Returning to the text, FLEISCHHAUER asked viewers to imagine a person who
might be conducting a search in a full-text environment. With this
scenario, he proceeded to illustrate other features of Personal Librarian
that he considered helpful; for example, it provides the ability to
notice words as one reads. Clicking the "include" button on the bottom
of the search window pops the words that have been highlighted into the
search. Thus, a user can refine the search as he or she reads,
re-executing the search and continuing to find things in the quest for
materials. This software not only contains relevance ranking, Boolean
operators, and truncation, it also permits one to perform word algebra,
so to say, where one puts two or three words in parentheses and links
them with one Boolean operator and then a couple of words in another set
of parentheses and asks for things within so many words of others.
Until they became acquainted recently with some of the work being done in
classics, the AM staff had not realized that a large number of the
projects that involve electronic texts were being done by people with a
profound interest in language and linguistics. Their search strategies
and thinking are oriented to those fields, as is shown in particular by
the Perseus example. As amateur historians, the AM staff were thinking
more of searching for concepts and ideas than for particular words.
Obviously, FLEISCHHAUER conceded, searching for concepts and ideas and
searching for words may be two rather closely related things.
While displaying several images, FLEISCHHAUER observed that the Macintosh
prototype built by AM contains a greater diversity of formats. Echoing a
previous speaker, he said that it was easier to stitch things together in
the Macintosh, though it tended to be a little more anemic in search and
retrieval. AM, therefore, increasingly has been investigating
sophisticated retrieval engines in the IBM format.
FLEISCHHAUER demonstrated several additional examples of the prototype
interfaces: One was AM's metaphor for the network future, in which a
kind of reading-room graphic suggests how one would be able to go around
to different materials. AM contains a large number of photographs in
analog video form worked up from a videodisc, which enable users to make
copies to print or incorporate in digital documents. A frame-grabber is
built into the system, making it possible to bring an image into a window
and digitize or print it out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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