View ILRT Technical and Research Reports by year: 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | Show All
| Type | Title & Abstract |
|---|---|
| Research |
A Discussion of issues raised by the Semantic Web Technologies
Workshop, 22-23 November 2000.
A discussion of what ontologies might mean in the context of the semantic web, from someone new to ontologies. Author: Libby Miller |
| Technical |
A Proposed Interpretation of RDF Containers
A proposal of how to interpret the 1999 RDF Model and Syntax description of containers and container membership properties in a more consistent way by making them into typed nodes and regular properties rather than having special grammar parts. Authors: Brian McBride , Dave Beckett |
| Research |
A retrospective on the development of the RDF/XML Revised Syntax
This report reviews the process that was undertaken in revising the transfer syntax for RDF as defined in the RDF Model and Syntax W3C Recommendation by the RDF Core Working Group and the problems that are now clear especially comparing the revised RDF model and new abstract syntax. The syntax looks out of date in particular with the use of XML QNames giving unconstrained syntax terms in the XML, causing problems with newer XML technology such as XSLT, DTDS and W3C XML Schema and other XML-constraining languages. In order to deliver a modern RDF syntax, this report reviews the requirements for RDF in two aspects - as a canonical transfer syntax and one for end-users, targeted at HTML. It evaluates previous RDF syntax proposals against these requirements and analyses the pros and cons of XML and non-XML syntaxes. The conclusion is a summary of syntax approaches for future standardisation activity. Author: Dave Beckett |
| Research |
Adding RDN Virtual Training Suite Tutorials to the intraLibrary repository – a short case study
Brief documentation on how we produced IMS Content Packages for one of the JORUM repositories for the JISC X4L Project Author: Paul Smith |
| Technical |
Book Mini-Review: Content Syndication with RSS
This book is a good introduction to the RSS technologies that I'd recommend if people are looking to get up-to-speed with RSS. Author: Dave Beckett |
| Technical |
Book Mini-Review: SVG Essentials
This book is a quick run-down of SVG, in an introductory tutorial form. Author: Jan Grant |
| Technical |
Boolean 'or' searches with Zope's ZCatalog
I needed to create a simple boolean 'or' search for a Zope site which searches a ZCatalog - the following is a simple method of accomplishing this task. Author: Paul Smith |
| Research |
Citizenship Past – first impressions of the Homepage and Learning
Materials
This report outlines the results from the first stage of focus-group testing of the Citizenship Past Homepage and learning resources. Author: Di Jones |
| Research |
Code Club - software quality assurance and staff development through software review meetings
Software reviews are a well documented and highly effective form of software quality assurance. However, their benefit in terms of staff development and team building is less well documented. This short report describes Code Club, a software review club established by and run by the programmers of the Internet Development (ID) group at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT). The success of Code Club from a software engineering perspective is remarkable given the diverse backgrounds of the programmers and that they typically work in isolation with typically one programmer per project. From a staff development perspective, Code Club has been outstandingly popular and has transformed the way the ID programming team interacts and develops its expertise. Furthermore, these staff development aspects of the Code Club model are not domain specific and so may reasonably be assumed to have wider applicability outside the specialist domain of software review. Author: Simon Price |
| Technical |
Creating a Java client for the MEG metadata registry
This report describes the Java client software for the MEG metadata registry project, created by the author during a period working for the ILRT and UKOLN in May 2002. The software enables vocabularies, ontologies and schemata to be created and stored in a registry. Author: Damian Steer |
| Technical |
Easy Image Annotation for the Semantic Web
This is a write-up of work done by one of us (LM) on tools to generate machine-readable descriptions of several aspects of images. Two interfaces were created; a command-line version and a point-and-click version. Both use client-side javascript to consult multiple remote database-driven services Authors: Libby Miller , Martin Poulter |
| Research |
Fighting Linkrot with Digital Libraries: a speculative proposal
With a simple script, digital libraries could provide a service to webmasters that helps them maintain their sites and makes browsing a more satisfying experience for their users. Small images that are generated by a script on the digital library's server could be included next to external links. The image could change colour as a way of signalling to the creator and users of a site when the link is out of date. Author: Martin Poulter |
| Research |
Grids - a brief overview
The development of grids for research and education is central to the UK government's plan for E-science. This is a beginner's guide to what is meant by a Grid. Author: Grace de la Flor |
| Research |
Implementing an Online Database of External Examiners
A minor project of Economics LTSN to provide an online database of external examiners has been unexpectedly successful in terms of take-up and recognition by the target community, and for very little cost. We have decided to write up a detailed specification so that other projects know what is involved. Authors: Martin Poulter , John Sloman |
| Research |
Journal Submission Management with an Online Interface
In October 2001 Economics LTSN started accepting submissions for its new journal, The International Review of Economic Education. IREE has two editors; one in the UK and one in Australia. A way had to be found to enable these editors to accept submissions and to collaborate with each other and with the publishers in Bristol. The solution was a journal intranet based on a couple of active pages. For the benefit of projects that are thinking of setting up a similar service, this report describes the functionality required and how easy it was to implement. Author: Martin Poulter |
| Technical |
New Syntaxes for RDF
This report reviews syntaxes for RDF as defined in RDF Model and Syntax W3C Recommendation including RDF/XML as updated by the RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised) and describes the problems that remain after the revising. These include not clearly showing the RDF triple model and not working very well with newer XML technology such as XSLT and W3C XML Schema (WXS). The report then constructs requirements for new syntaxes in the two main uses - as a transfer syntax as an end user syntax. It summarises existing approaches and discusses using XML or non-XML formats and then describes two new syntaxes, an outline XML one and a new textual RDF syntax N-Triples Plus based on the N-Triples test case syntax. Author: Dave Beckett |
| Research |
Open Source - Closed License
There are many Free Software / Open Source licenses, semi-free and semi-open liceses and the number of them is increasing. How should a developer choose between them when releasing software? Author: Dave Beckett |
| Research |
Overview of Major Library Focused Bibliographic and Related Standards
This report is a review of bibliographic standards within the context of libraries, it covers major issues in the management of bibliographic data in library contexts and the various standards that are required to make such system operate and interoperate effectively . It was produced as part of background research for the SWAD-E Semantic Blogging Demonstrator Research and was funded by HP Labs as part of the SWARA project based in ILRT. Author: Paul Shabajee |
| Research |
Public Transport - best route planning
This is a short summary of a project idea in its very early stages. Aim: to get information to travellers about all forms of transport in a particular area in a format they can use and enable them to accurately plan their journeys; and to feed back travellers' required routes to policy makers. Author: Libby Miller |
| Technical |
RDF Thesaurus Specification (draft)
Conceptual relationships for encoding thesauri, classification systems and organised metadata collections and a proposal for encoding a core set of thesaurus relationships using an RDF Schema Authors: Phil Cross , Dan Brickley , Traugott Koch |
| Technical |
RDF: Extending and Querying RSS channels
This document explores some examples based around the idea of extending RSS using RDF-based modularisation, and then querying the resulting data in ways that exploit those extensions. Authors: Dan Brickley , Libby Miller |
| Research |
Report on the SWAD-Europe RDF calendaring workshop
A report for interChange (http://www.isgmlug.org/newsletter.html), the newsletter of the International SGML/XML Users' Group on a woskshop on RDF and calendaring, held in Bristol, October 2002, as part of the SWAD-Europe project. A full report is available at http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_2/ . Author: Libby Miller |
| Research |
Review of Personal Bibliographic Systems
This report is a review of personal bibliographic management software and systems – it provides a fairly comprehensive review of available systems, functionality and issues in personal bibliographic data management. It was produced as part of background research for the SWAD-E Semantic Blogging Demonstrator Research and was funded by HP Labs as part of the SWARA project based in ILRT. Author: Paul Shabajee |
| Technical |
Scalability and Storage: Survey of Free Software / Open Source RDF storage systems
This report surveys the state of semantic web storage for RDF / triple data using existing free software tools. It takes a practical approach by targeting the work to the needs of developers, answering frequently asked questions related to this subject. The report first reviews previous work in surveying semantic web data, schema and triple stores, then gives an overview of the major systems with their feature set and maturity and then uses that information to provide a set of FAQs with answers related to storing semantic web data. Author: Dave Beckett |
| Research |
User Modeling & Adaptive User Interfaces
An overview of personalisation interfaces and technology Author: Grace de la Flor |
| Technical |
Using RDF to annotate the (semantic) web
Collections of annotations need indexes for certain of their properties. When we have a set of created annotations, we want to be able to ask questions concerning these properties such as: agency: "Who said this?"; timing: "is this the most recent annotation about this object?"; the annotated object itself: "What annotations have been made about this object?"; and content: "Which objects which fail this test?". This document examines an approach to creating annotations on the web in two projects, EARL and MedCERTAIN. Both projects use RDF (Resource Description Framework) to model annotations in a flexible and extensible way, so that these types of questions can easily be asked. Authors: Phil Cross , Libby Miller , Sean Palmer |
| Research |
What is Annotation? – A Short Review of Annotation and Annotation Systems [DRAFT]
The annotation of Web-based data by user communities is a widely used means to augment and add value to resources (Shabajee et al 2002) and there are numerous examples of different types of annotation system across the Web (see below for examples). Different types of Web-based project will require different approaches to annotation. This short paper is part ongoing work as part of the ARKive-ERA (Educational Repurposing of Assets) project (ARKive-ERA, 2002) to characterize annotation in the context of Web-based resources and aims to provide 1) a discussion on the basic nature of annotations in a Web context and 2) a review of some significant annotation systems both personal (providing local annotation tools) and Web-based , i.e. that allow and support Web-based storage of annotations and/or collaborative annotation. Authors: Paul Shabajee , Dave Reynolds |