I'm very please to let all fishen members know that our e-conference has
resulted in the construction of a thesaurus of period terminology,.working
title 'the Timeline thesaurus', that is now available for download from the
archive for the conference (see below). I am very grateful to a list member,
Dr R. Wilson of the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology, for
assistance in preparing a digital version of the thesaurus. To get to this
stage from a starting point in January is really a tremendous achievement,
and I would like to acknowledge publicly the effort that has gone into this,
from everyone who has taken part in the conference, and particularly from
Phil Carlisle at the Data Standards Unit.
The present version is still very much to be treated as an alpha (trial)
version. I am aware of additional terminology, for example, from the BIAB
that will need to be included in the 'beta' version. I suggest the following
approach:-
1) as many as possible of you who have the time / interest take a look at
the alpha version (see below for download instructions) and circulate
comments via the e-conference between now and mid June. In particular it
would be useful to have comments on additional terms, additional links
between terms, and the positoning of terms in the hierarchies. Not all terms
have been scope noted yet, and suggestions for scope notes are also welcome.
2) the next face to face meeting of FISHEN 'attending' members (mid June -
date to be finalised) reviews any additional comments / terms and authorises
a formal peer review excercise.
3) a 'beta' version is circulated for formal peer review in July. List
members would be invited to participate in the formal review.
A link to the beta version would be added to the INSCRIPTION web site.
4) the thesaurus is finalised for completion and addition to the INSCRIPTION
standard by say October 2000.
Downloading the timeline thesaurus:-
The timeline thesaurus is available as a Portable Document Format (.PDF)
file. To read this you will also need access to a copy of the Adobe Acrobat
Reader software which is available free for download from
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html. this format was chosen
as it preserves the lay-out of the thesaurus on the page, which is essential
for understanding the use of the terminology. I will look into provision of
the thesaurus in other digital formats, but I considered it essential to get
the thesaurus out to the list as early as possible. I would hope that the
beta version would also appear on the English Heritage web site.
to download the .pdf file (which is 367KB in size) send the following
command to [log in to unmask]
get mime fishen timeline.pdf
stop
you will receive the file as an attachment to an email from the mailbase
computer. It has been scanned for viruses.
I look forward to your comments in the comming weeks,
Edmund Lee
FISHEN coordinator
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