The purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered shortly before writing.
Design/methodology/approach
This novel approach of providing cues for finding important meeting events that would be worth recording in a meeting summary looks at temporal overlaps of multiple people’s note-taking. This research uses data of 124 meetings taken from the AMI meeting corpus.
Findings
The results show that several machine learning methods that the authors compared were able to classify the data significantly better than a random approach. The best model, decision trees with feature selection, achieved 70 per cent accuracy for the binary distinction writing for any number of participants simultaneously or no writing, whereas the performance for a more fine-grained distinction of the number of participants taking notes showed only about 30 per cent accuracy.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that meeting participants take personal notes in accordance with the utterance of previously uttered speech acts, particularly dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. However, further research is necessary to examine other domains and to determine in what way this behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.
Practical implications
The reader of an Information Systems (IS) journal would be interested in this paper because the work described and the findings gained could lead to the development of novel information systems that facilitate the work for businesses and individuals. Innovative meeting capture and retrieval applications, satisfying automatic summaries of important meeting points and sophisticated note-taking tools that suggest content automatically could make people’s daily lives more convenient in the future.
Social implications
There are wider implications in terms of productivity and efficiency. Business value is increased for the organisation, as human knowledge is built more or less automatically. There are also cognitive and social implications for individuals and possibly an impact on the society as a whole. It is also important for globalisation, social media and mobile devices.
Originality/value
The topic is new and original, as there has not been much research on it yet. Similar work was carried out recently (Murray, 2015; Bothin and Clough 2014). This is why it is relevant to an IS journal and interesting for the reader. In particular, dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. This behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.
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Jo Bates, Paul Clough, Robert Jäschke, Jahna Otterbacher and Kris Unsworth
Sophie Rutter, Paul David Clough and Elaine G. Toms
The information use environment (IUE) – the context within which the search activity takes place – is critical to understanding the search process as this will affect how the…
Abstract
Purpose
The information use environment (IUE) – the context within which the search activity takes place – is critical to understanding the search process as this will affect how the value of information is determined. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors influence search in English primary schools (children aged 4–11) and how information found is subsequently used.
Design/methodology/approach
Ten teachers, selected using maximal variation sampling, describe search-related activities within the classroom. The resulting interview data were analysed thematically for the influence of the environment on search and different information uses. The findings were then validated against three classroom observations.
Findings
12 categories of information use were identified, and 5 aspects of the environment (the national curriculum, best practice, different skills of children and teachers, keeping children safe, and limited time and resource) combine to influence and shape search in this setting.
Research limitations/implications
Findings support the argument that it is the IUE that is the key influence of search activity. What makes children a distinct user group is linked to the environment within which they use information rather than age, as advocated in previous studies.
Practical implications
The features of search systems and practical guidance for teachers and children should be designed to support information use within the IUE.
Originality/value
As far as the authors are aware, this is the first study to consider the influence of the IUE on how search is enacted within primary schools.
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Sophie Rutter, Elaine G. Toms and Paul David Clough
To design effective task-responsive search systems, sufficient understanding of users’ tasks must be gained and their characteristics described. Although existing…
Abstract
Purpose
To design effective task-responsive search systems, sufficient understanding of users’ tasks must be gained and their characteristics described. Although existing multi-dimensional task schemes can be used to describe users’ search and work tasks, they do not take into account the information use environment (IUE) that contextualises the task. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
With a focus on English primary schools, in four stages a multi-dimensional task scheme was developed that distinguishes between task characteristics generic to all environments, and those that are specific to schools. In Stage 1, a provisional scheme was developed based upon the existing literature. In the next two stages, through interviews with teachers and observations of school children, the provisional scheme was populated and revised. In Stage 4, whether search tasks with the same information use can be distinguished by their characteristics was examined.
Findings
Ten generic characteristics were identified (nature of work task, search task originator, search task flexibility, search task doer, search task necessity, task output, search goal, stage in work task, resources and information use) and four characteristics specific to primary schools (curricular area, use in curricular area, planning and location). For the different information uses, some characteristics are more typical than others.
Practical implications
The resulting scheme, based on children’s real-life information seeking, should be used in the design and evaluation of search systems and digital libraries that support school children. More generally, the scheme can also be used in other environments.
Originality/value
This is the first study to develop a multi-dimensional task scheme that considers encompasses the IUE.
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Daniela Petrelli and Paul Clough
This paper aims to describe a study of the queries generated from a user experiment for cross‐language information retrieval (CLIR) from a historic image archive.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe a study of the queries generated from a user experiment for cross‐language information retrieval (CLIR) from a historic image archive.
Design/methodology/approach
A controlled lab‐based user study was carried out using a prototype Italian‐English image retrieval system. Participants were asked to carry out searches for 16 images provided to them, a known‐item search task. Italian speaking users generated 618 queries for a set of known‐item search tasks. User's interactions with the system were recorded and queries were analysed manually quantitatively and qualitatively. The queries generated by user's interaction with the system were analysed and the results used to suggest recommendations for the future development of cross‐language retrieval systems for digital image libraries.
Findings
Results highlight the diversity in requests for similar visual content and the weaknesses of machine translation for query translation. Through the manual translation of queries the authors show the benefits of using high‐quality translation resources. The results show the individual characteristics of users while performing known‐item searches and the overlap obtained between query terms and structured image captions, highlighting the use of user's search terms for objects within the foreground of an image.
Research limitations/implications
This research looks in depth into one case of interaction and one image repository. Despite this limitation, the discussed results are likely to be valid across other languages and image repositories.
Practical implications
To develop effective systems requires studying user's search behaviours, particularly in digital image libraries.
Originality/value
The growing quantity of digital visual material in digital libraries offers the potential to apply techniques from CLIR to provide cross‐language information access services. The value of this paper is in the provision of empirical evidence to support recommendations for effective cross‐language image retrieval system design.
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Paul Clough, Jiayu Tang, Mark M. Hall and Amy Warner
The National Archives (TNA) is the UK Government's official archive. It stores and maintains records spanning over a 1,000 years in both physical and digital form. Much of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The National Archives (TNA) is the UK Government's official archive. It stores and maintains records spanning over a 1,000 years in both physical and digital form. Much of the information held by TNA includes references to place and frequently user queries to TNA's online catalogue involve searches for location. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how TNA have extracted the geographic references in their historic data to improve access to the archives.
Design/methodology/approach
To be able to quickly enhance the existing archival data with geographic information, existing technologies from Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Geographical Information Retrieval (GIR) have been utilised and adapted to historical archives.
Findings
Enhancing the archival records with geographic information has enabled TNA to quickly develop a number of case studies highlighting how geographic information can improve access to large‐scale archival collections. The use of existing methods from the GIR domain and technologies, such as OpenLayers, enabled one to quickly implement this process in a way that is easily transferable to other institutions.
Practical implications
The methods and technologies described in this paper can be adapted, by other archives, to similarly enhance access to their historic data. Also the data‐sharing methods described can be used to enable the integration of knowledge held at different archival institutions.
Originality/value
Place is one of the core dimensions for TNA's archival data. Many of the records which are held make reference to place data (wills, legislation, court cases), and approximately one fifth of users' searches involve place names. However, there are still a number of open questions regarding the adaptation of existing GIR methods to the history domain. This paper presents an overview over available GIR methods and the challenges in applying them to historical data.
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Paula Goodale, Paul David Clough, Samuel Fernando, Nigel Ford and Mark Stevenson
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive style on navigating a large digital library of cultural heritage information; specifically, the paper focus on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive style on navigating a large digital library of cultural heritage information; specifically, the paper focus on the wholist/analytic dimension as experienced in the field of educational informatics. The hypothesis is that wholist and analytic users have characteristically different approaches when they explore, search and interact with digital libraries, which may have implications for system design.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed interactive IR evaluation of a large cultural heritage digital library was undertaken, along with the Riding CSA test. Participants carried out a range of information tasks, and the authors analysed their task performance, interactions and attitudes.
Findings
The hypothesis on the differences in performance and behaviour between wholist and analytic users is supported. However, the authors also find that user attitudes towards the system are opposite to expectations and that users give positive feedback for functionality that supports activities in which they are cognitively weaker.
Research limitations/implications
There is scope for testing results in a larger scale study, and/or with different systems. In particular, the findings on user attitudes warrant further investigation.
Practical implications
Findings on user attitudes suggest that systems which support areas of weakness in users’ cognitive abilities are valued, indicating an opportunity to offer diverse functionality to support different cognitive weaknesses.
Originality/value
A model is proposed suggesting a converse relationship between behaviour and attitudes; to support individual users displaying search/navigation behaviour mapped onto the strengths of their cognitive style, but placing greater value on interface features that support aspects in which they are weaker.
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Shahram Sedghi, Mark Sanderson and Paul Clough
Medicine is heavily dependent on images and health care professionals use medical images for clinical, educational and research purposes. This paper aims to investigate the…
Abstract
Purpose
Medicine is heavily dependent on images and health care professionals use medical images for clinical, educational and research purposes. This paper aims to investigate the resources used by health care professionals while searching for medical images.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on a qualitative study that uses the Straussian version of grounded theory and involved 29 health care professionals from various health and biomedical departments working within Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust. Data collection was carried out using semi‐structured interviews and think‐aloud protocols.
Findings
The findings show that health care professionals seek medical images in a variety of visual information sources, including those found online and from published medical literature. The research also identified a number of difficulties that health care professionals face when searching for medical images in various image resources.
Originality/value
There have been few studies that investigated the image resources used by health care professionals. Thus, this study contributes to the understanding of medical image resources and information needs of health care professionals. A clear understanding of the medical image information needs of health care professionals is also vital to the design process and development of medical image retrieval systems.
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Simon Wakeling, Paul Clough, Barbara Sen and Lynn Silipigni Connaway
Moves towards more interactive services on the web have led libraries to add an increasing range of functionality to their OPACS. Given the prevalence of recommender systems on…
Abstract
Purpose
Moves towards more interactive services on the web have led libraries to add an increasing range of functionality to their OPACS. Given the prevalence of recommender systems on the wider web, especially in e‐commerce environments, this paper aims to review current research in this area that is of particular relevance to the library community. It attempts to gauge the uptake of recommender systems in exiting OPAC services, and identify issues that might be responsible for inhibiting wider uptake.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on an extensive literature review, as well as original research comparing the functionality of 211 public and 118 university library OPACs in the UK. Examining current recommender systems research, it outlines the most significant recommendation models and reviews research in two key areas of recommender systems design: data acquisition, and the explanation of recommendations. It discusses three existing library recommendation systems: BibTip, LibraryThing for Libraries and the in‐house system at the University of Huddersfield.
Findings
The authors' analysis indicates that the incorporation of recommender systems into library services is extremely low, with only 2 per cent of public libraries and 11 per cent of university libraries in the UK offering the feature. While system limitations and budget constraints are perhaps partly to blame, it is suggested that library professionals have perhaps yet to be persuaded that the value of recommendations to library users is great enough to warrant their inclusion becoming a priority.
Originality/value
This paper represents the first study of UK library OPACs to focus on the prevalence of recommender systems.
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Shahram Sedghi, Mark Sanderson and Paul Clough
This paper aims to report the results of a study investigating the relevance criteria used by health care professionals when seeking medical images.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report the results of a study investigating the relevance criteria used by health care professionals when seeking medical images.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 29 participants using a think‐aloud protocol and face‐to‐face interviews and analysed using the Straussian version of grounded theory (GT).
Findings
The results show that participants made use of 15 relevance criteria, although they agreed on topicality being the most important. The findings suggest that users apply different criteria in different situations when evaluating the relevancy of medical images.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, there have been few studies that investigate relevance judgments for visually orientated documents. Thus, this study helps to contribute to the understanding of medical image resources and the information needs of health care professionals. A clear understanding of the medical image information needs of health care professionals is also vital to the design process and development of medical image retrieval systems.