4th READING ASSIGNMENT

4th READING ASSIGNMENT

TITLE: Interactive 3D Visualization for Document Retrieval
AUTHORS: John Cugini, Dr. Christine Piatko, and Dr. Sharon Laskowski
SOURCE: http://www.itl.nist.gov/iaui/vvrg/cugini/uicd/viz.html

ABSTRACT:

The availability of large collections of documents coupled with powerful search and retrieval algorithms provides the opportunity for people to access large sets of relevant documents in electronic form. However, often a user query can result in hundreds of potentially useful documents returned by the system. Our hypothesis is that interactive 3D graphics techniques can be used to help the user comprehend and filter such result sets. We describe some prototypes developed at NIST in pursuit of these goals and discuss associated design issues, such as icon appearance, layout within 3D space, and interaction mechanisms.

THREE (3) THINGS I LEARNED:

1.Visualization gives the user an immediate overview of the retrieval set.
2.The graphical display of keyword strengths makes it easy to understand at a glance the relative distribution of terms in a document.
3.Visualization maybe the solution in retrieval problem by helping the user find those documents which are most relevant more quickly than a traditional scrolled list.

IMPLICATIONS
As a searcher, we usually encountered difficulties in finding those documents which are relevant to what we are searching. Based on this article, visualization can be a solution for that retrieval problem. Example of those were although the order of the list makes it more likely that useful documents are at the top, the may be the “best” document from the user’s perspective may be towards the end. Visualization helps can be used to interactively filter result sets. Also, visualization helps users comprehend large quantities of data, and visual attributes can present abstract representations of data. In visualization, relationships among displayed entities become apparent. So, it only implies that visualization for document retrieval helps a lot in having a refined result in our searching.

3rd Reading Assignment

TITLE: Library 2.0 Theory Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries

AUTHOR: Jack M. Maness

SOURCE/URL: http://www.webology.ir/2006/v3n2/a25.html


ABSTRACT:


This article posits a definition and theory for “Library 2.0”. It suggests that recent thinking describing the changing Web as “Web 2.0’ will have substantial implications for libraries, and recognizes that while these implications keep very close to the history and mission of libraries, they still necessitate a new paradigm for librarianship. The paper applies the theory and definition to the practice of librarianship, specifically addressing how Web 2.0 technologies such as synchronous messaging and streaming media, blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging, RSS feeds, and mashups might intimate changes in how libraries provide access to their collections and user support for that access.


Three (3) I learned:


1. Library 2.0 is user- centered- because the library collection will be more interactive and fully accessible.
2. Library 2.0 is a virtual reality of the library, because it will be a place not only for searching of books and journals, but can be a place where we can interact with a community, a librarian, and share knowledge and understanding with them through this electronic medium, the Web 2.0.
3. Web 2.0 and libraries are well suited for marriage, or we can say, the best partner.
Library 2.0 is completely user- centered and user- driven. It is a mashup of traditional library services and innovative Web 2.0 services. If libraries and Web 2.0 becomes partner, it will be a library for the 21st century which is rich in content, interactivity, and social activity.

REFLECTION:

Library 2.0 is a mashup of the traditional library services. The library services changed, it focused more on facilitation of information transfer and information literacy rather than providing controlled access to it. According to the article, Library 2.0 is the application of interactive, collaborative, and multi- media web- based technologies to web- based library services and collections. Also, it moved its collections and spare services into the online environment, and the Library 2.0 will move the full suite of library services into this electronic medium. With the Web 2.0, information can be released to flow in every direction (library to user, user to library, library to library, and user to user). And with Library 2.0, library services are frequently evaluated and updated to meet the changing needs of library users

2nd Reading Assignment

Title: Morality and computers: attitudes and differences in moral judgments.

Author(s):Urs E. Gattiker and Helen Kelley.

Source Citation: Information Systems Research 10.3 (Sept 1999): 233. InfoTrac Custom Periodicals 100. Gale. Manuel S. Enverga University Foundation. 6 July 2009 .

ABSTRACT:
Business ethics is an emerging area of research in many subfields of management, including information systems (IS). Empirical IS research has studied differences in users' attitudes and in moral judgments regarding ethical computer-related behavior. This study applied the "domains of morality" approach to determine how users felt about certain computer-related behaviors. Vignettes describing ethical dilemmas involving computer technology (e.g., uploading a computer virus on an electronic network/bulletin board system) were presented to a sample of Internet users. The research findings offered several interesting and, in some cases, unexpected results. The empirical results indicated that older computer users have a less permissive sense of what is right and wrong for an illegal game. When computers were used to test a banned game, men and women differed in their assessment of its appropriateness. A surprising finding was that participants were not likely to endorse civil liberties, and were more concerned about the harm to, and violations of, social norms when the scenario described a situation involving a computer virus. How users perceive, prejudge, and discriminate computer ethics and abusive computer actions raises numerous questions and implications for IS researchers, IS practitioners, and policy makers. The results of this study foster a better understanding of Internet users' moral categorization of specific computer behaviors and, hopefully, help to further reduce risks and vulnerabilities of systems by identifying computer actions deemed ethically acceptable by users. Opportunities for IS researchers to further explore this timely issue are also discussed. (Computer Security; Domain Theory of Moral Development; Data Encryption; Computer Viruses; Gender; Ethics; Socioeconomic Status; Age).

Three (3) things I learned:

1. The development of ethical standards and regulations that are perceived as acceptable and appropriate by the majority of users is needed to facilitate compliance with legislation and with company and industry policies for the ethical use of computer technology.
2. Moral reasoning often exists for individuals as representations of their collective beliefs regarding what is just or unjust.
3. We must develop a better understanding of the moral development of the growing numbers and varieties of computer users, especially with respect to the social transgressions committed by some.

Implications of the new things I learned:

We are in a computer world now. We witnessed a rapid evolution in and adoption of computer technologies and the Internet. Because of the proliferation of computer technology and the introduction of new technology, many individuals use their computers on a daily basis at home or work.
This only implies that we have to know the right attitude in using the computer and the internet. Also, there are instances that computer users from different socioeconomic status on moral judgments of ethical dilemmas involving computer technology when the situations are categorized as residing in the personal, conventional knowledge, an moral domains.

1st Reading Assignment in LIS260

Title of the Article:

Divide and Conquer Strategies for Effective Information Retrieval

Authors: Jie Chen and Yousef Saad

URL : http://www.siam.org/proceedings/datamining/2009/dm09_043_chenj.pdf

Abstract:

The standard application of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), a well-known technique for information retrieval, requires the computation of a partial Singular Value Decomposition

(SVD) of the term-document matrix. This computation becomes infeasible for large document collections, since it is very demanding both in terms of arithmetic operations and in memory requirements. This paper discusses two divide and conquer strategies, with the goal of alleviating these difficulties. Both strategies divide the document collection in subsets, perform relevance analysis on each subset, and conquer the analysis results to form the query response.

Since each sub-problem resulting from the recursive division process has a smaller size, the processing of large scale document collections requires much fewer resources. In addition, the computation is highly parallel and can be easily adapted to a parallel computing environment. To reduce the computational cost, we perform the analysis on the subsets by using the Lanczos vectors instead of singular vectors as in the standard LSI method. This technique is far more efficient than the computation of the truncated SVD, while its accuracy is comparable. Experimental results confirm that the proposed divide and conquer strategies are effective for information retrieval problems.

Three (3) things I learned from my Reading Assignment

1. I learned that Latent Semantic Indexing, a well-known method which was developed to deal common problems of word usage. LSI projects the original term-document matrix into a reduced rank subspace by resorting to the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The comparison of the query with the documents is then performed in this subspace and produces in this way a more meaningful result.

2. The authors of the article proposed two strategies to have an effective information retrieval, the divided and conquer strategies. It is a paradigm known for its effectiveness in solving very large scale scientific problems is that of multilevel approaches. It can lessen the computational burden because it has a primary goal of reducing cost at the expense of a minimal cost in accuracy.

3. Divide and conquer strategies were proposed to retrieved relevant documents for text mining problems, along with efficient techniques to use as alternatives to the classical truncated Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) approach of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

Application / implication of new things I learned to my work or to me as a person.

Actually, I am not that familiar with some words/ terms used in information science and that is why I have difficulties in understanding those articles that I have read. But after reading the article about “Divide and Conquer Strategies for Effective Information Retrieval”, I realized that I need to have patience in reading this article though it is really hard for me to understand those unfamiliar terms. Reading this article really helped me to have little idea how we are able to have an accurate retrieval of information.

We always say that it is easier to get information using the internet, but really we don’t how that information has been stored and retrieved. So maybe, by reading this article, slightly I have a little idea why it happened.