Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 557.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (50)
Subject: interoperability?
[2] From: Gerry McKiernan <gerrymck@IASTATE.EDU> (24)
Subject: Intelligent E-Journals
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:42:36 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: interoperability?
Recently I had occasion to look into the question of "interoperability", in
the course of which I ran into Paul Miller's essay, "Interoperability: What
is it and Why should I want it?", Ariadne 24 (June 2000),
<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/interoperability/>. If I understand him
correctly, interoperability is the defining quality of networks and
networking of all sorts. It seems a term of such uncertain limits that it
can easily mean very little, though actually I think it means a very great
deal. Can anyone recommend a thoughtful, non-specialist treatment of this
topic?
Meanwhile interoperability prompts a question. I hope you can be patient
while I stumble my way to it.
Miller offers by way of definition the statement that "to be interoperable,
one should actively be engaged in the ongoing process of ensuring that the
systems, procedures and culture of an organisation are managed in such a
way as to maximise opportunities for exchange and re-use of information,
whether internally or externally." Under the political sense of the term he
observes that "the decision to make resources more widely available has
implications for the organisations concerned (where this may be seen as a
loss of control or ownership), their staff (who may not possess the skills
required to support more complex systems and a newly dispersed user
community), and the end users." He goes on to say that, "As traditional
boundaries between institutions and disciplines begin to blur, researchers
increasingly require access to information from a wide range of sources,
both within and without their own subject area." Do we always and
unrestrictedly want this?
It seems to me that at the technical level it's hard to argue with
interoperability, though this is no simple matter. If, for example, I want
to link directly to the online Lewis & Short lexicon at Perseus for the
definition of a lemma in the reference work I am making, I find that quite
often what I call a lemma is not one in L&S. This may seem trivial, but it
isn't, or not always. Considerable editorial intelligence and deep
knowledge of Latin is behind the choice of lemmata in L&S; I aspire to my
choices being as good, but driven by different editorial principles they
will often be different. If in such a small matter we're at an impasse, how
about bigger ones? Isn't it the case that the mediation between
incompatible schemes (that are the enemy of interoperability) requires
other than artificial intelligence?
I solve the problem with the online L&S by providing a link to the page at
Perseus where one types in the word and receives an analysis back, so that
the user of my thing can exercise some judgement -- i.e. knowing that I
distinguish between singular and plural nominals at the level of the lemma,
he or she can enter the singular. I wonder if that human intervention isn't
what we'll always need.
Yours,
WM
-----
Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
Centre for Computing in the Humanities / King's College London /
Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
+44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:43:33 +0000
From: Gerry McKiernan <gerrymck@IASTATE.EDU>
Subject: Intelligent E-Journals
_Intelligent E-Journals_
I am interested in learning of *any* and *all* e-journals [or
e-magazines or e-newsletters or e-newspapers] that monitor the interaction
of a reader with the publication and based on such implicit behavior(s)
customizes the publication to match these 'expressed' interests so that the
reader is provided with (more) content that in similar / related to the
content that he/she had previously selected/read. [Whew, What a sentence!
[:-)]
I have learned about a service provided by AdaptiveInfo
[http://www.adaptiveinfo.com ] which provides personalized news services
[ http://www.adaptiveinfo.com/Products/newsServer.asp ] using its
Adaptive Personalization technologies
[ http://www.adaptiveinfo.com/Products/recommendation.asp ]
[A demo that illustrates a personalized version of the _Los Angeles Times_
is available [ http://www.adaptiveinfo.com/Products/demonstration.asp]]
As Always, Any and All contributions, suggestions, comments, queries,
Supreme Split Decisions, questions, Cosmic Insights, etc. are Most Welcome.
/Gerry McKiernan
Intelligent Librarian
Iowa State University
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu
_DISCLAIMER_
The commercial service and product mentioned in this posting are for
educational purposes only; such mention does not constitute an endorsement.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/12/00 EST