Vocabulary Matching for Book IndexingSuggestion in Linked Libraries

– A Prototype

Implementation & Evaluation

Antoine Isaac, Dirk Kramer, Lourens van der Meij, Shenghui Wang, Stefan Schlobach, Johan Stapel

Problem: subject indexing

• Describing subjects of books• Using concepts from vocabularies (e.g. thesauri)

Problem: re-indexing

• Describing a book that has already be described• With a new vocabulary

– Fitting a different context (e.g., different libraries)

Why re-indexing at KB?

• The Dutch National Library (KB) holds many books that are also in other Dutch public libraries

• KB deposit uses Brinkman thesaurus for indexing• Public Libraries use Biblion thesaurus

KBDeposit

Collection

DutchPublic

Libraries

Biblion Brinkman

overlap betweenbook collections

A wider issue• KB shares books with many other libraries• All having their own description practices

KB

KBDeposit

Coll.

KBScientific

Coll.

DutchPublic

Libraries

LC(US Nat.

Lib)

BnF(FrenchNat. Lib)

DNB(GermanNat. Lib)

DutchBook-trade

Biblion

NURBISACsubjectcodes

Brinkman GTT

NBCclass.

UNESCOclass.

KBCorporatie+ Persoon

RAMEAUsubject

headings

LCSHsubject

headings

DDCDewey

decimalclass.

SWDsubject

headings

Personennamendatei

LCauthority

file

AutoritésBNF

otherclassifications

domain/discipline

classifications

subjectthesauri /

subj. headinglists

bookcollectiondatasets

person/corporation

data

Doel-groep

--audience

overlap between book collections(thickness indicates degree of overlap)

Vertical adjustment between a coll. and KOSsdenotes KOSs' being used to describe that coll.

Room for improvement?

• Libraries devote large resources to indexing– 20 people at KB– About 20,000 books per year

• Leveraging already existing descriptions for re-indexing can be beneficial for both sides

Alignment and re-indexing

• STITCH project– Tackling semantic interoperability in Cultural Heritage– Using ontology alignment

• Mappings between concepts from different vocabularies can be used for re-indexingBasic idea: replace concepts in descriptionsby conceptually equivalent concepts

Goal: a re-indexing prototype

• Past: preliminary experiments with KB data

• Now: building a prototype and– plugging it onto the KB production system– having it evaluated by its potential users (indexers)

• Prototype case: Dutch public libraries / KBSuggesting Brinkman subjects based on Biblion ones

Alignment and re-indexing: requirements

Subjects can be complex

• Mappings between groups of concepts "Travel guides" + "Spain" → "Spain; travel guides"

Concepts are used in descriptions

• Mappings taking into account extensional semantics"Building engineering"

→ "Learning material ; building engineering"

Obtaining re-indexing rules

• Lexical alignments are not good enough

• Probabilistic rules are calculated– Using extension of concepts: existing indexing– Simple probabilities, with adhoc adjustment

"Travel guides","Spain"→"Spain; travel guides", 0.982

• Not only based on Biblion subjects– AUT – main authors of books– KAR – “characteristic”– DGP – intellectual level/target group

Demo

Doesn't work?

User study

• Quantitative aspect– How well does the tool compare to human subject

indexing?

• Qualitative aspect– User satisfaction– Improvement suggestion

Evaluation setting

• 6 indexers• 6 weeks• 284 books• Evaluation integrated in daily indexing work

• Pre-evaluation briefing• Questionnaire during evaluation • Post-evaluation de-briefing & questionnaire

User study results

• Top ranked mappings are indeed much better

• Individual book satisfaction level > 70%

Suggestion class # suggestions precision recall

blue 308 72.7% 47.9%

purple 1,188 10.7% 27.1%

red 2,525 1.11% 5.98%

non suggested 89 19.0%

User study results (1)

• But the general satisfaction is lower– Only two out of six would use the tool as such

• Quality of suggestions– Lower-level suggestions are often not meaningful

• Perception of suggestions' quality– Long lists with wrong suggestions ad the end are bad– Ranking is appreciated, but it is not enough

User study results (2)

Suggestions were found promising• Bridging the indexing gap between collections

– Different indexing strategies

"Persian language" (Biblion)

vs. "Iranian language and literature" (Brinkman)

Lots of suggestions for improvement• More re-indexing!

– Suggesting concepts from other vocabularies– More context metadata as input

Conclusions

• Shows the potential of re-using data in a library network

• Alignment approach fitting indexing practice

• Concrete demonstration, in KB production environment

• Technology transfer: KB wants to continue efforts

• Flexibility: architecture ready to exploit other vocabularies– Linked data & SKOS

Prototype components

Sesame SKOSRDF store

STITCH script(VisualBasic)

STITCHstylesheet (XSLT)

Indexer

WinIBWcataloguing interface

IE

GGC cataloguingsystem

LOD SPARQLendpoints

suggestion service(SWI-Prolog)

vocabularyservice

(Java/Tomcat)

lexical alignmentsSesame RDF store

Linked libraries?

KB

KBDeposit

Coll.

KBScientific

Coll.

DutchPublic

Libraries

LC(US Nat.

Lib)

BnF(FrenchNat. Lib)

DNB(GermanNat. Lib)

DutchBook-trade

Biblion

NURBISACsubjectcodes

Brinkman GTT

NBCclass.

UNESCOclass.

KBCorporatie+ Persoon

RAMEAUsubject

headings

LCSHsubject

headings

DDCDewey

decimalclass.

SWDsubject

headings

Personennamendatei

wikipedia.nl

wikipedia.de

LCauthority

file

AutoritésBNF

existing KOS alignment

potential KOS alignment of interest

overlap between book collections(thickness indicates degree of overlap)

otherclassifications

domain/discipline

classifications

subjectthesauri /

subj. headinglists

bookcollectiondatasets

person/corporation

data

othersLCSH

currently available entry point tothe LOD cloud

Vertical adjustment between a coll. and KOSsdenotes KOSs' being used to describe that coll.

Doel-groep

--audience

Thank you!

• Questions?

Screenshots

WinIBW production tool

STITCH suggestion tool

Original metadata

Concept suggestions

Comparing with human re-indexing

Complement: lexical alignments

Adding subjects using thesaurus access

Concept suggestions

Saving and back to WinIBW

Screenshots

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