EagleRAD Your Assistant for Reference Service - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Title: EagleRAD Your Assistant for Reference Service


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EagleRAD - Your Assistant for Reference Service

• Jiangping Chen
• School of Library and Information Sciences,
  University of North Texas
• http//max.lis.unt.edu

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Presentation Outline

• Challenges and Opportunities for Reference
  Services
• Introduction to Automatic Question Answering
• The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database
• A class project for developing a Web database
  system for reference services
• EagleRAD Eagle Reference Assistant Database
• Usefulness
• Design considerations
• Open Discussion Does EagleRAD Make Sense?

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Challenges and Opportunities For Reference
Services

• Digital libraries
• Digital reference services
• The Educators Reference Desk (http//www.eduref.o
  rg/)
• Automatic question answering systems
• High expectations for reference librarians
• Subject domain knowledge
• Familiar with various in-house online sources
• Familiar with database search techniques
• Online interaction

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Automatic Question Answering

• Types of question answering (QA) systems
• Automatic vs. human mediated
• General vs. domain specific
• Automatic question answering
• A step further from information retrieval
• Provide answers to users natural language
  questions
• Fostered by TREC (Text REtrieval Conference)
  (http//trec.nist.gov)
• Currently, a popular research area attracting
  researchers from information retrieval,
  artificial intelligence, and natural language
  processing

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Basic QA strategy of TREC QA systems
Question focus identification
Question
Keyword selection
Keyword expansion
Document or passage retrieval
Passage filtering
Answer
Answer candidates identification
Answer ranking
Answer formulation
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Automatic Question Answering

• Strengths
• Quickly respond to questions
• Effective to some factoid questions
• Question How much folic acid should an
  expectant mother get daily?
• Answer 400 micrograms
•  
• Question Who invented the electric guitar?
• Answer Adolph Rickenbacker
• Weakness
• Unable to understand and answer complex questions
• How do I complete Form 2441 if I have flexible
  Spending Account?
• Is there any research on correlations between
  playing violent video games and aggressive
  behavior in children?

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• Some reference questions are difficult
• Can you help me to find articles with negative
  opinion on artificial intelligence?
• Usability testing methodologies on small scale
  Web database systems?
• Some difficult reference questions have been
  asked by different customers at different time
• The sources for reference service are changing
  and growing

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• Spend our time wisely
• Focus on learning new things
• Organize and summarize what we have
• Knowledge is power
• Why didnt we collect and use what we have as
  reference experts?
• Take advantage of information technologies
• Internet and Internet information resources
• Database management systems
• Open-source software systems

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• The idea encouraged me to design a class project
  for my database class at SLIS, UNT in Spring 2004
• Students were required to design a Web database
  to assist reference librarians
• Specifically, the project included following
  tasks
• Informal interview to understand users
  requirement
• Database conceptual design
• Database logical design
• Website design
• Web database implementation

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• Informal interview to understand users
  requirements
• Four team interviewed about 7 reference
  librarians
• Very informal students presented the project
  assignment and asked interviewees questions about
  their daily reference practice and challenges
  they have encountered.
• During the interview
• At the beginning, interviewees were unclear about
  the usefulness of the system
• Questions about what the system could do

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• Discoveries from the informal interview
• It is true that there are different types of
  reference questions, and some questions are
  substantially difficult
• Direct answers vs. information sources for
  answers
• Libraries currently dont have such a system to
  track reference questions
• It is important to organize questions and sources
  according to a thesaurus
• Browsing through subjects is as important as
  searching
• Outcomes students obtained knowledge on
  reference service and reference librarians
  system requirements

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The Idea of A Reference Assistant Database (RAD)

• Screen shots of students work
• slis5717sp04_websites.ppt
• Students comments on the project
• A practice on applying Web database knowledge to
  reference service
• Knowledge on database design is useful for
  librarians as non database designers
• Limitations of search functions offered by
  Database Management Systems
• The most important tasks for database design
  implementation
• Users requirement
• System evaluation
• The class project helped the students to design a
  database to connect database technologies with
  library work

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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• EagleRAD Eagle Reference Assistant Database
• A Web database system that will be implemented
  using PHP and MySQL at SLIS, UNT
• Web based, database-driven, interactive system
• Will provide to interested libraries free of
  charge
• Currently the design phase has been completed
• We want to hear what reference librarian say
  about the design before implementation

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The screen short of the trial web site EaglaRAD
Home
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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• Usefulness of a system like EagleRAD
• A time safer for reference librarians
• A training tool for new reference librarians
• A knowledge base for patrons
• An important component of future digital
  reference services
• A source for evaluating library services

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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• Functions of EagleRAD
• Record patrons questions, reference librarians
  or subject experts answers (sources), and the
  reference interview processes
• Organize the resources used by reference
  librarians for references
• Convenient search and browse whats in the
  database
• Provide certain statistical information for
  reporting

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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• Database conceptual design
• Business rules
• one question can be answered by different
  sources, one source can answer many questions
• One question can be assigned many subject terms.
  And one subject term will be assigned to many
  questions
• Subject terms constitute a thesaurus, which
  contains terms and their semantic relations such
  as UT, RT, BT, and NT
• In order to add new records into the system, the
  user needs to have a valid user name and password
• Tables
• Main tables QUESTION, SOURCE, ANSWER, SUBJET,
  USER
• Bridge tables QSUB, SUBREL, ANSWER

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The Conceptual Design of EagleRAD
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The Data Dictionary
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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• Web site design principles
• Support basic user interactions
• Input new data
• Edit reference resource list
• Search for previous questions
• Browse resources list and previous questions
  according to subjects
• Easy to use
• Tell users what the system expects
• Mechanism to reduce input workload and avoid
  input errors
• Easy to expand thesaurus management, automatic
  QA

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EagleRAD Web Site Architecture
Main Page
Manage Account
Browse Ref List
Search
Login
Input Data
Edit Data
Display Data
Report
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The screen short of the data entry page
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Application Put Data into EagleRAD

• Two examples extracted from Riechel (1989)
• Sample Question 1

My husband has a slight cut on his hand that led
to severe infection and hospitalization. He was
diagnosed as having cellulites. I need a
non-technical definition of the condition and
information about treatment.

• Answer finding process as described in the book

Patron has checked certain medial reference books
but not satisfied. What had she looked at? Some
medical dictionaries. We together looked at
certain medicine and health encyclopedias and
guides written for the layerperson, found an
indication of the cause in Columbia University
College of Physicians And Surgeons Complete Home
Medical Guide. Patron was interested in more
recent studies and reports on the treatment of
cellulites, but rejected to use MEDLINE and spend
time to find specialized journals. CCML was
searched with cellulites same hand same
treatment Article Infection Today Skin and
Soft-Tissue Infections by Roger Finch, lancet, 23
January 1988, 164-168 most interested her.
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Sample Question 1 in EagleRAD
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Application Put Data into EagleRAD

• Two examples extracted from Riechel (1989)
• Sample Question 2

I am looking for an article by Everstine or
Everstein in AmP whatever that is!

• Answer finding process as described in the book

A medical student, frustrated due to the
incomplete reference to an article he needed.
Further queries revealed that the article has
something to do with ethics and was probably
written 1980-1986. AmP stands for American
Psychologist. Do a ready reference search on
DIALOG, in PSYCINFO, search term AU
EVERSTIN,? or EVERSTEIN and JN AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST. Article found Everstine, Louis, et
al., Privacy and Confidentiality in
Psychotherapy, American Psychologist, 35
(September 1980), 828-40.
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Sample Question 2 in EagleRAD
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EagleRAD Design and Implementation

• Expected Search Functions
• Support natural language queries as well as
  keywords
• Attempt to integrate some functions of automatic
  QA into EagleRAD

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The screen short of the trial Search Browse
page
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Open Discussion Does EagleRAD Make Sense?

• Do you think such a tool is useful?
• Would you use it if it were available to you?
• I would like to hear from you!
• (Jiangping Chen jpchen_at_unt.edu)
• Suggestions Comments?

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References

• Chen. Jiangping Ge, He Wu, Yan and Jiang,
  Shikun. (2004). UNT at TREC 2004 question
  answering combining multiple evidences. To
  appear Proceedings of TREC 2004
• Lankes, R. D. (2004). The Digital Reference
  Research Agenda. Journal of the American Society
  for Information Science and Technology, 55(4),
  301-311
• Miller, G. (1990). WordNet an on-line lexical
  database. International Journal of Lexicography,
  2(4), Special issue.
• Pomerantz, J., Nicholson, S., Belanger, Y.,
  Lankes, R. D. (2004). The Current State of
  Digital Reference Validation of a General
  Digital Reference Model through a Survey of
  Digital Reference Services. Information
  Processing Management, 40(2), 347-363.
• Riechel, R. (1989). Personnel Needs and Changing
  Reference Service. Hamden, Conn.. Library
  Professional Publications, ISBN. 0-208-02226-0.
• Rob, P. Coronel, C. (2004). Database Systems
  Design, Implementation, and Management, sixth
  Edition. Course Technology. ISBN 0-619-21323-X.