Document Type De�nition (DTD) Metrics

In this paper, we present two complexity metrics for the assessment of schema quality written in Document Type De�finition (DTD) language. Both "Entropy (E) metric: E(DTD)" and "Distinct Structured Element Repetition Scale (DSERS) metric: DSERS(DTD)" are intended to measure the structural complexity of schemas in DTD language. These metrics exploit a directed graph representation of schema document and consider the complexity of schema due to its similar structured elements and the occurrences of these elements. The empirical and theoretical validations of these metrics prove the robustness of the metrics

Literary texts in an electronic age: Scholarly implications and library services [papers presented at the 1994 Clinic on Library applications of Data Processing, April 10-12, 1994]

Authors and readers in an age of electronic texts / Jay David Bolter -- Electronic texts in the humanities : a coming of age / Susan Hockey -- The Text Encoding Initiative : electronic text markup for research / C.M. Sperberg-McQueen -- Electronic texts and multimedia in the academic library : a view from the front line / Anita K. Lowry -- Humanizing information technology : cultural evolution and the institutionalization of electronic text processing / Mark Tyler Day -- Cohabiting with copyright on the nets / Mary Brandt Jensen -- The role of the scholarly publisher in an electronic environment / Lorrie LeJeune -- The feasibility of wide-area textual analysis systems in libraries : a practical analysis / John Price-Wilkin -- The scholar and his library in the computer age / James W. Marchand -- The challenges of electronic texts in the library : bibliographic control and access / Rebecca S. Guenther -- Durkheim???s imperative : the role of humanities faculty in the information technologies revolution / Robert Alun Jones -- The materiality of the book : another turn of the screw / Terry Belanger.published or submitted for publicatio

From paper to digital documents : Challenging and improving the SGML approach

This research has been initiated on the basis of practical experiences in developing a relatively large SGML system at the University of Oslo. This thesis contributes to the field of information systems, with a particular focus on document systems. The aim of this work is to inform the design of document systems by considering the transformation from paper to digital documents in organizations. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML, ISO 8879) approach is emphasized. The SGML approach takes the documents' structure and content as the starting point in design, and regards the document as a collection of structured information. This approach is challenged and tentatively improved by empirical studies of documents in use and theoretical considerations of artifacts at work. The research approach has been an Action Case, as defined by Vidgen and Braa (1997). The interpretation of the transformation process from paper to digital documents is based mainly on an in-depth case study that was conducted at a Norwegian news agency from January 1996 to March 1998. The empirical findings are discussed according to theoretical concepts that emphasize the significance of artifacts at work to illuminate the various roles of documents at work. Concepts from the Actor Network Theory (ANT) (for example, see Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987; Law, 1986) are applied to emphasize the interrelations of humans and artifacts, as well as the importance of artifacts' properties in these relations. The concepts of 'boundary object' (Star and Griesemer; 1989) and 'borderline issues' (Brown and Duguid, 1994) are applied to get various perspectives on the actor-network. The study illustrates that it is challenging to substitute paper documents with SGML documents. Firstly, two different types of technology, with different properties and features, are exchanged. By removing paper documents, we also remove resources that go beyond the canonical meaning of the artifact. These resources are related to paper as a technology. Secondly, the document perspective in SGML is too restricted in relation to the various perspectives on documents in practical use. The emphasis on structure complicates the production of documents. Thirdly, the application of shared document models across work practices turns the various heterogeneous actor-networks into one network, which requires a common objective among the actors involved. The dilemma of "who does the job and who gets the benefits" (Grudin, 1989; 1994) arises as well. The study indicates that an investigation of the actor-networks that include documents provides an insight into the more hidden aspects of work. By regarding documents' central, peripheral, local and shared properties, one can gain an understanding of how documents are embedded in work, including the importance of documents and related artifacts to aspects such as awareness, articulation and coordination of work. The properties determine how things become interrelated into heterogeneous networks. The research shows how a document's properties or inscriptions are essential to its production and application in use. Insight into these prerequisites helps us to understand how the computer system can fit into work practices, even if we do have no guarantees that it will be used in the way that we expect. According to design, work practices are improved by changing the technical properties or the technical fundamentals, by adding various inscriptions into the system. This thesis describes how an existing system was improved by the use of 'gateways'. In the design of the gateways, the idea has been to keep the technical possibilities that SGML provides, and at the same time take into account our knowledge about the paperwork

Wittgenstein and Contemporary Theories of Language

Papers read at the French-Norwegian seminar in Skjolden, 23-26 May 199

A software based mentor system

This thesis describes the architecture, implementation issues and evaluation of Mentor - an educational support system designed to mentor students in their university studies. Students can ask (by typing) natural language questions and Mentor will use several educational paradigms to present information from its Knowledge Base or from data-mined online Web sites to respond. Typically the questions focus on the student’s assignments or in their preparation for their examinations. Mentor is also pro-active in that it prompts the student with questions such as "Have you started your assignment yet?". If the student responds and enters into a dialogue with Mentor, then, based upon the student’s questions and answers, it guides them through a Directed Learning Path planned by the lecturer, specific to that assessment. The objectives of the research were to determine if such a system could be designed, developed and applied in a large-scale, real-world environment and to determine if the resulting system was beneficial to students using it. The study was significant in that it provided an analysis of the design and implementation of the system as well as a detailed evaluation of its use. This research integrated the Computer Science disciplines of network communication, natural language parsing, user interface design and software agents, together with pedagogies from the Computer Aided Instruction and Intelligent Tutoring System fields of Education. Collectively, these disciplines provide the foundation for the two main thesis research areas of Dialogue Management and Tutorial Dialogue Systems. The development and analysis of the Mentor System required the design and implementation of an easy to use text based interface as well as a hyper- and multi-media graphical user interface, a client-server system, and a dialogue management system based on an extensible kernel. The multi-user Java-based client-server system used Perl-5 Regular Expression pattern matching for Natural Language Parsing along with a state-based Dialogue Manager and a Knowledge Base marked up using the XML-based Virtual Human Markup Language. The kernel was also used in other Dialogue Management applications such as with computer generated Talking Heads. The system also enabled a user to easily program their own knowledge into the Knowledge Base as well as to program new information retrieval or management tasks so that the system could grow with the user. The overall framework to integrate and manage the above components into a usable system employed suitable educational pedagogies that helped in the student’s learning process. The thesis outlines the learning paradigms used in, and summarises the evaluation of, three course-based Case Studies of university students’ perception of the system to see how effective and useful it was, and whether students benefited from using it. This thesis will demonstrate that Mentor met its objectives and was very successful in helping students with their university studies. As one participant indicated: ‘I couldn’t have done without it.

Semantic and stylistic differences between Yahweh and Elohim in the Hebrew Bible

This thesis attempts to understand the authorial and editorial choice between the two most common designations for God in the Hebrew Bible: Yahweh and Elohim. The main body of the thesis divides into four sections, the first two parts containing the background and methodological material against which the second two are to be read.Part one deals with the major methodological issues relevant to the thesis. It examines previous academic debate relating to the divine names (=DNs), especially the works of Cassuto and Segal, the documentary hypothesis, the Rabbinic tradition, and Dahse's preference for the Septuagint. It outlines the approach taken here (synchronic, based on the MT), and justifies this as being the most appropriate for this particular taskPart two is also preliminary in character, giving a brief but comprehensive account of the meanings and uses of three designations (Elohim, Adonai Yahweh, Yahweh Elohim) throughout the Hebrew Bible, so that their significance (or lack of significance) will be recognized when they appear in parts three and four.Part three gives a quantitative account of DN usage in two corpora - Psalms and Wisdom Literature. This reveals a number of facets of DN choice: suitability to genre, arrangement of sections, poetic sequence, and in the case of the Elohistic Psalter, editorial change. A possible reason for this editorial change is offered in an appendixPart four consists of a series of qualitative analyses of texts which display a high degree of DN variability (including Exodus 1-6, Jonah). It is argued in each case that DN variation is a literary device intended to highlight certain aspects of the text. Examination of a prophetic text (Amos) reveals possible structural reasons for the placement of Yahweh and other designations. As the criteria for DN use are different in each text examined, it is suggested that the significance of each DN is dependent on, and limited to the text in which it is found.This thesis does not conclude with a single (or even several) satisfying answer(s) to the question of the interchange between Yahweh and Elohim, as Cassuto and Segal attempted to do. Instead, it points to the kind of answers which are relevant: from use in stock phrases and quotations, to bespoke commentaries on the text. Is also demonstrates the wide variety of DN patterns and predilections which we must recognize as 'normal'

Publication practices in motion: The benefits of open access publishing for the humanities

The changes we have seen in recent years in the scholarly publishing world - including the growth of digital publishing and changes to the role and strategies of publishers and libraries alike - represent the most dramatic paradigm shift in scholarly communications in centuries. This volume brings together leading scholars from across the humanities to explore that transformation and consider the challenges and opportunities it brings

Critical Programming: Toward a Philosophy of Computing

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer technologies, the basic modes of philosophical inquiry remain in the grip of print media, and default philosophies of computing prevail, or experimental ones propagate false hopes. I cast this as-is situation as the post-postmodern network dividual cyborg, recognizing that the rational enlightenment of modernism and regressive subjectivity of postmodernism now operate in an empire of extended mind cybernetics combined with techno-capitalist networks forming societies of control. Recent critical theorists identify a justificatory scheme foregrounding participation in projects, valorizing social network linkages over heroic individualism, and commending flexibility and adaptability through life long learning over stable career paths. It seems to reify one possible, contingent configuration of global capitalism as if it was the reflection of a deterministic evolution of commingled technogenesis and synaptogenesis. To counter this trend I offer a theoretical framework to focus on the phenomenology of software and code, joining social critiques with textuality and media studies, the former proposing that theory be done through practice, and the latter seeking to understand their schematism of perceptibility by taking into account engineering techniques like time axis manipulation. The social construction of technology makes additional theoretical contributions dispelling closed world, deterministic historical narratives and requiring voices be given to the engineers and technologists that best know their subject area. This theoretical slate has been recently deployed to produce rich histories of computing, networking, and software, inform the nascent disciplines of software studies and code studies, as well as guide ethnographers of software development communities. I call my syncretism of these approaches the procedural rhetoric of diachrony in synchrony, recognizing that multiple explanatory layers operating in their individual temporal and physical orders of magnitude simultaneously undergird post-postmodern network phenomena. Its touchstone is that the human-machine situation is best contemplated by doing, which as a methodology for digital humanities research I call critical programming. Philosophers of computing explore working code places by designing, coding, and executing complex software projects as an integral part of their intellectual activity, reflecting on how developing theoretical understanding necessitates iterative development of code as it does other texts, and how resolving coding dilemmas may clarify or modify provisional theories as our minds struggle to intuit the alien temporalities of machine processes