meet these challenges by engaging in electronic publishing activities themselves, and finally sketch a desirable future scenario of networked scholarly publishing, resource sharing and preserving, considering some possible (new) roles for authors, academic societies, digital libraries and various other kinds of intermediaries. What could be appropriate steps in such a direction?

A Book Selection System for Children's Book from the Viewpoint of Development Task

Koichi Tabata ,Shigeo Sugimoto ,Tetsuo Sakaguchi
University of Library and Information Science
1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305 JAPAN
Tel: +81-298-52-4326 Fax: +81-298-52-4326
Email: {tabata,sugimoto,saka}@ulis.ac.jp

Abstract

The term Developmental Task means a set of functional and mental aspects of abilities which children obtain as they grow up. Children learn various things from reading, which include important mental aspects for their sound development. This paper presents a reading selection system which helps parents select books for their children from the viewpoint of the developmental task. Books are analyzed based on ten developmental tasks,which include to know a sense of humor, to respect personality of other persons, and so on. The information got from the multivariate statistical analysis is visualized and presented to the parents for their books selection.

Keyword

children's book,book selection,development task, multivariate statistical analysis