School of Computer Science
Departmental Seminar
4pm, Thursday 11th May, Lecture Room 7
Geospatially Referenced Digital Libraries
Prof. Mike Freeston,
University of Aberdeen/UCSB, California
Abstract:
In this talk we discuss the design of digital libraries and their role as a
foundation on which to build the infrastructure for global knowledge
networking over the World Wide Web. The discussion is centered on the
experiences of a specific research program, the Alexandria Digital Library
(ADL) Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which has
developed an operational geospatially referenced digital library.
A defining characteristic of such a system is its use of the Earth metaphor
for describing, organizing, using, presenting, and evaluating information at
all levels of spatial and temporal resolution; i.e. everything is viewed and
categorized in terms of its location in space and time on the surface of the
Earth. This is a natural metaphor for answering questions of the kind:
'Where is.?'; 'What information/data does the library have about this area
of the Earth?'; 'Where can I find.?'; 'What happened where and when?'; 'What
would happen in this area if.?' It encompasses a vast number of potential
applications, from environmental planning and earth science education to
social history.
We begin by defining what we mean by digital libraries and geospatial
referencing. We then focus on the architecture and design of ADL: handling
metadata and data diversity, providing search access across diverse
collections, incorporating knowledge services such as gazetteers and
thesauri, and providing user workspaces for evaluation and use.
We discuss the concept of knowledge networking and how the World Wide Web
needs to change to support it. Finally we develop a knowledge-networking
scenario in a geospatial context to illustrate our vision of the path to the
future.
References:
Alexandria Digital Library Homepage: http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu
Frew, J., Freeston, M., Freitas, N., Hill, L., Janee, G., Lovette, K.,
Nideffer, R., Smith, T., & Zheng, Q. (1998). The Alexandria Digital Library
Architecture. In C. Nikolaou & C. Stephanidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the
Second European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital
Libraries (ECDL'98), Heraklion, Crete, Greece, Sept. 1998 (pp. 61-73).
Berlin: Springer-Verlag. http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html.
Frew, J., Freeston, M., Hill, L., Janee, G., Larsgaard, M., & Zheng, Q.
Generic query metadata for geospatial digital libraries. Proceedings of the
Third IEEE Meta-Data Conference (Meta-Data '99), April 6-7, 1999, Bethesda,
MD, sponsored by IEEE, NOAA, Raytheon ITSS Corp., and NIMA.
The seminars are on Thursday afternoons in Lecture Room 7, Aston Webb C,
and are intended for general audience. If you wish to confirm that a
particular seminar is taking place please contact Sammie Snow
(email S.Snow@cs.bham.ac.uk, tel. 0121 414 4774).
More information about seminars in the School can be found at URL http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/system/notice_board.html.
Tea and biscuits afterwards in the Coffee Room.
Last modified: 8th May 2000
Marta Kwiatkowska
(mzk@cs.bham.ac.uk)
Back to School of Computer Science homepage