dc.description.abstract | This research is an application research of the theories that have been governing the knowledge organization domain for decades. The goal of this research is to find out an effective method to construct a digital archives database system for the photograph and video resources on Taiwan indigenous peoples. The assertion of this research is that if we carefully analyze the relationships among resources and try to utilize the relations in the construction of metadata records and in the establishment of information retrieval system, it is possible to integrate resources in a complementary way and to enable the construction of a knowledge-oriented database system.
In order to prove that the application of relations can enable the construction of a database system that can well-integrate resources and can provide easy-to-use searching aids such as indices as tools, this research was designed to include three major parts: literature review, survey of the state of the art, and experimental research. The purpose of literature review is to summarize useful concepts and methods in information/ knowledge organization so that this research can incorporate them in the experiment of database system construction. In this stage, the effort is to summarize the core theories of library science concerning database construction, including the traditional methods in information organization, and the recommended methods in information/ knowledge organization which are believed to be able to enable effective information searches. The survey of the state of the art includes two parts: to survey the databases of this domain provided by major portals to find out the problems that need to be solved, and to survey the available so-called ‘knowledge-oriented resources’ that are complementary to digital objects and their correspondent metadata records, i.e., those resources that deserve our attention and good to be included in the database system. Based on the findings of literature review and survey investigations, this research listed a set of functions for the to-be-constructed database system, with a goal to establish a database system that well applies the core theories and useful information organization methods asserted in the literature of information retrieval. The effort has resulted in an easy-to-use database system which was equipped with instrumental search guiding tools to enable effective searches and exploration, no matter if the searchers have background knowledge about the domain or not.
To construct a database for the photograph and video resources on Taiwan indigenous peoples that can fulfill the system goals set by this research, it is necessary not only to establish accurate and more complete metadata records but also, to construct index files and ‘knowledge database’ that can support with supplemental or explanatory information for the digital objects in the database. However, it is a challenging task to fill in accurate and complete information in the index fields for numerous metadata records. It is also very time consuming to fill in complete explanatory information repeatedly in metadata records. In order to avoid human error and to enable inputting index terms in index fields effectively, this research tried to utilize the bibliographic relations and hierarchical relations between layered class terms so as to facilitate automatic index terms inputting. Besides, in order to eliminate the troublesome of inputting explanatory information repeatedly for all the metadata records that are about a same activity or event, this research tried to construct ‘knowledge databases’ for metadata records to share-use of the knowledge-oriented resources. The benefit of this approach is to make the metadata information more complete through an economic way. The application utilization of relations not only can ensure the accuracy of the index terms but also can associate indices, knowledge databases, and metadata records laterally, thus could enable the realization of a cross-database browsing-search interface afterwards.
Upon the completion of a digital archives database system for the photograph and video resources on Taiwan indigenous peoples, this research tried to make an appraisal from multi-approach, including verifying the functionalities of the search interface of the database against the system goals set by this research in the beginning stage, discussion on the efficiency of the developed automatic index terms inputting method for metadata construction, in addition, discussion on the cost effectiveness of transforming Web resources into structured knowledge databases as demonstrated by this research. Finally, this research conducted a preliminary survey within the institutions that are allowed to access to the database during this database system development stage to learn about users’ opinion concerning the user-freindlyness and usability of this database, then refined the database system according to some of the users’ feedback. The appraisal concluded that the outcome database system has successfully fulfilled the system goals set by this research: it provides useful bilingual search aids that are useful for both browsing search and for learning about the content of the database, it can ensure literary warrant, and it can enable searchers to view all of the digital objects as long as the searchers make a thorough exploration using either the ‘knowledge map’ or certain index that has a complete coverage of all of the digital objects. In other words, the automatic index terms inputting method developed by this research had enabled the achievement of a complete subject indexing in both Chinese and English for all of the objects tackled in this research. Most of all, searchers can explore in the database from multi-facet, and can do expansion search from their search results while supplied with useful explanatory or introductory information about the digital objects they have retrieved. The aids for doing exploration search from multi-facet, for relating digital objects with knowledge-oriented Websites’ resources, and for the browsing and touch-screen search functionalities are especially highly valued by users.
This research concluded that the application utilization of relations that exist among digital objects databases, ‘knowledge databases’ that are extracted from authoritative Internet resources, and layered knowledge map and indices as asserted by this research, is a kind of information/ knowledge organization method that exploits in-depth subject relationships, and could relate databases or relate databases with Internet resources in a logical way. This method is practical and easy to apply. It can ensure that all the objects and metadata records can at least be searched by at least one search guiding tool such as ‘knowledge map’ or index, and the searched object or metadata could bring upon useful knowledge-oriented information when there is any, hence make the search results informative enough that could benefit researches, education and culture preservation. | en |