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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BRITISH HCI GROUP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ http://www.bcs.org.uk/hci/ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NEWS SERVICE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ All news to:[log in to unmask] ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ Newsarchives: ~~ ~~ http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/bcs-hci/ ~~ ~~ archive.html ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear HCI Colleague, It's been said many times in recent years, and it's still true: The Net, particularly the Web, provides an unprecedented opportunity in scientific history to locate, interconnect and analyse ideas and documents. But* The Web is becoming a more chaotic place by the day. As the signal to noise ratio gets worse, research communities need better support for tracking developments and finding relevant documents. It is currently impossible for search engines (Web or otherwise) to answer complex questions commonly posed by researchers such as the following: * are there distinct schools of thought in this field? * what impact did this evidence have? * who is currently tackling this applied problem? * has anyone built a system based on this theory? * has anyone applied this theory to other fields? Is it possible to conceive of a 'linga franca' for summarising key scholarly and scientific relationships between research documents which could provide a representational infrastructure capable of supporting such queries? What if we could agree that - within HCI research - there is a fairly stable set of inter-document relationships of interest and importance that would be worth encoding in a form detectable, and visualizable, by software agents? If interested, or at least mildly intruiged, read on!... AN INVITATION I'd like to invite you to participate in a pilot study to evaluate a "metadata scheme" for describing HCI research publications. This provides a set of scientific relationships which can be used to conceptually link a document to others in the research literature. The "HCI Knowledge Web" pilot website is at: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/hciweb/pilot.html from where you can download a short article (summary below) setting out the rationale for this project, and a template form with the proposed metadata scheme and examples. I invite you to try describing 1-2 of your own HCI publications, and sending me the form and your feedback. Thanks, Simon ........................................................................... http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/hciweb/Interfaces98.pdf Evolving the Web for Scientific Knowledge: First Steps Towards an "HCI Knowledge Web" Summary: In this article, I consider the challenge of building a Web-based infrastructure for scholarly research which moves beyond the basic dissemination and linking of documents, to support more powerful searching and analysis of the cumulative knowledge in the literature's documents. Taking the HCI research community as an example, the goal would be to enable HCI researchers to search for interesting documents and phenomena, and discover previously unknown but conceptually related research, for instance, other groups addressing persistent problems in the field, the structure of debates, or when and how new theoretical perspectives began to make an impact. I propose that focusing on the scientific relationships between documents is important, and has advantages as the basis for a Web metadata scheme to enrich the HCI community's Web. To appear in Interfaces Magazine, British HCI Group, December, 1998. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ NOTE: Please reply to article's originator, ~~ ~~ not the News Service ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ To receive HCI news, send the message: ~~ ~~ "JOIN BCS-HCI your_firstname your_lastname" ~~ ~~ to [log in to unmask] ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ To join the British HCI Group, contact ~~ ~~ [log in to unmask] ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%