© 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 University Smart Web Technologies Centre School of Computing Aberdeen, Scotland.

© Prof David J Harper 2004 Lifecycle of an e-Thesis u Do research u Write up research u Production (of e-thesis) u Publish u Retrieval (search, directory lookup, …) u Delivery u Use

© Prof David J Harper 2004 What kinds of Use? u Reading to: u Locate and extract information u Reference information u Examine the thesis u Using the thesis as a “pivot” in the information space: u Following references from thesis u Finding references to the thesis u Tracking work of the author u Searching based on extracts/snippets from text u Exploring social/work context of the thesis u Project group(s) u Research group u Department

© Prof David J Harper 2004 ProfileSkim u Developed to support retrieval within long documents u Within document retrieval tool: supports reading to extract and reading to reference u Main concept: relevance profiling based on language modelling u Replacement for the ubiquitous (and ineffective) Find-command

© Prof David J Harper 2004 Overview of ProfileSkim Tool Page(s) being visited Highlight Query Words Query input Standard Acrobat

© 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 u Think beyond electronic e-theses delivery to use u ProfileSkim is an effective tool for within document retrieval, and this has been confirmed by end user experiments u ProfileSkim is a standalone tool, which is currently being developed as plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Reader and Professional u Range of possible reading activities suggests a need for a specialised e-thesis reading tool

© Prof David J Harper 2004 Further Information on ProfileSkim u Handout u Acrobat plug-in launch in November 2004 u Opportunities for: u User Trialling u Purchase u Resellers u Affiliates u Registration of Interest (see Speaker) u Link to ProfileSkim e-shop from (soon)

© Prof David J Harper 2004 SmartWeb - A few words from my sponsor u Centre of excellence on intelligent computing technologies and their application to web-based systems and services u Basic and applicable research targeted at: e- Government, e-Learning, e-Health and e-Business u Located at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen u Seeking collaborators, commercialisation partners, exchanges, short- and longer term visitors, PhD students u

© Prof David J Harper 2004 Relevance Profiling Process P(query | window) Page max -> page score Sliding window