Studying 'research' in Australia’s library and information profession. With over 111 million annual visits, libraries are fundamental to Australia's social fabric and increasingly to its success as a national economy. In the current volatile economic climate Australia's libraries are being called upon to do more with less. This project aims to help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity by helping library and information professionals make tough decis ....Studying 'research' in Australia’s library and information profession. With over 111 million annual visits, libraries are fundamental to Australia's social fabric and increasingly to its success as a national economy. In the current volatile economic climate Australia's libraries are being called upon to do more with less. This project aims to help Australia's libraries to contribute in a more powerful way to national productivity by helping library and information professionals make tough decisions in an environment where there is competition for limited resources. This project aims, for the first time, build an evidence base on research in Australia's library and information profession. It will establish a framework that can be used by library and information professionals to build a research culture that enables the adoption of "practitioner-researcher" as an approach to professional practice.Read moreRead less
Special Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0567353
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$98,035.00
Summary
An Intelligent Search Infrastructure for Language Resources on the Web
. Language occupies a central role on the web: most content is expressed in language, and most access takes place via natural language search. Today, investigation of human language depends on access to this vast store of language data. This project will develop new infrastructure for accessing language resources, namely a language-aware search engine. Language technologies will be employed to classify web content, and a ....An Intelligent Search Infrastructure for Language Resources on the Web
. Language occupies a central role on the web: most content is expressed in language, and most access takes place via natural language search. Today, investigation of human language depends on access to this vast store of language data. This project will develop new infrastructure for accessing language resources, namely a language-aware search engine. Language technologies will be employed to classify web content, and a special search keyword 'lang:' will constrain search results to be in the specified language. The system will be integrated with major language archives in Australia and overseas, and deployed on the high performance computing infrastructure at Melbourne University's Advanced Research Computing Centre.
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Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right ....Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for conducting information retrieval experiments will have widespread and tangible benefits. The techniques developed will also be applicable in fields such as document categorization, text summarization, and machine learning.Read moreRead less
Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing fast ....Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing faster search, even in the presence of complex query variants and distributed implementations, we will be able to advise the suppliers of such services on how to provide a maximally useful product.
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Accurate Context-Aware Search for Managed Document Collections. Search is a key component of a vast range of computing applications. However, while search on large collections of general-purpose text is well-understood, and the best systems are highly effective, search on smaller or special-purpose collections is much less reliable and has attracted relatively little research. By identifying general ways of using context such as user history or prior page usefulness, the quality of search in s ....Accurate Context-Aware Search for Managed Document Collections. Search is a key component of a vast range of computing applications. However, while search on large collections of general-purpose text is well-understood, and the best systems are highly effective, search on smaller or special-purpose collections is much less reliable and has attracted relatively little research. By identifying general ways of using context such as user history or prior page usefulness, the quality of search in such cases can be greatly improved. Products that make use of these principles will provide greater workplace efficiency and be able to locate information that other search tools cannot identify.Read moreRead less
Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universal ....Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universally inferior to real-world counterparts. Given the lack of fundamental theories to inform design, this is unsurprising. After creating a detailed and systematic account of user behaviour in browsing, we will create novel designs that will accelerate the discovery of information, particularly for innovative work.Read moreRead less
Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of syste ....Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of system effectiveness. This project should provide significant advances that will benefit all users of search engines.Read moreRead less
Local Aboriginal community archives: the use of information technology and the National Broadband Network in disaster preparedness and recovery. This project will redefine the way significant and at-risk audiovisual archival material in Aboriginal communities is preserved, protected and made accessible for future generations via new initiatives such as cloud technology and the National Broadband Network, ensuring intergenerational transmission of vital cultural heritage.
Rights in records by design. This project aims to design and develop a Lifelong Living Archive for children who experience out-of-home care Children cared for out-of-home need quality recordkeeping systems to develop and nurture their sense of identity and connectedness; account for their care experiences throughout their lives; and detect, report, investigate and take action against child neglect and abuse. This research is expected to support children experiencing family dislocation through ef ....Rights in records by design. This project aims to design and develop a Lifelong Living Archive for children who experience out-of-home care Children cared for out-of-home need quality recordkeeping systems to develop and nurture their sense of identity and connectedness; account for their care experiences throughout their lives; and detect, report, investigate and take action against child neglect and abuse. This research is expected to support children experiencing family dislocation through efficient, effective, and responsive recordkeeping systems to ensure the highest standards and continuity of care.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200100064
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$422,022.00
Summary
Fair and Transparent Information Access in Spoken Conversational Assistants. This project aims to investigate how rich information needed to answer complex questions can be delivered via a speech-only communication channel. Using laboratory user studies, where users can interact with a smart speaker to ask for information about controversial or multi-perspective topics, the project expects to advance knowledge on how to expose pertinent information without creating or reinforcing biases. Expecte ....Fair and Transparent Information Access in Spoken Conversational Assistants. This project aims to investigate how rich information needed to answer complex questions can be delivered via a speech-only communication channel. Using laboratory user studies, where users can interact with a smart speaker to ask for information about controversial or multi-perspective topics, the project expects to advance knowledge on how to expose pertinent information without creating or reinforcing biases. Expected outcomes include novel presentation strategies to access rich information via audio in a fair manner. This should significantly benefit the visually impaired and low-literacy communities by enhancing their access to topics with multiple point of views, which would impact decision making such as who to vote for in elections.Read moreRead less