Managing Authority Lists for Customized Linking and Visualization

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Collaborative Project: Managing Authority Lists for Customized Linking and Visualization: A Service for the National STEM Digital Library

Gregory Colati, Tufts University Gregory Crane, Tufts University Sayeed Choudhury, Johns Hopkins University

Proposal funded by the National STEM Digital Library

Proposal Summary: We propose two broad classes of service to the NSDL. First, we will provide automatic linking services that automatically bind key words and phrases to supplementary information. Such automatic linking services are already in place in the Perseus Digital Library. These services will help students, professionals outside a particular discipline, and the interested public to read documents full of unfamiliar technical terms and concepts. Astronomy students and curious amateurs may need to see expansions of some acronyms --- e.g., MACHO: massive compact halo object, such as neutron stars and brown dwarfs --- or pictures of "Kuiper belt objects." These services can be of particular help to undergraduates as they shift from textbooks to scientific literature: the student struggling with research papers on bioluminescence, for example, will be able to locate information about particular chemical processes or relevant species of echinoderms. Second, we will base automatic linking on authority control of names and terms and on links among different authority lists such as thesauri, glossaries, encyclopedias, subject hierarchies, and object catalogues. For our Services for a Customizable Authority Linking Environment (SCALE) to support all levels of reading in the National STEM Digital Library, we propose to

create and maintain authority lists of technical terms and concepts harvested from OAI metadata, extracted from full text, and imported from existing authority lists
extend our current automatic hypertext capabilities to embed glosses of technical terms and links to related passages within HTML, PDF, and XML documents in the NSDL
provide term detection and document linking through SOAP-based web services
evaluate the interface to and functionality of our service in cooperation with the National Virtual Observatory
customize the service through explicit user configuration and adaptive learning of preferences
collect annotations on the quality of links to improve precision and provide a training set for future systems

Much of the work at the Tufts University Perseus Digital Library Project and the Johns Hopkins Digital Knowledge Center --- both funded under DLI-2 --- has already focused on exploiting various kinds of authority lists (gazetteers, biographical dictionaries, dictionaries, glossaries of technical terms, and name authority files) for the automatic generation of hypertext links and for visualizations such as automatically generated dynamic maps and timelines. Such link generation complements the current practice of automatic identification and aggregation of citations. This proposal sets out to augment and transfer our technology for managing authority lists, converting this from a research effort to an institutionalized service serving a wider community. The support requested will allow two complementary shifts. First, we will be able to extend and refine our existing software base. While much can be done with the text matching and categorization algorithms, our main focus will be upon developing refined user tools that NSDL participants can use over the Web. Second, we will transfer functionality from its current home in our research labs to Tufts' Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) and Johns Hopkins' Digital Knowledge Center (DKC). This move is a natural one and continues an on-going partnership with shared technology resources: for the past four years, the Tufts University archives (now DCA), Perseus, and the DKC have collaborated closely in various projects and technologies. The Principal Investigator, Gregory Colati, is the Director of the Digital Collections and Archives group that will provide the long-term home for this service. Gregory Crane, head of the Perseus Digital Library Project and PI on the DLI-2 grant "A Digital Library for the Humanities," is co-PI and responsible for overseeing the technical development and transfer of the technology. The Johns Hopkins PI, Sayeed Choudhury, is the Director of the Digital Knowledge Center and PI on the DLI-2 "Digital Workflow Management," and will manage the evaluation of the service and development of adaptive authority linking technology. Alexander Szalay, professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins and head of the NSF-funded National Virtual Observatory, is co-PI and will involve the NVO in incorporating its knowledge bases for astronomy and evaluating the system for the NVO's audiences from K-12 to higher education.

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