1	CS 6210 - Special Topics in CS: Digital Libraries and Computing for the Humanities Orientation Module 0 Min-Yen KAN
2	What is a library? A place set apart to contain books for reading, study, or reference. (Not applied, e.g. to the shop or warehouse of a bookseller.) A building … containing a collection of books for the use of the public or of some particular portion of it, or of the members of some society or the like; a public institution or establishment, charged with the care of a collection of books, and the duty of rendering the books accessible to those who require to use them.
3	What is a library? A private commercial establishment for the lending of books, the borrower paying either a fixed sum for each book lent or a periodical subscription. a great mass of learning or knowledge; the objects of a person's study, the sources on which he depends for instruction. Computers. An organized collection of routines, esp. of tested routines suitable for a particular model of computer Biology. a collection of sequences of DNA … that represent the genetic material of a particular organism or tissue
4	Introduction Bush’s “As we may think” Writes this at the end of WW II _____ was the first computer, born to compute ballistic tables fast ______ just invented 5 years ago ________ (“display technology”) still a less than perfect process. _______ (“storage technology”) was a mature and stable technology.
5	Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development lead 6000 scientists in R&D for WWII Predicted many technological advances the “memex” is one whose spirit we are implementing the purpose was to provide scientists the capability to exchange information; to have access to the totality of recorded information
6	Design for Memex (c. 1945)
7	Memex Integrated computer, keyboard, and desk “mechanized private file and library” remove drudgery from information retrieval suggested implementation was microfilm various user operations are suggested ________________ was the main purpose “the process of tying two items together is the important thing” prelude to hypertext...
8	Memex Information could come pre-associatively indexed, but the key point was ___ ___________ ____ still does not provide that today Bush observes that tools change our way of doing, and expand the horizons before us full impact of WWW and DLs still not known
9	What is a Digital Library (DL)? “a collection of information that is both digitized and organized” (Lesk) there are numbers of alternate definitions, but this seems fair enough no mention of ________, __________, __________, etc. It is not just to reform the current library system, rather, we aim to organize and access the “information overload”
10	Outline for today Introduction to libraries √ Course administration Reading and writing research To think about
11	Course administration Teaching staff Web sites Objective Syllabus Assessment overview Homework and discussions Survey paper and project Any questions?
12	Teaching staff Lecturer: Min-Yen Kan (“Min”) kanmy@comp.nus. edu.sg Office: S15 05-05 6875-1885 Hours:
13	Course web sites http://ivle.nus.edu.sg/ Discussion forum Any questions related to the course should be raised on this forum Please do not send emails except urgent or personal matters Announcements Work bin: Lecture notes (incomplete!) http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs6210 Homework specification Other supplementary content
14	Objective Building, using and maintaining large volumes of information Contrast computational approaches with traditional library science methods Who? Advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. Centered towards IS/CS or by permission.
15	Syllabus (S0. 6 Aug and S1. 13 Aug) M0: Orientation; and M1: LIS crash course. (S2. 20 Aug) M2: Multi-(media, lingual, access, needs). (S3. 27 Aug) M3: Cataloging/indexing services. (S4. 3 Sep) M4: Metadata creation and management. (S5. 10 Sep and S6. 17 Sep) M5: Fundamentals of information retrieval. (S7. 24 Sep) M6: Introduction to bibliometrics.
16	Syllabus (2/2) (S8. 1 Oct) Usability of OPACs and retrieval engines. (S9. 8 Oct) M8: Computational literary analysis. (S10. 15 Oct) M9: The problem of synonymy. (S11. 22 Oct) M10: Topics in digital library policy. (S12. 29 Oct) Final project poster presentations.
17	Readings Required textbook: Lesk (1999) Practical Digital Libraries Will be supplemented by readings and excerpts from the following books: Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto (1999) Modern Information Retrieval Witten, Bell and Moffat (2003) Managing Gigabytes. Chakrabhati (2003) Mining the Web. Arms (2003) Digital Libraries.
18	Discussions Class participation is very important. There are no “dumb” questions. You will only be penalized for “no” questions / comments. Possibilities: Name tags Cold calls Small group discussion and presentation
19	Freedom of information rule Collaboration is acceptable To assure that all collaboration is on the level, ________________________________________________________________________________________ You will be assessed for the parts for which you claim is your own contribution.
20	Gilligan’s Island rule You are free to meet with fellow students(s) and discuss assignments with them. Writing on a board or shared piece of paper is acceptable during the meeting; however, you ___________________________________________________________________. After the meeting, do something else for at least a half-hour (watch an episode of Gilligan's Island), before working on the assignment. This will assure that you are able to reconstruct what you learned from the meeting, by yourself, using your own brain.
21	Assessment overview Homeworks (2) @ 10% =20% Discussion participation 10% Survey paper 20% Final project Presentation 10% Write-up / Deliverables 40%
22	Homework and discussions Homework Practical aspect of the course Two assessments, both individual: HW 1: query analysis HW 2: authorship detection Discussions Participation is key Come prepared (read ahead of time!)
23	Literature survey Each student will pick an area of study to survey 3-5 papers in detail. Must be interesting to you Journal or conference papers from an authority list Limit to 8 pages, better if just 5 Individual work only Give your perspective on area’s future
24	Final project Students will self-organize into groups for the final projects, shortly after the survey papers are due. Requires original work Cooperation and coordination Report as a conference submission Poster presentation to the public Sample topics on the web page
25	Outline for today Introduction to libraries √ Course administration √ Reading and writing research To think about
26	Reading and writing research papers References: http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~dylan/ efficientReading.html ftp://fast.cs.utah.edu/pub/writing-papers.ps This section partially from Surendar Chandra of University of Notre Dame.
27	Why do you read a paper? Understand and learn new contributions However… Not all papers are “good” Not all papers are “interesting” Not all papers are “worthwhile” for you You have to learn to identify a good paper and spend your time wisely Breadth Depth React
28	Reading a research paper What is this paper about? Read the title and the abstract If you still don’t know what this paper is about, then this is a poorly-written paper. Read the conclusion Are you now sure you know what this paper is about? If not, paper. Read the _________ Read the ___________________ Read _________________________
29	How to read a paper See who wrote it, where it was published, when was it written (credibility) Skim references Are authors are aware of relevant related work? Do you know the work that they cite? Do you know other work that they should have cited?
30	How to read a paper - depth Approach with scientific skepticism Examine the assumptions. Are they: Rely on any uncertain trends? Reasonable? e.g., “Let’s assume that there are billions of powerful computers, connected by a high speed network, spread across the world, our system will …” e.g., “Our system functions in real-time on a 33Mhz Intel 386 with 640K main memory running Windows 98”
31	How to read a paper - depth Examine the methods: Did they measure what they claim? Can they explain what they observed? Want an analysis of why the system behaves a certain way, not raw data. Did they have adequate controls? Were tests carried out in a standard way? Were the performance metrics standard? If not, do they explain their metrics clearly?
32	How to read a paper - depth Examine the statistics: “Lies, d*mned lies and statistics” Appropriate statistical tests applied properly? Did they do proper error analysis? Are the results statistically significant? Common mistake: “We performed our experiment once at 4 am and noticed a ten fold improvement. Thus we conclude that our system is better” Be very careful with percentages Method A: 0.01 seconds, our Method: 0.005 seconds Our method shows 100% improvement over method A!!
33	How to read a paper - depth Examine the conclusions: Do the conclusions follow logically from the conclusions We performed our experiments with 8 palm pilots and saw a 10 fold improvement. Hence we conclude that our system will scale to millions of palm pilots What other explanations are there for the observed effects What other conclusions or correlations are there in the data that they did not point out Earlier work performed experiments using a 2 Mbit wireless network. Our system (incidentally) used a 11 Mbit network and saw a 5 fold improvement. So our technique works!!
34	How to read a paper - react Take notes Highlight major points React to the points in the paper Place this work with your own experience If you doubt a statement, note your objection Summarize what you read Good practice: maintain your own bibliography of all papers that you ever read
35	How to write a research paper Write it such that anyone who reads it using the method we just discussed understands the idea Clearly explain what problem you are solving, why it is interesting and how your solution solves this problem Be crisp. Explain what your contributions are, what your ideas are and what are others’ ideas
36	Any questions? Introduction to libraries √ Course administration √ Reading and writing research √
37	Survey on expectations Go to IVLE and help me determine the needs for this course Your background and knowledge Expectations on what you want to learn Optimal office hours Please complete before next lecture!
38	To think about for discussion What are the functions of a traditional library? Are these same functions in the digital library? How is the digital library different from: _________? _________?