HCIL Workshop 4: Design and Implementation of Query Previews for Digital Libraries

Design and Implementation of
Query Previews for Digital Libraries
Thursday June 17th, 1999

a Workshop preceeding the
16th Annual HCIL Symposium & Open House

Organized by Catherine Plaisant and Maya Venkatraman
Sponsored by HCIL, NASA ESDIS and the ESIP federation

Abstract

The workshop aims to equip participants with the tools necessary for building query preview interfaces. The software and data fornat from Query Preview interfaces will be fully described. Workshop activities and presentations will enable attendees to learn using the existing code and design interfaces for their own data.

Want to participate??

Even if you are still uncertain, please inform us of your potential participation.
maya@cs.umd.edu or plaisant@cs.umd.edu
Tel: (301) 405-2768 (Catherine)

To register, 1) contact Catherine or Maya so we can "authorize" your registration, 2) wait for confirmation, 3) register using the Symposium and Open House Registration form.

We will limit the number of participants to about a maximum of 15.

To know more about Query Previews

Readings

Read the Query Previews project page at HCIL (description, all online papers and prototypes)

If you read only one paper read this online early version of our paper accepted at ADL'99 (or ask us a final version by email).

Prototypes

Operational Interface at the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD)
- requires a recently upgraded browser, Requires IE4+ or Netscape 4.08+ .
(NOTE that GCMD is updating their website and some things may be changing).
This shows an example for an EOSDIS Directory Search situation (5-10,000 records, multi-valued attributes).

Query preview (temporal + geographical) for inventory situation
This technique will scale up to any number of records and multivalued attribute data by limiting the number of simultaneous attributes and using range queries only. (Operational Prototype at Raytheon STX )
Needs Netscape 4.06 / IE 4.0 PCs; and Netscape 4.5 on Unix - Special link for Mac Users using IE 4.5

Binary Preview Interface
A simpler technique that provides only coverage, but not counts. Try selecting a single month and see what happens in this apparently global dataset. This technique scales up to any number of records and multivalued attribute data.
Binary previews are also used in the soon-to-be-released GLCF (i.e. the Maryland ESIP) search and retrieve applet.

Agenda

Time	Scheduled Event	Details
Morning Session I	Introduction to Query Previews	Speaker: Catherine Plaisant , HCIL
Morning Session II	Demonstration of Query Preview Interfaces	Everyone gains a first hand experience of working with the query preview interfaces
Morning Session III	Operational Experiences at NASA:	Speakers: Jean Major or Steve Gokey - GCMD Bob Harberts and Wenlan Feng - Raytheon STX
...LUNCH...	...LUNCH...	...LUNCH...
Other possible topics
Additional demos	Other prototypes: 1) Use of binary previews in UMd ESIP (the Global Land Cover Facility), 2) Browsing search results with dynamic query starfield displays (new Java applet) Egemin Tanin will demostrate a Query Preview Calculator that helps determine the Query Preview Technique that is best suited to a given dataset
Afternoon Session I	Designing Query Previews	Workshop participants will form small groups that will chose data sets that can benefit from the previews and design QP interfaces for their dataset. Groups will decide which QP interface fits the dataset best, select inputs and outputs and model the metadata pipelines. Groups will design their own QP interface paper mockups, using the widgets from the existing products. At the end of the design session each group will present their solutions and discussions will be held.
Afternoon Session II	Conclusions	Workshop organizers collect feedback and suggestions for future research from participants

Sponsors and Partners

This workshop is organized in the context of research projects supported by NASA ESDIS and by the ESIP federation. Recent work was done in collaboration with the Global Change Master Directory and with the V0-IMS team at Raytheon for evaluation in operational environments.

Last update: April 29, 1999

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