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Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to provide a tutorial and survey on recent advances in multimedia networking from an integrated perspective of both video networking and building digital video libraries. The nature of video networking, coupled with various recent developments in standards, proposals and applications, poses great challenges to the research and industrial communities working in this area. Design/methodology/approach -- This paper presents an insightful analysis for recent and emerging multimedia applications in digital video libraries and on video coding standards and their applications in digital libraries. Emphasis is given on those standards and mechanisms that enable multimedia content adaptation fully interoperable according to the vision of Universal Multimedia Access vision. Findings -- The tutorial helps elucidate the similarities and differences among the considered standards and networking applications. A number of research trends and challenges are identified, and selected promising solutions are discussed. This practice would needle further thoughts on the development of this area and open-up more research and application opportunities. Research limitations/implications -- The paper does not provide methodical studies of networking application scenarios for all the discussed video coding standards and Quality of Service (QoS) management mechanisms. Practical implications -- The paper provides an overview of which technologies/mechanisms are being used broadly in networking scenarios of digital video libraries. The discussed networking scenarios bring together video coding standards and various emerging wireless networking paradigms toward innovative application scenarios. Originality/value -- QoS mechanisms and video coding standards that support multimedia applications for digital video libraries need to become well-known by library managers and professional associations in the fields of libraries and archives. The comprehensive overview and critiques on existing standards and application approaches offer a valuable reference for researchers and system developers in related research and industrial communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a system for the semantic annotation of audio-visual media objects, which are provided in the documentary domain. It presents the system's architecture, a manual annotation tool, an authoring tool and a search engine for the documentary experts. The paper discusses the merits of a proposed approach of evolving semantic network as the basis for the audio-visual content description. Design/methodology/approach – The author demonstrates how documentary media can be semantically annotated, and how this information can be used for the retrieval of the documentary media objects. Furthermore, the paper outlines the underlying XML schema-based content description structures of the proposed system. Findings – Currently, a flexible organization of documentary media content description and the related media data is required. Such an organization requires the adaptable construction in the form of a semantic network. The proposed approach provides semantic structures with the capability to change and grow, allowing an ongoing task-specific process of inspection and interpretation of source material. The approach also provides technical memory structures (i.e. information nodes), which represent the size, duration, and technical format of the physical audio-visual material of any media type, such as audio, video and 3D animation. Originality/value – The proposed approach (architecture) is generic and facilitates the dynamic use of audio-visual material using links, enabling the connection from multi-layered information nodes to data on a temporal, spatial and spatial-temporal level. It enables the semantic connection between information nodes using typed relations, thus structuring the information space on a semantic as well as syntactic level. Since the description of media content holds constant for the associated time interval, the proposed system can handle multiple content descriptions for the same media unit and also handle gaps. The results of this research will be valuable not only for documentary experts but for anyone with a need to manage dynamically audiovisual content in an intelligent way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The aim of this work is to evaluate Greek newspaper websites using clustering and a number of criteria obtained from the Alexa search engine. Furthermore, a recommendation approach is proposed for matching Greek online newspapers with the profiles of potential readers. The paper presents the implementation and validation of a recommender tool that suggests to a user (based on age, education and income) an optional Greek newspaper's website to read. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 25 newspaper websites were selected from the Greek information bank http://edoellada.gr. After investigating these websites one by one, this number was decreased to 16 websites due to their printing prevention, cessation or no coverage by Alexa. Findings – Based on data obtained from Alexa, the Naftemporiki newspaper has the highest traffic rank and the Eleftherotypia newspaper the largest number of links among others. The Macedonia newspaper has the largest number of foreign users. The results of the study also show that most newspaper websites' visitors come from the UK. The expectation-maximisation (EM) clustering algorithm classifies the 16 websites into two groups based on some common characteristics. Research limitations/implications – The proposed recommendation approach is generic because it can be applied as a recommendation solution on various types of website, such as educational or commercial. However, slight adjustments are needed depending on the nature of recommending websites. Practical implications – A website administrator of an online newspaper can adapt the newspaper's features such as content and layout according to the prevailing user profile of the online newspaper. For example, a website administrator of an online newspaper whose dominant user education is "no-college" should enable the writing style of this newspaper in a more naive way. The administrator can also add advertisements that are more suitable to readers aged between 35 and 55 years, if the most frequent age of users of this online newspaper is between 35 and 55. Originality/value – The results of this research will be important not only to administrators of Greek newspaper websites but also to anyone with a need to increase the usage of a website. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to provide an overview of representative multimedia applications in the cultural heritage sector, as well as research results on quality of service (QoS) mechanisms in internet protocol (IP) networks that support such applications. Design/methodology/approach - The paper's approach is a literature review. Findings - Cultural heritage multimedia applications require greater bandwidth capacity, especially where multiple users share the connections. For such applications, scalability and reliability of quality of service depend on packet-level QoS mechanisms operating in a full end-to-end basis. Research limitations/implications - The paper provides a foundation for future research directions in the professional communication context. For instance, the QoS mechanisms in possible network infrastructures could be used to explore effective multimedia data dissemination across cultural heritage institutions. Practical implications - The paper provides an overview of which technologies/mechanisms are being used most broadly and which might provide the most potential for cultural heritage institutions managers considering experimenting in the multimedia communications area. Originality/value - QoS mechanisms that support multimedia applications in the cultural heritage sector need to become well known by cultural heritage institutions managers and professional associations in the fields of libraries, museums and archives. This paper provides a useful overview of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]