A section of the Library Association of IrelandA section of the Library Association of IrelandI was looking at the Vufind implementation of the Yale University Library catalog - yufind - and was interested to see that it implements a link to OCLC's xISBN service to pull together other editions of a displayed result. Here is an example where several versions of Krapp's Last Tape are shown in the bottom left section of the display.
The feature, and how it is implemented, is nicely described under the label 'New feature: other editions'.
Franco Moretti has an interesting short book called Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for literary history. He proposes a way of reading literary history which involves abstracting patterns across large stretches of a literary field rather than examining "concrete, individual works". In particular, he works with three organizing models: graphs, maps and trees. He calls this type of reading 'distant reading', a method which can be applied to large bodies of literature and which yields a different form of insight than close textual analysis of a selective canon.
Via a conference report by Eric Lease Morgan I recently came across John Unsworth's use of the phrase "reading at library-scale".
My own research career as a faculty member, for the last 20 years, has been devoted first to understanding the impact of technology on the humanities and, more recently, to designing tools that would allow humanists to work at library-scale, using the computer as a kind of attention prosthetic that allows us to perceive patterns made up of very small pieces of information across very large expanses of text. Having perceived those patterns, of course, it is still up to us, as human beings with expertise in a relevant domain, to make sense of them and to persuade others to share that sense. [Abstract - reading at library scale]Unsworth and Moretti both feature in an article published in The Chronicle a couple of days ago: The humanities go Google.
This considers 'distant reading' or 'reading at library-scale' in the context of Google Book Search.
Data-diggers are gunning to debunk old claims based on "anecdotal" evidence and answer once-impossible questions about the evolution of ideas, language, and culture. Critics, meanwhile, worry that these stat-happy quants take the human out of the humanities. Novels aren't commodities like bags of flour, they warn. Cranking words from deeply specific texts like grist through a mill is a recipe for lousy research, they say--and a potential disaster for the profession. [The humanities go Google]Now, the article sets up an opposition which may be a convenient hook for a story, but is probably less important than some of the ways in which humanities scholarship will develop when large amounts of material are available for computational analysis in this way.
In this context, I was interested to read how 'distant reading' involves a cross-disciplinary team: "To sort, interrogate, and interpret roughly 1,000 digital texts, scholars have brought together a data-mining gang drawn from the departments of English, history, and computer science". Unsworth also discusses collaborative multi-disciplinary work of the type which produced MONK, for example.
From a library point of view it is interesting to see humanities scholarship acquiring some of the features - and support requirements - more characteristic of the sciences.
I was quite taken with the phrase "return on attention" while reading The Power of Pull a while ago. I was also interested in the deprecation of the term information overload.
It's not so much about finding which information is most valuable, as many of those who fret about information overload would have it. Improving return on attention is more about finding and connecting with people who have the knowledge you need, particularly the tacit knowledge about how to do new things.Forwarding a particular current awareness bulletin to colleagues the other day, I wrote: "I confess that I find this type of digest less and less useful. Or rather, maybe, their return on attention is not high enough incentive to make me want to look at them."
However, there is one digest that I will usually look at. My colleague, Roy Tennant, noted the other day that this is the twentieth year of Current Cites. Current Cites is selected by several hands under the overall editorship of Roy. I find that it provides very good return on attention ;-)
Roy deserves our congratulations for keeping Current Cites going for so long. I wonder is part of its success down to the variety of personal perspectives that inform the selection?
Google revamped its home page a while ago, highlighting a little more some additional features such as its wonder wheel, related searches, social (which searches among your 'friends' on various sites), nearby, and so on.
I find the ability to limit by the date of pages in results quite useful - there are many times where you want to see 'recent' things.
I wonder how much some of the other features are used? I had a look at some results earlier.
Here is the wonder wheel for 'Lorcan Dempsey' results.
Here is what clicking on 'related searches' for an original search on 'Lorcan Dempsey' shows:
Now, I am not quite sure why these are different. Or how useful they are. I tried several other searches, more aligned with recent interests, and the results would not really motivate continued use in the future.
I hope that Google publish something about patterns of use at some stage to see how the various features are used. A while ago, Andy Powell wrote of Google:
Google search is the benchmark of functionality and usability in Internet search - it's what every other search engine compares themselves to and it has been pretty much since it was first released. That's a pretty amazing track record!What's been the basis of that track record? It is simplicity, at least as far as the user is concerned, that has kept it in pole position. Google search does one thing, really, really well. [eFoundations]He compared this with other Google services, which fell short in some way of this simplicity and clarity. We value greatly the simplicity, the ability to find things quickly. And the ability to look at news, or images, or videos, and so on. We cannot imagine living without it, in fact, and at some level understand that Google works hard to provide this quality of experience. But some other things seem less compelling: the integration of real time search or the search of your social circle for example. And some of the new features I mention here. It is almost as if Google knows this too for their addition seems a little perfunctory. They are literally marginal to the main results.
That said, I was interested in one aspect of the refining approaches where results are placed along a timeline ...
It looks as if my career peaked in 1996 ;-)
(Minor update: 31 May 2010)
