Dissertation organization

The remainder of this dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 describes a framework for a knowledge-based digital museum comprising an ontological knowledge base layer, adaptive service agent layer, and ubiquitous digital museum service layer to support knowledge creation, management, reuse, diffusion, sharing, and exploration from the perspective of the museum as a whole. Moreover, Chapter 3 presents a unified knowledge content management model that comprises unified knowledge content processes, multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures and integrated knowledge-based content management system for supporting knowledge creation, management, and publication from a global perspective for an entire museum. Chapter 4 then describes a knowledge-based ubiquitous learning service model that provides ubiquitous, context-aware and personalized service by reusing unified knowledge bases. Next, Chapter 5 employs ontological techniques to restructure current digital contents into corresponding knowledge bases for sharing and reusing knowledge content among KBSs (Knowledge base system) and communities. Finally, the results of this study are discussed and future research directions are drawn.

Chapter 2

Knowledge-based digital museum framework 2.1 Conceptualization

The previous chapter defined a knowledge-based digital museum as a new generation of digital museum that employs unified knowledge content to provide proactive, adaptive, ubiquitous and collaborative services for various user types via global knowledge management in actual and virtual accessible spaces.

This chapter first aims to clarify the conceptualization of knowledge-based digital museum framework before practical construction. This framework is constructed in a collaborative environment involving knowledge specialists, IT engineers, knowledge engineers, and knowledge consumers. For a museum, knowledge consumers may include the public, students, teachers, researchers, museums, institutes, industry, and so on. IT engineers cooperate with knowledge engineers to develop a knowledge-based digital museum framework, which knowledge specialists can use to create various contents efficiently and productively. Based on the requirements of various types of knowledge consumers, knowledge specialists in various domains create and organize content that ranges from simple to complex using common processes and standardizations. The vast amount of knowledge content is reused to develop diverse applications and is diffused to consumers in a ubiquitous, proactive, and adaptive environment.

The knowledge-based digital museum framework includes three key components, namely a unified knowledge repository, a set of service agents, and a knowledge-based digital museum service portal. The unified knowledge repository is created using a unified process, multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures, and an integrated knowledge content management system involving a large group of knowledge specialists. All knowledge specialists should follow common and standard workflow to acquire, digitize, edit, organize,

and publish content. To provide tools for enabling knowledge specialists to express and organize accumulated knowledge efficiently and productively, multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures should be defined. These structures are used to model various granularities of knowledge content ranging from basic core knowledge elements to complex ones to present various knowledge concepts. All contents are created and managed using a common knowledge concept and knowledge management system.

Various research, exhibition, education, and entertainment applications can be designed depending on consumer requirements by reusing the content from the unified knowledge repository. Knowledge consumers can access the unified knowledge repository via the intelligent digital museum service portal. The service portal is supported by a set of service agents, including agents for content organization service, content presentation service, ubiquitous service, context-aware service, and personalized service. These services collaborate to provide a ubiquitous, adaptive, proactive service environment while accessing various applications.

To excavate implicit and innovative knowledge in the unified knowledge repository within domains, further intelligent knowledge classification, discovery, inference, and organization mechanisms should automatically be supported by the system. The knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, and knowledge retrieval tools based on standard and sharable knowledge concept is also needed to integrate and share knowledge bases among specialists, domains, communities, and institutes. Figure 2.1 illustrates the conceptualization of the knowledge-based digital museum.

Figure 2.1 The conceptualization of knowledge-based digital museum

2.2 System framework

Base on the conceptualization of the knowledge-based digital museum described in the previous section, this study proposes a knowledge-based digital museum (KBDM) framework (see Figure 2.2) comprising an ontological knowledge base layer, adaptive service agent layer, and ubiquitous digital museum service layer, to realize the concept of a knowledge-based digital museum. Using this framework, the objective is not only to solve the content silo trap problem in digital museum projects but also to provide a methodology for museums to deal with global knowledge management issues, including creation and management, reuse and diffusion, and sharing and exploration.

Figure 2.2 Knowledge-based digital museum framework

2.2.1 Ontological knowledge base layer

Ontology has previously been applied in digital archives, digital museums and museum-related e-learning projects to provide shared and reusable knowledge standards.

Ontology integrates various contents from inter-domains and intra-domains, services, applications, and users based on a common and sharable knowledge concept. Ontology plays several significant roles in this study. First, ontologies provide a sharable thesaurus describing entities, attributes, relationships and events for various content types in the unified knowledge base and user context. Second, ontologies maps content onto a simplified and standard specification, and processes it consistently among application services with common knowledge concept. Third, the concept hierarchy of ontologies can be employed to design

definitions based on the user context and the unified knowledge base for patterns discovery and content recommendation in the personalization service.

The ontological knowledge base layer is based on a unified knowledge content management (UKCM) model that comprises the unified knowledge content processes, multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures and an integrated knowledge-based content management system. This layer focuses on solving the problem of content silo trap and dealing with knowledge creation and management issues.

The unified knowledge content process provides a common workflow among knowledge specialists, IT specialists and users. All specialists must employ a standard process to create knowledge content using well-defined knowledge content structures. The unified knowledge content processes can be considered a knowledge management life cycle that includes collection, digitizing, editing, organizing, publishing, and access phases

The multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures define the spectrum of knowledge content as comprising core, advanced, and innovative knowledge elements for expression and organization by all participants. Knowledge content is based on core knowledge content, which comprises a multimedia object and semantic metadata. Advanced and innovative elements are manually authored or automatically inferred from existing content.

The integrated knowledge-based content management system manages all types of knowledge contents. This system comprises a creation subsystem for constructing ontology, vocabulary, metadata, content, authoring templates, classification hierarchy, and user bases; a management subsystem for managing the various types of knowledge content, and the above-mentioned resources for creating and publishing those contents, and a publishing subsystem for transferring all the authored content into a publishable format for presentation on the Web or in other medias.

2.2.2 Adaptive service agent layer

To effectively and intelligently support digital museum applications, the entire

framework requires a set of service agents for generating integrated and appropriate content for the user. The services agents serve as a bridge linking users with content. The adaptive service agent layer comprises a set of service agents designed for serving various users and applications. These service agents adapt to user requirements to provide a ubiquitous, proactive, and adaptive service environment collaboratively. Services can be added flexibly according to the extension of applications and user requirements.

The general services support personalized, proactive, and adaptive service environments, including ubiquitous, context-aware, personalization, content, publication, and knowledge sharing and discovery services. A ubiquitous service supports users in accessing applications and contents without constraints of time, place or device. Such services enable any application to serve all users both inside and outside the museums 24/7 without temporal and spatial constraints. Meanwhile, a context-aware service serves users depending on their context, including demographic characteristics, preferences, and environmental situation.

Context-aware service works together with content service to dynamically and proactively retrieve and generate appropriate content for users. User actions and behaviors are also tracked to dynamically update user context and usage base to provide more accurate and adaptive content in the future. Personalization services cooperate with ubiquitous service and context-aware service to recommend content to individuals or groups among all applications adaptively and proactively based on up-to-date user context and usage information. The content service retrieves related knowledge content from the unified knowledge bases depending on application type and user context. The content service generates semantic content structures for presentation and interchangeable formats for sharing and reuse among domains, communities and institutes. The publication service cooperates with content services to generate formats for content presentation. Moreover, the knowledge sharing and discovery service discovers implicit and innovative knowledge in the knowledge bases and meaningful

2.2.3 Ubiquitous digital museum service layer

A ubiquitous digital museum service portal integrates research, exhibition, education, and entertainment applications in a single portal. Such a portal enables users to access all contents and applications without temporal and spatial constraints. The ubiquitous digital museum service layer sends user requests to the adaptive service agent layer. Users can use a navigation method to access and present content based on the classification hierarchy or ontological knowledge map. Additionally, users can employ various types of query methods to obtain all related content. The query methods include keyword search, full text search, natural language search, and visual interface search. Keyword search identifies content based on metadata for each domain. Both full text and natural language search extract phrases from the query and then identify identical or similar content. Moreover, the visual interface uses graphical patterns to represent metadata in each domain. Consequently, users can express queries by combing several instinctive and understandable graphical patterns. All applications, services and content are accessed and controlled using a digital right management or membership mechanism. Consequently, each user can obtain permitted contents and define their personal portal and presentation style within accessible content and service scopes authorized by system. The combination of personalized, ubiquitous, and context-aware services monitors the access process of all users and recommends appropriate content for adaptive and proactive service.

This study attempts to provide an effective and practical methodology covering knowledge creation and management; reuse and diffusion, and sharing and exploration issues for museums to reference and follow. This study realizes this framework via the following approach. First, the unified knowledge content management (UKCM) model with multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures is designed for representing, creating, managing, organizing, and publishing global knowledge content for all specialists, applications, projects, and domains. Chapter 3 discusses the details. Second, a knowledge-based learning service

model with a set of collaborative service agents is designed by reusing and diffusing the unified knowledge bases to serve various users and applications ubiquitously, proactively, and adaptively. Chapter 4 discusses the details. Third, an ontological knowledge reuse and sharing approach is designed to integrate and share knowledge bases among related domains, communities and institutes by using FCA (Formal Concept Analysis) for knowledge acquisition and OWL-DL (Ontology Web Language-Description Language) for knowledge representation to construct ontologies. Chapter 5 discusses the details.

Chapter 3

Unified knowledge content management model 3.1 Introduction

Numerous digital archives programs in museums are conducted worldwide to preserve and sustain mankind’s cultural heritage. Such programs aim to preserve cultural heritage and collections; popularize fine cultural landmarks; encourage information/knowledge sharing;

invigorating cultural content and value-added services, and improve literacy, creativity and quality of life. They are considered as the prerequisite and foundation for developing digital museums from which a museum’s conventional functions in academic research, exhibition, education, and entertainment can be extended and developed through information technologies [3, 13, 36, 60, 70].

Most digital archives programs in museums incur some of the following problems:

„ Content and resources created by diverse individual, groups, departments, projects, or applications cannot be shared and reused among each other.

„ Content cannot be accumulated and managed centrally for long term utilization and applications development.

„ Digital content is managed at a data or information level for preservation, but not in a knowledge level for creation, organization, sharing and reusing.

„ Systems are developed separately and repetitiously, and lack integration, leading to redundant overhead costs and spent resources.

„ Users cannot access related and integrated content from a single entry point.

Content silo trap largely accounts for the above problems, owing to the content is created by individuals working in isolation from other individuals within a project. Walls are erected among content domains and even within the same content domain. Rockley [69] proposed the

unified content strategy (UCS) to avoid the content silo trap. UCS focuses on the need for effective content acquisition, representation, organization, publication and sharing in a global view among projects, applications, users, contents and organizations in an institute. The system framework of UCS described by Rockley comprises three components: unified process, content management system (CMS), and reusable content.

The UCS was developed to fit a general enterprise needs, but it needs be extended to consider the characteristics of knowledge management and application for museums. As a knowledge creator, a museum’s most important mission is to accumulate and integrate tremendous existed and growing knowledge content. The processes include collecting, creating, organizing, reusing, and publishing knowledge content among all specialists, departments, projects, and domains for developing various applications in academic research, exhibition, and education for users. Our previous works in some digital archives projects applied CMS [39. 40] to exhibition applications. Many museums have implemented CMS to manage amassed content and to enhance functionality and accessibility of a Web site [38. 78].

These projects only handle partial participants, processes, content, technologies, domains and applications. They not only lacked the application of knowledge management techniques, but also neglected the integration and long-term prospective of content management considerations for all domains and applications from entire museum’s viewpoint.

This study extends Rockley’s UCS to fit museums’ global needs for various domains and applications through knowledge management, and proposes a knowledge-based content management (UKCM) model. The UKCM model contains unified knowledge content processes, the multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures and the integrated knowledge-based content management system. The model aims to satisfy the knowledge management issues among various domains and academic, exhibition, and education

The purpose on this chapter is to solve content silo trap problem and global knowledge management issues on creation and management discussed in section 1.2. This chapter also wants to provide a practical approach to construct unified and multi-layer reusable knowledge bases that can be reused by various research, exhibition, education, and entertainment applications. This rest of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.2 describes the knowledge-based content management system model. Sections 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 describe the three components of the proposed model — the unified knowledge content processes, the multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures and the integrated knowledge-based content management system respectively. Section 3.6 details the application of the Extended Entity-Relationship (EER) modeling tool to conceptually design the integrated knowledge system across the domains of a museum, and the multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures. Section 3.7 demonstrates a practical implementation of our approach.

3.2 UKCM model

Knowledge management framework in museums not only aims to manage these knowledge assets but also to manage the processes that act upon the assets. These processes include developing, preserving, using and sharing knowledge [55, 59]. This study proposes a unified knowledge-based content management (UKCM) model (see Figure 3.1) to extend the UCS and achieve knowledge management among various domains and for long-term digital museum applications developing perspective. The three components in this model are unified knowledge content processes, an integrated knowledge-based content management system and multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures. The three components are described briefly below and are detailed in the following Sections.

Figure 3.1 Unified knowledge-based content management model

The unified knowledge content process functions as a common workflow among participants and projects that includes knowledge content collection, digitization, editing, organizing, publishing and accessing stages.

The multi-layer reusable knowledge content structures define the spectrum of knowledge content for all participants to follow, from core knowledge elements to advanced and innovative elements. A core knowledge element is the basis of knowledge content and comprises a multimedia object and semantic metadata. Advanced and innovative elements are further manually authored or automatically inferred from existing content.

The integrated knowledge-based content management system works to integrate the entire system. This system comprises the creation subsystem for constructing vocabulary, metadata, content and the classification hierarchy; the management subsystem for managing the entire knowledge content and resources for creation and publishing, and the publishing subsystem to transfer the authored content into the publishing structure and Web pages for

Aside from those advantages shown by Rockley such as faster time to publish, better use of resources, reduced costs, improved quality and usability of content, increased opportunities to innovate, improved workplace satisfaction and increased customer satisfaction, additional benefits from the proposed model for digital archives projects in museums include the following:

z Establishing a knowledge-based content creation, management and publication process to closely connect the collaboration among knowledge and IT specialists for all projects.

z Constructing an integrated, formal, explicit domain knowledge system to unify and integrate all domain specialists under a common conceptual model.

z Providing standard and consistent multi-layer knowledge content structures for specialists to fully express and create their spectrum of knowledge content.

z Integrating and managing knowledge content created from projects, specialists and applications centrally for others to share and to reuse.

z Improving the effectiveness of business for museums and satisfying the needs of audiences.

3.3 Unified knowledge content processes

In Rockley’s UCS, the unified processes eliminate the silo walls and create a collaborative environment to ensure that authors are aware of reusable content and for all departments to follow a repeatable and transparent workflow. For museums, unified knowledge content processes must be defined providing common and collaborative workflows among knowledge specialists, IT specialists and museum users. Knowledge specialists require a standard, consistent, repeatable, sharable and transparent environment to

collect, digitize, edit and organize knowledge content. IT specialists require an integrated and collaborative system development environment to design an efficient, automatic, scalable, and interoperable system for supporting content creation, management, and publication. Users require organized, categorized, integrated and systematic knowledge content via classification hierarchy browsing and metadata searching across related domains.

To satisfy the needs of knowledge specialists, IT specialists and users, all specialists must follow a standard process to create and maintain knowledge content with well-defined knowledge content structures autonomously. The unified knowledge content processes can be regarded as a life cycle that comprises knowledge content collecting, digitizing, editing, organizing, publishing, and accessing phases (see Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 The unified knowledge content processes The major tasks of each phase are summarized as follows:

„ To express the knowledge concepts for a particular application and user group, the variety of knowledge element must be decided in advance.

„ To collect original materials such as slides, photographs, audio, video, or documents for the target content type and prepared under a standard knowledge

„ To collect original materials such as slides, photographs, audio, video, or documents for the target content type and prepared under a standard knowledge