Access Insights
A Brief History of Markup Languages
Let’s look at the history of the MLs a little bit. Those are the markup languages for computer text processing.
Markup languages started appearing in the 1960s. At that time, if you were a publisher, you would have your pages typeset by a professional typesetter or a typesetting company. The typesetters used to encode your data so that you couldn’t see the results until they generated the pages. The problem was that once a publisher had a large corpus of their publications set with a typesetter, they were handcuffed. They couldn’t leave very easily. Their data was so tied up with some particular typesetting system, the Penta system or whatever they were involved with. They couldn’t migrate. They couldn’t move. So, they were kind of imprisoned. The price kept going up every year because, well, “Where are you going to go? Hah!” It was very frustrating.
Read MoreDon’t Miss the Data Harmony Users Group Meeting, February 18 – 20, 2013!
Here is a sneak peek at two of the in-depth case studies you will hear about during the meeting:
Developing the PLOS Thesaurus: Jonas Dupuich of PLOS will tell the story of how PLOS identified the need to improve its thesaurus, completed the task of updating the thesaurus, and implemented services to leverage the thesaurus throughout the organization in partnership with Access Innovations. Expect to hear about lessons learned, best practices, and a glance at how PLOS is moving forward from here.
Read MoreTaxonomies and Standards
We’ve discussed what it takes to make the components of a digital information model work but one of the things that is most important, if you want it all to work together, is standards.
There are several controlled vocabulary standards, as well as networking protocols that have an impact on taxonomy implementation. There are also standards having to do with markup and with metadata and data modeling that impact thesauri.
Read MoreAdopting and Adapting Existing Word Lists and Taxonomies
In traditional taxonomy construction, you approach the body of knowledge, head for your ivory tower with its closed room and decide on the general structure of the field or discipline. From that single point, or perhaps multiple points, of knowledge, you are going to design a completely new taxonomy … and every now and then that works.
Read MoreMethodologies for Taxonomy and Thesaurus Creation
When you are building a thesaurus, you can build it from the original text or from a new intellectual area. You can build from an existing vocabulary or from an existing topic. You can do a combination of the two. What often happens is that you take your text and apply it to a taxonomy you think might be fairly parallel, and then you customize it to meet your own needs. That is very common practice and it gets you there faster.
Read MoreMaking Thesaurus Terms Work for Indexing
We’ve already discussed indexing. We are going to assign those terms to the documents based on the concepts. A thesaurus is also known as an indexing language. We’re controlling the synonyms – different terms for the same concept. They are polythemes or homonyms, depending on if you are European or stateside. They are the same words with different meanings, like lead.
Read MoreAccess Innovations Partners with SPIE on New Taxonomy
SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has partnered with Access Innovations, a leading firm in semantic enrichment, on a new, cutting edge taxonomy in optics and photonics. Currently in use on SPIE’s websites, SPIE.org and the SPIE Digital Library, the taxonomy provides the basis for topically focused searching and browsing the most relevant SPIE content from the society’s journals, proceedings papers, and eBooks.
Read MoreInformation inefficiency across the enterprise – Index shows no sector has found a definitive solution
Information is at the heart of what most enterprises do. For some it is their product and lifeblood; for others it lubricates all aspects of their operation. The fact is that, in one form or another, information management is vital for virtually any organisation, particularly as tough economic conditions prevail, and the more efficiently enterprise content is controlled and accessed, the more effective organizations’ operations become. After all, we all operate in an ‘information economy’ these days.
Read MoreAccess Innovations Announces Two Free Webinars This Month
Access Innovations, Inc. invites you to two free hour-long webinars this month as a continuation of the successful Discovery Tour Series. Join us on Monday, October 22, at 3 p.m. EDT and Tuesday, October 30, at 3 p.m. EDT to discover for yourself the software suite that is revolutionizing thesaurus building and content management as you know it.
Read MoreThe Growing Deficit in Computer Science Education
In our increasingly globalized economy many career paths that seemed to offer security are today only offering uncertainty to recent graduates. Students graduating with degrees in teaching, law, and even human resources or business are finding stiff competition and few opportunities. Even in our stubbornly weak economy, job growth in computer science fields has continued steadily; yet even as computer usage becomes ingrained in nearly every facet of modern life, many graduates find themselves ill-equipped to take on the requirements of technology-based jobs.
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