Workshop on Supporting Users' Exploration of Digital Libraries

As a part of the Conference, on the 27th an International Workshop on Supporting Users’ Exploration of Digital Libraries will be held. The aim of the workshop is to stimulate collaboration from experts and stakeholders in Digital Libraries, Cultural Heritage, Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval in order to explore methods and strategies to support exploration of Digital Libraries, beyond the white box paradigm of search and click. Objectives of the workshop Large amounts of digital cultural heritage (CH) information have become available recently, partly due to the rise of large-scale aggregators such as Europeana, the European aggregator for museums, archives, libraries, and galleries. These large collections, and similar digital libraries (DL), present an important challenge to new users: discovering what items are present in the collection. In current systems support for item discovery is mainly provided through the standard keyword-based search paradigm, which is well suited for DL professionals who are highly familiar with the collections, subject areas, and have specific search goals. However, for new users who may not have a good understanding of the contents of the collections, be unsure about appropriate keywords, and have vague search goals, this method of access is unsatisfactory. Alternative item discovery methodologies are required to introduce new users to DL collections, including exploratory search models that enable switching between collection overviews and detailed exploration within the collection. The aim of the workshop is to stimulate collaboration from experts and stakeholders in Digital Libraries, Cultural Heritage, Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval in order to explore methods and strategies to support exploration of Digital Libraries, beyond the white box paradigm of search and click. Topics of the workshop Topics of interest include the following: User-adaptive technologies Personalization and recommendation Information discovery and exploration Navigating information spaces Crowd sourcing and user generated content Navigation using visual metaphors Supporting exploration using enriched content Any other technique which supports exploration of Digital Libraries