DELOS: A network of excellence on digital libraries

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0786-2

Key words (English)

Digital libraries; evaluation; cross-language information retrieval; CLEF

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: IST-1999-12262

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.2.3 Multimedia content and tools

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
Eurospider Information Technology AG

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: GEIE - ERCIM (F)

Abstract (English)

The aim of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries (DLs) is to provide an open context in which an international research agenda for future research activities in the digital library domain can be developed and continuously updated. It consitutes a reference point for all DL projects funded by the 5th FP-IST, stimulating the exchange of experiences and know-how in this multidisciplinary domain, and will also establish close contacts with relevant application communities. It makes testbeds available, facilitates their interoperability, and provides mechanisms for the evaluation of models, techniques, and approaches, and the exchange of open-source software components. It contributes to the definition of relevant standards. Appropriate take-up models are studied to facilitate the exploitation of the new DL technologies in the industrial/commercial environment. A network of links with the international DL research community is created.
Multilingual and Cross-Language Evaluation (Workpackage 2)
An information retrieval system evaluation infrastructure (the CLEF campaign) was set up and tools, training data and methodologies for the performance evaluation of multilingual information retrieval systems were developed. This activity focussed on cross-language system evaluation but also offered evaluation for monolingual systems for European languages other than English. It was designed to be complementary to and in collaboration with the TREC (Text Retrieval Conference) activity organized by NIST (the US National Institute for Standards). Results were disseminated at two Workshops (2000 - Lisbon, 2001 - Darmstadt) and published by Springer Verlag, in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNCS 2069 and LNCS 2406). The activity provided an important European (and international) forum not only for multilingual system evaluation but also stimulated studies and discussion on the development of technologies for multilingual information access. In its final year, the activtiy attracted 34 groups from academia and industry as participants.
The activity consisted of: setting up and maintaining a repository of tools, training data and evaluation suites for use by the scientific community for cross-language and monolingual system evaluation activities; development and testing of a methodology for multilingual system evaluation; organisation of a mono- and cross-language system assessment activity; organization of an annual Workshop (2 days) for presentation of the results; dissemination of the results of the activity by presentations at relevant European and international conferences.
The success of the activity allowed the set-up of a follow-up project named 'CLEF' as a part of the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme (IST-2000-31002).

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0786-2