Haute école de gestion de Genève
Prof. Dr. René Schneider
Project management RODIN
+41 22 388 18 66
rene.schneider@hesge.ch

ROue D'INformation (Wheel of Information): a tool for bundling and linking user-relevant sources of information

"RODIN" (ROue D’INformation; Wheel of Information) is an information portal that can be customised to suit the user, giving them the option of searching in different information resources simultaneously. The resources are represented by different widgets. The user chooses which sources he/she wishes to add or remove and how they should be arranged.

The idea is that all the information sources included in e-lib.ch which have a search function are to be incorporated in "RODIN". For example, the interfaces for "swissbib" and RERO DOC have been incorporated, while special search environments have been created for the information portals "Infonet Economy" and "infoclio.ch". Conventional web resources such as Google Books and Delicious can also be consulted in the form of widgets.

After carrying out a simple search in all the selected information sources, the user has the option of refining the search by using bibliographical ontologies. Starting from one document from all the results, semantic relationships (synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms) are defined within the ontologies, which form the basis for further searches.

The project was started at the beginning of 2009 and will run until the end of 2011. Then the project is due to be continued by the Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft Genf HEG (School of Business Administration, Geneva) with follow-up financing.