The PATHS project is a 3-year EU-funded project involving 6 partners across 5 countries. The project aims to introduce personalized paths into digital cultural heritage collections to provide more engaging access to large volumes of online material. The PATHS system enriches metadata through natural language processing and links items within collections and to external resources. It provides various tools for browsing, searching and creating paths. Two rounds of user evaluations found the path creation tools and search mechanisms were well received. Outcomes include the PATHS API and potential commercialization of components and consultancy services.

1. PATHS: Personalising access to
digital cultural heritage spaces
Kate Fernie
MDR Partners (Consulting) Ltd
UK
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

2. PATHS: project basics
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A STREP funded under the FP7 programme
36 month project - 1/1/2011 to 31/12/2013
6 partners in 5 countries
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University of Sheffield
Universidad del Pais Vasco
i-sieve technologies Ltd
Asplan Viak Internet Ltd
MDR Partners
(Alinari 24 Ora Spa)
http://www.paths-project.eu
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

3. Motivation
Large quantities of digital cultural heritage material have
become available online
Museum exhibitions offer narratives organised by theme
yet digital libraries are often limited to a simple keyword
search
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

4. Introducing paths
We’re introducing the idea of paths into digital library collections
This is not a new idea – some online examples are Walden’s
Paths, Trailmeme and Timelines
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

5. Research Objectives
• Information access: Methods for exploring and
navigating digital cultural heritage collections, including
paths, topic maps, tag-clouds, hierarchical concept
structures and recommender services.
• Natural Language Processing: analysing item metadata
to improve indexing, enable use of ontologies, and
generating links between items in the collection and with
external background material.
• Educational informatics: adapting to individual learners
in relation to being directed and being allowed the
freedom to explore autonomously
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

6. User-centred development methodology
What do people want from digital libraries /
how might they use paths?
Users
Gather user requirements and behaviours
Develop prototype system
Evaluate and test system with potential end
users
http://www.paths-project.eu/eng/Resources/User-Requirements-Analysis
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

7. PATHS system
The system consists of web-services, data storage and an
end-user interface.
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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8. Enriched metadata
The PATHS system is based on content from Europeana
that has been processed and enriched. Our aims were to:
• Linguistic processing – enrich text metadata with
additional keywords and index terms
• Thematic organisation – find a vocabulary to use to
organise the items in the collection automatically
• Intra-collection links – to create a network of links
between related items in the collection
• Links to Wikipedia – create links to contextual
information in Wikipedia
• Links to websites – use Sentiment Analysis to
establish links to closely related external websites
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
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9. Demo
• Two cycles of user evaluation of prototype systems
have been completed
• Here follows a quick demo of the main features
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10. Published Paths
Paths can be created by experts or any registered user
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11. Path following
Continue on this path
Description by path creator
Users can simply follow a path in a similar way to
reading a narrative or viewing an exhibition.
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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12. Encouraging exploration of the collection
Going off the path and
exploring the links
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13. Different user scenarios
Classroom
activities
Curated
collections
Leisure
users
Local
historians
Paths
Researchers
• PATHS system incorporates tools to support different
activity levels from path following to active
exploration and use of the contents
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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14. Searching the collections
There is a conventional keyword search
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15. Tools for browsing: thesaurus
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16. Browsing the collection as a tag cloud
Same taxonomy, different view
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17. Collection overviews: topic map
Same taxonomy different
view
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18. Case 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 art-focussed topic in a popular,
accessible way, and to encourage further use and
exploration of cultural heritage resources.”
eCult Dialogue Day, 19th September 2013, Dubrovnik
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

19. Creating paths
Users who have registered and logged into
the system can add items to their
workspace and create their own paths
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

20. Finding items
Users can find items to include in their path by any of the
methods above – selecting from paths, search results or by
browsing using the thesaurus, tag cloud or topic map
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

21. Workspace
You can add items to your
workspace until you’re
ready to start creating a
path or editing one of your
existing paths
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

22. Editing paths
You can drag and drop items from your workspace
to your path, add and edit nodes
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23. Editing nodes
Users can add their own descriptions of
the item nodes on a path which can
include links to external resources, notes
or exercises
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Copyright 2013 PATHS

24. User evaluation
• Second round of evaluation trials just completed
• User feedback on the prototype systems has been very
good: very positive feedback on path creation tools and
search mechanisms
• About to start field trials and evaluation of a mobile app.
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

25. Outcomes
• PATHS has a flexible modular architecture consisting
of web-services, data storage and end-user interfaces
• Natural language processing of the metadata
allows search capabilities to be enhanced
• A hybrid model combines RDF/SPARQL with
RDB/SQL to deliver performance and
robustness
• Web services support users, path creation and
editing, querying, interacting with topic
hierarchies and a SolrProxy service.
• Published set of results from the user evaluation trials
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

26. Outcomes
• Potential business benefits include:
– Improving user experiences when searching large
collections of data (more than a million items) and to
help users discover content which is more relevant
– To implement tools which automatically improve and
enrich the quality of the item metadata that is available
– Provision of tools that enable users to collect content,
annotations and background material to create a story,
trail or exhibition, or to document the sources used in a
piece of research
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

27. Route from research to market
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We’re currently in the final stage of our research and
development cycle
• The PATHS API is available for testing and system
documentation is available
• Market study is currently underway to understand the
future market potential. Initial findings suggest:
• Potential demand is for stand-alone components
• and for consultancy services on NLP and evaluation
studies
• Suggests that the route to market will be as a suite of tools
for implementation in digital library systems
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS

28. Thanks for your attention!
kate.fernie@mdrpartners.com
http://www.paths-project.eu
Twitter @PATHS_project
The research leading to these results was carried out as part of the
PATHS project funded by the European Community’s Seventh
Framework Programme.
Session 8b: 10th October 2013
eChallenges e-2013
Copyright 2013 PATHS