The Federated World Directory of Mathematicians (FWDM)

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The Federated World Directory of Mathematicians
(FWDM)

• Jonathan M. Borwein, Mason S. Macklem and
  Jaehyun Paek,Dalhousie University,
• Halifax, Canada

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International Mathematical Union (IMU)

• Non-governmental, non-profit ICSU organization
• Focused on promoting and developing math research
  internationally
• Organizes the International Congress of
  Mathematicians (ICM) every four years
• Awards the Fields Medals
• Publishes the World Directory of Mathematicians
  to coincide with the ICM

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World Directory of Mathematicians

• Data collection is not performed directly by the
  IMU
• Member nations provide their membership lists for
  inclusion in WDM
• 66 Member Nations
• Goal Design electronic version of WDM to replace
  physical version

Members
Members
Members
WDM
Members
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Committee on Electronic Information and
Communication

• 1998 IMU asked CEIC about feasibility of
  electronic version of WDM
• Conclusion A centralized database would be
  subject to intellectual property and privacy laws
• Different laws for different nations

Members
Members
Members
WDM
Members
Internet
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Federated World Directory of Mathematicians

• Goal Simulate electronic version of WDM without
  creating a centralized database
• Federated search any system that provides a
  common user interface for searching and
  retrieving information across heterogeneous
  datasets via the internet

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FWDM Structure

• User requests information from FWDM interface
• FWDM sends separate requests to search engines
  for member nations
• FWDM merges separate responses into single set of
  results
• Returns merged results to user
• No centralized database!

User
FWDMUser Interface
Members
Members
Members
Members
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FWDM Prototype
http//www.fwdm.math.ca
Includes AMS Combined Membership List (CML), and
membership lists for Australia, Canada, France,
and Germany
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FWDM Basic Search
http//www.fwdm.math.ca/cgi-bin/search_sm.cgi

• Search parameters
• First Name
• Last Name
• Two parameters comprise minimum requirements for
  inclusion of search engine into FWDM
• Most searches are on these two parameters
• Default version of FWDM

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FWDM Standard Search
http//www.fwdm.math.ca/cgi-bin/search.cgi

• Search parameters
• First Name
• Last Name
• Employer/ University
• Country
• Not all member search engines have the last two
  fields

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FWDM Advanced Search

• Includes fields for every search parameter
  available on any included member search engine
• New fields include
• Research Interests
• Position
• Member society

http//www.fwdm.math.ca/cgi-bin/search_adv.cgi
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Structure of Search Results

• Individuals name, linked to all personal email
  addresses found in search
• Separate link for each society containing that
  individual
• Links to every homepage found (currently shown as
  numbered links when multiple are found)
• Links to searches for each individual using
  Google and Google Scholar
• Google search performed using individuals name
  and mathematics

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Layout of Search Results
Search Results individuals found in all
databases - Excludes individuals found only in
the CML (to avoid overwhelming the results due to
the size of the CML database)
Google results shows number of search results
using all specified search parameters using both
Google and Google Scholar, along with links to
the results from each

• Your Query a copy of the version of the search
  interface, with specified parameters
• Allows you to adjust your search by changing
  parameters and clicking Search Again
• Also shows you what parameters you entered to
  get the results displayed above

• Search Results by Society Groups the results by
  member-society database, with links to collected
  results on each societys member database
• Identifies and links to societies that either
  return no results or timed out during the search

CML Only Results contains results of individuals
present only in the CML database
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Sample Approach CMS
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Merging Results CML and CMS
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NCMS, DMV, SMF
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Member Databases Recent Additions
EWDM Electronic World Directory of
Mathematicians
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Member Databases Recent Additions
OeMG (Austrian Mathematical Society)
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Member Databases Recent Additions
PDM (Portuguese Directory of Mathematicians)
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Adding Search Engines

• First and Last Name searchable and separable

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Recent Additions

• Multiple threads
• Previous prototype performed the searches for all
  societies in sequence, with the search in the
  next society not started until the search in the
  previous societys member list has completed
• Length (in time) of search sum of lengths of
  all member societys searches
• Current version employs multiple threads, so that
  all searches are performed in parallel
• Length of search longest length of member
  societys search

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Recent Additions II

• Accented characters
• Previous active version was unable to deal
  effectively (and predictably) with accents,
  either when inputted into FWDM interface, or when
  returned from member database
• New version now can robustly deal with accents in
  either setting
• Future work add multiple searches in cases where
  accents are present in user input, one search
  with accents intact and one with them removed
• Necessary in case the member society does not
  have the accents present in their database
• Multiple searches more feasible with the
  multithreaded version complete

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Next Steps

• Two goals for prototype
• Add more search engines for national societies
• Support increased number of users
• Requirements for new search engines
• First and Last Name are searchable fields
• Interested in working with national societies

http//www.cs.dal.ca/ddrive/fwdm
(includes documentation on history and future of
FWDM)