Richter Library Web Services Dream Design

Archimedes, Geometry, Information

(Archimedes Palimpsest)

The oldest existing document of the mathematician Archimedes remerged and is currently undergoing archival preservation, decoding, digitization. The document is important as much for what it tells us about "Ancient Greek Geometry" and the origins of mathematics as the lesson it gives on the nature of 'archival preservation'. The document also gives occasion to reflect on libraries, ideologies with regards to knowledge preservation and the future possibilities of 'visualizing information' through forgotten methodologies.

Ironically, the recent tenth century 'Archimedean document' was found as a palimpsest that had been written over in the dark ages by orthodox monks with liturgical prayers. Because the 'erasure' of the palimpsest was not complete, 'Archimedes' texts, with the help of digital technology, are being recovered in a fascinating digital library interdisciplinary academic project.

(Archimedes Palimpsest)

Ideology and Information: The Archimedean text is a good example that what in one era is considered sacrosact in another era becomes a lost archive or civilization's 'detritus'. As digital keepers of knowledge, the Archimedean corpus and lessons of Greek mathematics (a lot of which which had to be recovered from Arabic sources) should be kept in mind in our own preservation strategies. What is considered 'the essence of archival preservation in one era' (i.e. prayer hymns) becomes the detritus of another era. With this in mind, our ideas on preservation should have a wide berth.

Archimedes text sheds new light on 'visual mathematics' and the importance of 'the diagram'. Even in the revival of 'Greek mathematics' in the renaissance and then in our current era, redactors marginalized the Greeks 'visual methodology of proof' to give a larger importance to the 'word and 'number' to fit the eras bias and ideologies rather than keeping closer to the original.

What has been found with the new 'Archimedean manuscripts' is Archimedes reliance on 'physical' and mechanical properties (ie. weight, balance, symmetry) to generate abstract concepts. For example, in solving volume ratios between cones and circles Archimedes uses an aesthetically beautiful methodology based on visual symmetries, balance and weight that moves later abstract idealistic concepts (circle, triangle) into an applied direction. For our own digital library programs, the intuitive connection with these new 'visual geometries' is Macromedia Flash and its synthetic capabilities to generate visually pleasing symmetries on which to map databases of information. The trick and difficulty becomes to find these new geometries to match these visual symmetries and 'information mapping' so that new relationships and patterns are revealed 'through seeing' and new knowledge produced.

Montage, Multimedia, Latin America

(DanzAbierta still)

The Cuarderno project is an online digital library of multimedia materials relating to performance and politics in Latin America. Sponsored by NYU's "Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics" the projects use online paradigms to create information montages through a combination of digital assets: photos, videos, texts, hyperlinks, bibliogaphies and audio recordings. What do we at UM's Richter Library Digital Library Initiatives have to learn from this endeavor?

On the one hand, the institute provides a model for the symbiosis between university "Ph.D. research academics" and digital library possibilities. On the other, the institute provides ocassion to think about our own DanzAbierta "Latin American Focused Digital Library/Information Institute".

To critique some of these projects, fellowships are given to interested faculty for proposals. Technological support is provided to projects. For example, Yuyachkani: Performance and Politics in Peru" uses an innovative 'information architecture' to present the history of an activist Peruvian theatre group. Interestingly, the navigation uses flash rollovers to complexly move between English and Spanish translation. Within the second level of interface is a series of academic essays describing the group. These provide the space for educators using the web to throw long scrolling academic essays online. Embedded thumbnail jpgs are presented on the left to highlight the group's performances.

(Antigona Yuyachkani Poster Still)

"Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform" has been designed as a companion to a Duke University Press Book. Multimedia artifacts such as women's comic strips, bibliographies and interviews are incorporated into the online site. Technologically, this entire site is accomplished in Dreamweaver and HTML with a strong attention to questions of design.

DanzAbierta looks at Cuban dance. What stands out immediately is that the site give a lot of information but is silent, using a flash scrollbar to present a series of articles. The use of Qucktime to present thumbnails of the dance punctuates and enlivens the political essays as a dance timeline. The 'photos' act to document the dance 'history' for future generations. Online review, a webography and bibliography all deepen the historical integrity of the site providing a multimedia experience working on a number of academic levels

All of these projects variously use 'multimedia' to build digital libraries. The trick becomes to use the specificity of the medium to its potential. Rather than remapping hackneyed 19th and 20th century academic models (here presented as the long scrolling essay) how can we let 'function' follow form to more fully utilize the potential of multimedia and bring out these archival riches.

Catalog Paradigm Shift, Amazon, Information Seeking

On October 25, 2003, Amazon.com, went live with the first widescale "Search Inside the Book Program" granting full text access to over 120,000 in print titles (33 million pages) from over 190 publishers. In terms of new research possibilities, it is not difficult to see from even briefly using this tool that this way of searching is a paradigm shift on the level of moving from say wooden cabinet catalog to the OPAC online catalog. It is now a question of how long this will take existing infrastructures to follow the benefit of this change towards searching and research possibilities. At the least, this larger 'shift' for searching across the 'universe of knowledge of texts' is worth reflecting on further http://www.amazon.com.

In terms of academic library web services and how our catalogs operate (displaying or searching a Marc record, at the more baroque end - 'table of contents') for the text, this 'full text' gambit presents a epistemic rupture and sea change. The question remains: how long will it take for libraries to catch up? Who will be the first academic library to tread into this new water and build on, expand or even improve Amazon's calculated and visionary move and bring this to the public domain? Who will be visionary enough to effect a change that it is easy to see all academic libraries using in ten years.

Karen Schneider writes about the development in Librarian's Resource Shelf thus:

I remember about six years ago showing patrons (government program officers) how to use online databases, and how to use the book catalog. But more than one of them kept asking why the book catalog only contained RECORDS. Their expectation was that the book catalog (like journal databases, and for that matter the Web) would contain BOOKS. Their seemingly naïve questions were very telling, and were based on very reasonable assumptions related to other tools they were familiar with. Searching a GIS database didn't tell you to go to a shelf and pull a map; it gave you the map. A magazine database gave you full text. A book catalog gives you--a record? What librarians haven't done, for the most part, is rethink the items in the catalog. The book is still an analog device in physical space.

Shchneider is correct. Libraries have been slow to respond to technological possibilities. Amazon has presciently and correctly understood that all books are primarily created as digital objects these days - this should be used to advantage not supression. They have also exploited this for their users and their own benefit. It is only now a matter of time before people see the value of this paradigm shift. The questions here also become how did Amazon obtain the original 'digital artifacts' that had been previously created? How did the genesis of this project take place? Fascinatingly, these files (for current in print text), existed before but were considered 'archival storage' material rather than something to be repurposed to larger 'searching' ends. To be explicit, as Amazon correctly knows, this act does not mean the end of 'the printed book' but a renaissance for searching and 'purchasing' the bound text.

From the perspective of Amazon's mode of searching, as an academic search tool, the value here even at cursory glance is immense. To test out this service, I typed in the names of three obscure academic references, the second circle surrealist, "Unica Zurn", the early Soviet Filmmaker, "Alexander Dovzhenko" and the New York art historian "Annette Michelson". Incredibly, the search tool here gave immediate references to a wide circle of heterodox texts that would have been beyond the radar screen of databases or this author without immense research time and labor. Moreover, the technology opened up interdisciplinary connections to open new research possibilities. The possibilities for science and math in this direction seem immense. The Amazon search tool provided immediate citational page numbers, full page extracts and complete copyrighted pages from books (with the caveat that one has to register and simply put down ones credit card number to be cleared for copyright!). As an academic researcher looking for new relationships and citational sources, there is no question that these sources would have otherwise been lost and obscure - many are beyond ones field of specialization but perhaps very important. What this is adding is the field of interdisciplinarity in the form of fully thought out 'texts' to a researcher's specialized pallette. While an academic researcher, even an expert, might know one or two fields of knowledge where his specific subject area may overlap, this tool opens up the field to the entire spectrum of perhaps unexpected but fruitful connections through 'full text' references and the leads needed to these texts.