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[ Description | Activities | Work area | User Involvement | Future Work | Further Information ]
The CULTOS project develops concepts, systems and tools for knowledge publishing. It includes a knowledge model of intertextual studies, a standardised hypermedia document model and a prototype multimedia authoring tool for use in the publishing life-cycle. In order to arrive at a “semantic web”, information technology needs to provide mechanisms that allow domain experts to express their knowledge, and combine that knowledge with medial presentations and illustrations.
The project supports electronic publishing of semantically rich content that are presented to the consumer as multimedia objects. The output of the CULTOS authoring are multimedia objects called "Intertextual cultural threads". These are based on Enhanced Multimedia Meta Objects (EMMOs), a novel type of structured multimedia meta object containing expert knowledge and conforming to current and emerging standards.
The concept of categorising content into distinct publishable models follows today's view of the publishing workflow for electronic publications. The workflow procedures are grouped around the actual knowlege unit - encapsulated into an EMMO - so that the knowledge unit, rather than the workflow, is at the focus.
Figure: The architecture of CULTOS knowledge tools and its components.
In the first months of the project, an ontology of intertextual studies was specified and a first prototype of the multimedia knowledge authoring tools was developed.
An ontology on intertextual studies
The aim of CULTOS is to develop "ontology-aware" multimedia authoring tools for use by literary and arts experts. This means that multimedia information is described in a knowledge representation formalism so that segments of the information are typed according to a conceptual model and linked together.
The content-group, world experts in comparative literature, intertextuality and cultural studies, together with knowledge engineers developed an ontology. The project contributes to an agreed ontology of literary scientific work using a knowledge based systems approach. It was of crucial importance for the project to get a clear picture of "intertextual studies" before trying to build an authoring environment. Therefore a peer-reviewed deliverable entitled "Knowledge Model of Intertextual Studies" was the outcome of this task. The paper knowledge model was implemented using a knowledge representation tool provided by one of the partners.
Authoring tools and transformers
The information objects created by the authoring tools are stored as Enhanced Multimedia Meta Objects (EMMOs). The dcument model for EMMOs was specified and received a successful peer review.
The authoring tool was developed further and was evaluated by the content group, using intertextual material that had been gathered as part of the evaluation tasks.
The authoring tool is currently available in release 1.2 featuring audio and video integration in the authoring process as well as the integration of an updated ontology version. The development of the authoring tool release 2 focuses on the integration of additional media formats like tiff, certain video formats and PDF as well as HTML. In addition, the look and feel of the authoring tool is adapted to the user requirements refined throughout the evaluation of the authoring tool
As functionalities developed within the CULTOS authoring tool can be reused for a transformer realisation, the transformer and authoring tool development were continued in parallel. The transformer development of the first iteration concentrates on the development of web based EMMO representations.
The development of a suite of CULTOS tools is based on the concept of supporting the value chain of authoring and publishing knowledge-enriched multimedia objects, from content acquisition and value adding, to editing, media production and use.
It will be one milestone within the project to provide the specification and implementation of these portable meta data objects, including their internal architecture, interfaces, serialisation format and their relationship with existing multimedia document models (HyTime, SMIL, ZYX, MVDs, etc.) as well as standards for the representation of meta-data (RDF, Dublin Core, US-MARC, etc.).
Users will be able to interact with the portable meta-data objects (EMMOs) in different usage modes, such as Web-based training (WBT), default XHTML browsing, annotation mode, or administration mode. Each mode is accessible through defined interfaces at runtime and can be pre-set and customised during the publishing process. The tools developed in CULTOS and the portable meta data objects (EMMOs) differentiates between structure, presentation and layout, as well as interaction. Thus additional "delivery modes" may be added on demand. This way, EMMOs support the publishing workflow for multimedia artefacts.
In the burgeoning knowledge economy the development, exchange and management of knowledge is increasingly recognised as crucial to the success of companies and - through education - to the competitive strength of nations and regions. Knowledge creation and publishing is an important facet of knowledge management. Consequently the markets for the CULTOS' support for knowledge publishing are very broad and diverse.
CULTOS results consists of specific tools, eg. an authoring tool and a new concept of creating and publishing content. As such it will address different types of markets. Interesting markets are:
The fact that the CULTOS architectures and systems is unique in several ways does not mean, however, that there is no competition for CULTOS products and services or for those of the contributors. With the growing common expectation towards intelligent systems a "market for meaning" has already begun to develop. Publishers, knowledge managers and others with a need for enhanced retrieval and content customisation are showing interest in mapping knowledge domains, whether with straightforward indexes and thesauri or more sophisticated structures such as topic maps and ontologies. Companies entering the knowledge media domain tend to come with a particular focus of expertise.
Investigation of the competition shows that the positioning of CULTOS tools can be regarded as very promising with respect to the above markets, and that some competitors may in fact be potential partners because they may have complementary strengths. There is of course a need to continually monitor the competition. Interestingly, as the prospect grows of numerous publishers wishing to prepare content for smart distributed retrieval and aggregation, so the economies of scale that are possible will begin to bring other competitors onto the scene.
Basically the dissemination of CULTOS is very highly dependent on the availability of demonstrator threads. Thus the focus of dissemination activities is in the first project year was on scientific dissemination which also is in line with the principle “proper research first – then publish”. Nevertheless the CULTOS consortium had a lot of preparatory dissemination and awareness activities focusing on the design and knowledge model applied within CULTOS.
The following dissemination activities were carried out:
During second year of the CULTOS project, several showcases of larger units of multimedia meta objects will be developed utilising the CULTOS tools. These enhanced multimedia media objects in the exemplary cultural application domain are instantiations of EMMOs and referred to as "Intertextual Cultural Threads" (ITC threads). The ITC threads will be developed by a group of internationally renowned experts in European literature and cultural studies in order to:
The 2nd release of the authoring tool will be available to support the demonstrator of the thread design with the functionalities and requirements articulated within the final user requirements. On basis of the technical experiences in the first prototype of the transformers with respect to the integration of EMMOs into WBT, e-Journal and publishing processes integration interfaces are developed as basis for the development of the second set of EMMO transformers.
Wernher Behrendt, wernher.behrendt@salzburgresearch.at
Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H.
Jakob-Haringer-Strasse 5/III
A-5020 Salzburg
Tel: +43-662-2288-409
Fax: +43-662-2288-222
CULTOS is co-funded by the European Commission under the IST Programme (Information Society Technologies).