We describe our prototype digital library in computer science based on publications from ACM and other publishers, and the integrated client and server software devised from local development efforts (i.e., the Envision and MARIAN systems) as well as other components (e.g., Hyper-G, KMS, Mosaic, WATERS). We explain changes to curriculum and new courseware developed with the aid of this digital library, as well as our preliminary evaluation. 1 Problems Addressed Computer science students should be better prepared than they have been to work in the field of Information Technology. They often have poor writing skills, and cannot articulate clear convictions about ethical or professional matters. Many dislike reading, have little exposure to technical reports or articles in the research literature, are unfamiliar with key concepts of library and information science, and so are not prepared for lifelong learning in their profession. They are encouraged to create programs from scratch, rather than learning key concepts of software reuse. Almost all incoming students lack elementary network usage skills. Due to the recognized importance of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), computer science students will be expected to be able to create WWW hyperlinked documents, navigate, and search the WWW for information. In order to fully take advantage of the WWW, graduates must be able to communicate and collaborate in a networked environment. Computer science faculty face serious challenges in dealing with these problems. They must motivate students to develop: scholarly skills of effective writing, interest in reading about new developments, awareness to behave in an ethical and professional manner, and ability to search the literature for solutions (e.g., algorithms, data struc...

Research in several areas provides scientific guidance for use of graphical encoding to convey information in an information visualization display. By graphical encoding we mean the use of visual display elements such as icon color, shape, size, or position to convey information about objects represented by the icons. Literature offers inconclusive and often conflicting viewpoints, including the suggestion that the effectiveness of a graphical encoding depends on the type of data represented. Our empirical study suggests that the nature of the users ’ perceptual task is more indicative of the effectiveness of a graphical encoding than the type of data represented. 1. Overview of Perceptual Issues In producing a design to visualize search results for a

Most available information today, both from printed books and digital repositories, is in the form of free-format texts. The task of retrieving information from these ever-growing repositories has become a challenge for information retrieval (IR) researchers. In some fields, such as Botany and Taxonomy, textual descriptions observe a set of rules and use a relatively limited vocabulary. This makes botanical textual descriptions an interesting area to explore IR techniques for finding structure and facilitating semantic analysis. This paper presents X-tract, a solution to the problem of text analysis and structure extraction in a specific application domain, named by floristic morphologic descriptions. The solution demostrates the potential of using a grammar in the determination of information structure in a botanical digital library. We have developed a prototype based on this approach in which given an HTML or plain text, X-tract analyzes it and presents results to the user so he can verify the proposed structure before updating the database. This transformation is useful also in the process of storing morphologic descriptions in a database with a preestablished format. The solution is implemented in the context of the Floristic Digital Library (FDL), a large digital library project comprising a wide variety of botanical documents, formats and services. Subject areas: information extraction, X-tract, botanical digital libraries, FDL I.

Abstract. Digital library interaction evaluation has, by nature, a user centered perspective, which directs the scientific research to the benefit of the user and narrows the research parameters. In this paper we propose a new framework for the evaluation of interaction and we introduce the concepts of usefulness, usability and performance as the main contributing factors for the creation of a rational and successful interaction. The framework attempts to trace and highlight some of the interaction evaluation requirements and parameters, in order to be sufficient in many different contexts. 1.

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The digital libraries of the future will provide electronic access to information in many different forms. Recent technological advances make the storage and transmission of digital video information possible. This paper will describe the design of a Digital Video Library System (DVLS) suitable for storing, indexing, searching, and retrieving video and audio information and providing that information across the Internet or the evolving National Information Infrastructure. To be an effective library, users need to be able to find the video segments they want. Realizing this goal will require ground-breaking research into automatic content-based indexing of videos that will significantly improve the users' ability to access specific segments of interest with videos. In our approach, videos, soundtracks and transcripts will be digitized, and information from the soundtrack and transcripts will be used to automatically index videos in a frame by frame manner. This will allow users to quickly search indices for multiple videos to locate segments of interest, and to view and manipulate these segments on their remote computer. While this technology would be applicable to any collection of videos, we will target educational users, providing teachers with the ability to select segments of nature and/or current events videos which complement their lessons.

The notion of agent has become increasingly popular in computer science research and the software industry. However, reconciling different views of agency and providing a precise definition of agent has remained a challenging task for researchers. This paper proposes a taxonomy of agents that provides a high-level, user-oriented view of existing conceptions of agency and their inter-relationships. Within this taxonomy, agents that are perceived directly by the end user (user agents) are placed at the same level as agents used in designing complex software systems and network communications. The class of user agents is further refined by developing useful subclasses and characterizing techniques commonly used in their implementation. 1.

Abstract: Everyday, millions of people use some form of text-based interface to search inefficiently for information. This reflects a lack of penetration of key developments in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) designed to expedite document retrieval. In the context of document search, the value of textual language is self-evident for searching natural language documents. However, there has been little human factors research into general user preferences such as the number of words preferred to describe or search for a document. Such heuristics can help to balance processing overheads of tasks like clustering against user cognitive load in the realisation of, overall, more efficient document retrieval process. We report the results from two internet delivered experiment designed to obtain this heuristic information. Author: Please check if change made is ok. Keywords: HCI; human computer interaction; user preference; cognitive load; TFIDF; Nwords; Rwords.

Problems: Though there are approximately 400,000 Master's or Doctoral degrees awarded nationally each year, many of the students involved are poorly prepared for a lifelong career in which electronic publishing and access to networked information systems will be commonplace. At the same time, graduate education and the whole scholarly research enterprise suffer because, after considerable investment is made in the generation and preservation of theses and dissertations, access to them is severely constrained, greatly limiting possibilities of knowledge transfer and re-use, and missing an opportunity to unlock valuable university resources. Activities: This project will train the future professorate, and the next generation of scholars, to be "information literate", so that they can publish electronically and can make effective use of digital libraries. In particular, we will embark upon a national effort so that theses and dissertations can be prepared and submitted in electronic form, allowing them to be easily cataloged, indexed, archived, searched, accessed, browsed, and re-used. We also will pave the way for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) to be enriched through the use of hypertext methods, and the inclusion of multimedia components. We will scale up our current pilot effort to

Digital library search results are usually shown as a textual list, with 10-20 items per page. Viewing several thousand search results at once on a two-dimensional display with continuous variables is a promising alternative. Since these displays can overwhelm some users, we created a simplified two-dimensional display that uses categorical and hierarchical axes, called hietaxes. Users appreciate the meaningful and limited number of terms on each hieraxis. At each grid point of the display we show a cluster of color- coded dots or a bar chart. Users see the entire result set and can then click on labels to move down a level in the hierarchy. Handling broad hierarchies and arranging for imposed hierarchies led to additional design innovations. We applied hieraxes to a digital video library of science topics used by middle school teachers, a legal information system, and a technical library using the ACM Computing Classification System. Feedback from usability testing with 32 subjects revealed strengths and weaknesses.