BooksOnline'09 Workshop: 2nd Workshop on Research Advances in Large Digital Book Collections
October 2 2009, Corfu, Greece.

Programme:

Workshop Goals:

Building on the success of the First BooksOnline Workshop on Research Advances in Large Digital Book Collections (BooksOnline'08), organized at CIKM 2008, the BooksOnline'09 Workshop aims to provide continuity and ensure further progress on addressing challenges and exploring opportunities around large collections of digital books and complementary media.

The objective of the BooksOnline'09 Workshop is to connect researchers and practitioners from libraries, archives, academia, publishers, and on-line services in order to facilitate discussion and promote collaboration around:

• Key research and innovation issues, leveraging the outcome of the BooksOnline'08 Workshop,
• Proposals for projects and initiatives that the BooksOnline community could take forward, and
• Strategies for project implementation and funding.

The workshop aims to foster the BooksOnline professional network and build support for joint initiatives in research, design, and technology. The outcome of the workshop will comprise a set of formulated projects and dedicated committees that will facilitate progress over the following year. Future BooksOnline Workshops will follow the community progress and present an opportunity to share results, revisit the issues, and evolve the research and innovation agenda.

Background:

The volume of digital content has dramatically increased in recent years, including large collections of digital books obtained through digitization and electronic publishing. Such collections present a great value to the humanity and are attractive to commercial organizations for use in diverse information services and applications. They continue to grow as hundreds of thousands of books are being digitized in partnership between libraries and companies like Amazon and Google. Among prominent digitization initiatives are the Project Gutenberg, the Million Book project, the European Digital Library, and the Internet Archive by the Open Content Alliance (OCA).

However, in contrast to the great momentum in creating on-line book repositories, there is a lack of research initiatives that are focused on innovation opportunities and challenges created by large collections of digital books. Generally, there is lack of inter-disciplinary initiatives that leverage the expertise and synergies across the main stakeholders. The BooksOnline Workshop series aims to promote collaborative research and establish a framework for supporting ideas from their inception and realizing them through inter-disciplinary partnerships.

Topics of Interest:

Participants of the BooskOnline'09 are invited to reflect and expand on the topics that have been identified through position papers and panel discussions during the First BooksOnline'08 Workshop. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Fundamental issues

• Understanding new paradigms for books, social aspects of on-line book services, and contrasting evolutionary vs. revolutionary approach to innovation, paper vs. electronic media, digitized vs. born digital content.
• Enabling business and research models, identifying collaboration strategies, fostering community driven innovation, identifying enabling technologies, and addressing legal issues.

2. Enriched digital collections

• Virtual learning environments and eBooks; eBooks in teaching; eBooks as integrated content, data, and media.
• From books to discovery of knowledge; cross-referencing, sense making, and knowledge sharing; community interests and social context.

3. Usage scenarios and user expectations from digital book services

• Affordances of physical books and the difference from electronic media.
• Social navigation and annotations; diverse user profiles and content types; searching, gathering, annotating, and authoring scenarios.
• Personalization and context sensitivity; ubiquitous access; and emersion in the user experience.
• Evaluating eBooks, interface and interaction designs for active reading, features for collection browsing, etc.

4. Content representation and discovery

• Indexing and content representation.
• Scalability and interoperability; technologies for search, browsing, filtering, and information extraction.
• Universal access across nations and cultures; translation of content and metadata.
• Integration of complementary content and services.

Participation:

Participants of the workshop are expected to contribute a two page extended abstract describing critical issues and challenges, current projects, or proposals for joint initiatives related to large digital book repositories. Those interested to contribute and attend the workshop should contact the organizers.

Submissions must be written in English, following the submission guidelines set by Springer.

Contributions will be reviewed by the organizing and the programme committee. Authors of selected topics will be invited to give a presentation or facilitate a brainstorming session at the workshop.

As with BooksOnline'08, we shall aim to attract researchers and practitioners from industry, libraries, and archives who can bring to the discussion the insights and experience of working with large digital book collections and services.

Workshop format:

The one day workshop will include selected project presentations and proposals for new initiatives, break-out sessions to brainstorm around proposals and implementation strategies, and a panel discussion to present and summarize the results of the break-out sessions.

The day will start with a summary of ongoing projects by one of the workshop organizers. Selected projects and proposals will be presented and discussed in more detail. The core activity will be the breakout sessions to brainstorm around the proposals for joint initiatives. We expect that the results of these sessions will include an outline of the implementation strategies, the mechanisms for managing the initiatives, and the plan for increasing visibility and creating relevant partnerships. The outcomes will be discussed during the panel session.

All the relevant reports, proposals, and presentation abstract will be included in the workshop proceedings and distributed to the participants. A detailed workshop report will be published after the workshop. Participants will be invited to contribute to the post-workshop report by reviewing the organizers' write up and providing additional supporting material if needed.

Important Dates:

• Deadline for submission of extended abstracts: July 31, 2009
• Feedback to contributors: August 17, 2009
• Deadline for submission of camera-ready extended abstracts: September 06, 2009

Workshop Organizers:

Gabriella Kazai, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK
Peter Brusilovsky, University of Pittsburgh, US
Claire Warwick, University College London, UK
Ray Siemens, University of Victoria, Canada
Natasa Milic-Frayling, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK

Related Webpages:

Workshop's External Site