Papers by Sally Jo Cunningham
Guest Editorial: Special issue on digital libraries in the context of users' broader activities
Information Processing and Management: an International Journal, Mar 1, 2008
Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM ha... more Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references. ... Blandford, A., & Gow, J. (2006). Digital Libraries in the Context of Users' Broader Activities: JCDL 2006 Workshop Report. D-Lib Magazine 12, (7/8). ... Towards collaboration between information seeking and information retrieval. Information Research. v10 i2. ... In this paper we investigate how information surrogates might be useful in exploratory search and what information it ...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005
This paper investigates the information seeking of humanities academics and scholars using digita... more This paper investigates the information seeking of humanities academics and scholars using digital libraries. It furthers existing work by updating our knowledge of the information seeking techniques used by humanities scholars, where the current work predates the wide availability of the Internet. We also report some of the patterns observed in query and term usage by humanities scholars, and relate this to the patterns they report in their own information seeking and the problems that they encounter. This insight is used to reveal the current gap between the skills of information seekers and the technologies that they use. Searches for 'discipline terms' prove to be particularly problematic.
American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementiasr, 2013
Objectives: In certain health care facilities, the staff commonly wear uniforms for dementia care... more Objectives: In certain health care facilities, the staff commonly wear uniforms for dementia care. Wearing uniforms are often believed to improve the well-being of institutionalized people with dementia (PwD) by facilitating orientation and preserving hygiene. However, when studied more thoroughly, it appears that their use counters to person centeredness. This study aims to investigate the impact of wearing uniforms on the quality of life (QoL) of institutionalized PwD. Method: A natural experimental design was operated in 4 special care units (SCUs) in France. Two SCUs served as an experimental group (caregivers wearing street clothes except when performing hands-on physical care; N = 13) and 2 served as a comparison group (caregivers wearing uniforms; N = 14). The QoL of PwD was measured using the QoL-Alzheimer’s Disease scale, and focus groups were carried out with caregivers. Results: Overall and significantly enhanced QoL scores were observed for the experimental street clothi...
This article discusses a new approach to scholarly search and discovery in large-scale text corpo... more This article discusses a new approach to scholarly search and discovery in large-scale text corpora. While lexicographic search is at present the predominant means to access large document corpora, it cannot directly address the inherent ambiguity of natural language. As a pragmatic solution, many scholars manually build their own list of suitable search terms to be used in repeated searches in digital libraries and other online resources; however, scholars then have to resolve on a case-by-case basis issues caused by synonyms, homonyms and OCR errors. Our approach differs from this by supporting scholars in developing and refining a set of relevant concepts, searches a large document collection using semantic concepts, and categorizes the potentially relevant documents from search results into worksets. The developed technique revisits the notion of semantic search and redesigns both the underlying data representation and interface support. This is achieved through an end-to-end design that relies centrally on a Concept-in-Context network sourced through the link structure of Wikipedia. We discuss here the principles of our approach, its implementation in the Capisco prototype, and the relationship between established search techniques and our approach.
International Journal on Digital Libraries, Mar 14, 2018
In this article, we present the conceptual design and report on the implementation of Capisco-a l... more In this article, we present the conceptual design and report on the implementation of Capisco-a low-cost approach to concept-based access to digital libraries. Capisco avoids the need for complete semantic document markup using ontologies by leveraging an automatically generated Concept-in-Context (CiC) network. The network is seeded by a priori analysis of Wikipedia texts and identification of semantic metadata. Our Capisco system disambiguates the semantics of terms in the documents by their semantics and context and identifies the relevant CiC concepts. Supplementary to this, the disambiguation of search queries is done interactively, to fully utilize the domain knowledge of the scholar. For established digital library systems, completely replacing, or even making significant changes to the document retrieval mechanism (document analysis, indexing strategy, query processing, and query interface) would require major technological effort and would most likely be disruptive. In addition to presenting Capisco, we describe ways to harness the results of our developed semantic analysis and disambiguation, while retaining the existing keyword-based search and lexicographic index. We engineer this so the output of semantic analysis (performed off-line) is suitable for import directly into existing digital library metadata and index structures, and thus incorporated without the need for architecture modifications.
Writers of the Lost Paper: A Case Study on Barriers to (Re-) Finding Publications
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
We document the surprising hurdles that we encountered when attempting a known-item search to loc... more We document the surprising hurdles that we encountered when attempting a known-item search to locate copies of four of our own published research papers, known to be archived in the ACM Digital Library and Google Scholar. The discoveries made in this exercise in ‘search engine archaeology’ are noteworthy as they are equally relevant to other users engaging with these and other digital libraries, to whom the pitfalls are much less readily apparent. We present details of our investigation together with a description of MEDDLE (a ModifiED Digital Library Environment), a proof-of-concept system that illustrates a technique to address some of these search issues for a target digital library. We conclude with suggestions on how scholarly digital libraries may avoid these issues in the future.
Building a public digital library based on full-text retrieval
The NZDL aims to impose structure on anarchic and uncataloged repositories of information, provid... more The NZDL aims to impose structure on anarchic and uncataloged repositories of information, providing information consumers with effective tools to locate and peruse what they need. Our goal is to produce an easy-to-use digital library system that runs on inexpensive computers at information providers' own sites and offers an information service that information providers themselves maintain. New Zealand's geographical isolation magnifies the benefits of networked digital libraries, in terms of both cost and timeliness of access to information. We are collaborating with the Medoc project in Germany to provide local indexes to German language technical-reports, and with the J Biological Chemistry in the United States to field-test novel browsing techniques. The project rests on five basic planks. First, we avoid manual processing of source material, and avoid making assumptions about the document repositories from which it is collected-e.g. we do not require bibliographic metadata. Second, access is via a full-text index of the entire contents of each document, rather than document surrogates. Third, we are concerned with user interface aspects and the real needs of library users. Fourth, our systems must operate in geographically remote locations with high Internet costs-an environment in which the benefits of networked library technology are especially striking. Finally, we aim to produce a library scheme that operates on small, inexpensive, servers.
ACM SIGWEB newsletter, Nov 3, 2015
This article discusses a new approach to scholarly search and discovery in large-scale text corpo... more This article discusses a new approach to scholarly search and discovery in large-scale text corpora. While lexicographic search is at present the predominant means to access large document corpora, it cannot directly address the inherent ambiguity of natural language. As a pragmatic solution, many scholars manually build their own list of suitable search terms to be used in repeated searches in digital libraries and other online resources; however, scholars then have to resolve on a case-by-case basis issues caused by synonyms, homonyms and OCR errors. Our approach differs from this by supporting scholars in developing and refining a set of relevant concepts, searches a large document collection using semantic concepts, and categorizes the potentially relevant documents from search results into worksets. The developed technique revisits the notion of semantic search and redesigns both the underlying data representation and interface support. This is achieved through an end-to-end design that relies centrally on a Concept-in-Context network sourced through the link structure of Wikipedia. We discuss here the principles of our approach, its implementation in the Capisco prototype, and the relationship between established search techniques and our approach.
In this paper, we describe Semantic Bookworm-a tool that supports scholarly text analysis. In con... more In this paper, we describe Semantic Bookworm-a tool that supports scholarly text analysis. In contrast to the text-based Bookworm tool, the Semantic Bookworm identifies semantic concepts. CCS Concepts • Information systems ➝ Digital libraries and archives • Computing methodologies ➝ Lexical semantics • Computing methodologies ➝ Semantic networks
Public Access to Digital Material; A Call to Researchers: Digital Libraries Need Collaboration across Disciplines; Greenstone: Open-Source Digital Library Software; Retrieval Issues for the Colorado Digitization Project's Heritage Database; Report on the 5th European Conference on Digital Librari...
D-lib Magazine, 2001
Most existing digital libraries use traditional lexically-based retrieval techniques. For establi... more Most existing digital libraries use traditional lexically-based retrieval techniques. For established systems, completely replacing, or even making significant changes to the document retrieval mechanism (document analysis, indexing strategy, query processing and query interface) would require major technological effort, and would most likely be disruptive. In this paper, we describe ways to use the results of semantic analysis and disambiguation, while retaining an existing keyword-based search and lexicographic index. We engineer this so the output of semantic analysis (performed off-line) is suitable for import directly into existing digital library metadata and index structures, and thus incorporated without the need for architecture modifications. CCS Concepts •Computing methodologies → Semantic networks; Lexical semantics; •Applied computing → Digital libraries and archives; •Information systems → Digital libraries and archives; Search engine indexing;
Communications of The ACM, May 1, 2001
prising a total of 21,000 pages in 1,750 issues. This collection forms a unique historical record... more prising a total of 21,000 pages in 1,750 issues. This collection forms a unique historical record of the language of the indigenous Mãori people, the evolution of the written form of this language, and of events and developments during the formative colonial history of our country. Using the Greenstone software from the New Zealand Digital Library (see article in this special section), this collection is now publicly available with full-text search capability.
Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
We document how surprisingly easy it is for user misconceptions to arise when using digital libra... more We document how surprisingly easy it is for user misconceptions to arise when using digital library search interfaces, and the significant unseen impact this can have on the user's interpretation of search results. Further, we detail a bespoke proxying technique we have devised called Meddle-for ModifiED Digital Library Environmentwhich is a lightweight agile technique that helps address identified pitfalls in a DL search interface that operates independently of the originating digital library.
Technology, Knowledge and Learning
The exponential growth in the use of digital technologies and the availability of mobile software... more The exponential growth in the use of digital technologies and the availability of mobile software applications (apps) has been well documented over the past decade. Literature on the integration of mobile technology into higher education reveals an increasing focus on how mobile devices are used within the classroom environment, both physical and online, rather than on how mobile applications may be used for either teaching or the research process. Our study surveyed staff and higher degree research students at a New Zealand university using an online questionnaire to gain insight into the use of mobile apps for tertiary teaching and research, seeking information, particularly on which apps were used for which tasks and what obstacles hindered their use. The online survey used 29 questions and ran in 2016/2017. 269 participants completed the survey, nearly 20% of the potential sample. We found that mobile apps were used by academics and students for both teaching and research, prima...
Department of Computer Science, The University of Waikato, 2017
Applications (apps) are software specifically designed for mobile devices. This paper reports on ... more Applications (apps) are software specifically designed for mobile devices. This paper reports on the results of an online survey about app use for teaching and research by students and academic staff at the University of Waikato. The questionnaire had 138 respondents. The results of the data analysis indicate that among respondents apps are primarily used for communication, data storage, and collaborative work. Nearly a third of respondents reported not using. any apps for academic purposes, with almost half that number citing a lack of knowledge about possible uses. In teaching practice, apps were reported to be used as a means to push information to students, e.g., for distributing reading materials and other teaching resources. In research, apps appeared to be used to self-organise, collaborate with other researchers, store information, and to stay current with research. This paper concludes with a list of implications.
This article explores the role visual browsing can play within a digital music library. The conte... more This article explores the role visual browsing can play within a digital music library. The context to the work is provided through a review of related techniques drawn from the fields of digital libraries and human computer interaction. Implemented within the open source digital library toolkit Greenstone, a prototype system is described that combines images located through textual metadata with a visualisation technique known as collaging to provide a leisurely, undirected interaction with a music collection. Emphasis in the article is given to the augmentations of the basic technique to work in the musical domain.
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Papers by Sally Jo Cunningham