Semantically-Based Active Document Collection Templates for Web Information Management Systems

Representing and processing semantic information regarding individual documents is desirable but not sufficient. To improve the efficiency and reusability of users’ work with Web-based information management systems, it is essential to handle document collections. We describe techniques for representing semantics both of collections and of information management services that operate upon them. These techniques help users set up complex analyses and structurings of information collections, adapt their work for other analyses or for different collections, and obtain automatic refreshing and updating for collections with content that changes over time. Our semantic representation helps identify and sequence appropriate analysis and visualization services for a given task. Templates capture these sequences in terms of active semantic relations between document collections created and manipulated during those tasks. Templates can be dynamically modified and instantiated to generate document collections for similar tasks, or to refresh an information space with time-varying document membership. They can also be exchanged, allowing others to reapply them.