© Prof David J Harper 2004

Looking beyond the delivery of e-Theses to using them: Intelligent document browsing using ProfileSkim

David J Harper

The Robert Gordon UniversitySmart Web Technologies Centre

School of ComputingAberdeen, Scotland.

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Lifecycle of an e-Thesis

Do research Write up research Production (of e-thesis) Publish Retrieval (search, directory lookup, …) Delivery Use

© Prof David J Harper 2004

What kinds of Use?

Reading to: Locate and extract information Reference information Examine the thesis

Using the thesis as a “pivot” in the information space: Following references from thesis Finding references to the thesis Tracking work of the author Searching based on extracts/snippets from text

Exploring social/work context of the thesis Project group(s) Research group Department

© Prof David J Harper 2004

ProfileSkim

Developed to support retrieval within long documents

Within document retrieval tool: supports reading to extract and reading to reference

Main concept: relevance profiling based on language modelling

Replacement for the ubiquitous (and ineffective) Find-command

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Overview of ProfileSkim Tool

Page(s) being visited

HighlightQuery Words

Query input

StandardAcrobat

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Relevance Profile Meter (1)

Retrieval Status Value

Word position

Document

Relevance Profile Meter

Click and visit ...

Page

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Closing Remarks

Think beyond electronic e-theses delivery to use

ProfileSkim is an effective tool for within document retrieval, and this has been confirmed by end user experiments

ProfileSkim is a standalone tool, which is currently being developed as plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Reader and Professional

Range of possible reading activities suggests a need for a specialised e-thesis reading tool

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Further Information on ProfileSkim

Handout Acrobat plug-in launch in November 2004 Opportunities for:

User Trialling Purchase Resellers Affiliates

Registration of Interest (see Speaker) Link to ProfileSkim e-shop from

http://www.smartweb-products.co.uk (soon)

© Prof David J Harper 2004

SmartWeb - A few words from my sponsor

Centre of excellence on intelligent computing technologies and their application to web-based systems and services

Basic and applicable research targeted at: e-Government, e-Learning, e-Health and e-Business

Located at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

Seeking collaborators, commercialisation partners, exchanges, short- and longer term visitors, PhD students

www.smartweb.rgu.ac.uk

© Prof David J Harper 2004

Relevance Profiling Process

P(query | window)

Page

Page

Page

max -> page score

Sliding window