using an ontology and a multilingual glossary for enhancing the nautical archaeology digital library
Access to materials in digital collections has been extensively studied within digital libraries. Exploring a collection requires customized indices and novel interfaces to allow users new exploration mechanisms. Materials or objects can then be found by way of full-text, faceted, or thematic indexes. There has been a marked interest not only in finding objects in a collection, but in discovering relationships and properties. For example, multiple representations of the same object enable the use of visual aids to augment collection exploration. Depending on the domain and characteristics of the objects in a collection, relationships among components can be used to enrich the process of understanding their contents. In this context, the Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (NADL) includes multilingual textual- and visual-rich objects (shipbuilding treatises, illustrations, photographs, and drawings). In this paper we describe an approach for enhancing access to a collection of ancient technical documents, illustrations, and photographs documenting archaeological excavations. Because of the nature of our collection, we exploit a multilingual glossary along with an ontology. Preliminary tests of our prototype suggest the feasibility of our method for enhancing access to the collection.
nautical archaeology interfaces technical documents ship reconstruction multilingual technical manuscripts information retrieval