asking questions of data

Asking questions of data:

Tony HirstComputing and Communications Dept,

The Open University, UK

blog.ouseful.info / @psychemedia

from simple searchto advanced queries

Time was when…

Search and replace

Advanced search and

replace

regex

Regular expressions

How do we discover or recover information from

data?

A medical librarian is probably not a expert on zoonotic H5H1 influenza

infections…

BUT…

How do we cope with new discovery

regimes and environments?

“DIY

Dre

amca

tche

r”, v

ia fl

ickr

use

r: b

arbr

oand

erse

n

“DIY

Dre

amca

tche

r”, v

ia fl

ickr

use

r: b

arbr

oand

erse

n

Friends of my friends who are librarians

People who live in Bath and like the Future of Libraries

When the databases really are databases..?

USERS QUERY INFORMATION

DATA

QUERIES

USERS INFORMATION

An example – questions around

local elections

Which wards in my local council area were not

contested by Conservative affiliated candidates?

Can I get a list of all the candidates?

SELECT * FROM candidates

Can I get a list of people standing in wards in Newport

who live out of ward?

SELECT * FROM candidates WHERE ward LIKE 'Newport%' AND address NOT LIKE '%Newport%'

How many candidates did

each party field?

SELECT desc AS Party, COUNT(desc) AS Number FROM candidates GROUP BY Party ORDER BY Number DESC

Which wards were not contested by Conservative

affiliated candidates?

SELECT DISTINCT ward from Candidates WHERE ward NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT ward FROM Candidates WHERE desc LIKE '%Conservative%’)

Which candidates were signatories in to

other proposals?

Time is now…

blog.ouseful.info @ps

yche

med

ia