University of Tennessee, Knoxville,

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University of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of
Information Sciences, What, Where, When, and
Who Redesigning the Reference Environment In
Digital Libraries. Michael Buckland Samuel
Lazerow Lecture, March 31, 2004
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• In the old days, one could visit a the reference
  collection and make notes on. . .
• What, When, Where, Who, Why, and How
• using specialist genres of reference work
• Dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Atlases and gazetteers
• Chronologies and time-lines
• Biographical dictionaries
• etc.
• This has become more difficult in a digital
  environment.

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Some related issues Confusion over genre What
kind of a document? Simplistic notions of
multimedia. Have digital libraries have been
designed backwards? How could we re-design the
functionality of a reference collection in a
digital environment? Form should follow
function. Based on work at Berkeley on designing
search support, especially the challenge of
searching across different media text, image,
numeric data, sound,
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• WHAT? Searching by topic, e.g. Dewey, LCSH.
• Two kinds of mapping in every search
• Documents are assigned to topic categories.
• Queries have to map to topic categories
• Also mapping between topic systems.
• Obviously one would like to search seamlessly
  across multiple media, e.g. text corpora and
  socio-economic numeric data series.
  Is that possible?

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Text
Numeric datasets It is
difficult to move between different kinds of
document
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Text THESAURUS

Captions Numeric datasets
Different media can be linked indirectly via
metadata, but in this case you need to specify
place also.
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Text THESAURUS
Maps GAZETTEER Captions Numeric
datasets Proper name control
requires a gazetteer -- and latitude and
longitude allow points on maps.
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• WHERE?
• People want to search by place!
• For
• Mammals in Madagascar
• Castles in Quercy
• Hikes in the Himalayas . . .
• . . . but libraries provide only weak support.

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• Geographical search in library catalogs
• Place name in title if present - and
• Place names as / in Subject Headings (MARC
  6XXz, 651)
• Search of other geographical clues not supported,
  e.g.
• Geographical scope note (MARC 043 n-us-id
  Idaho)
• Geographical codes in classification numbers,
  e.g.
• the 7946 for San Francisco Bay in Dewey
  917.94604
• No spatial relationships Within / near / next /
  between.
• Map interfaces not yet provided

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Place names are problematic - Variant forms
St. Petersburg, ????? ?????????,
Saint-Pétersbourg, . . . - Multiple names Cluj,
in Romania / Roumania / Rumania, is also called
Klausenburg and Kolozsvar. - Names changes
Bombay ? Mumbai. - HomographsVienna, VA, and
Vienna, Austria 50 Springfields. -
Anachronisms No Germany before 1870 - Vague,
e.g. Midwest, Silicon Valley - Unstable
boundaries 19th century Poland Balkans USSR.
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BUT places have coordinates latitude and
longitude. . . . and a GAZETTEER links places and
spaces! A gazetteer is a place name authority
file and . . . indicates what kinds of place
Feature type and . . . objectively specifies
latitude and longitude and . . . disambiguates
similar place names and . . . brings variant
names together and . . . allows places to be
displayed on maps.
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Project Going Places in the Catalog Improved
Geographical Access (IMLS) http//ecai.org/imls
2002/ Project objectives (1) Better use of data
already in library catalog records for
clarification of place and space (2) Link
online catalogs with online gazetteers (3) Map
display of search results (4) Map interface for
spatial queries (5) Extend spatial queries
beyond library to other resources relating to the
same locality.
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Geo-temporal search interface. Place names found
in documents. Gazetteer provided lat. long.
Places displayed on map.
Timebar?
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Zoom on map. Click on place brings list of
records. Click on record displays text.
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BUT better standards for gazetteer content and
format needed. - Multilingual and multiscript
entries - Specialists need specialized Feature
Type Thesauri, e.g. Medieval Chinese
administrative units 200 feature types in
British canal archaeology. Different kinds of
Buddhist temple. - Always declare which
thesaurus is being used - Short generic standard
thesaurus for upward compatibility - Preferred
name always a matter of local choice. - Time
codes on records because places and names
unstable - Harmonize geotemporal metadata
across standards families Based on A
Multilingual Gazetteer System for Integrating
Spatial and Cultural Resources (NSF-ITR
funded) http//ecai.org/projects/gazetteer/
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WHEN? Places and place names have temporal
aspects. Time period names resemble place names.
- Ambiguous Civil war, Renaissance, . . .
which? - Unstable The European War, The Great
War, World War I - Periods have objective
calendar dates as well as name - Dates can
display in time-lines, chronologies. So Time
period directory design resembling a
gazetteer Place name Kind of place Where
(lat./long.) When Period name Kind of period When
(dates) Where
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Geographical subject headings with "Civil war"
as chronological subdivision
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Catalog search for Civil War. Geo-temporal
display of sets of results. Click on choice to
retrieve documents.
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Text THESAURUS
Maps GAZETTEER Captions Numeric
datasets TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY
Timeline Chronology
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Place (and time) are broadly important across
numerous tools and genres including, e.g.
Language atlases. Library catalogs Biographica
l dictionaries. Bibliographies Archival finding
lists Museum records, etc., etc. Biographical
dictionaries are heavy on place and time
Emanuel Goldberg, Born Moscow 1881. PhD under
Wilhelm Ostwald, Univ. of Leipzig, 1906.
Director, Zeiss Ikon, Dresden, 1926-33. Moved to
Palestine 1937. Died Tel Aviv, 1970.
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BIOG. DICT.
Text THESAURUS Maps GAZETTEER Captio
ns Numeric datasets TIME PERIOD
DIRECTORY Timeline
Chronology
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BIOG. DICT. 2 BIOG. DICT. THESAURUS
3 Text 2 THESAURUS 2 Text THESAURUS
Maps GAZETTEER Captions Numeric GAZETTEER
2 etc datasets GAZETTEER 3 TIME PERIOD
DIRECTORY Time line TIME PERIOD
DIRECTORY 2 Chronology TIME PERIOD
DIRECTORY 3
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Linking webpages to library catalogs, gazetteers,
etc. Websites often contain bibliographies. Anothe
r option is to generate a live searches from the
a webpage, using the Z39.50 protocol, to search
for latest available resources about that topic
or place. Example See historic sites pages of
ECAI Iraq portal of internet accessible resources
relating to Iraqi antiquities. Clicking on link
generates searches of major U.S. and U.K.
research libraries for resources relating to that
site. http//ecai.org/iraq/
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Through - standards - good practice -
interoperability an intermediate infrastructure
like a traditional reference collection could be
built and shared.
Thank-you! Acknowledgments National Science
Foundation, Institute for Museum Library
Services, DARPA, and helpful discussions with
Academia Sinica, Alexandria Digital Library
project, and others.