Scholar | Speaker | Writer | Teacher | Advocate
We’re in the process of sprucing up the StoryStarters prototype for first beta. Cathy is working on the final database schema.
The plan is once the database schema is in place we finish the StoryStarters beta.
Then we take this code base and re-task it for OpenQA Builder (shh, but we’re working on a release for distribution at this year’s VRD).
Stay tuned.
A publication on the DREW project I co-authored with Scott Nicholson has been been accepted for publication by Reference and User Services Quarterly. Here’s the anticipated citation:
Nicholson, S. & Lankes, R. D. (2006, Winter). The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse (DREW) Project: Creating the infrastructure for digital reference research through a multi-disciplinary knowledge base. Reference and User Services Quarterly.
If you were scratching your head over that last post about IKE (the Inductive Knowledge Engine) and that clustering, fear not. Here is an animation showing IKE in action. The dots you see scattered about are each Story Starter responses. They have been randomly scattered around a 100 x 100 graph. Each frame of the animation has a dot compare itself to another dot and then move (so one dot eventually compares itself to all other dots), then the step is repeated with the next dot. Each frame represents one full cycle of comparison. In each comparison the dots are getting closer to each other if they come from the same blog, and farther away if they are from different blogs. The clustering is dynamic. Entries from the same blog end up clustered together.
THis example is pretty simplistic as it is based on a single static variable (blog title). However, I wanted to give you an idea how IKE was working.
Hi all. I’ve put the StoryStarters prototype online to play with. Note it doesn’t play too well with Internet Explorer for Windows. Click here to see a streaming video overview. Or go right to the prototype.
A few notes about the prototype:
We are in the process of implementing the “real” system. Consider it a working model. There are a few things you need to know before you start playing with it:
It has been a busy month at the Institute with all of us traveling and moving in different directions before the start of the semester. I thought it would be useful to recap some of the recent projects I’ve been working on and where they are headed. Some of this information is just an update to previous posts on my blog, some is new. Sorry if it is repetitive, but it helps me put it all in one place.
My projects have revolved around two threads…credibility and digital reference. There are three major projects here:
• Reference Extract: A digital reference search engine
• Story Starters: building a blogging community of answers and questions, and
• IKE: the Inductive Knowledge Engine
Let me break them down:
Continue reading “What I’ve done with My Summer Vacation”
Sorry I have been quiet for a while. I’ve been very busy preparing for a MacArthur presentation next week. I’ve been building the Story Starters site…and having a fun time in source code. The basics of the site are done and almost ready for public play (on the “reference implementation at least). We’ll need to do some re-writing and cleaning up (not good to do database design while you are also figuring out the feature set).
It is also becoming clear to me how Story Starters is going to become the next version of QABuilder – OpenQA.
I hope to have a site up for folks to look at end of next week.
I’ve put a lot of the news from my former RSS feed on the blog to browse. I’ll put up some more intelligent navigation to the older information soon.
“Digital and Information Trends on the Library Landscape,” AASTO RAC, Wilmington, NC. Presented changes in libraries as a result of a changing technology landscape.
Abstract: A discussion of the changing role of libraries in industry from external information providers, to organization wide repositories.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2005/AASHTO.pdf
Slides from the presentation are now available here. A discussion of the changing role of libraries in industry from external information providers, to organization wide repositories.
Well, yesterday I finished up a working demo site of Story Starters for the National Science Digital Library. Doing that and teaching kept me too busy to blog. My plan is to make a more general and scalable demo for the world. Hopefully I can have that up by the end of the week. My intention is to also tie in Reference Extract.
Right now in Reference Extract you can search digital reference knowledge-bases and then extend your search to cited references.Like this:
DR Archives –> Cited Searches
No imagine, chaining more specific searches together, so now we can add blogs in Story Starters:
Blogs –> DR Archives –> Cited Searches
Making this capability generic, a local library could add their archives, and then extend to Reference Extract:
My Library –> DR Archives –> Cited Search
And one could continue to add more links:
My Library –> DR Archive –> Cited Search –> Google
The idea would be to make a general utility to tie these searches together in a seamless interface and allow any interface mix and match (and collapse) these chains based on a given user interface. So a library could go:
My Library –> Cited Search –> Google
etc.
Just an idea. Off to start the Story Starter site.