[13718] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Multi-Dimensional Indexing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gerry Mckiernan)
Mon Jan 22 20:01:36 2001
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 11:52:46 -0600
From: Gerry Mckiernan <GMCKIERN@GWGATE.LIB.IASTATE.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
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_Re: Multi-Dimensional Indexing_
In response to my recent posting concerning the use of
'Multi-Dimensional Indexing' in e-Books or e-Journals
[ http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/0101/0180.html ] ,
Peter B. Boyce, Senior Consultant for Electronic Publishing for the
American Astronomical Society (AAS) sent the response below [Re-posted with
permission]
He sites/cites a most impressive application of the Kohonen
self-organizing maps for an index to the _Astrophysical Journal_
If there is one special Web site you visit today, I strongly recommend that
you visit and explore this most remarkable Multi-Dimensional Index'
/Gerry McKiernan
Self-Organized Librarian
Iowa State University
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu
P.S. I have been a Big Fan of the Kohonen SOM for several years.
For other examples, please see _The Big Picture(sm)_
[ http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/BigPic.htm]
my clearinghouse devoted to "Visual Browsing in Web and non-Web Databases",
notable the two examples under Helsinki University of Technology, the home
of Teuvo Kohonen, the developer of the SOM
>>> "Peter B. Boyce" <pboyce@aas.org> 01/18/01 02:34PM >>>
Gerry,
The Centre de Donnees Astronomique de Strasbourg
(http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/) utilizes the technique of "Self-organizing
maps" to collect articles under various concept headings and arranging
those headings such that adjacent concepts are closely related to each
other. The entire collection is then displayed as a three dimensional
map. See http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/ApJ/map.pl for an example of how this
works.
This provides a visual method of navigating among concepts and discovering
related articles in a visual way which is much more intuitive to me than
text-based searches -- even when they are incorporated into a "concept map"
of the type described by Ross.
They use a neural network method which includes all the article keywords to
characterize each article. The article keywords -- never less than three
per article -- are assigned by the editor and the vocabulary is controlled,
so this method is quite reliable. Unfortunately, this neural network
approach uses a lot of computing power, and it is not suitable for "on the
fly" usage. But, it demonstrates the kind of approach which will have to
be done eventually so that readers can find relevant information more
reliably than at present.
Cheers,
- --Peter--
_________________________________________________________
Peter B. Boyce - Senior Consultant for Electronic Publishing, AAS
email: pboyce@aas.org
Summer address: Winter: 4109 Emery Place,
33 York St., Nantucket, MA 02554 Washington, DC 20016
Phone: 508-228-9062 202-244-2473
_____________________________________________
