Description
I am a Postdoc at the Institute for Information Systems, TU Braunschweig led by Wolf-Tilo Balke.
I am interested in research that boosts literature retrieval and search in digital libraries. My works focus on bridging the gap between unstructured information (natural language text) and structured representations (document graphs, knowledge graphs, etc.). Therefore, I proposed narrative information access, which allows users to formulate information needs as graph patterns while preserving result validity through context-compatible information fusion.
My research interests include narratives, information extraction, entity linking, text classification, and query processing. My research aims to allow more sophisticated retrieval by adding structure to digital library collections.
PC Chair: JCDL Panels [2024] (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries)
PC Member: JCDL Poster Track [2024] (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries).
TPDL [2024] (International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries).
ECIR [2024] (European Conference on Information Retrieval),
DISCO [2021] (Digital Infrastructures for Scholarly Content Objects@JCDL).
LWDA [2020] (Lernen. Wissen. Daten. Analysen.)
Journal Reviewer: TKDE (Transaction on Knowledge and Data Engineering),
JODL (International Journal on Digital Libraries),
IPM (International Journal on Information Processing and Management)
Projects
I am working for the specialized information service for Pharmacy (www.pubpharm.de). The project's overall goal is to support pharmaceutical literature search for the German academic landscape. I have been developing the Narrative Service for PubPharm. The Narrative Service allows users to formulate their information need as structured graph patterns. The service returns publications that match the corresponding pattern, i.e., they contain the desired information. Therefore, we transformed the literature into so-called document graphs through entity linking and information extraction. One special feature of the service is the support of queries with variables (e.g., which drugs to treat Diabetes Mellitus). To allow eased access, users can now formulate their information needs as keywords, and the service proposes possible patterns automatically.
In addition to the Narrative Service, I have been developing the Drug Overview service which generates a structured literature overview about a drug by combining information from specialized databases and information extracted from research literature. The information is derived by the following steps: a set of narrative queries with variables is executed, the results are aggregated, and shown to the user. A click on some information will forward the user to corresponding text passages/sources to show from where the information was derived.
Publications
2024
-
Hermann Kroll, Christin K. Kreutz, Bill Matthias Thang, Philipp Schaer and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Building an Explainable Graph-based Biomedical Paper Recommendation System. 1st Workshop on Utilizing AI/ML to Enhance Information Extraction, Organization, and Retrieval from Large-scale Archival Collections co-located with ACM/ IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Hong Kong, China, 2024, ACM.
[Preprint (Short Version)]
[Technical Report (Long Version)]
[Technical Report arXiv]
DOI: Following Soon.
Talk: [Slides]
Code: [GitHub]
-
Hermann Kroll, Pascal Sackhoff, Timo Breuer, Ralf Schenkel and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Ranking Narrative Query Graphs for Biomedical Document Retrieval. 1st Workshop on Utilizing AI/ML to Enhance Information Extraction, Organization, and Retrieval from Large-scale Archival Collections co-located with ACM/ IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Hong Kong, China, 2024, ACM.
[Preprint (Short Version)]
[Technical Report (Long Version)]
[Technical Report arXiv]
DOI: Following Soon.
Talk: [Slides]
Code: [GitHub]
-
Hermann Kroll, Pascal Sackhoff, Bill Matthias Thang, Maha Ksouri and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A Library Perspective on Supervised Text Processing in Digital Libraries: An Investigation in the Biomedical Domain. ACM/ IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Hong Kong, China, 2024, ACM.
[Preprint]
[arXiv]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3677389.3702557
Talk: [Slides]
Code: [GitHub]
-
Hermann Kroll, Christin Katharina Kreutz, Mathias Jehn and Thomas Risse. Requirements for a Digital Library System: A Case Study in Digital Humanities. ACM/ IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Hong Kong, China, 2024, ACM.
[Preprint (Short Version)]
[Technical Report (Long Version)]
[Technical Report arXiv]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3677389.3702502
Poster: [Poster]
-
Hermann Kroll, Christin Katharina Kreutz, Mirjam Cuper, Bill Matthias Thang, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Aspect-Driven Structuring of Historical Dutch Newspaper Archives using Wikimedia Data. Wiki Workshop 2024, Online.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: https://wikiworkshop.org/papers/aspect-driven-structuring-of-historical-dutch-newspaper-archives-using-wikimedia-data.pdf
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, Florian Plötzky, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A detailed library perspective on nearly unsupervised information extraction workflows in digital libraries. International Journal on Digital Libraries (JODL) 2024.
[PDF]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-023-00368-z
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, Jan-Christoph Kalo, Morris Kunz, Johannes Ruthmann, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A discovery system for narrative query graphs: entity-interaction-aware document retrieval. International Journal on Digital Libraries (JODL) 2024.
[PDF]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-023-00356-3
2023
-
Hermann Kroll. Narrative Information Access – A new Paradigm for Digital Libraries. Disseration, 2023, TU Braunschweig. [PDF] DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24355/dbbs.084-202401171145-1
-
Hermann Kroll, Katharina Heldt, and Lisa Kühnel. Innovative Recherchetools für das Screening von Literatur zu Long COVID: Eine kooperative Zusammenarbeit zwischen RKI, ZB MED und PubPharm. GMS Medizin - Bibliothek - Information, 2023.
[PDF]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3205/mbi000558
-
Hermann Kroll, Julian Schenke, Florian Plötzky, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Narrativer Informationszugriff interdisziplinär – Chancen und Herausforderungen für Fachinformationsdienste. O-Bib. Das Offene Bibliotheksjournal, 2023.
[PDF]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5962
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Hermann Kroll, Christin Katharina Kreutz, Mirjam Cuper, Bill Matthias Thang, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Aspect-Driven Structuring of Historical Dutch Newspaper Archives. International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL), Zadar, Croatia, 2023, Springer.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43849-3_4 arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.09203
Talk: [Slides]
-
Hermann Kroll, Christin Katharina Kreutz, Pascal Sackhoff, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Enriching Simple Keyword Queries for Domain-Aware Narrative Retrieval. ACM/ IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Santa Fe, NM, USA, 2023, IEEE.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL57899.2023.00029 arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.07604
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Are Qualifiers Enough? Context-Compatible Information Fusion for Wikimedia Data. Wiki Workshop 2023, Online.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: https://wikiworkshop.org/2023/papers/WikiWorkshop2023_paper_26.pdf
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
2022
-
Niklas Kiehne, Hermann Kroll, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Contextualizing Language Models for Norms Diverging from Social Majority. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2022, ACL.
[PDF]
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.findings-emnlp.339
-
Christina Draheim, Hermann Kroll, and Stefan Wulle. Neue PubPharm-Tools - Gezielter suchen, Überblick gewinnen. Krankenhauspharmazie 2023.
URL: https://www.krankenhauspharmazie.de/heftarchiv/2023/01/neue-pubpharm-tools-gezielter-suchen-ueberblick-gewinnen-1.html
-
Hermann Kroll, Niklas Mainzer and, Wolf-Tilo Balke. On Dimensions of Plausibility for Narrative Information Access to Digital Libraries. International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL), Padua, Italy, 2022, Springer.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16802-4_43
arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2208.10308
Talk: [Slides]
-
Hermann Kroll, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. On Design Principles for Narrative Information Systems. Workshop on Semantic Techniques for Narrative-Based Understanding (SEM4NBU) at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI), Vienna, Austria, 2022, CEUR-WS.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3322/short3.pdf
Talk: [Slides]
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, Florian Plötzky, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A Library Perspective on Nearly-Unsupervised Information Extraction Workflows in Digital Libraries. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Cologne, Germany, 2022, ACM.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3529372.3530924
arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.00716
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
Minute Madness: [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Florian Plötzky, Jan Pirklbauer, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. What a Publication Tells You — Benefits of Narrative Information Access in Digital Libraries. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Cologne, Germany, 2022, ACM.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3529372.3530928
arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.00718
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
Minute Madness: [YouTube]
2021
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, Jan-Christoph Kalo, Morris Kunz, Johannes Ruthmann, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Narrative Query Graphs for Entity-Interaction-Aware Document Retrieval. International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL), Online, 2021, Springer.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91669-5_7
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, and Christina Draheim. Narrative Information Access for a Precise and Structured Literature Search. O-Bib. Das Offene Bibliotheksjournal 2021.
[PDF]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5730
-
Hermann Kroll, Judy Al-Chaar, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Open Information Extraction in Digital Libraries: Current Challenges and Open Research Questions. Workshop on Digital Infrastructures for Scholarly Content Objects (DISCO) at the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, 2021, CEUR-WS.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2976/short-1.pdf
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A Toolbox for the Nearly-Unsupervised Construction of Digital Library Knowledge Graphs. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, 2021, IEEE.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL52503.2021.00014
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Denis Nagel, Morris Kunz, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Demonstrating Narrative Bindings: Linking Discourses to Knowledge Repositories. Workshop on Narrative Extraction From Texts (Text2Story) at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR), Lucca, Italy, 2021, CEUR-WS.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2860/paper7.pdf
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
2020
-
Hermann Kroll, Denis Nagel, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Modeling Narrative Structures in Logical Overlays on top of Knowledge Repositories. International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER), Vienna, Austria, 2020, Springer.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_18
Summary Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
Long Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan-Christoph Kalo, Denis Nagel, Stephan Mennicke, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Context-Compatible Information Fusion for Scientific Knowledge Graphs. International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL), Lyon, France, 2020, Springer.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54956-5_3
Talk: [Slides] [YouTube]
-
Hermann Kroll, Jan Pirklbauer, Johannes Ruthmann, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. A Semantically Enriched Dataset based on Biomedical NER for the COVID19 Open Research Dataset Challenge, 2020.
arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2005.08823
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Katharina Ostaszewski, Philip Heinisch, Ingo Richter, Hermann Kroll, Wolf-Tilo Balke, Diego Fraga, and Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier. Pattern recognition in time series for space missions: A rosetta magnetic field case study. Acta Astronautica 2020.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.11.037
2019
-
Kristof Keßler, Hermann Kroll, Janus Wawrzinek, Christina Draheim, Stefan Wulle, Katrin Stump, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. PubPharm – Gemeinsam von der informationswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung zum nachhaltigen Service. ABI Technik 2019.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abitech-2019-4005
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Stephan Mennicke, Jan-Christoph Kalo, Denis Nagel, Hermann Kroll, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. Fast Dual Simulation Processing of Graph Database Queries. IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Macau, China, 2019, IEEE.
[Preprint]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDE.2019.00030
2018
-
Hermann Kroll, Denis Nagel, and Wolf-Tilo Balke. BAFREC: Balancing Frequency and Rarity for Entity Characterization in Open Linked Data. 1st International Workshop on Entity REtrieval (EYRE) at the ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Turin, Italy, 2018.
[Preprint]
[PDF]
DOI: http://ws.nju.edu.cn/conf/eyre2018/paper_14.pdf
Recorded Talks
-
Deutsch: Recherche mit Narrative Service, Long COVID und Drug Overviews.
[YouTube]
-
Drug Overview Tutorial.
[YouTube]
-
Drug Overview: Drug-Target-Disease Network Tutorial.
[YouTube]
-
Long COVID / COVID-19 / ME/CFS Overview Tutorial.
[YouTube]
Teaching
Lectures/Seminars
# |
Year |
Semester |
Course Name |
Role |
1 |
2024 |
Winter |
Multimedia Databases |
Lecturer |
1 |
2024 |
Summer |
Relational Database Systems 2 |
Lecturer |
1 |
2023 |
Winter |
Relational Database Systems 1 |
Lecturer |
2 |
2023 |
Summer |
Relational Database Systems 2 |
Assistant |
3 |
2022 |
Winter |
Relational Database Systems 1 |
Assistant |
4 |
2022 |
Summer |
Multimedia Databases |
Assistant |
5 |
2021 |
Winter |
Seminar: Narrative Information Access |
Assistant |
6 |
2020 |
Winter |
Deductive Databases and Knowledge-based Systems |
Assistant |
7 |
2019 |
Winter |
Relational Database Systems 1 |
Assistant |
8 |
2019 |
Summer |
Relational Database Systems 2 |
Assistant |
9 |
2018 |
Winter |
Relational Database Systems 1 |
Assistant |
Student Projects
# |
Year |
Course Name |
Type |
Role |
1 |
2023 |
A pharmaceutical PDF table extraction pipeline |
Teamproject |
Supervisor |
2 |
2022 |
Graph-based Exploration of Long COVID Literature |
Teamproject |
Supervisor |
3 |
2021 |
Narrative Information Access for Pharmacy (Drug Overviews) |
Teamproject |
Supervisor |
4 |
2021 |
SherloQL 2.0 |
Teamproject |
Supervisor |
5 |
2020 |
SherloQL |
Software Development Project |
Supervisor |
6 |
2019 |
A Narrative Query Designer |
Teamproject |
Supervisor |
7 |
2019 |
Music Tinder |
Software Development Project |
Supervisor |