Method and apparatus of metadata generation

• US 20030004942A1
• Filed: 06/21/2002
• Published: 01/02/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bird, Colin
• Application Number:
  US10/177,193
• Publication Number:
  US 20030004942A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification

Abstract

A method of generating metadata is provided including providing (401) a plurality of source texts (100), processing the plurality of source texts (100) to extract primary metadata in the form of a plurality of sets of words (104, 106), and comparing (407) each of the source texts (100) with each of the sets of words (104, 106). The method includes using a clustering program to extract the sets of words (104, 106) from the source texts (100). The step of comparing is carried out by Latent Semantic Analysis to compare the similarity of meaning of each source text (100) with each set of words (104, 106) obtained by the clustering program. The comparison obtains a measure of the extent to which each source text (100) is representative of a set of words (104, 106).

Claims

1. A method of generating metadata comprising the steps of:

providing a plurality of source texts;

processing the plurality of source texts to extract primary metadata in the form of a plurality of sets of words;

comparing a source text with each of the sets of words to obtain a measure of the extent to which the source text is representative of a set of words.

2. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein each source text is compared to each of the sets of words.

3. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein the source texts are multimedia documents with at least some associated textual content.

4. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processing step clusters source texts together and produces a set of words representative of the meaning of the source texts in the cluster.

5. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein the comparing step associates a source text with a weighting of the similarity of meaning between the source text and a set of words.

6. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein the comparing step is carried out using Latent Semantic Analysis.

7. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 6, wherein the Latent Semantic Analysis generates a value representing the extent to which a source text is represented by a set of words.

8. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 7, wherein the value represents the similarity of meaning between the source text and the set of words.

9. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 7, wherein the value is compared to a threshold value.

10. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein additional source texts are added prior to the comparing step and the comparing step is carried out on the combined texts.

11. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein a plurality of sets of words are merged prior to the comparing step and the comparing step is carried out on the merged sets of words.

12. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein the content of the set of words is manually refined before the comparing step is carried out.

13. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 1, wherein identifying labels are allocated to the sets of words.

14. A method of generating metadata as claimed in claim 13, wherein the identifying labels are used in a graphical user interface.

16. An apparatus for generating metadata as claimed in claim 15, wherein the apparatus includes an application programming interface for accessing the source texts.

15. An apparatus for generating metadata comprising:

means for providing a plurality of source texts;

means for processing the source texts to extract primary metadata in the form of a plurality of sets of words;

means for comparing a source text with each of the sets of words to obtain a measure of the extent to which the source text is representative of a set of words.

17. A computer program product stored on a computer readable storage medium, comprising computer readable program code means for performing the steps of:

providing a plurality of source texts;

processing the plurality of source texts to extract primary metadata in the form of a plurality of sets of words;

comparing a source text with each of the sets of words to obtain a measure of the extent to which the source text is representative of a set of words.