1. Semantic Web: “To be browsed or what?” Martin Dzbor Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University Presentation @ Soc. of Archivists Conf. 2 nd Sep 2004

2. Overview What is Magpie? –Brief demonstration –Principles & assumptions What can it do and how? –Supporting document interpretation –Collaborative browsing –Conceptual management of browsing history Application areas –Education & e-learning –Access knowledge not content

3. Semantic Services Demo (Magpie in education)

4. Semantically Enhanced Web Browsing ‘Zero overhead costs’ –Dynamic ontology-driven enrichment in real time –Utilizing interfaces familiar to the lay user –Resource re-usability & openness ‘Gateway’ to the semantic web –Access knowledge through annotated web resources –Integrated with standard web browsers –Magpie services are ‘first class’ concepts Multiple user interaction modalities –User-requested (‘pull’ or ‘click&go’) semantic services –Trigger (‘push’ or ‘subscribe&learn’) semantic services One-click (or less) interface

5. Magpie Components Enriched Web Page Semantic Log (found-item 3275578832 localhost #u"http://localhost/peopl e/motta/" john-domingue john-domingue) (found-item 3275578832 localhost Jabber Server Magpie Hub Ontology cache (Lexicon) Problem Domain & Resources Ontology based Proxy Server Web Page

6. Value of tools like Magpie Quan & Karger (2004): –[…] separate pieces of information about a single resource that used to require navigation through different web sites can be merged together […] without specialized portal sites or coordination between the sites McDowell, Etzioni &al. (2003): –How do we entice non-technical people to structure their data? –[…] semantic annotation will be motivated by services [giving] immediate benefits – instant gratification to the user. Tauscher & Greenberg (2001): –< 1% browsing actions use explicit history mechanisms –Browsing history needs better representation that would be meaningful to the user.

7. “…and now I put my learning hat on”

8. Benefits to a student Science (but also art & philosophy) is largely about relating things and seeing patterns Quick access to course-related resources Ability to link [theoretical] resources with the [practical] articles, documents, stories, … Exploratory guiding as a metaphor: –“What would my prof say if he was watching over my shoulder when I read about IPCC climate scenarios?” Uni may re-use chunks of existing knowledge [from third parties] and only provide their interpretation rather than replicating them

9. Collaborative Work Demo

10. What else? Conceptual management of browsing history and “semantic bookmarks”

11. Benefits of semantic bookmarking Textual vs. iconic representation of browsing history Automated creation of a semantic footprint in the selected ontology for each visited page (if the user allows) High-level semantic filtering/querying Yet-another ‘gateway’ to the semantically relevant knowledge/information (via Magpie on- demand services) Comes ‘for free’ with the Magpie framework

12. Current & future work Better support for semantic web services –Modularization of semantic services –Tools supporting non-IT authors in publishing new services for their users/customers –Service discovery & composition Early-stage “Author’s toolkit”

14. Current & future work Better support for semantic web services Magpie as a development framework for semantic web applications –S199: Climatology course pilot for The Open University & its spin-off for climateprediction.net project with >60k users –ELS: Semantically augmented environment for journal subscribers (for Nature Publishing) –WIND: Simple semantic web demonstrator for Italian Seria A football domain (variants for rugby, politics, …)

15. Summary Semantic web browsing to support sense-making Integrated with standard web browsers User requested (pull) and trigger (push) semantic services Semantic web browsing at no-extra-cost and no-extra-cognitive-overhead for the user Suite of services complementing the core engine –Team/group collaboration –Browsing history management –Rich educational resource & appl. development framework Not a “semantic web browser” but browser or better “gateway to the semantic web”

16. Magpie IE Plugin downloadable from http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/magpie Thank you!

18. Elements of successful collaboration Common goal to provide focus/motivation Shared processes and workflow –Integration of groupware into main info flows Critical mass –Active presence, low use = insufficient data Burden/benefit ratio –Users’ buy-in, effort & overhead costs Trust –Reluctance to cross-organizational sharing Team rewards and recognition –Individual performance vs. teamwork = conflict? After: Tamara Hall, MITRE Corp.: Intelligence Community Collaboration (1999)

19. Magpie as a collaborative framework Collaboration integrated into daily activities that are normally centred on perusing web documents Zero-cost paradigm of the framework significantly reduces the ‘burden/benefit’ ratio Automatically populated ontology (via IE & screen scraping) overcomes bootstrapping and ‘data seeding’ issues (a.k.a ‘vicious circle of critical mass’) Open architecture facilitates integration with existing IT infrastructure (and hence existing work practices) Reconciliation of individual vs. team conflict; e.g. by requesting specific info or tapping into shared Memex- style* repository * Chakrabarti, S., Srivastava, S. &al. (WWW’2000)

20. Functional Collaboration Components Semantic annotations & automatically updated semantic log = “team memory” Team members benefit from colleagues’ semantic annotations and browsing histories Synchronous communication & active presence using a KMi lightweight telepresence/CSCW tool (BuddySpace)

21. “ExploitIT.com”

22. Current and Future Work Pending applications –Climate Modelling – www.climateprediction.net –WIND - Italian Seria A –Nature - Life Sciences Encyclopedia Integrating NER Integrating semantic web services Integrating semantic annotation Creating a framework for web site development Smarter lexicon generation

23. Recent, current & future work Beyond ontology driven named entity recognition –Remove brittleness of ontologies –Facilitate knowledge acquisition Pre-alpha prototype combining & integrating Magpie & eSpotter functionalities Database of generic named entities (names, places, numbers, symbols) Repository of generic & domain-spec. rules (names, places, numbers, symbols) Additional text processor (segmentation, lemmatization, disambiguation, similarity)

24. ESpotter Demo

25. Recent, current & future work Beyond ontology driven named entity recognition Tighter integration with semantic web services –Further modularization of semantic services –Support for publishing, discovery & composition (?) –Automated management of Magpie services for different ontologies, users & browsing patterns Early-stage conceptual wrapper for IRS-II

26. Double CO 2 productionControl ClimatePrediction.net 1994

27. 2094 ClimatePrediction.net Double CO 2 productionControl

28. Magpie IE Plugin Entity recognition interface Web Browser Interface (incl. ‘click management’) & Trigger Services Interface (GUI-s) Text highlighting (incl. on-demand services) Ontology browsing, mapping module Recognized entities (hash) Document Object Model Lexicon- based Rule-based (eSpotter) Remote ontologies, KB-s & services RDF(S)/OWL parsers Hierarchical rep. suitable for simple ‘reasoning’ Ontology ‘cache’ Rules & patterns Edit, manage, extend/learn or customize the rules Selected classes/branches 1 1 Ontology visualizer/browser User preferences about actions a c d e f g h h i j k l’ l k’ m o’ n p q r s t u o