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
Tightly
integrated
Refuse to License
License widelyLicense widely
and 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
Narrower
e.g. Cirrus
Broad
e.g. Weather
Less Broad
e.g. Clouds
Narrowest
e.g. Cirrus in AZ
Granularity of results
Search
Precision
Ease of Integration
Hi
Lo Hi
Sub-Chapter
Track, Poem,
Article,
Chapter,
Track
Book,
Journal,
Series
Database
Discovery
Book descriptors,
ISBNs, ONYX
Media Descriptors
Albums, DVDs
Smaller units
Semantic tags
Book descriptors,
ISBNs, ONYX
Journal Descriptors
Article Citations, DOI
Media Descriptors
Albums, DVDs
Smaller units
Semantic tags
Search Tool Target
Easy
Hard
Journal Descriptors
Article Citations, DOI
‘Semantic’ Indexing
Collection
Series
Book or Volume
Chapter
Page
Word
Where ?
When ?
What ?
Who ?
‘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
ProductionVenueDirector
Lighting Set
Designers
Theater
PerformanceLocation
Production Company
Producer
Texts
Criticism
Cast List
Performers
Posters
Ephemera
Scenes
Acts
Characters
Dramatis
Personae
The virtual world…
Author
Birth date
Death date
Birth Place
Death Place
Nationality
Occupation
Awards
(38 fields)
Theater
District
Location
Capacity
Style
Etc…
(18 fields)
Company
Name
Productions
Performers
Etc…
(14 fields)
Production
Director
Theater
Cast
# of Perfs.
Lighting
Costumes
Etc…
(47 fields)
Characters
Plays
Age
Author
Performer
Etc…
(30 fields)
Scenes
Where
When
Setting
Subject
Etc…
(41 fields)
Resources
Play
Director
Theater
Production Co.
Character
Scene
Etc…
(45 fields)
Texts
Keyword
Author
Date Written
Date Published
Production
(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 Descriptors
Albums, DVDs
Smaller units
Semantic tags
Book descriptors,
ISBNs, ONYX
Journal Descriptors
Article Citations, DOI
Media Descriptors
Albums, DVDs
Smaller units
Semantic tags
Search Tool Target
Easy
Hard
Journal Descriptors
Article 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 to
other 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