Virtual Collection Builder

The aim of the Virtual Collection Builder (VCoB) project is to develop an adaptive, interactive agent for building and maintaining a virtual collection of Web documents.

VCoB approach will employ a wide array of methods from content analysis, citation analysis, machine learning, and information retrieval to collect, organize, and maintain a searchable and browsable collection of documents that are custom-tailored to the needs and preferences of individual users.

VCoB involves several interrelated projects, including but not limited to:

• The development of a text filter for the automatic identification and manipulation of web and non-web documents that cite a specific author or work.
• The development of a link server technology that allows (1) the identification of electronic, freely accessible monographs that an institution already has in hard copy and, subsequently and (2) the saving and/or linking of these accessible monographs into one's own virtual collection or online catalog. This project is based on the assumption that libraries worldwide have thousands of hard copies of items that are available for free on the web, yet, the online catalogs of these libraries do not provide links to the electronic version. Producers of these freely accessible e-monographs include such governmental and nongovernmental agencies as the Congress, United Nations, European Union, and Human Rights Watch, to name a few.

CiteSearch is a VCoB subproject (funded by OCLC) that is developing a Web-based citation search and analysis system that combines and analyzes data from multiple citation databases to produce citation-based quality evaluation measures.

• CiteSearch System Architecture
• CiteSearch System V2
• SLIS Faculty - Google Scholar Citation Search Results

Project Members:
Lokman Meho,   Kiduk Yang,   Shahrier Akram,   Kathleen Burlingame