SIMILE Objectives, Current Status, and Demonstration

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SIMILEObjectives, Current Status, and
Demonstration

• Stephen J. Garland, MIT CSAIL
• Mick Bass, HP Labs
• DSpace User Group Meeting
• Cambridge, MA
• March 11, 2004

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Simile Goals

• Make the Semantic Web a reality
• For libraries and their users
• Support heterogeneous, multi-community metadata
• Provide tools for viewing, browsing, searching
• Assess current state of Semantic Web
• Explore utility of standards (RDF, RDFS, OWL)
• Extend Semantic Web tool stack for libraries
• Identify issues, gaps, opportunities, best
  practices for digital libraries

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Current State of Affairs

• Library perspective
• Large amounts of metadata in catalogs
• Different schemas (DC, VRA, site specific)
• Varying amount, quality of metadata
• User perspective
• Multitude of site-specific tools
• Hard to switch from one domain to another
• Hard to search across domains

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Simile Objectives

• Reduce effort, time spent by librarians, users
• Provide contextual views of data
• Allow serendipitous discovery
• Via flexible semantic web infrastructure
• Value added by incremental, recombinant metadata
• Without custom development for new schemas

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Simile Participants

• MIT Libraries DSpace, DSpace Federation
• MacKenzie Smith, PI
• W3C Semantic Web Activity
• Eric Miller, PI
• Hewlett-Packard RDF Technologies
• Mick Bass, PI
• MIT CSAIL Haystack Project
• David Karger, PI

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Simile Current Status

• Sample data repositories
• ARTstor visual images (VRA Core metadata)
• OCW MIT OpenCourseWare (IMS LOM metadata)
• Metadata transformed into RDF using XSLT
• ARTstor ? OCW mapping established using OWL
• Tools
• For manipulating RDF Jena
• For browsing, searching Longwell, Haystack
• Illustrated by sample scenario

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Scenario Creating an Art Course

• Goal create course on abstract art
• Shape, flesh out course
• Track down resources (e.g., images)
• Leverage thought, work by others (e.g., in OCW)
• Approach faceted browse of diverse collections

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Step 1 Getting Started
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Step 2 Exploring One Collection
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Step 3 Pausing to Think
Narrow focus raises questions What else did
Gorky do? Who was doing similar work?
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Step 4 Redirecting the Search
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Step 5 Exploring a 2nd Collection
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Step 6 Exploring it Further
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Step 7 Back to the 1st Collection
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Step 8 The View from the Bridge
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Step 9 The View from the Bridge
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Recap of Scenario

• Started on ARTstor island
• SUBJECT Abstract

Roamed around island SUBJECT Abstract, CREATOR
Gorky
Traveled over Gorky bridge to OCW island CREATOR
Gorky, IS PART OF ...
Found resource not on ARTstor island
Traveled over Graham bridge
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Simile Beyond this Scenario

• Necessary to scale in multiple dimensions
• Tools for creating, improving metadata
• Quality of current metadata could be better
• Tools, guidelines for creators should help
• So would use metadata click logs, synaptic
  pathways
• Tools for storing, querying metadata
• Horizontal scaling increasing quantities of data
• Vertical scaling levels of metadata

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Simile and DSpace

• DSpace assets
• Interesting, fruitful islands of metadata
• Metadata for navigating around each island
• Experience letting users see, discover what they
  want
• Simile assets
• Semantic web tools for digital libraries
• Potential Simile, DSpace collaboration
• Increase quantity, quality of existing metadata
• Develop inexpensive metadata best practices

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Potential Impact

• Enlarged community of metadata creators
• Catalogers, users, automated agents,
• New bridges between diverse collections
• Created incrementally by adding new metadata
• Improved navigation across diverse collections
• Using new pathways created by new metadata
• Stay tuned! Visit simile.mit.edu