Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President,

E-Everything: Putting It All Together

November 2010

• About ASP• The information archipelago• Perspectives on discovery• Some examples

Overview

Alexander Street Press, LLC

Performing Arts, Drama, and Film

World Literature

Women’s History

Religion

CounselingMusic

Social and Cultural History

Sociology

Black Studies

American Civil War

The environment

OCLC, Environmental Scan, 2003

Newsletters

Journals

Monographs

Textbooks

Academic Tools

External Publishers Free Websites

Lay Tools

A&I Dbs

Video

Discovery

Integration is unavoidable

Loosely Held Tightly Held

Free Websites

Loosely integrated

Tightlyintegrated

Refuse to License

License widely

License widelyand be a Licensor

• Search for ‘myocardial infarct”

• 1,445 results• Most limiters don’t help

• A cataloging problem– No common agreement as to terms– No common agreement as to level of granularity

• A linking problem– Some successes in journals

• A financial problem– Few models to monetize links– It’s expensive to do this properly

• Discovery of the best, rarest, the most unique items remains elusive

Discovery

A closer look…

Granularity of tagging

Search Precision

Ease of Integration

Hi

Lo Hi

Narrowere.g. Cirrus

Broade.g. Weather

Less Broade.g. Clouds

Narroweste.g. Cirrus in AZ

Granularity of results

Search Precision

Ease of Integration

Hi

Lo Hi

Sub-ChapterTrack, Poem,

Article, Chapter,Track

Book, Journal,Series

Database

Discovery

Book descriptors, ISBNs, ONYX

Media DescriptorsAlbums, DVDs

Smaller units

Semantic tags

Book descriptors, ISBNs, ONYX

Journal DescriptorsArticle Citations, DOI

Media DescriptorsAlbums, DVDs

Smaller units

Semantic tags

Search Tool Target

Easy

Hard

Journal DescriptorsArticle Citations, DOI

‘Semantic’ Indexing

Collection

Series

Book or Volume

Chapter

Page

Word

Where ?

When ?

What ?

Who ?Traditio

nal indexing >

‘Semantic’ indexing >

Traditional vs. Semantic Indexing

  Traditional Indexing Semantic Indexing

  General  History Drama Religion

What? Article, Book Event Scene Passage

Who? Author Participants Characters Author

Where? Where published Where occurred Where set -

When? When published When it happened When set When written

• Give me articles from journal xxx prior to 1990

• Give me documents that discuss battles where more than 100 people were killed?

• Give me all scenes set before 1850 that portray lynching?

• Which authors cite Genesis most frequently?

The ‘real’ world

Play

Author

Production Stills

Playbills

ProductionVenueDirecto

r

Lighting

Set Designer

s

Theater

Performance

Location

Production Company

Producer

Texts

Criticism

Cast List

Performers

Posters

Ephemera

Scenes

ActsCharacters

Dramatis Personae

The virtual world…

Author

Birth dateDeath dateBirth PlaceDeath PlaceNationalityOccupationAwards(38 fields)

Theater

DistrictLocationCapacityStyleEtc…(18 fields)

Company

NameProductionsPerformersEtc…(14 fields)

ProductionDirectorTheaterCast# of Perfs.LightingCostumesEtc…(47 fields)

Characters

PlaysAgeAuthorPerformerEtc…(30 fields)

Scenes

WhereWhenSettingSubjectEtc…(41 fields)

Resources

PlayDirectorTheaterProduction Co.CharacterSceneEtc…(45 fields)

Texts

KeywordAuthorDate WrittenDate PublishedProduction(67 fields)

Give me scenes about AIDS written by South African authors in the past 5 years….

Tables of Contents

• More than a way to answer questions• A framework by which users can be guided to

understand, explore, discover and learn.• A route-map to guide users through data - saving time

and effort.• Delivers answers that cannot be asked elsewhere

• Facilitates discovery within the discipline

Semantic Indexing…

Discovery

Book descriptors, ISBNs, ONYX

Media DescriptorsAlbums, DVDs

Smaller units

Semantic tags

Book descriptors, ISBNs, ONYX

Journal DescriptorsArticle Citations, DOI

Media DescriptorsAlbums, DVDs

Smaller units

Semantic tags

Search Tool Target Easy

Hard

Journal DescriptorsArticle Citations, DOI

Links as the defining value added

•Links document intellectual pathways through data

• Basic traffic enhancer

• Allow independent annotation of scholarship

• Facilitate discovery

• Confer authority

• Prevent duplication of indexing, content and commentary

• ‘Links are intrinsically bidirectional’ (Ted Nelson)

Some examples from ASP

Building discovery…

Unhelpful

•Legal warnings not to link

•Changing links constantly

•Disabling links

•No permanent URLs

•No crawling

•Randomly changing URLs

•Insisting on one interface and one access point

•Unattached pages

Helpful

•Citations visible to the outside world

•Permanent URLs

•RSS feeds

•OpenURL

•Design for multiple interfaces

•Open to crawling

•Published APIs

•Welcome linking

•Ask others to do the same

No silos!Search via library catalog

(direct or federated)

OpenURL links directly to Alexander

Street content

OpenURL links

directly toother

databasesSearch the web

Search the library catalog

e.g. RILM,Grove Music

Online

Search via Alexander Street interface

Next phase - video

Discovery tools

• MARC records,• Discovery Services

• Text search • Search Engines

Social Tools

Newsletters

Journals

Monographs

Textbooks

Academic Tools

External Publishers Free Websites

Lay Tools

www.alexanderstreet.com

Search functionality