News Archives constitute an important source for historians, both for research and educational purposes. However, access to their material is not easy due to the special characteristics of the archival content as well as the possible difference between the historian's vocabulary and that of the Archive. In the context of the Papyrus EU-funded project, the requirements of historians have been investigated and taken into account for the creation of a specialized web-based tool, the Papyrus Browser. This paper focuses on the description of the requirements that lead to the design of this tool and provides a detailed description of its main view, the Historiographical Issues View. Design and implementation issues are discussed, as well as plans for future work on the tool. M. Platakis, Ch. Nikolaou, A. Katifori, M. Koubarakis, Y. Ioannidis: "Browsing News Archives From The Perspective Of History: The Papyrus Browser Historiographical Issues View". Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services, (WIAMIS 2010), Desenzano del Garda, Italy, April 2010.

1. Browsing news archives from the perspective of
History:
The Papyrus Browser historiographical issues
view
M. Platakis, Ch. Nikolaou, A. Katifori, M. Koubarakis,Y.
Ioannidis
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens
Presented @ WIAMIS 2010 by Manolis Platakis

2. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

3. Papyrus brings together a consortium of nine partners…
Tensions of Europe

4. Digital libraries today...
Huge archives of digital
content…
organised in digital
libraries…
targeting the relevant
user communities...

5. Is it possible...
…for specialized scientists
to find information
in general literature?
…for general audience
to understand
scientific publications?
…to study history in news?

6. Papyrus aims...
…to provide a window through which
cross-discipline access to content will be made possible

7. Papyrus…
..showcases its approach with a specific pair
of disciplines
History via News

8. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

9. Historical research requirements
Papyrus browser designed and
implemented after user needs study
Keyword search and browsing of
categorizations and indexes are equally
important
Research method (in any order)
Collect secondary material (i.e. historical essays)
Collect primary material (i.e. archival content)

10. Meaningful Concepts
General historiographical issues: “Change in Science”,
“Controversies”, “Public Opinion”, etc.
History of Science and Technology Domains:
“Biotechnology”, “Renewable Energy”
Domain specific concepts that may be the research
subject: “stem cell”, “cloning”, “wind turbine”, etc.

11. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

12. Papyrus Ontology Browser
assists researchers to interactively
explore secondary and primary sources
combines two different domain
ontologies as well as their underlying
content
demonstrates history concepts, news
concepts, news multimedia

15. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

16. Implementation
Google Web Toolkit
◦ Java 2 JavaScript
◦ GWT – Ext
◦ RPC server calls
Sesame Server
Apache Tomcat
Eclipse IDE
On all browsers

17. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

18. Challenges
Multiple views to incorporate historians’
needs
Accessibility to non – experts
◦ Invisibility
◦ Labels
Time and culture changes – non trivial to
model and display
Multilingualism

19. Outline
Introduction
History Researchers’ Needs
Functionality (Demo)
Implementation
Challenges
Conclusions & Future Work

20. Conclusions
Evaluation by 14 historians took place
◦ Hellas
◦ Netherlands
Feedback from the evaluation led to
implementation changes – 2nd version
2nd evaluation will take place in autumn

21. Future Work
Visualization
◦ Time
◦ Evolution
Refinements according to feedback
Generalization of the tool

22. Thank you for your attention