1. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20041 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

2. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20042 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.

3. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20043 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,…

4. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20044 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?

5. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20045 Text Numeric datasets It is difficult to move between different kinds of document

6. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20046 TextTHESAURUS CaptionsNumeric datasets Different media can be linked indirectly via metadata, but in this case you need to specify place also.

7. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20047 TextTHESAURUS MapsGAZETTEERCaptionsNumeric datasets Proper name control requires a gazetteer -- and latitude and longitude allow points on maps.

8. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20048 WHERE? People want to search by place! For – Mammals in Madagascar Castles in Quercy Hikes in the Himalayas...... but libraries provide only weak support.

9. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 20049 Geographical search in library catalogs: Place name in title – if present - and Place names as / in Subject Headings (MARC 6XX$z, 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

10. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200410 Place names are problematic: - Variant forms: St. Petersburg, Санкт Петербург, Saint- Pétersbourg,... - Multiple names: Cluj, in Romania / Roumania / Rumania, is also called Klausenburg and Kolozsvar. - Names changes: Bombay  Mumbai. - Homographs:Vienna, VA, and Vienna, Austria; 50 Springfields. - Anachronisms: No Germany before 1870 - Vague, e.g. Midwest, Silicon Valley - Unstable boundaries: 19th century Poland; Balkans; USSR.

11. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200411 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.

12. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200412 Project: “Going Places in the Catalog: Improved Geographical Access” (IMLS) http://ecai.org/imls2002/ 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.

13. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200413 Geo-temporal search interface. Place names found in documents. Gazetteer provided lat. & long. Places displayed on map. Timebar 

14. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200414 Zoom on map. Click on place brings list of records. Click on record displays text.

15. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200415 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/

16. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200416 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 nameKind of placeWhere (lat./long.)When Period nameKind of periodWhen (dates)Where

17. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200417 Geographical subject headings with "Civil war" as chronological subdivision Geographical headingChronological subdivision Great BritainCivil war, 1642-1649 United StatesCivil war, 1861-1865 SpainCivil war, 1936-1939 ChinaCivil war, 1945-1949 NigeriaCivil war, 1967-1970

18. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200418 Catalog search for Civil War. Geo-temporal display of sets of results. Click on choice to retrieve documents.

19. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200419 TextTHESAURUS MapsGAZETTEERCaptionsNumeric datasets TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Timeline Chronology

20. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200420 Place (and time) are broadly important across numerous tools and genres including, e.g. Language atlases. Library catalogs Biographical 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.

21. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200421 BIOG. DICT. TextTHESAURUS MapsGAZETTEERCaptionsNumeric datasets TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Timeline Chronology

22. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200422 BIOG. DICT. 2 BIOG. DICT. THESAURUS 3 Text 2 THESAURUS 2 TextTHESAURUS MapsGAZETTEERCaptionsNumeric GAZETTEER 2etcdatasets GAZETTEER 3 TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Time line TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY 2 Chronology TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY 3

23. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200423 Linking webpages to library catalogs, gazetteers, etc. Websites often contain bibliographies. Another 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/

24. Lazerow Lecture, UTK, 200424 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.