Generating PATHS through Cultural Heritage Collections, Samuel Fernando, Paula Goodale, Paul Clough, Mark Stevenson, Mark Hall, Eneko Agirre. Presentation given at LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria.

1. Generating Paths through
Cultural Heritage Collections
Samuel Fernando, Paula Goodale, Paul Clough,
Mark Stevenson, Mark Hall, Eneko Agirre
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria.

2. Introduction
Museums have guided tours with narratives organised
by theme or chronology while digital libraries are often
limited to a simple keyword search
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

3. Introducing paths
We introduce the idea of paths into digital library collections.
These may be created by experts or end-users.
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

4. Overview
What do people want from paths
/how might they use them?
User studies
Analyse properties of created paths
Problem: users do not add background text
Propose automatic methods to address this
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

5. User interpretations of paths
Hypertext trails
Search
history
Learning
process
Process
oriented
Information
seeking journey
Paths
Transaction
process
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Linked
metadata
Through route
Augmented
reality
Starting
point / way in
Encouraging
exploration
and enriching
data

6. User scenarios
Classroom
activities
Curated
collections
Paths
Leisure
users
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Local
historians
Researchers

7. Creating a path (1)
Select items from the collection
Colosseum
Palatine Hill
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Constantine Arch

8. Creating a path (2)
Arrange items to form a path or narrative
Colosseum
Palatine Hill
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Constantine Arch

9. Creating a path (3)
Add background text /titles etc.
Grand Tour of Rome
Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet,
consectetur
adipiscing elit.
Colosseum
Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet,
consectetur
adipiscing elit.
Palatine Hill
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet,
consectetur
adipiscing elit.
Constantine Arch

10. User study
“Imagine you are a student who has been asked to
create a path as part of a university assignment. You
have been asked to use primary source materials to
create a mini online exhibition suitable for a target
group within the general public and/or school visitor
categories. Your goal is to introduce a historical or artfocussed topic in a popular, accessible way, and to
encourage further use and exploration of cultural
heritage resources.”
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

11. Search/explore behaviour
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

12. Properties of paths
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

13. Types of ordering
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

14. Adding contextual information
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

15. Automatically adding context
Sequence of
items (S)
Process
Key Wikipedia
article (K), the
most relevant
article for S
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria
Sentences from K
summarising S

16. Methods
1. Choose the first n sentences from K
2. Find key topics W from S and use this to
select sentences from K.
a. W comprises titles of Wikipedia articles (from using
Wikipedia Miner).
b. Score each sentence in K by occurrence of words
from W multiplied by confidence values.
c. Return n highest scoring sentences
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

17. Method 2 example
Path: “Bronze age metallurgy” K = “Bronze Age”
comprising items and debris W = Bronze Age (0.9) , Copper (0.9),
from Bronze Age
Alloy (0.8), Tin(0.6), Bronze (0.6)
Output 1: A region could be in the Bronze Age either by smelting
its own copper and alloying with tin or by trading for bronze from
production areas elsewhere (score 3.8)
Output 2: The Bronze Age in Ireland commenced around 2000
BC, when copper was alloyed with tin and used to manufacture
Ballybeg type flat axes and associated metalwork (score 2.4)
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

18. Results
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

19. Conclusions
• Studies analysing different behaviours
when creating paths, and properties of
created paths
• Experts rate importance of context in
path, but users tend not to add this when
creating their own paths
• Automatic methods for adding context
show good results using a very simple
approach using a key Wikipedia article
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria

20. Future work
• Automatic methods for selecting key
Wikipedia article
• Filter out information from summary that
is already present in path
• Thank you for your time – please visit the
paths system at http://explorer.pathsproject.eu
LaTeCH 2013, ACL Workshop, Sofia, Bulgaria