CS 6210 - Special Topics in CS: Digital Libraries and
Computing for the Humanities

Orientation

Module 0 Min-Yen KAN

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.

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

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.

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

Design for Memex (c. 1945)

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...

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

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”

Outline for today

Introduction to libraries √

Course administration

Reading and writing research

To think about

Course administration

Teaching staff

Web sites

Objective

Syllabus

Assessment overview

Homework and discussions

Survey paper and project

Any questions?

Teaching staff

Lecturer:

Min-Yen Kan (“Min”)

kanmy@comp.nus.
edu.sg

Office: S15 05-05

6875-1885

Hours:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Assessment overview

Homeworks (2) @ 10% =20%

Discussion participation 10%

Survey paper 20%

Final project

Presentation 10%

Write-up / Deliverables 40%

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!)

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

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

Outline for today

Introduction to libraries √

Course administration √

Reading and writing research

To think about

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.

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

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 _________________________

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?

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”

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?

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!!

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!!

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

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

Any questions?

Introduction to libraries √

Course administration √

Reading and writing research √

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!

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:

_________?

_________?


	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.


	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


	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.


	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


	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...


	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


	“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”


	Introduction to libraries √
	Course administration
	Reading and writing research
	To think about


	Teaching staff
	Web sites
	Objective
	Syllabus
	Assessment overview
	Homework and discussions
	Survey paper and project

	Any questions?


	Lecturer:
		Min-Yen Kan (“Min”)
		kanmy@comp.nus. edu.sg
		Office: S15 05-05
		6875-1885
		Hours:


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


	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.


	(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.


	(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.


	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.


	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


	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.


	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.


	Homeworks (2) @ 10% =20%
	Discussion participation 10%
	Survey paper 20%
	Final project
		Presentation 10%
		Write-up / Deliverables 40%


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!)


	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


	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


	Introduction to libraries √
	Course administration √
	Reading and writing research
	To think about


	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.


	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


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 _________________________


	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?


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”


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?


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!!