Digital visual exploration library

With the advancement of instrument precision, research facilities are generating data at an unprecedented rate. These experimental results are stored in a digital library platform which the contents are later accessible from within the facility or the public. However, the sheer volume of collected data is overwhelming the capacity of researchers and impedes the process of browsing for the desired data. In this paper, we present a concept of Digital Visual Exploration Library (DVEL) based on the confluence of two major research domains-digital library and visualisation-that enables efficient browsing of the growing data within a digital library. We complement the current state-of-the-art textual metadata description by integrating visual exploration to address big complex data, i.e., data of large size, multimodal data and multivariate data. We describe our concept based on use cases from three unique domains: climate research with Doppler wind lidar, X-ray-imaging for entomology research, and medical imaging with ultrasound computer tomography