Visualized Subject Access for Open Access Archives Gerry Mckiernan 02 Jan 2003 20:27 UTC
_Visualized Subject Access for Open Access Archives_ With the completion of my latest mansucript on "New Age Navigation: Innovative E-Journal Interfaces" [soon to appear (I hope) in a library serial journal near you [:-)], I now turn my Eyes [:->] toward a Most Timely Topic: Subject Access to Open Access Archives At the 2nd Workshop on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI): Gaining Independence with E-prints Archives and OAI [http://library.cern.ch/Announcement.htm ] the topic of *Subject* access permeated several presentations [http://documents.cern.ch/AGE/current/fullAgenda.php?ida=a02333 ] and one break-out session on OAI Services, in particular [http://documents.cern.ch/cgi-bin/setlink?base=agenda&categ=a02333&id=a02333s9t13/text ] While I (and others) saw a role for traditional Abstracting and Indexes services in providing a Value Added Subject Overlay to: OAI Data Providers[http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites.pl ] and/or OAI Service Providers [ http://www.openarchives.org/service/listproviders.html ] it has occured to me that it may be more appropriate to exploit the inherent potential of the digital environment to provide topic- and subject- based access to these respective sources through technologies that Visualize the Information, instead of the conventional A&I process (automated or otherwise which we had in mind. My forthcoming paper profiles several information visualization technologies and visual interfaces for e-journals, and include: 1) Kohohen Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3540679219/qid=1041536283/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-9724355-6538317 [for examples, see Astrophysical Journal [http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/ApJ/map.pl ] and/or Astronomy & Astrophysics [http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/A+A/map.pl ] 2) SPIRE(tm) of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory [ http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/spire/spire.html ], notably ThemeView(tm) 3) AquaBrowser [http://www.medialab.nl/engels/index.html ] for MediaLab For examples, see eLibraryHub (http://aqua.elibraryhub.com/) [Type 'Iowa' as a search term :-)] 4) Concept Space For examples see _D-Lib Magazine_ [http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/zhang/10zhang.html ] [ http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~junzhang/dlib/IV1.html ] For a future paper (Yes, Yes, Yet another paper)[:-)], I would appreciate Any and All contributions, queries, comments, critiques, questions, Cosmic Insights, revised earnings statements, etc. on the Matter of Visualized Subject Access to Open Access Archives. Current or planned efforts to visualize *any* resource that is Dublin Core coded [ http://dublincore.org/ ] is also of interest. NOTE: For background information on the Open Access Initiative see: [http://www.openarchives.org ] Regards, /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Open Librarian Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu "Happy New Year!"