The Open Video Digital Library: A Möbius strip of research and practice

video files to the education and research community and is distinguished by an innovative user interface that offers multiple kinds of visual surrogates to people searching for video content. The OVDL is used by several thousand people around the world each month and part of this success is due to its user interface. This article examines the interplay between research and practice in the development of this particular digital library with an eye toward lessons for all digital libraries. We argue that theoretical and research goals blur into practical goals and practical goals raise new research questions as research and development progress—this process is akin to walking along a Möbius strip in which a locally two-sided surface is actually part of a globally one-sided world. We consider the gulf between the theories that guide current digital library research and current practice in operational digital libraries, provide a developmental history of the OVDL and the research frameworks that drove its development, illustrate how user studies informed its implementation and revision, and conclude with reflections and recommendations on the interplay between research and practice.

[1]  Ramana Rao,et al.  Silk from a sow's ear: extracting usable structures from the Web , 1996, CHI.

[2]  James D. Hollan,et al.  Edit wear and read wear , 1992, CHI.

[3]  Boon-Lock Yeo,et al.  Video visualization for compact presentation and fast browsing of pictorial content , 1997, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol..

[4]  Richard Gruss.  The VisOR System: Testing the Utility of User Interface Components for Feature-based Searching in Video Retrieval Software , 2004 .

[5]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Interface Concepts for the Open Video Project. , 2001 .

[6]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  The interactive shared educational environment: user interface, system architecture and field study , 2003, 2003 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2003. Proceedings..

[7]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Open video: A framework for a test collection , 2000, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[8]  Gary Geisler,et al.  Agile views : a framework for creating more effective information seeking interfaces , 2003 .

[9]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Performance of Visual, Verbal, and Combined Video Surrogates. , 1999 .

[10]  Michael G. Christel,et al.  Evolving video skims into useful multimedia abstractions , 1998, CHI.

[11]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Smartlinks in a video-based collaborative distance learning system: a cognitive model and evaluation study , 2004 .

[12]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  VIVO - a Video Indexing and Visualization Organizer , 2003, 2003 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2003. Proceedings..

[13]  Bradley N. Miller,et al.  Using filtering agents to improve prediction quality in the GroupLens research collaborative filtering system , 1998, CSCW '98.

[14]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Access via Features versus Access via Transcripts: User Performance and Satisfaction , 2003, TRECVID.

[15]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Previews and overviews in digital libraries: designing surrogates to support visual information seeking , 2000 .

[16]  Douglas C. Engelbart,et al.  A conceptual framework for the augmentation of man's intellect , 1988 .

[17]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Enriched video semantic metadata: Authorization, integration, and presentation , 2003, ASIST.

[18]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Digital government information services: the Bureau of Labor statistics case , 2003, INTR.

[19]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Video browsing interfaces for the open video project , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[20]  Brian C. O'Connor,et al.  Access to Moving Image Documents: Background Concepts and Proposals for Surrogates for film and video Works , 1985, J. Documentation.

[21]  Yihong Gong,et al.  Lessons Learned from Building a Terabyte Digital Video Library , 1999, Computer.

[22]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Key frame preview techniques for video browsing , 1998, DL '98.

[23]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Dynamic key frame presentation techniques for augmenting video browsing , 1998, AVI '98.

[24]  Paul Over,et al.  TRECVID: evaluating the effectiveness of information retrieval tasks on digital video , 2004, MULTIMEDIA '04.

[25]  Christine Stachowicz.  The Effectiveness of Storyboard Surrogates in the Subject Indexing of Digital Video , 2002 .

[26]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  The Open Video Digital Library , 2002, D Lib Mag..

[27]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Measures of User Performance in Video Retrieval Research , 2003 .

[28]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  The role of narrative in understanding digital video: An exploratory analysis , 2003, ASIST.

[29]  Jawaid A. Ghani,et al.  The Experience Of Flow In Computer-Mediated And In Face-To-Face Groups , 1991, ICIS.

[30]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Agileviews: A Human-Centered Framework for Interfaces to Information Spaces. , 2000 .

[31]  Edward A. Fox,et al.  Streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, societies (5s): A formal model for digital libraries , 2004, TOIS.

[32]  Michael G. Christel,et al.  Addressing the challenge of visual information access from digital image and video libraries , 2005, Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL '05).

[33]  Fred D. Davis.  Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology , 1989, MIS Q..

[34]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Text or Pictures? An Eyetracking Study of How People View Digital Video Surrogates , 2003, CIVR.

[35]  Christos Faloutsos,et al.  Developing high-level representations of video clips using VideoTrails , 1997, Electronic Imaging.

[36]  Zhu Liu,et al.  Multimedia content analysis-using both audio and visual clues , 2000, IEEE Signal Process. Mag..

[37]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Alternative Surrogates for Video Objects in a Digital Library: Users' Perspectives on Their Relative Usability , 2002, ECDL.

[38]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Content + connectivity => community: digital resources for a learning community , 1997, DL '97.