Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?

1. Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? Authors Titles Places Dates Introductions Reasons Larger Vision Larger Vision Larger Vision New media are changing our approaches to reference rooms and secondary literature. SUMS reflects these changes in 10 levels of knowledge: This includes adjusting the scale of our study: from millions of years to nanoseconds. It also entails using different calendars: e.g. Hindu, Hebrew, Gregorian, Islamic. As McLuhan showed, Full Contents vary with the medium used. In mediaeval manuscripts, primary texts had secondary comments as scholia. The advent of printing led to a separation of primary texts and comments about them. Hence, traditional libraries distinguish between primary and secondary literature. This distinction has different names: e.g. between books and articles or between monographs and periodicals/serials. In physical libraries levels 7 and 8 were typically roughly separated in the stacks. Level 9 was specialist literature acquired only by conservation institutes. Level 10 was not large enough to constitute a separate category. The new media have brought three fundamental changes to the traditional situation. First they have increased immensely the scale of access to collections of 40-120 million. This means that levels 7 and 8 need more careful separation. Second, they have made us aware that restorations are more than fixes. They affect fundamentally our understanding of an object. Hence interventions of a small group of conservators are now of general interest. Third, the advent of VR and AR has brought an explosion in the scope of reconstructions. Hence reconstructions need to become a separate category of secondary literature. For instance, a six year old child would be overwhelmed by the catalogue of the BL. A six year old child needs catalogues of children’s libraries. A general reader needs catalogues in translation. An expert needs catalogues in their original language. A full version of SUMS will use Access and Learning choices to personalize access. Users can at any stage adjust their access (goals, strategies) and learning levels. click to continue The SUMS demo focuses on traditional media: books, dissertations, articles Classes 1 and 2 assure that this access is appropriately filtered qua competence and need. Classes 3 and 4 are the key to full access to knowledge and information. Classes 5 to 9 provide further methods for studying the above knowledge. Class 10 provides tools for editing and creating new knowledge. click to continue A full blown version of SUMS will include integration of existing packages for: writing (e.g. Word) editing images (e.g. Adobe) creating images (e.g. Catia, Maya, 3D-Studio Max) editing film etc. (e.g. ) Tools also contain the help functions The large questions Who, What, Where etc. identify a focus on persons, subjects, places. The class 7 questions help to identify when a person lived, where a subject was etc. In a sense SUMS is a semi-automation of the 20 questions game. In a full-blown version this will be linked with UMTS, GPS and GIS. In the demo version this class is reflected in the map in the lower left hand corner. Clicking on this gives a map. Clicking on regions of the map will in future taken one down to different scales. The small boxes of choices will give access to different types and scales of maps. click to continue click to continue click to continue click to continue click to continue click to continue click to continue click to continue Printing also introduced 4 other distinctions in literature not yet fully reflected in stacks. Level 7 if some literature analyses one text, painting, painter (monograph,catalogue raisonnée) Up - back See path Level8 if some literature compares a text, painter with their context. Level9 if some literature focuses on restorations to an object (book, apinting etc). Level10 some literature focuses on reconstructions. Topic Choices LevelsRefresh Larger Vision SUMS meets these challenges through a new approach. SUMS assumes that users should have up to 6 questions to define their initial search. Defining the goal ahead of time makes Why implicit and means we can focus on 5 questions. Class 7 questions allows one to further refine these basic questions. SUMS recognizes that finding everything on a subject is in a sense only the beginning. The challenge is to help the user navigate these findings with becoming overwhelmed. SUMS does this through a whole series of carefully structured choices. These choices are in fact questions posing as 1 word choices. This above demo was concerned with a single Goal 4: Education (and Learning). Another of the basic ideas of SUMS is Levels (of Knowledge) In this demo we have focussed on the potentials of Levels 1-6 (of Knowledge). The power of SUMS lies in a fully modular approach. In its early stages the range of choices in any given list are provided by the system. In future, advanced users will be able to customise these choices as they proceed. E.g. experts on Islamic philosophy or physics will want access to different core libraries. Access will allow them to choose a few key ones they use constantly from a long list. They will thus have their own customised search engine. In the larger vision of SUMS these Levels in turn become one of 10 classes of Choices: click to continue 1. Access includes goals and strategies, visualisation methods, and personal preferences. 2. Learning identifies the level of the user and their methods of learning. Level 1 includes Terms (classifications, thesauri, ontologies). Level 2 includes Definitions (dictionaries). Level 3 includes Explanations (encyclopaedias). Level 4 includes Titles (library catalogues, bibliographies). Level 5 includes Partial Contents (abstracts, reviews, tables of contents) In physical libraries these levels are in the reference room or catalogue rooms. click to continue Level 1 includes Terms (classifications, thesauri, ontologies). Level 2 includes Definitions (dictionaries). Level 3 includes Explanations (encyclopaedias). Level 4 includes Titles (library catalogues, bibliographies). Level 5 includes Partial Contents (abstracts, reviews, tables of contents) In physical libraries these levels are in the reference room or catalogue rooms. 3. Levels, as we have seen, provides a layered approach to knowledge. click to continue 4. Media will give access to the whole range of new media: film, video, VR etc. In the Internet today there are two main trends. One assumes that a single search field can be enough. This began with the browser wars and continues with Google. The problem is that a single field cannot deal with subsets. We can search for Alberti and/or for his On Painting but cannot find a given edition. 5. Quality helps us to examine knowledge in terms of qualitative distinctions. SUMS thus guides users electronically through a series of implicit questions. These are much like the actual questions a research reference librarian might ask: Why? What is the purpose of your research? How? How are you proceeding? With books, Internet, Dissertation and other Abstracts? When? What period are you studying? Today? Renaissance? Where? What locations interest you? Your own country? Europe? Global? What? What is the precise topic? Who? Who are you studying? One individual, a group, a movement? A next level includes Full Contents Let’s choose level of Knowledge These first five levels correspond to a Virtual Reference Room SUMS also offers 4 other Levels of Knowledge Let’s open 10 classes of Choices 6. Quantity helps us to examine knowledge in terms of quantitative methods. click to continue click to continue 7. Questions allows us to further refine our basic questions. 8. Space helps us to explore knowledge in geographical terms. Level 6 includes Full Contents, which are found in the stacks of physical libraries. Level 6 includes Full Contents, which are found in the stacks of physical libraries. Another, attempts to collect everything on a given subject in one place: E.g.s range from the WWW virtual library, Onefind.com to networked catalogues (GBV) Ten years ago the problem was in finding enough. Today the problem lies in finding too much. No sane individual has time to sort through 1 million hits. The challenge now lies in creating intelligent limits to our searching. click to continue 9. Time helps us to explore knowledge in temporal terms. CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools LEVELS 1. Terms2. Definition3. Explanations4. Titles5. Partial Contents6. Full Contents7. Internal Analyses8. External Analyses9. Restorations10. Reconstructions CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools ` CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Time10. Tools ` CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Leisure10. Time11. Tools LEVELS 1. Terms2. Definition3. Explanations4. Titles5. Partial Contents6. Full Contents7. Internal Analyses8. External Analyses9. Restorations10. Reconstructions CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Time10. Tools ` CHOICE 1. Access2. Learning3. Levels4. Media5. Quality6. Quantity7. Questions8. Space9. Time10. Tools ` LEVELS 1. Terms2. Definition3. Explanations4. Titles5. Partial Contents6. Full Contents7. Internal Analyses8. External Analyses9. Restorations10. Reconstructions SUMS 1. Sources 2. Literature 3. Primary Literature 4. Secondary Literature 5. Both 6. Earlier Bibliographies LEVELS 1. Terms2. Definition3. Explanations4. Titles5. Partial Contents6. Full Contents7. Internal Analyses8. External Analyses9. Restorations10. Reconstructions 10. Tools help us to edit existing knowledge and create new knowledge. There are many debates today whether material is reliable, of sufficient quality. These are important discussions. We should not forget that all important fields have mechanisms in place to assure quality. Including the source of the material and the bodies that have accepted it is thus vital. click to continue click to continue start introduction >> SUMS is a first step towards a System for Universal Multi-Media Searching (SUMMA). Click Choices Click Levels click to finish

2. The end. For additional information, visit our web-sitehttp://www.sumscorp.com/ Maastricht 12-13 March 2004.