A Network-Based Approach to Text Handling for the Online Scientific Community

Randall Trigg

Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742

November 1983

Ph.D. dissertation
University of Maryland Technical Report, TR-1346
University Microfilms #8429934

Copyright © Randall H. Trigg

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center under grant MCS- 8219507, AFOSR-82-0303 and NAS-25764 respectively.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
    1. The scientific community and document composition
    2. Requirements
    3. The Textnet solution
    4. Organization
  2. Related work
    1. Advanced text processing
    2. User interfaces
    3. The automated encyclopedia
    4. Electronic journals and teleconferencing
    5. Toward an online scientific community
    6. Other relevant work
      1. Citations and automatic categorization
      2. Searching in text databases
    7. Comparison of three systems
  3. Textnet organization
    1. Overview
    2. Chunk nodes
    3. Toc nodes
    4. Links
    5. An example
  4. A taxonomy of link types
    1. Classifying link types
    2. Link directionality and semantics
    3. Functions of a work
    4. Normal links
    5. Commentary
      1. Environment
      2. Problem posing
      3. Statement of thesis
      4. Arguemnt
      5. Data
      6. Style and attitude
      7. Supportive links
  5. Textnet access
    1. Overview
    2. Text perusal
    3. Structure composition and modification
    4. Critiquing and reader linking
    5. Paths, hard-copy, and user modeling
  6. TEXTNET implementation
    1. Flavors plus windows
    2. Preliminaries
    3. Browsing
      1. Manual link following
      2. The scanning window
      3. Jumping via search
    4. Node modification
      1. Modifying toc nodes and their children
      2. Modifying chunk nodes
      3. Unlinking nodes
    5. Linking and critiquing
    6. Paths and hard-copy
      1. Building paths
      2. Viewing paths
      3. Generating hard-copy
    7. Future additions
  7. Experience with users
    1. Description of the trial
    2. Discussion
    3. Feedback from questionnaires
      1. Favorable responses
      2. Criticisms and suggestions
  8. New paradigms for scientific communication
    1. Viewing the current state of knowledge
      1. Spatially arranged knowledge
      2. Browsing as a user-controlled movie
      3. Displaying diverse information
    2. Monitoring the state of knowledge
      1. Personal literature monitoring
      2. Hot spots: System news monitors
      3. Text archiving
      4. Studies in research practices and history of science
    3. Knowledge augmentation
      1. Reader linking
      2. Accommodating different writing styles
      3. Writing for several audiences
    4. Soliciting knowledge augmentation
      1. Planting inquiries
      2. Dangling links
      3. System solicitation
    5. Other activities
      1. Electronic journal: Critiquing your referee
      2. Textnet, CAI, and private tutoring
      3. Textnet and expert systems
      4. Content analysis
  9. The national network
    1. Scaling up textnet
      1. Distributed vs centralized
      2. Scenario for a distributed Textnet
      3. Locking during node modification
      4. The versionaing alternative
    2. Paper supersets
    3. Reader linking
    4. Automatic monitoring
    5. Publishing
    6. Multiple authoring
    7. Paper classification
    8. Computer-assisted instruction
    9. Real-time aspects
  10. Conclusion
    1. Summary
    2. Future short-term improvements
    3. Future tests and trials
    4. Long-range plans
    5. Issues
  11. Appendix I: Examples of Textnet structures
  12. Appendix II: Figures from the Textnet system
  13. REFERENCES

Contact Information

Randall H. Trigg
Work Practice & Technology Associates

phone: +1-650-325-1639
email: trigg@workpractice.com
web: www.workpractice.com/trigg