Hyperlinking the world of Social Science Integrating Text and Data in a global Hypertext Space

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Hyperlinking the world of Social
ScienceIntegrating Text and Data in a global
Hypertext Space

• Jostein Ryssevik
• NESSTAR
• FASTER
• NSD

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The last page of the Web..?
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From (flat) text to hypertext
Hypertext
Flat text
Collections of flat text
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From many local to a global hypertext space
A global hypertext space
A local hypertext space
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From hypertext to hypermedia
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From Authoring to Collaboration-from parallel
authoring to bazar-style authoring
The author
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From Authoring to Collaboration-from parallel
authoring to bazar-style authoring
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The author-reader inversion..or simply power
to the reader

• Author authority?
• The author can not longer control the sequences
• The author is in constant danger of loosing the
  reader through the hyperlinks
• Readers become authors...

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What does it take?

• Digitalisation - the resource must be available
  in a digital form on the Net
• Browser support - there must be some sort of
  software (browser, plug-in, Java applet etc) that
  is able to handle the format and display the
  object to the user
• Naming - a naming convention (URI-system) that
  makes it easy to locate resources and to
  associate them with the relevant software
• Persistence - procedures and methods that can
  reduce the mortality rate of of web objects.

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The resources and artefacts of social science...

• The intellectual production - books, articles,
  papers etc...
• The sources - qualitative and quantitative data,
  text, pictures etc
• The people - links to institutions, individual
  researchers, domain experts etc..

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Hyperlinking acros...
Text
Data
People
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From data to text and people..
Data
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From text to data...
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Types of hyperlinks in NESSTAR

• Searches The search strings that is the result
  of a search for data in one or several NESSTAR
  archives..
• Dataset The location and name of a particular
  dataset.
• AnalysisThe request for an analysis (like a
  crosstab) on a particular dataset.
• Download. The specification of a download
  including sub-setting information and
  output-formats

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Types of hyperlinks in NESSTAR

• Normal Executed when a user click on it inside
  the Explorer or from an external Web-object.
• Active Executed automatically when the Explorer
  is loaded.
• Subscribed Left with the active research agent
  and executed on behalf of the user on
  user-specified intervals

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The author reader inversion revisited

• In the first scenario the reader become a partner
  in the creation of metadata
• In the second scenario the reader become a
  participant in the analysis of a data source
• They are both facilitating cumulative research

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...a social science Workbench...?

• Tools
• Finding and sorting
• Browsing
• Analysing
• Authoring
• Publishing