A visual digital library approach for time-oriented scientific primary data

Abstract

Digital Library support for textual and certain types of non-textual documents has significantly advanced over the last years. While Digital Library support implies many aspects along the whole library workflow model, interactive and visual retrieval allowing effective query formulation and result presentation are important functions. Recently, new kinds of non-textual documents which merit Digital Library support, but yet cannot be fully accommodated by existing Digital Library technology, have come into focus. Scientific data, as produced for example, by scientific experimentation, simulation or observation, is such a document type. In this article we report on a concept and first implementation of Digital Library functionality for supporting visual retrieval and exploration in a specific important class of scientific primary data, namely, time-oriented research data. The approach is developed in an interdisciplinary effort by experts from the library, natural sciences, and visual analytics communities. In addition to presenting the concept and to discussing relevant challenges, we present results from a first implementation of our approach as applied on a real-world scientific primary data set. We also report from initial user feedback obtained during discussions with domain experts from the earth observation sciences, indicating the usefulness of our approach

VisInfo: a digital library system for time series research data based on exploratory search—a user-centered design approach

“…In [8,9], and [10], clustering was used to gain insight into interesting relationships between the data content and metadata associated to the research data content. Visual query definition concepts for time series data are reviewed in [5], a comprehensive survey for the visualization of time series is presented in [2]. Research data-based approaches on multivariate data changing over time are presented in [12,62] considering event data or climate data.…”

Content-based layouts for exploratory metadata search in scientific research data

“…This need for multidisciplinary collaboration is stated in biological sciences [32], neuroscience [10], E-Science [16] and other application areas [6,13]. Making effective use of data sets based on a combined metadatabased and content-based approach is promising [3]. Like stated by Foster et al, understanding the scientific workflow and providing effective information tools has the potential to eventually realize massive benefit to science [17].…”

“…In [30], content summaries are provided via a k-means clustering approach. As another example, Bernard et al [3] generate content summaries based on scientific research data via a self-organzing maps approach. A solution for visualizing icon-based cluster content summaries combined with graph layouts can be found in [8] from the information visualization research field.…”

Visual Search and Analysis in Complex Information Spaces—Approaches and Research Challenges

“…To this end, the research data needs to be indexed by an array of different descriptors; and appropriate visual search interfaces need to be provided. In [10], we have described an early prototype system which allows a multi-faceted search in earth observation data. Content-based search is supported by allowing the user to specify the draft shape of a time series of a given observation parameter (cf.…”