----------------------------------------------------------------------
MLIA4DL 2009 - Workshop on
Multilinguality in Information Access to Digital Libraries:
User Needs & Evaluation of multilingual resources use

9 September 2009, Trento, Italy
http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/MLIA4DL09Workshop.php
co-located with ICSD2009
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Digital libraries are becoming increasingly complex. They draw on
diverse resources, need to satisfy many different user needs and carry
out tasks that are getting more and more complicated. The amount of
information managed by such systems, its heterogeneity and variety,
and the demand for insightful access to it are key challenges in the
present research agenda. A particular challenge to overcome in this
context are multilingual and multicultural issues in the information
organization, retrieval and representation of information objects.

Many digital library projects – especially in a pan-European context –
are concerned with enabling users to navigate and find relevant
content not described in their native language. Through the provision
of multilingual access capabilities - that is the translation and
mapping of the portal interfaces, object descriptions, browsing
categories and even user queries – users could retrieve and leverage
content equally, regardless of their native language or the available
native language of the resources.

Multilingual information access systems cannot simply be inserted as
“black boxes” but need to know and effectively exploit the peculiar
features of the managed information resources and interact with the
varied user groups.

The objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers,
stakeholders, and representatives of pan-European digital library
projects to discuss multilingual user needs, assessment methods for
requirements, and usage logging of multilingual resources use as well
as practical implementation issues when incorporating multilingual
capabilities into a digital library.

We invite submissions of extended abstracts (2 pages +
1 for references) describing projects and initiatives in the field of
multilingual information access to digital libraries as well as
studies and/or approaches for the assessment of user needs and
resources use of such systems. Research projects of any size and at
any stage are welcome, ranging from EU to PhD projects. Full versions
of the accepted extended abstracts should be up to 6 pages position
papers.

Topics relevant to the workshop are (but not limited to):
- User & usability indications for multilingual access within digital libraries
- Analysis of the impact of multilingual / multicultural differences on
interface / search design
- Identification of focus areas for multilingual access: media types, object models,
retrieval algorithms
- Preferences for presentation options for multilingual content: result translation,
ranking options for different object types depending on multilinguality
- Architectures and services for multilingual information access in digital libraries
- User behaviour and log analysis for multilinguality
- Contextual information retrieval and multilinguality

[Important Dates]
- Extended abstract (2 pages + 1 page for references) submission deadline: 5 August 2009
- Notification of acceptance: 19 August 2009
- Full-length papers (6 pages) submission deadline: 30 August 2009

[Outcome / Publication]
The position papers and the results of the workshop discussion shall be the starting
point for a white paper on multilinguality in digital libraries cooperatively
authored and developed - outlining the most important issues and approaches for
implementation.

[Submission details]
Submissions should follow the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) format and
should be in Adobe PDF. Please refer to the Springer information for authors page
for details. Each abstract (2 pages) may contain a separate page for references (1 page).
To submit a paper please visit the conference submission system Easy Chair
at the following page: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mlia4dl09

[Workshop Structure]
1 Day workshop:
- invited talks representative of major European multilingual research initiatives
- individual paper presentations
- panel discussion
- wrapping-up session with conclusions formulated by a chosen rapporteur

[Programme Committee]
- Nicola Ferro (Co-chair), University of Padova, Italy
- Vivien Petras (Co-chair), Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
- Maristella Agosti, University of Padova, Italy
- Tiziana Catarci, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy
- Luca Dini, CELI, Torino, Italy
- Floriana Esposito, University of Bari, Italy
- Thomas Mandl, University of Hildesheim, Germany
- Carlo Meghini, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
- Jacco van Ossenburgen, Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Carol Peters, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
- Jacques Savoy, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland
- Frédérique Segond, Xerox Research Centre Europe, Grenoble, France
- Lars Svensson, German National Library, Frankfurt, Germany

[Workshop Organization]

The workshop is organized by the eContentplus
EuropeanaConnect project (http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/) working on
multilingual access for the Europeana portal.

For further information, please visit

http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/MLIA4DL09Workshop.php

or contact the co-chairs of the programme committee
Nicola Ferro, University of Padua, Italy (ferro@dei.unipd.it), and
Vivien Petras, Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany (vivien.petras@ibi.hu-berlin.de).