This workshop seeks to gather researchers and problem owners from a range of disciplines - both inside and outside the semantic web space - to explore key aspects of the user experience in complex, very heterogeneous data environments. It is the sixth in the Semantic Web User Interaction (SWUI) series, and takes its theme this year in part from the location of ISWC2009: Washington, D.C.

Workshop Theme

Use of semantic web protocols and technologies are increasing rapidly in government and business, so they are affecting an ever-widening user population on the web. Increasingly, web and data/archival management tools are embedding RDF and linked data capabilities into their architectures, and projects are overlaying standards-based ontologies to supplement older proprietary vocabularies. However, the key question remains: What are the most effective ways to harness these capabilities to support high quality user interaction by researchers and the public?

A case study provides a focal point for our day-long collaborative discussion - a frame around which the workshop looks at ideas for integrating a wide range of techniques and tools to support quality user interaction, and the critical contribution to be made by linked data and the semantic web. The case study centers around the rapidly growing area of large-scale electronic archives and library collections online (http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009/archival-casestudy). This domain is particularly rich to explore, as it offers highly heterogeneous data sources, a wide mix of structured and unstructured data, diverse user populations and goals, requirements for a range of query/search/retrieval strategies, and unique needs for visualizing/rendering both results and individual objects.

There is a lot of good, relevant research and new interaction techniques (inside and outside the linked data/semantic web community) that can contribute to this domain, and ultimately to many large, heterogeneous data interaction domains.
Who should participate?

This workshop will be of interest to researchers and designers from a range of disciplines, including:

* Semantic Web
* Linked Data
* Machine Learning
* NLP, concept and entity extraction, and linguistic analysis
* Search and indexing of structured and unstructured data, images and multimedia
* Visualization
* Text entry, tagging and annotation
* Ontology and taxonomy modeling and integration
* Social and community interaction
* Multimedia
* Grid and cloud computing
* Agents

Participating in the Workshop

A written research/position paper must be submitted and accepted to participate in the workshop. The deadline for papers is August 17, 2009 (see key dates, below). Papers do not need to be full length research papers to be accepted - high quality ideas, contributions, and imagination are most important.

For acceptance into the workshop, participant papers must contain at minimum:

* A summary of your related research/practice work, with examples that describe unique aspects of your research and any tools or models you are developing.
* Links to existing papers that describe your work in more detail; for researchers doing newer or more exploratory work, a longer paper describing new and unpublished work can also be accepted by the PC.
* Specific ideas on how your research is a "piece in the larger puzzle" that contributes to improving the situation for users in the case study problem domain.

It is not an absolute requirement for acceptance that submissions use the case study. Furthermore, submissions can discuss existing and ongoing work in the context of the study, or be adapted for the study. However, how much a submission involved the study is a factor in its positive consideration for acceptance.

Position papers can be as short as 4 pages, and the maximum length for research papers is 12 pages. Accepted papers are expected to be published to the CEUR-WS website.
Workshop Format

The workshop will feature collaborative activities to understand the relationships between participants' work, in order to find points for cross-fertilizing and extending future research. This will be a highly interactive workshop! Some of the specific activities for the workshop will be determined based on the participants and the research work they are bringing to the event.

The workshop aims to produce a strong and detailed outline/extended abstract on the UI challenges presented by the case study domain and the types of approaches that apply - and hopefully by extension can benefit other large, heterogeneous data domains. We will ask participants to continue contributing to the outline, with the aim of publishing the workshop outcomes as a paper or journal special edition.

Key Dates
Abstract/intent due: 7 August 2009
Submissions due: 17 August 2009
Notification by: 6 September 2009
Final papers due: 9 October 2009
Workshop date: 25 October 2009

All papers submitted will be reviewed by the workshop program committee.

Submissions to: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swui2009

Questions to: swui (AT) webscience (DOT) org
Organizers

* Duane Degler, Design for Context, USA
* Jennifer Golbeck, University of Maryland, USA
* mc schraefel, University of Southampton, UK
* Lloyd Rutledge, Open Universiteit Nederland, NL

Program Committee

* Mark Ackerman, University of Michigan
* Anupriya Ankolekar, Universitat Karlsruhe
* Lisa Battle, Design for Context
* Chris Bizer, Freie Universitat Berlin
* Michael Hausenblas, DERI
* Tom Heath, Talis
* Jacco van Ossenbruggen, CWI
* Taowei David Wang, University of Maryland
* Max Wilson, Swansea University

For more information

E-mail: swui (AT) webscience (DOT) org
Submissions: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swui2009
Case study: http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009/archival-casestudy (coming soon)
Text CFP: http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009/SWUI2009CFP.txt (please distribute!)

ISWC2009 (Washington, D.C. USA, 25-29 October 2009): http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/
It is not an absolute requirement for acceptance that ) submissions use the case study. Furthermore, submissions can ) discuss existing and ongoing work in the context of the ) study, or be adapted for the study. ) However, how much a submission involved the study is a factor ) in its positive consideration for acceptance. Westfields Conference Center: http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/wiki/index.php/Westfields_Conference_Center

Previous workshops in Semantic Web User Interaction: http://swui.webscience.org/