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This deliverable demonstrates several prototype applications of the W3C
Resource Description Framework (RDF) in the context of the DESIRE work on
web indexing and quality-assured information gateways. This work
builds upon, and implements in part, the analyis undertaken earlier as D3.1 - Quality Ratings in RDF.
The documentation and demonstrators for D3.2 consist of two parts,
undertaken by ILRT and UKOLN respectively. UKOLN's work focuses on the
integration of quality-oriented attributes into the ROADS search and
retrieval environment, and presents a prototypical client-side interface to
one such rating bureau. The ILRT demonstrators contrast the facilities
offered by a generic RDF datastore with a more traditional relational
database approach, showing how either approach can be integrated into more
general RDF-based information services.
Demonstators and documentation
The demonstrators are maintained on separate sites and can be accessed
from the URLs below.
Motivating Scenarios
The following 'motivating scenarios' are taken from the earlier D3.1
report. While the current demonstrators do not address all these
applications (for example digital signatures) we present frameworks and
software toolkit components that are intended to be usable for such
purposes.
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I'm looking for peer-reviewed journals (and not merely 'vanity
publishing').
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I'm looking for resources recommended by a subject-librarian.
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I'm looking for 3rd party descriptions of this resource from
metadata servers run according to [some specified] collections policy.
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I'm looking for Web resources matching [some search] which will be
useable (by blind users / on a Nokia Communicator browser / without Java enabled).
- I've created a set of Web pages from my PhD thesis; I'd like to include
metadata in those pages, which makes it clear
that this is well-researched content, so that other people working in this
area can discover my document.
- Our
pages are listed in catalogue of the (OMNI/EELS/DutchESS/SOSIG) subject
gateway; we'd like to include a 'kitemark' logo and a (digitally signed)
machine-readable equivalent on those pages so that search engines know
that the site has been rated as 'high quality'
by a trusted source.
- I want to be able to 'recommend' resources as rating highly on some quality
scale to a trusted metadata service, so
that those resources might be found more easily by others in my subject
community.
- I want to be able to find resources that other subject specialists in my
community have rated highly.
- I want to be able to find resources that other PhD researchers in my
community have rated highly.
- I want to be able to do an Internet search from a single point of access,
and have my query automatically forwarded to appropriate searchable
catalogues/databases/gateways/indexes on the Web, prioritising gateways
that follow (something like) the DESIRE quality selection criteria.
- I've created a page that uses Macromedia Shockwave; how can this technology
dependency be made explicit so that people who can't use Shockwave don't
find it when searching?
- I want to be able to have my search results filtered or ranked according to
some 'rule' based on a quality-related property of the resources listed
- I want to find resources matching [some search term], listing those
that are freely accessible first.
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I'm an Internet cataloguer and would like to have some automated support
tools to help with resource selection and description (e.g. forms pre-populated
with mechanically detectable information, or an easy way of finding out
whether a site has lots of broken links or makes well known usability
errors)
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I run a large scale Internet search service, and want to be able to
cross-reference from our 'search results' page to 3rd party descriptions,
ratings, classifications and reviews available elsewhere; we need to know
which of these services are run by information specialists, librarians and
subject specialists, and which aren't.
Scenarios such as these present a
considerable challenge - they raise questions about trust, about machine
vocabularies for describing both Web resources and for
characterising the agencies which create those descriptions.
In addition these scenarios suggest problems which are more architectural in nature:
how, for example, can one service discover which other metadata servers
offer useful descriptions for some given URL. The 'RDF quality vocabulary'
strand of activity in DESIRE attempts to make some contribution towards
addressing these issues, and does so in the broader context of the DESIRE
Subject Gateway
activity and the work on distributed indexing and searching.
The scope of the discussion and recommendations which follow are
consequently more constrained than the
list of 'motivating scenarios' given above might suggest. When combined
with the technologies, services and recommendations developed elsewhere
within DESIRE, the framework outlined here should go some way towards
addressing many of the issues raised in the motivating examples
above.
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