Full
project title |
Towards
a knowledge structure for high performance subject access and
retrieval within managed digital collections. |
Project
funding |
Funded
by AHRB (Arts and Humanities
Research Board) - Innovation Awards Scheme, 2001. |
Project
lifetime |
Original
plan: April 2002 and ends in March 2003. |
A major issue
in the location and retrieval of digital objects is the lack of
high performance retrieval tool or classification system suitable
for an electronic environment. Taxonomical classification structures,
when applied in knowledge organization, tend to regard knowledge
as an integrated whole, which is divided and subdivided into smaller
(i.e. more specific) units, in a single tree-like structure. Thus
they are limited in their capacity to handle the kinds of multi-dimensional
properties and relationships that are found in collection of digital
objects where no specific ordering is dominant, and in distributed
environment through which much digital content is made available.
Facet
analytical theory (FAT) provides
methods and techniques to build classification knowledge structure
from individual terms (bottom-up) which are analysed into categories
and ordered by the application of the system syntax. The resultant
structure is logical and predictable, and therefore highly effective
in storage and retrieval.
This research
will focus on application of such this method in the field of humanities
and will try to answer on the following questions:
- Is FAT useful
for developing the kind of complex knowledge structures we need
in order to access digital materials
- How might
classification structure based on FAT provide innovative access
to digital materials?
- How might
FAT facilitiate cross-disciplinary access?
- To investigate
the feasibility of using FAT to develop a knowledge structure
suitable for the digital environment
- To develop
and evaluate a prototype implementation in collaboration with
the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) and the Humbul Humanities
Hub
In order to
fulfill the following objectives:
- to make
a major contribution to the development of FAT
- to test
an innovative method for accessing digital content, which is able
to take account of the complexity and variety of digital resources
in a way that existing classification schemes cannot
- to test
an innovative method for accessing digital content in a cross-disciplinary
framework
- to develop
a working prototype of a knowledge structure extensible across
the arts and humanities
- to provide
model for such a scheme for other disciplines and the wider community
- to provide
a mapping between this knowledge structure and recognized international
standards to ensure interoperability
- to disseminate
the results of the research
If successful
the project will have a very significant impact on the broad community
of users of the AHDS, Humbul, and, more generally future developments
within the Distributed National
Electronic Resources (DNER) and other digital library activities.
It will make it possible to carry out cross-collection searches
in ways that are much more effective than can be achieved by current
linear indexing schemes.
Facet analysis
theory (FAT) has never been applied to digital resources. Neither
has it been applied in any significant manner across the whole of
the arts and humanities. The experiments proposed here will help
to establish how effective this technique can be in the implementation
of a knowledge structure that could potentially reach a very wide
audience.
Given the rate
at which the number of electronic resources is increasing and the
investment by the AHRB and JISC in their development, the need for
such a knowledge structure and browsing scheme cannot be overstated.
Of particular relevance to this proposal is the Arts and Humanities
Portal being planned by Humbul and AHDS. The portal will act as
a single point of access to a range of varied resources across the
arts and humanities. Any classification scheme withing Portal has
to assist in creating different paths to the same resource so that
the user approaching the Portal from one subject area (e.g. English
literature) should not need to know the sub-discipline breakdown
of another subject area (e.g. archaeology) in order to retrieve
relevant information.
In a testbed
implementation for this research, the AHDS and HUMBUL will apply
the knowledge structure to the Portal's planned metadata repository
for all the digital objects in their collections. They will also
experiment with its use in cross-disciplinary browsing and retrieval
of digital resources which are held elsewhere.
Areas to be
investigated include:
- the terminology
of subject areas within the arts and humanities
- an analysis
of terminology into functional categories including the investigation
of additional categories
- the problems
of interdisciplinary
- the additional
properties of digital objects, especially non-text, multi-media
and images
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