Digital publications can be packaged, distributed, and viewed via the Open Web Platform using the EPUB 3 format. Meanwhile, the increased amount of mobile clients and the advent of HTML5’s Geolocation have opened a whole range of possibilities for digital publications to interact with their readers. However, EPUB 3 files often remain closed silos of information, no longer linked with the rest of the Web. In this paper, we propose a solution that addresses the difficulties of reconnecting digital publications with the Web using the spatial location of the concepts mentioned in the publication. We enrich digital publications by connecting the detected concepts to their URIs on, e.g., DBpedia, and use an algorithm that uses these URIs to retrieve or approximate the coordinates of these concepts. The evaluation of the approximation algorithm showed that almost any concept can be linked to a coordinate, but that the errors can be very high when context information is limited. This means relevant locations for a user can be shown, based on the content he or she is reading, and based on his or her location. This methodology can be used to reconnect digital publications with the online world, to entice readers, and ultimately, as a novel location-based recommendation technique. Link to the paper: http://www.www2015.it/documents/proceedings/companion/p749.pdf

1. Reconnecting Digital Publications to the Web
using their Spatial Information
Ben De Meester
Tom De Nies, Ruben Verborgh,
Erik Mannens, Rik Van De Walle
University Ghent – iMinds – Multimedia Lab
ben.demeester@ugent.be
@Ben__DM
LocWeb@WWW | May 19th 2015 | Firenze
http://www.www2015.it/documents/proceedings/companion/p749.pdf

2. There are a lot of links to books…

3. … but little links from books

4. How about linking content from a book
to your and other locations?

5. On the menu:
Digital publications…
EPUB 3
... reconnecting them to the Web …
NER, Semantic Web
… using their spatial information …
DBPedia [lat,long]
… and the cool results!

6. EPUB 3: the Web in a box!
°2011

7. EPUB 3: the Semantic Web in a box!
°2014

8. EPUB 3: the Semantic Web in a box!
the Semantic Web
Open, standardized formats
HTML5, CCS3, JS
Machine-understandable
RDF(a)
in a box
Packaged
zip

9. Digital publications could be
first-class, interlinked Web-citizens…
But aren’t.
What can we do?

10. Reconnect all the boxes!
DBPedia spotlight
Retrieve Semantic data
about digital publications
(Approximate) location
Use this Semantic data
to connection publications
with locations
1 2

14. Done?

15. Done?
Well… “almost”.

17. Not all (DBPedia) locations
have a geolocation…
What can we do?

18. Approximate the location of entities
using the location of relevant concepts

19. Approximate the location of entities
using the location of relevant concepts
Relevant?
Abstract
Links
Entities?
Can be used for entities that aren’t actual locations!

20. Approximate the location of entities
using the location of relevant concepts
Relevant?
Abstract
Links
Entities?
Can be used for entities that aren’t actual locations!

23. Approximate the location of entities
using the location of relevant concepts
Relevant?
Abstract
Links
Entities?
Can be used for entities that aren’t actual locations!

26. Link-average is more precise,
Abstract-average has more recall
2%
9%
21%
26%
34%
8%
1%
6%
9%
23%
45%
16%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000
relative
frequency
kmLink based Abstract based

27. Averaging relevant concepts
100 km

28. Averaging relevant concepts
1 km

29. Averaging gives pretty good predictions…
and standard deviation gives good spread

30. Where is Mozart located?

31. Result: a contextualized reading experience

32. To take away
By augmenting EPUBs with their DBPedia-links…
and connecting these links with their spatial coordinates
… You reconnect digital publications with the Web …
… And create contextualized information for readers!

33. Our project
Our pilot project partners:
The Publisher of the Future
http://www.www2015.it/documents/proceedings/companion/p749.pdf