Narrativer Informationszugriff interdisziplinär

Chancen und Herausforderungen für Fachinformationsdienste

Abstract

Digital libraries typically implement keyword-based access paths for their collections. However, searching for complex information needs can become challenging if users are limited to keyword searches. Eventually, an essential part of the scientific discourse is the publication of knowledge in stringent argumentation contexts. Especially explorative searches require the usage of open keywords, which leads to a considerable effort during literature screening in view of the rapidly increasing number of scientific publications. An alternative could be that we enable users to formulate their information need as a narrative, i.e., as a structured query about the relevant actors and their interactions in their actual context. In close cooperation between the University Library and the Institute for Information Systems of the Technical University of Braunschweig, narrative information access for pharmacy (www.narrative.pubpharm.de) has been developed and implemented in the Specialized Information Service (FID) Pharmacy (PubPharm). In joint cooperation with the FID Political Sciences (Pollux), narrative information access for political sciences was evaluated. First, we examined the developed extraction methods for their suitability in political sciences. We prototypically implemented narrative information access through a semantic search and elaborated on the chances and challenges of the access in the example of European speeches. In this article, we present the central insights gained in that process: Narrative information access for political sciences is useful and helpful. However, due to a lack of concept vocabularies and suitable extraction methods, it is more complex to implement than for pharmacy.