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