51,059 research outputs found
Defeaters and Disqualifiers
Justification depends on context: even if E on its own justifies H, still it might fail to justify in the context of D. This sort of effect, epistemologists think, is due to defeaters, which undermine or rebut a would-be justifier. I argue that there is another fundamental sort of contextual feature, disqualification, which doesn't involve rebuttal or undercutting, and which cannot be reduced to any notion of screening-off. A disqualifier makes some would-be justifier otiose, as direct testimony sometimes does to distal testimony, and as manifestly decisive evidence might do to gratuitous evidence on the same team. Basing a belief on disqualified evidence, moreover, is distinctively irrational. One is not necessarily irresponsible. Instead one is turning down a free upgrade to a sleeker, stabler basis for one's beliefs. Such an upgrade would prevent wastes of epistemic effort, since someone who bases her belief on a disqualified proposition E will need to remember E and rethink her belief should E ever be defeated. The upgrade might also reduce reliance on unwieldy evidence, if E is relevant only thanks to some labyrinthine argument; and if even ideal agents should doubt their ability to follow such arguments, even they should care about disqualifiers
Reading in the 21st century; reading at scale
Essay from a festshrift that was originally published in:
Reading for faith and learning : essays on scripture, community, and libraries in honor of M. Patrick Graham / edited by John B. Weaver and Douglas L. Gragg. Abilene : Abilene Christian University Press, 2017
Towards Better Understanding Researcher Strategies in Cross-Lingual Event Analytics
With an increasing amount of information on globally important events, there
is a growing demand for efficient analytics of multilingual event-centric
information. Such analytics is particularly challenging due to the large amount
of content, the event dynamics and the language barrier. Although memory
institutions increasingly collect event-centric Web content in different
languages, very little is known about the strategies of researchers who conduct
analytics of such content. In this paper we present researchers' strategies for
the content, method and feature selection in the context of cross-lingual
event-centric analytics observed in two case studies on multilingual Wikipedia.
We discuss the influence factors for these strategies, the findings enabled by
the adopted methods along with the current limitations and provide
recommendations for services supporting researchers in cross-lingual
event-centric analytics.Comment: In Proceedings of the International Conference on Theory and Practice
of Digital Libraries 201
Investigating the Effects of Exploratory Semantic Search on the Use of a Museum Archive
Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in how new technologies can support the more effective use of online museum content. Two particularly relevant developments are exploratory search and semantic web technologies. Exploratory search tools support a more undirected and serendipitous interaction with the content. Semantic web technology, when applied in this context, allows the exploitation of metadata and ontologies to provide more intelligent support for user
interaction.
Bletchley Park Text is a museum web application supporting a semantic driven, exploratory approach to the search and navigation of digital museum resources. Bletchley Park Text uses semantics to organise selected content (i.e. stories) into a number of composite pages that illustrate conceptual patterns in the content, and from which the content itself can be accessed.
The use made of Bletchley Park Text over an eight month period was analysed in order to understand the kinds of trajectories across the available resources that users could make with such a system. The results identified two distinct strategies of exploratory search. A risky strategy was characterised as incorporating: conceptual jumps between successive queries, a larger number of shorter queries and the use of the stories themselves to acclimatise to a new set of search results. A cautious strategy was characterised as incorporating: small conceptual shifts between queries, a smaller number of longer queries and the use of composite pages to acclimatise to a set of new search results. These findings have implications for the intelligent scaffolding of exploratory search
ArchiveSpark: Efficient Web Archive Access, Extraction and Derivation
Web archives are a valuable resource for researchers of various disciplines.
However, to use them as a scholarly source, researchers require a tool that
provides efficient access to Web archive data for extraction and derivation of
smaller datasets. Besides efficient access we identify five other objectives
based on practical researcher needs such as ease of use, extensibility and
reusability.
Towards these objectives we propose ArchiveSpark, a framework for efficient,
distributed Web archive processing that builds a research corpus by working on
existing and standardized data formats commonly held by Web archiving
institutions. Performance optimizations in ArchiveSpark, facilitated by the use
of a widely available metadata index, result in significant speed-ups of data
processing. Our benchmarks show that ArchiveSpark is faster than alternative
approaches without depending on any additional data stores while improving
usability by seamlessly integrating queries and derivations with external
tools.Comment: JCDL 2016, Newark, NJ, US
An Online Tutor for Astronomy: The GEAS Self-Review Library
We introduce an interactive online resource for use by students and college
instructors in introductory astronomy courses. The General Education Astronomy
Source (GEAS) online tutor guides students developing mastery of core
astronomical concepts and mathematical applications of general astronomy
material. It contains over 12,000 questions, with linked hints and solutions.
Students who master the material quickly can advance through the topics, while
under-prepared or hesitant students can focus on questions on a certain topic
for as long as needed, with minimal repetition. Students receive individual
accounts for study and course instructors are provided with overview tracking
information, by time and by topic, for entire cohorts of students. Diagnostic
tools support self-evaluation and close collaboration between instructor and
student, even for distance learners. An initial usage study shows clear trends
in performance which increase with study time, and indicates that distance
learners using these materials perform as well as or better than a comparison
cohort of on-campus astronomy students. We are actively seeking new
collaborators to use this resource in astronomy courses and other educational
venues.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures; Vogt, N. P., and A. S. Muise. 2015. An online
tutor for general astronomy: The GEAS self-review library. Cogent Education,
2 (1
Exploring the information behaviour of users of Welsh Newspapers Online through web log analysis
Purpose – Webometric techniques have been applied to many websites and online resources,
especially since the launch of Google Analytics (GA). To date, though, there has been little
consideration of information behaviour in relation to digitised newspaper collections. The purpose of
this paper is to address a perceived gap in the literature by providing an account of user behaviour in
the newly launched Welsh Newspapers Online (WNO).
Design/methodology/approach – The author collected webometric data for WNO using GA and
web server content logs. These were analysed to identify patterns of engagement and user behaviour,
which were then considered in relation to existing information behaviour.
Findings – Use of WNO, while reminiscent of archival information seeking, can be understood as
centring on the web interface rather than the digitised material. In comparison to general web browsing,
users are much more deeply engaged with the resource. This engagement incorporates reading online,
but users’ information seeking utilises website search and browsing functionality rather than filtering in
newspaper material. Information seeking in digitised newspapers resembles the model of the “user” more
closely than that of the “reader”, a value-laden distinction which needs further unpacking.
Research limitations/implications – While the behaviour discussed in this paper is likely to be
more widely representative, a larger longitudinal data set would increase the study’s significance.
Additionally, the methodology of this paper can only tell us what users are doing, and further research
is needed to identify the drivers for this behaviour.
Originality/value – This study provides important insights into the underinvestigated area of
digitised newspaper collections, and shows the importance of webometric methods in analysing online
user behaviour
Binding time: Harold Innis and the balance of new media
Much has been made of the impacts of digital media on the experience of space: new modes of perception and action at a distance: accelerating globalisation; shifting boundaries between work and home life; and so on. It is less common to read about the impacts of digital media on the experience of time. Yet, the digitisation of cultural practices and artefacts has significant implications for structuring our relationships with both the future and the past. In the theoretical traditions concerned with technology and time, the work of Harold Innis, a Canadian economist and communications theorist, offers an approach to understanding the social significance of all kinds of media. He analysed how different media relate to space and time: space-binding media extend influence and meanings over distances, helping to build empires and develop cohesion across space; while time-binding media influence cultural patterns in duration. For Innis, civilisations can be measured by their balance between managing time and controlling space. If this remains the case today, how has the computer changed this balance in our own culture? This paper examines the extent to which Innis’s concepts about media still apply today
Speculative practices : utilizing InfoVis to explore untapped literary collections
Funding: Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research CouncilIn this paper we exemplify how information visualization supports speculative thinking, hypotheses testing, and preliminary interpretation processes as part of literary research. While InfoVis has become a buzz topic in the digital humanities, skepticism remains about how effectively it integrates into and expands on traditional humanities research approaches. From an InfoVis perspective, we lack case studies that show the specific design challenges that make literary studies and humanities research at large a unique application area for information visualization. We examine these questions through our case study of the Speculative W@nderverse, a visualization tool that was designed to enable the analysis and exploration of an untapped literary collection consisting of thousands of science fiction short stories. We present the results of two empirical studies that involved general-interest readers and literary scholars who used the evolving visualization prototype as part of their research for over a year. Our findings suggest a design space for visualizing literary collections that is defined by (1) their academic and public relevance, (2) the tension between qualitative vs. quantitative methods of interpretation, (3) result- vs. process-driven approaches to InfoVis, and (4) the unique material and visual qualities of cultural collections. Through the Speculative W@nderverse we demonstrate how visualization can bridge these sometimes contradictory perspectives by cultivating curiosity and providing entry points into literary collections while, at the same time, supporting multiple aspects of humanities research processes.PostprintPeer reviewe
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