Graph Based Representation of Walden’s Paths in Drupal 7

The Walden’s Paths Project is used by different communities in order to create and use linear paths that link to documents available on the web. Walden’s Paths has been implemented as a web application using Drupal where a web service handles the core functionality of storage and representation of a Path data structure and a user interface uses this service for authoring and browsing of the paths. I have implemented an interactive user interface for representation of information for educational purpose in the form of a graph instead of a linear representation. This representation helps the users of the path to better understand the subject by understanding the conceptual structure of subject. The authoring interface is simple and easy to use and enables the authors of Walden’s Paths to represent the conceptual structure of a subject domain in the form of a graph. It allows for graphical representation of different types of relationships between various topic included in the Walden’s Paths. Such graphical representation of educational resources is similar to the concept of Topic Maps. The authoring tool for the Walden’s Paths has been implemented in Drupal 7. This Drupal 7 version of Walden’s Paths extends its implementation from a hypertextual system to a hypermedia system by supporting different document types like images, PDF, etc

Solving the broken link problem in Walden's Paths

With the extent of the web expanding at an increasing rate, the problems caused by broken links are reaching epidemic proportions. Studies have indicated that a substantial number of links on the Internet are broken. User surveys indicate broken links are considered the third biggest problem faced on the Internet. Currently Walden's Paths Path Manager tool is capable of detecting the degree and type of change within a page in a path. Although it also has the ability to highlight missing pages or broken links, it has no method of correcting them thus leaving the broken link problem unsolved. This thesis proposes a solution to this problem in Walden's Paths. The solution centers on the idea that "significant" keyphrases extracted from the original page can be used to accurately locate the document using a search engine. This thesis proposes an algorithm to extract representative keyphrases to locate exact copies of the original page. In the absence of an exact copy, a similar but separate algorithm is used to extract keyphrases that will help locating similar pages that can be substituted in place of the missing page. Both sets of keyphrases are stored as additions to the page signature in the Path Manager tool and can be used when the original page is removed from its current location on the Web

Interaction history for digital objects

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-143) and index.Digital information has no history. When we interact with physical objects, we are able to read the traces left by past interactions with the object. These traces, sometimes called "wear," form a basis for the interaction history of the object. In the physical world, we make use of interaction history to help come up with solutions and guidance. This is not possible in the digital realm, because the traces are missing. This dissertation describes a theoretical framework for talking about interaction history. This framework is related to work in anthropology, ethnomethodology, architecture, and urban planning. The framework describes a space of possible history-rich digital systems and gives properties which can be used to analyze existing systems. The space consists of six properties: proxemic/distemic, active/passive, rate/form of change, degree of permeation, personal/social, and kind of information. We also present an implementation of these ideas in a system called Footprints, a toolset for aiding information foraging on the World Wide Web. Our tools assume that users know what they want but that they need help finding it and help understanding - putting in context - what they have found. Footprints is a social navigation system, designed to show that information from past users can help direct present problem-solvers. We present results from informal use of the tools over the last two years, and from formal surveys and experiments on a controlled task. These experiments showed that people could achieve the same or better results with significantly less effort by using our tools.by Alan Daniel Wexelblat.Ph.D

Integrating information seeking and information structuring: spatial hypertext as an interface to the digital library.

Information seeking is the task of finding documents that satisfy the information needs of a person or organisation. Digital Libraries are one means of providing documents to meet the information needs of their users - i.e. as a resource to support information seeking. Therefore, research into the activity of information seeking is key to the development and understanding of digital libraries. Information structuring is the activity of organising documents found in the process of information seeking. Information structuring can be seen as either part of information seeking, or as a sepárate, complementary activity. It is a task performed by the seeker themselves and targeted by them to support their understanding and the management of later seeking activity. Though information structuring is an important task, it receives sparse support in current digital library Systems. Spatial hypertexts are computer software Systems that have been specifically been developed to support information structuring. However, they seldom are connected to Systems that support information seeking. Thus to day, the two inter-related activities of information seeking and information structuring have been supported by disjoint computer Systems. However, a variety of research strongly indicates that in physical environments, information seeking and information structuring are closely inter-related activities. Given this connection, this thesis explores whether a similar relationship can be found in electronic information seeking environments. However, given the absence of a software system that supports both activities well, there is an immédiate practical problem. In this thesis, I introduce an integrated information seeking and structuring System, called Garnet, that provides a spatial hypertext interface that also supports information seeking in a digital library. The opportunity of supporting information seeking by the artefacts of information structuring is explored in the Garnet system, drawing on the benefits previously found in supporting one information seeking activity with the artefacts of another. Garnet and its use are studied in a qualitative user study that results in the comparison of user behaviour in a combined electronic environment with previous studies in physical environments. The response of participants to using Garnet is reported, particularly regarding their perceptions of the combined system and the quality of the interaction. Finally, the potential value of the artefacts of information structuring to support information seeking is also evaluated

Thoreau\u27s Melancholia, Walden\u27s Friendship, and Queer Agency

Walden queers its readers. While many have investigated Thoreau’s queerness, there has been little notice of Walden’s queerness. This project begins with a situational analysis that identifies the melancholic antecedents of Walden in Thoreau’s life and his choices that led to the illumination of his melancholia. Thoreau had already been experimenting with what Branka Arsić identified as “literalization.” Nevertheless, a period of crisis, detailed by Robert Milder, made him aware of what Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok have referred to as the melancholic’s blind skill of “demetaphorization.” I suggest that Thoreau exploited this skill to produce Walden’s unique ability to feed on and, as Henry Abelove and Henry Golemba have suggested, awaken its reader’s desires. I combine a close reading of Walden with selective study of the text’s reception. Walden delivers on Thoreau’s theory of friendship from his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Walden’s friendship with its reader is the agency that accomplishes what Henry Golemba and Lawrence Buell have noted as a blurring of the boundary between reader and text. To investigate this friendship and Walden’s accommodations of faux friendship, I construct a Burkean perspective by incongruity using research in the nature-writing and rhetoric disciplines that intersect with Thoreauvian studies. This incongruity is analyzed using not only Burke’s theories of literary form and literature as equipment for living, but also Deleuze’s process philosophy and Deleuze and Guattari’s analyses of the war machine and their spatial analysis. This project complexifies Erin Rand’s research on polemics, using Deleuze’s multiplicity not only to explain why polemics are unpredictable, but also to address what Sarah Hallenbeck has referred to as “the crisis of agency.” I suggest an expansion of José Esteban Muñoz’s research. The question of how one actually transitions from melancholia to disidentification cannot be adequately answered with terms like Stuart Hall’s ‘oppositional reading’ or Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘de/reterritorialization.’ I also suggest that queer utopian thinking and poststructuralism are more compatible than previously argued. This dissertation is itself a polemic, straining the possibilities of friendship in the service of queerness