Tales From the Field: Implementing Information Technology

Tales from the Field:
Implementing
Information Theory
SIG CR - 2012

Marjorie Hlava, President
Access Innovations, Inc.
www.accessinn.com

Implementing Information Theory

 The case of the missing abstracts
 Russian information
 US PTO
 Getty adventures
 Vatican bibles
 Past basics
 Thoughts on directions

The Bleeding Edge
 Figure Out the client needs
 Figure out the specifications
 Get approval on the specifications
 Figure out how to deliver the data
following the specs
 Quality control the data delivery

 …. But then life happens

The Case of Missing Abstracts
Tests showed that just searching the indexing
did not provide the full answers users
wanted. Searching the titles and abstracts as
well would improve search
Enough space could be found on servers if the
data was moved to in-house from Dialog and
Orbit.
New platform going into production
New format – Messenger
Specifications written, test file approved

Specifications

Need 99.998% accuracy for user acceptance
Left tagged ASCII
Office in Mexico City – Access de Mexico
Triple key - double proof
Two sets of volumes
792,000 abstract tapes destroyed
1970 – 1982 data

Access de
Mexico

7:17 Am Shift change
September 19,1985
8.7 earthquake

CAS to Philippines

Limo from the airport with the remaining volumes

Typhoon Dot
October 12, 1985
Clark Air Force base evacuated
Power out for weeks

Jamaica

Hurricane Kate November 1985
4 inches of water in the
computer room
No power on the island

Beijing China November 1985
 NOTHING HAPPENED
 Finished
 On time
 Under budget
 At promised accuracy level
 Client said “ when I read your contract I
thought you had an unusual level of detail
on the Acts of God clauses….
 But I didn’t expect you to use every one of
them!”

Implementing Information Theory
Viniti Maxwell
Information map
PDP-8’s
Microfilm machines – no batteries
Glastnof – open but no trust

Puzzles, Keys, and Digitization

Photocomposition keys
Science typographers
Puzzles – SGML
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Marquis Who’s Who
Designing the Chicago Research and trading
“desks”

US PTO Conversions
 Scan at 300 dpi
 OCR to 97%
 5,400,000 patents
 Create the machines
 Testy
 QC algorithms
 Display image
 Search dirty OCR
 Spell right once in 30 pages = findable

British Library Map Collection
225,000 maps pre-1850
From printed catalog to
digital catalog

Success - Failure - Future
 Successes
• Chemical Abstracts
• USPTO
• Getty AATA
• British Map Collection
 Failures
• Access Russia
• Ipsoa Video Disk
• MAI Mail

All projects use classification
 To organize the job
 To organize the information
 To allow the finding of the items once digital
 Apply term tags
• thesaurus and controlled
 Apply notation
• Not necessarily classification
• Just reflects the content
 The classification is NEVER done
• Needs to reflect the ever-changing data

Theoretical Underpinnings
 Outlines of Knowledge
• Thomas Aquinas
• John Knox (Bacon)
• Morton Taube - Encyclopaedia Britannica
 Organization of Knowledge
• Cutter – 1896
• COSATI – 1964
• Alvin Weinberg
• Cranfield Institute papers
• Cleverton, Aitcheson, Vickery

Theory of knowledge
…. began early
 Plato et al. - BC
 Knowledge of reality is philosophy
 Realism
 St. Augustine 354 - 430 AD
 St. Thomas Aquinas 1225 -1274 AD
 Characteristics common in particulars
 Not the same object without them

38
© 2010. Access Innovations, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Theory of knowledge
 William of Occam (or Ockham) –
 c. 1288 – c. 1348
 Nominalism - Universals are
represented by words
 Conceptualism - Universals are general
concepts, mind dependent, formed by
extraction from particular experiences

39

Theory of knowledge
 The Knower (Subject)
 The Known (Object)
 Knowing (a subjective process)
 An act, a process, or a concept
 Facts or perception?
 Yes or no answers

40

The basis of knowledge
 René Descartes 1596 - 1650
 Separate what is known - philosophy
 From new knowledge - science
 Conditions of reason, suspension of belief
 Je pense donc je suis
 Cogito, ergo sum (from Socrates)
 I think, therefore I am
 Cartesian

41

Conditions for knowledge
 John Locke - 1632 - 1704
 “A sailor needs to know the length of
a line he has available before he
goes out to sound the ocean with it.”
- J. Locke
 Acquire knowledge of reality
 Establish the conditions needed to
acquire knowledge
 Establish possible extent and
limitations of knowledge
42

John Locke 1632 - 1704
Classification of kinds
of knowledge

Some Thoughts
Concerning
Education

43


Outlines of knowledge
 Carl Linnaeus 1707 – 1778
 Placed plants in categories
 Systematized the three kingdoms of nature
 Replaced “natural systems” classification
 Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804
 A posteriori and a priori judgments
 A posteriori and a priori concepts
 Outline of knowledge
 The nature of this distinction has been disputed by various philosophers; however, the
terms may be roughly defined as follows:
 A priori knowledge is knowledge that is known independently of experience (that is, it
is non-empirical, or arrived at beforehand, usually by reason).
 A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that is known by experience (that is, it is
empirical, or arrived at afterward). 44

Epistemology
 James Frederick Ferrier 1808 - 1864
 Analyzing the nature of knowledge
 How it relates to connected notions
 truth, belief, justification
 The means of production of knowledge
 Skepticism about different knowledge
claims
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
45


Personification of knowledge
(Greek Επιστημη, Episteme)
in Celsus Library in
Ephesus, Turkey.

Epistemology
from Greek ἐπιστήμη – epistēmē,
"knowledge, science" + λόγος, "logos")

or theory of knowledge
is the branch of philosophy
concerned with the nature and scope
(limitations) of knowledge.
It addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
How do we know what we know?
46


Philosophy of knowledge
divides
 20th century thought
 Memory
 Perception and memory
 Religion
 Linguistic analysis
 Classification of knowledge
 Vocabulary control
 Linguistic analysis
47

Rise of Classification
 Charles Ami Cutter 1837 - 1903
 Cutter Classification System
 Melville Dewey 1851 - 1931
 Dewey Decimal Classification
 Vladimir Lenin 1870 – 1924
 Rubricon - Russia
 Rubricator
 S. R. Ranganathan – India,1892 – 1972
 Faceted Classification System
 Colonicity 48

Charles Ammi Cutter
 Harvard College,
 index catalog,
 using cards instead of published volumes,
 an author index
 and a “classed catalog” or subject index.
 Expansive Classification System (Cutter)
 seven levels of classification,
 each with increasing specificity
 use lower levels and still be specific 49


Thesauri
 Philo of Byblos Herennius Philon; c. 64-
141 AD
 Sanskrit, the Amarakosha 4th century
verse
 Roget's Thesaurus, 1805
 by Peter Mark Roget, and published in 1852
 COSATI - 1964
 TEST - 1967
50


Points of knowledge
 Single point of knowledge
 Eve and the apple
 First organism
 All science
 Examples
 Linnean system
 Rubricator
 Locke system
 Dewey
51

Points of knowledge
 Multiple points of origin
 Several fields come together
 Top terms
 Should they be captured separately or together?
 Facets or different views?
 Anarchy in the universe
 Examples
 Physical biochemistry
 NICEM
 Engineering
 Cutter, COSATI, Ranganathan

52

Information access is changing
 Teletype
 Fax
 Online
 CD-ROM
 Downloading
 Internet

The players are changing
 Standalone publishers
 Aggregators
 Serials and book vendors
 Hosting services
 Cloud
 Disaggregation
 Everyone is an author
 Loss of quality, accuracy, review

The formats are changing
 Handwritten
 Gutenberg
 Linotype
 Web Presses
• Photocomposition
Digital layout
Desktop publishing
Web publishing

Search is (finally) changing
 Stairs
 Online search
 Elhill
 Boolean search
 Orbit
 Cached search
 String search
 Bayesian
 Verity
 Co-occurrence
 Neural nets
 Fast
 Machine learning  Lucene
 Faceted (fielded)  Muse Global
 Rules systems  Perfect Search


Tagging is still debated
 Permuted Indexes
• Chem abs
• Bio abs
• Portals
 Permaterm indexes
• IFI Predicasts
• Classification systems LC
• Thesauri
 Inverted files
 Triples

Horizons are more complicated
 Field formatted data
 Relational and SQL databases
 Object oriented systems
 Semantic web
 Linked data

Formats just keep being added
 Photocomposition markup
 SGML
 XML
 JSON Calls

Storage keeps changing
 Big iron
 Server farms
 Cloud farms

Telecommunications tries to
keep up
 Party lines
 Direct connect lines
 Trunk lines
 Fiber optic
 Cell towers
 Wireless

Media
 Punch cards
 9 track tapes
 Mountain tapes
 Removable drives
 Diskettes
• 8” –
• 5.25 –
• 3.5
• Flash drives
• Chips

Indexes
 Pre-coordinate
• Back of the book
• Subject headings
 Post-coordinate
 Bayesian
 Co-occurrence
 Neural nets
 Machine learning
 Rules systems

Now
 Changing the way we learn

 Changing the way we find things
 Easier to manipulate what we know
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx5
25s
 Comprehensive information / invasive
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJl9EEc
soE
 People now know what search is.

Future
 Information any place, any time
 A great big mess - Unless we corral it.
• Tag it,
• Clean it,
• Weed it
• Curate it
 Everyone is creating content

The information
explosion has just
begun


We should
all be part of it
Questions?

Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President
Access Innovations, Inc.
Mhlava@accessinn.com
505-998-0800

Tales From the Field: Implementing Information Technology

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