Newsletter No. 162
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FreePint
"Helping 69,000 people use the Web for their work"
http://www.freepint.com/
ISSN 1460-7239 1st July 2004 No.162
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ALTERNATIVE NEWSLETTER FORMATS AVAILABLE AT:
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IN THIS ISSUE
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EDITORIAL
MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By David Renfree
FREEPINT BAR
In Association with Factiva
a Dow Jones & Reuters Company
JOBS
Researcher
Records Management Analyst
Information Officer
TIPS ARTICLE
"Trends in Business Information Provision and Use"
By Pam Foster
BOOKSHELF
"Information Architecture: Designing Information
Environments for Purpose"
Reviewed by Susan Bradley
FEATURE ARTICLE
"GIS Enabling the Internet"
By Chris Kutler
EVENTS, GOLD AND FORTHCOMING ARTICLES
CONTACT INFORMATION
ONLINE VERSION WITH ACTIVATED HYPERLINKS
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/010704.htm>
FULLY FORMATTED VERSION
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<<< ORGANISING YOUR CAPITAL OF THE FUTURE >>>
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an overview from different perspectives on how knowledge management
(KM) can work for your organisation and how KM initiatives can be
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The Masterclass involves 8 days and will start on 14th October in
Birmingham in the UK. For more details see <http://www.cibit.com>. For
further information please feel free to contact us at email
<info@cibit.com> or by telephone +44-1495-774884.
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>>> NEW: VIP No.7 Now Available <<<
> VIP, the monthly business information publication, has an in-depth
review of Thomson ONE Banker and the Times Digital Archive.
> VIP Eye, the timely twice-monthly analysis of news, announces
various new company-information products.
<http://www.vivavip.com>
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>>> ABOUT FREEPINT <<<
FreePint is an online network of information searchers. Members
receive this free newsletter twice a month: it is packed with tips
on finding quality and reliable business information on the Internet.
Joining is free at <http://www.freepint.com/> and provides access to
a substantial archive of articles, reviews, jobs & events, with
answers to research questions and networking at the FreePint Bar.
Please circulate this newsletter which is best read when printed out.
To receive a fully formatted version as an attachment or a brief
notification when it's online, visit <http://web.freepint.com/>.
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EDITORIAL
FreePint has always prided itself on carrying straightforward, helpful
articles listing quality online resources in a wide range of subject
areas. Our index of previous articles is updated every six months and
the latest is published this week
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/04indexa.htm>.
Alongside these practical tips-based articles, we also try to publish
features that really give an insight into the latest information
industry trends, and new online research techniques. Ask any company
director to list a critical success factor in staying ahead of
competition and many will say "innovation". Perhaps this may simply be
a response to market changes, or trend-spotting before everyone else.
Maybe it indicates the courage to take risks with cutting-edge
technology. After all, today's innovation is tomorrow's mainstream
product or service. In Pam Foster's article on business information
trends today we are privileged to get a taste of the sort of insight
that you often only get from expensive market research reports.
Pam identifies the growing importance and impact of weblogs for
business intelligence; 'social networking' changing from just theory
into a commercial concept; and the move of many major publishers to
wholly electronic models. What makes her article good reading is that
she is not only citing general trends but backing it up with her
up-to-the-minute knowledge of the specific information industry
products and services that illustrate the trends. I am delighted that
Pam has agreed to give FreePint readers some regular updates of the
sort of business critical content that is available from VIP,
available by full subscription <http://www.vivavip.com>.
As Pam acknowledges, Google continues to influence search interfaces.
Google has recently added a geographic searching facility (currently
in beta), which allows you to refine searches with place names or
postcodes <http://local.google.com/lochp>. However, FreePint is being
more cutting-edge today and going a step further with Chris Kutler's
article "GIS enabling the Internet". Chris is advocating more
sophisticated geographic searching with the use of map references to
refine searches.
This is innovative stuff, and I invite people to respond on the
FreePint Bar <http://www.freepint.com/bar> or directly to the author,
who is clearly an early advocate in this field. He is not alone
though: Dlib magazine dedicated its whole May issue to georeferencing
applications in digital libraries and natural history museums
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may04/hill/05hill.html>. As Chris concludes,
"Adding geographical relevance to a search on the Web can
significantly improve search results especially in the fields of
genealogy, local history and archaeology but potentially in other
fields too".
I hope you find this issue informative. Remember, we always welcome
feedback (anonymous or otherwise) and so why not fill in the new
FreePint suggestion box at <http://www.freepint.com/contact.htm>.
All the best
Annabel Colley
Editor, FreePint
<annabel.colley@freepint.com>
FreePint is a Registered Trademark of Free Pint Limited (R) 1997-2004
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Company information in an instant from:
BUREAU VAN DIJK ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Access financial information on over 11 million public and private
companies worldwide (2.6 million in the UK).
Products available include FAME, AMADEUS, DASH and BANKSCOPE.
To find out more and to register for a FREE trial visit
<http://directory.bvdep.com/register/register.asp>
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>>> It's a two-way street <<<
Thank you to all our sponsors and advertisers who make
FreePint available for free to so many information users.
To publicise your information-related products and services,
*and* support this popular resource, consider advertising:
<http://www.freepint.com/advert.htm>
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MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By David Renfree
* <http://www.childcarelink.gov.uk> - find detailed information about
childcare and early years provision in your area, using the
interactive map or a choice of search options.
* <http://www.dfes.gov.uk/childrenandfamilies> - 'one-stop shop' of
links to various websites and documents outlining the law and
government policy concerning childcare and family services.
* <http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting> - collection of articles containing
parenting advice on topics such as pregnancy, children's ailments,
financial considerations and support services.
* <http://www.unicef.org> - this UN mandated organisation offers
information, news, statistics, campaigns and much more relating to
children's welfare around the globe.
* <http://www.yahooligans.com> - one for the kids! A directory of
internet sites that can be safely used by children, plus a selection
of interactive resources.
David Renfree is the subject librarian for the School of Childhood &
Education at the Birmingham College Of Food, Tourism & Creative
Studies.
Submit your top five favourite Web sites. See the guidelines at
<http://www.freepint.com/author.htm>.
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>>> Factiva - Easier, Faster and More Relevant <<<
Looking for a new, yet easy way to provide business information?
Look no further.
Simplicity of the free Web with world-class content is now available.
It's the best of both worlds for your entire organisation
Download the Factiva toolbar today!
<http://www.factiva.com/redirects/toolbar/freepint>
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>>> Online Editors Need Automation <<<
Whether you're publishing email newsletters or
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editors, including those of FreePint, VIP and ResourceShelf:
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FREEPINT BAR
In Association with Factiva
a Dow Jones & Reuters Company
With FreePint feeling proud of its new permanent premises, we've had
some of the busiest days ever at the Bar. Questions are being answered
within minutes, with whole discussion threads being done-and-dusted
within a morning (e.g. see <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29122>).
It's the sharing of experience by seasoned information professionals
which I find the most exciting thing about the Bar. Some of the topics
have cropped up many times before, but I think it's good when there
are fundamental questions about the definitions of information,
knowledge, data and intelligence. One enquirer is evaluating the
perceived merits of each term as they create a new 'Knowledge Store'
<http://www.freepint.com/go/b29051>. Someone else is considering a
career in competitive intelligence (CI) and has already received
valuable advice <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29106>. Perhaps those in
the know can help find papers and anecdotes about CI in financial
services <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29047>?
UK media information professionals are under the spotlight for an MA
dissertation; please help if you meet these criteria
<http://www.freepint.com/go/b29112>. If you're a general information
researcher, wherever you're based, then you'll find the latest
FreePint Index useful. It lists all the articles that have appeared in
the FreePint Newsletter since it was first published in 1997
<http://www.freepint.com/go/b29111>.
Business information professionals are concerned about the changes at
OneSource <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29121>, but VIP's Editor, Pam
Foster, soon fills in the full picture. VIP No.7 has also just been
published and contains an in-depth review of Thomson ONE Banker, which
provides integrated access to well known Thomson Financial sources
(including Datastream, Worldscope, Compustat, First Call, IDC, Extel
and more) <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29105>. VIP Eye No.12 looks at
two surveys about the shortfalls in corporate retrieval environments
and the lack of information on companies in the new EU states
<http://www.freepint.com/go/b29130>.
There are various unanswered statistics questions. These range from
requests for stats on the NHS (e.g. waiting times for specific
operations) <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29162> or putting CIA World
Factbook figures into perspective <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29101>.
Maybe you know where to find B2B market research on electrical goods
in the UK <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29096> or can point to
current-awareness suppliers in environmental legislation/issues
relevant to construction <http://www.freepint.com/go/b29091>?
Don't forget that you can now get a content feed from the Bar (in
RSS/XML format). Find out more at <http://www.freepint.com/feed/>.
Thank you all for your invaluable input to the FreePint Bar.
William Hann <william.hann@freepint.com>
Founder and Managing Editor, FreePint
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The FreePint Bar is where you can get help with your tricky research
questions, for free! <http://www.freepint.com/bar>
Help with study for information-related courses is available at the
FreePint Student Bar <http://www.freepint.com/student>.
Twice-weekly email digests of the latest postings can be requested
at <http://web.freepint.com/>.
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What is the ResourceShelf?
<http://www.resourceshelf.com>
ResourceShelf is a free daily update containing news of interest
to information professionals around the world.
Topics include the latest news with web search engines, research
tips, new web resources, and much more.
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FREEPINT JOBS
<http://www.freepint.com/jobs>
The FreePint Jobs Update is being circulated widely every two
weeks. This free newsletter now has 2,000 direct subscribers and
is posted at the Bar and in the Bar Digest (circulation 11,000).
To see the Jobs Update No.75 and read the new 'Jobs Advice' section,
visit <http://www.freepint.com/go/b28999>. To subscribe, modify your
account at <http://web.freepint.com>.
Here are some of the latest featured jobs:
Researcher
Excellent opportunity with Consultancy for recent Library/Information
graduate who is confident, professional and proactive.
Recruiter: Glen Recruitment
<http://www.freepint.com/go/j3320>
Records Management Analyst
We have an urgent requirement for an experienced Records Management
professional to cover maternity leave.
Recruiter: GlaxoSmithKline, Global HQ Brentford, West London
<http://www.freepint.com/go/j3324>
Information Officer
Two roles suitable for recent information graduates keen to develop
careers in financial information research. Good salaries.
Recruiter: Sue Hill Recruitment
<http://www.freepint.com/go/j3325>
NB: There are 42 other jobs in the current edition of the Jobs Update
<http://www.freepint.com/go/b28999>.
[The above jobs are paid listings]
FreePint Jobs -- the best place for information vacancies.
* VACANCY SEARCHING -- Free search and sign up to the Job Update.
* VACANCY RECRUITING -- Complete the form and advertise a vacancy
for GBP195 <http://www.freepint.com/jobs/submit/overview.php3>.
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Find out more today at <http://www.freepint.com/jobs>
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>>> Latest reports and training from FreePint <<<
> "Marketing for the Info-Entrepreneur: Top Techniques to
Build Your Business" ISBN 1-904769-05-5.
> "Sharpening Skills; Acquiring Knowledge" ISBN 1-904769-04-7.
> More: Freedom of information, data protection and copyright.
<http://www.freepint.com/shop/report/>
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TIPS ARTICLE
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/010704.htm#tips>
"Trends in Business Information Provision and Use"
By Pam Foster
VIP and VIP Eye were launched just over six months ago at
<http://www.vivavip.com>. Aimed at business information researchers,
the monthly VIP provides in-depth reviews of major products, while the
fortnightly VIP Eye provides news and analysis of products, publishers
and vendors. An analysis of their content so far reveals the emergence
of some interesting trends.
Blogs are being recognised as important sources of information
--------------------------------------------------------------
Although highly personalized, the best blogs offer valuable opinion,
comment and news, and companies are becoming aware that they often
contain important and usable intelligence. Items under discussion on a
blog or chatroom can impact on corporate reputation - what are
people saying about them and their products? What are their
competitors doing? Some of the major vendors are looking at ways to
harness this unstructured data and integrate it into the content they
offer to their users. Factiva has teamed up with IBM to co-develop
text analytics solutions built on the IBM WebFountain platform. IBM's
WebFountain is a Web-scale mining and discovery platform that extracts
trends, patterns and relationships from unstructured and semi-
structured text, including internet data, blogs, bulletin boards,
licensed content, newspapers and trade journals. Factiva's first
application on the WebFountain platform tracks corporate reputation,
by analyzing information from a collection of Factiva sources, web
pages, blogs, newsgroups and special interest web sites. The resulting
customized analysis displays emerging trends and patterns, competitor
activity, 'buzz' about products, relationships with customers and much
more. A review of Factiva and its new corporate reputation tool will
be published in VIP later this year.
New interfaces are being influenced by Google
---------------------------------------------
The 'Google factor' is never far away and it is influencing product
development, as users demand simple interfaces that allow them to
search in a familiar way. Factiva's latest interface, iWorker Search
Technology, offers novice and occasional searchers simple text-based
searching, and has the look and feel of a traditional search engine.
Key word searches are matched to the filtering capability embedded
within Factiva's proprietary taxonomy, to retrieve relevant results.
The new platform will form part of the September issue of VIP, which
will include a comparative review of Factiva and LexisNexis, followed
in October by a review of Dialog NewsRoom. The October issue will also
chart the content and functionality of all three products, enabling
readers to make instant comparisons.
Dialog has also been busy developing a new interface, in response to
demands from its users. Its new integrated platform for Profound and
NewsRoom caters for occasional users, as well as professional
searchers. It provides access to related content sets, via a single
password and a single search. It also utilises SmartTerms, Dialog's
new proprietary taxonomy. We gave the new interface an in-depth review
in the March issue of VIP. In the same issue, we also investigated the
indexing strategies of Dialog, Factiva and LexisNexis, by comparing
Dialog SmartTerms, Factiva Indexing and LexisNexis SmartIndexing. We
looked at the features of each and how the three services indexed a
given subject.
Adding value and responding to market changes
---------------------------------------------
Information providers can be quick to respond to changes in the market
that affect their clients. New money laundering regulations came into
effect in the UK in March this year, whereby all legal, financial and
other businesses need to implement a 'Know Your Client' check for
every customer. In response to client demand, OneSource has created
the OneSource Synergy Solution for Anti Money Laundering, an automated
product that offers the required Know Your Client content to the legal
and financial sectors. It is this adaptability and willingness to
provide added value that ensures companies like OneSource will
survive. Further details of the OneSource Synergy Solution for Anti
Money Laundering are available in VIP Eye. Additionally, an in-depth
item on money laundering, authored by OneSource, will be published in
the August issue of VIP. Other OneSource items published in VIP so far
include, 'Addressing the problems of data quality issues', by Andrew
Hughes, OneSource's VP of Content for Europe (VIP May 2004), and 'CEO
Insight', an article by Marty Kahn, interim CEO, OneSource, who shares
his insights on issues facing the business information sector. (VIP
March 2004).
Social networking theory is being transformed into a commercial
---------------------------------------------------------------
concept
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Social networking applications are turning who you know into a
commercial concept. Social network analysis creates social maps that
show how people are connected and assesses the strengths of social
connections. Information companies are beginning to integrate 'people
data' into their product development. Alacra is developing Alacra
Corporate Connections which is aimed at helping sales and marketing
people develop useful relationships with individuals at other
companies. Another new product, HighBeam Executives, provides access
to information on more than 20 million business executives, managers
and employees from more than one million organizations (public and
private companies and non-profit organizations). The database of
profiles of business executives was created by Eliyon, one of the best
known of the social networking companies. Eliyon's technology
continuously crawls millions of web sites, press releases, electronic
news sources, SEC filings and other online sources, and uses natural-
language processing to create individual profiles. An in-depth look at
social networking theory and applications, together with detailed
profiles of the major players, is available in the item 'Social
networks - mining the web for competitive advantage' in VIP,
January 2004.
Large vendors are transforming themselves into wholly electronic
----------------------------------------------------------------
publishers
----------
Many of the large vendors are either selling or outsourcing their
remaining print businesses and transforming themselves into wholly
electronic publishers. D&B has entered into an agreement with AP
Information Services to print and distribute its hard copy
directories, such as Who Owns Whom, Key British Enterprises and D&B
Business Registers. The move is part of D&B's Blueprint for Growth
strategy which aims to generate more revenue from the Web. In line
with its strategy of providing web access to its reference databases,
D&B has so far launched e-KBE, e-WOW, MarketEurope, D&B Market Insight
and MarketDirect on the web. D&B is also just about to launch its
Global Reference Service, which provides data on 85 million companies,
including corporate linkage information. Reviews of MarketDirect and
the Global Reference Service will be published in the August issue of
VIP.
Thomson has also taken another step in transforming itself into a
wholly electronic publisher by putting its Media group up for sale.
The group publishes 54 titles that focus on the banking, financial
services and related technology markets. They include familiar titles
such as American Banker and Bond Buyer. Both the Thomson and D&B news
is covered in more depth in VIP Eye.
Not much consolidation but still some surprises
-----------------------------------------------
The period of large scale consolidation in the sector is over but
there is still some activity. One of the more surprising moves was the
purchase of Mergent, one of the US's oldest information companies, to
Xinhau Finance, a Chinese media company. Mergent's history dates back
to 1900 when it was part of Moody's. Over the years it has became a
major provider of business and financial data on publicly traded
equity and debt. Xinhau is rapidly increasing in size, having acquired
Market News International and AFX Asia earlier in the year.
OneSource also surprised the market by rejecting a merger agreement
with ValueAct and agreeing, instead, to be acquired by a wholly owned
subsidiary of infoUSA. The latter is a better strategic fit for
OneSource. More information on these acquisitions is available in VIP
Eye.
New products and product enhancements
-------------------------------------
Plenty of new products still continue to be launched, proving that the
sector hasn't reached saturation point just yet. Some have already
been mentioned in the context of other industry activity. One of the
more important of the recently-launched new products is WorldData, from
the Economist Intelligence Unit: it provides near-time economic,
market data and forecasts on 150 countries, 45 regions and more than
120,000 series. A review of WorldData is published in the April 2004
issue of VIP. Economic database products is an area that VIP
subscribers told us they'd like to see investigated, so as well as
looking at WorldData, we obliged by also reviewing Advanced Country
Analysis and Forecast (VIP April 2004), and Global Insight and
Datastream (VIP May 2004).
VIP and VIP Eye also cover products which have undergone major
enhancements. One product that has recently added a large amount of
new content is Hemscott Company Guru, which is an online company and
director research tool for business professionals. At the end of 2002,
Hemscott purchased the Directory of Directors from Reed Business
information which lists details of directors of both public and
private companies in the UK. Hemscott has subsequently launched a new
electronic Directory of Directors module within Company Guru. The
January 2004 issue of VIP includes a detailed review of Hemscott
Company Guru.
Further information on VIP and VIP Eye is available at
<http://www.vivavip.com>. The site also provides free samples of
both products. For further information please contact the editor Pam
Foster at <pam.foster@vivavip.com>.
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Pam Foster is a freelance information professional and has been
actively involved in the business information industry as a writer and
reviewer for nearly 20 years. She previously played a major role in
Headland Business Information since its inception, as editor of its
newsletters and directories. More recently, she has acted as a
consultant to several large information companies. In December 2003,
she became editor of FreePint's subscription-based products, VIP and
VIP Eye.
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Related FreePint links:
* 'Information and Libraries' articles and resources in the FreePint
Portal <http://www.freepint.com/go/p69>
* Post a message to the author, Pam Foster, or suggest further
resources at the FreePint Bar <http://www.freepint.com/bar>
* Read this article online, with activated hyperlinks
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/010704.htm#feature>
* Access the entire archive of FreePint content
<http://www.freepint.com/portal/content/>
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>>> VIP Wire - Business information press announcements <<<
Keep abreast of the latest business-information news free at the
VIP Wire. Post your press releases for significant free coverage:
<http://www.vivavip.com/>
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FREEPINT BOOKSHELF
<http://www.freepint.com/bookshelf>
"Information Architecture: Designing Information
Environments for Purpose"
By Alan Gilchrist and Barry Mahon
Reviewed by Susan Bradley
This book boasts an impressive list of editors and contributors with
the likes of Peter Morville, who was possibly one of the earliest
advocates of the concept of "information architecture", Alan
Gilchrist and Barry Mahon, both associate consultants with TFPL Ltd.
It also includes contributions from individuals working in government
departments and leading commercial organisations. The contributors
bring a wealth of real-life experience to he book and both successes
and failures of projects are described.
The book begins with an introduction and also a helpful reading guide.
The guide suggests that you can dip into the appropriate section
without having to read the book from start to finish and I can testify
(having tried it) that this is certainly the case -- though I did first
read the introduction and the majority of part 1 before venturing
further.
The book is divided into four sections: the design environment;
software environments; managing metadata; and the user interface. Each
part is preceded by a preface, which introduces the theme and main
concepts of the following chapters. Quite a few chapters provide
references and there is a fairly comprehensive index allowing you to
quickly hone in on your area of interest. Theory and practice are
covered, from the use of XML and taxonomies through to how you
should/could specify and procure software.
One of the highlights of this book for me was the inclusion of case
studies. These down-to-earth accounts of projects and their objectives
highlight how constraints such as time-scales or budgets can affect
the success or failure of the projects and how they can determine the
need for a practical rather than ideal solution. The book also
includes useful checklists, examples of the steps that need to be
followed, lessons learnt and dos or don'ts.
The text throughout was easy to read and although dense and technical
in places (without the relief of a figure or list) generally written
in a jargon-free language. A couple of small criticisms on a printing
note: for some reason in a number of figures, the number 4 was always
below the line and some screen dumps were rather pale and consequently
more difficult to read.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain a greater
understanding of how to design an information environment so that it
is fit for purpose and I will certainly find it a useful guide for the
various projects in which I can foresee my involvement.
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Susan Bradley gained experience in a variety of information/database
related roles with Rapra Technology Ltd before moving to the world of
management consulting with A.T. Kearney, where the world of knowledge
management became the focus of her role. Now Information Officer of
Universities UK (the umbrella group for the executive heads of all the
UK universities), her responsibilities include developing an
Information Centre, developing a records management policy and system,
redeveloping an Intranet and integrating a myriad of information
resources, developing a taxonomy and maintaining specialised in-house
databases such as an expertise database. Susan can be contacted via
the FreePint Bar <http://www.freepint.com/bar>.
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FEATURE ARTICLE
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/010704.htm#feature>
"GIS Enabling the Internet"
By Chris Kutler
Imagine you are a researching a family history and are looking for web
pages relating to the surname 'Martin' and the placename 'Kingston' in
'Devon' (UK). A Google search with this common English surname and
relatively common English placename with a wide geographic
distribution, will currently generate a list of 58,900 links. However,
many of these results will be irrelevant partly because the "Kingston"
keyword isn't interpreted in a geographic context - you find you have
lots of links to other Kingstons, including people with the name
'Kingston', many, many kilometres away from Devon. Even if you refine
the search with something like "martin family kingston devon -hull
-surrey", things don't get much better - you still have more than 9,000
sites to sift through and again many of these won't actually relate to
Kingston, Devon. Further, in order to build up the family tree, you
are likely to want to look for the surname in places near to Kingston,
Devon. This would require a knowledge of the names of these places and
then repeating the original search with these different placenames.
This is going to make the research more laborious because you will
need to find out the names of these nearby places and then have to
sift through even more irrelevant results lists.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
------------------------------------
But what if you were able to tell the search engine to perform a
query in a geographic context? What if you could tell the search
engine to limit your 'Martin' search to this keyword but only report
back if the result is relevant to say within 10 or so KM of Kingston,
Devon? Surely, this would make things easier?
This is the basis of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which use
positional information such as geographic co-ordinates as search
criteria in addition to keywords. We are seeing more of them on the
internet, but they have weaknesses because information within them is
usually selected by the GIS providers who often make value judgements
about what constitutes the best or most relevant information. This
could mean that the web pages created by, say, amateur historians
about Kingston, Devon, may be under-represented, or not make it into
the system at all. This may be because the editor collecting the
content for the GIS system hasn't come across these pages in the
course of their collation exercise; or the amateur's pages haven't
been deemed the best in local community information; yet these may be
the most relevant pages to our original search. This situation seems
even more frustrating if you consider the huge amount of relevant and
well-researched "Community Information" published on the web by
individuals and smaller interest groups which is often overlooked when
the person doing the research is swamped with irrelevant hits.
Geographically Indexed Community Web Pages
------------------------------------------
So how can web pages created with a geographic context be made more
visible to internet users? How can these usually unpaid but
enthusiastic and highly motivated internet "content generators"
mentioned above increase the profile of their work?
First, one has to assume that the major web search engines such as
Google will develop their search software to account for geographic
information and that the web page indexing programs, called spiders or
robots, are able to index web sites in a geographic context. The web
page creator then has two main options: They may be able to register
the site with the search engine and when they do, also include a
"geographic stamp" for the web site such as a co-ordinate;
Alternatively, they could embed this stamp within the pages' HTML in a
standard place where the search engine spiders/robots have been
programmed to look for co-ordinates.
Web Page Registration with GIS-Enabled Search Engine
----------------------------------------------------
To illustrate the principle of the first option, a basic working model
search engine submission form has been created, and readers are
encouraged to submit their own sites or sites they find useful. The
search engine's "Go Geo" form can be at <http://www.gogeo.net>. Any
website address added to the "Archaeology" subject form will also be
included in the hit list output from a search of Archaeology UK's
ARCHI (Archaeological Sites Index) database at
<http://www.digital-documents.co.uk/archi/archi.htm>.
Here's how the model works. When you go to the site, you simply enter
the address (URL) of the website you want to add to the search engine,
together with a placename or a co-ordinate in the British Ordnance
Survey Grid Reference format (OS). The placename or co-ordinate is the
georeference for the webpage and stamps the web page with a geographic
identity. Note that the system can covert a placename into a
co-ordinate, so you don't always have to know a place's grid
reference in order to submit a web page.
When a web user searches the internet they would simply enter the
keywords plus a geographic reference such as a placename or OS
co-ordinate together with a distance value, say 10 km. This distance
value tells the search engine to only return results from web sites
which have a geographic stamp within that distance from the placename
of interest (e.g. Kingston, Devon). This is going to have the obvious
benefit of excluding all Kingston places outside of Devon and all
sites relating to Devon which have the word Kingston in them but not
within 10km of the place Kingston.
However, in addition, websites within the 10km radius which don't
contain the Kingston placename will also be included as long as the
web site has been submitted to the search engine in a geographically
enabled way. This overcomes one of the problems mentioned at the start
of this article - the need to know the names of nearby places in order
to find possibly relevant web pages.
GIS-Enabled Web Pages
---------------------
A problem with the need to register web pages with the various search
engines is that it takes time and there might be hundreds of different
search engines to which you want to submit your site. It might be
easier to type the geographic locational information (i.e.
co-ordinate) directly into web pages' HTML. This sounds difficult, but
the technicalities may be much easier than one might think. Again, we
have to assume that the major search engines' spiders have been
programmed to look for a page's georeference when they index the web
page. They already look for keyword information in a page's <meta>
tags anyway, so this might make an appropriate starting point, e.g.
<meta name="Keywords" Content=" martin,family,history, kingston,devon,
SX 63 47>.
There are problems with the above in that there isn't anything to
tell the spider/robot that the co-ordinate (SX 63 47) is associated
with the Ordnance Survey British National Grid Referencing System, but
the format of the "keyword", i.e. two upper case characters followed
by two sets of 2 to 6 digits which may or may not be separated by a
space, makes it likely. How can we find out if a search engine spider
looks for these coordinates?
XHTML encoding of Dublin Core metadata
--------------------------------------
When talking about web pages, the Dublin Core Metadata tags provide a
simple and standard framework which allow web page creators to insert
general information about the information on the page directly into
the HTML of the page. For example, there are tags for 'publisher',
'language', 'subject', and for our purposes 'coverage', which can be
used to specify the geographic location to which the information on
the web pages relates. If standards like this are used, it is going to
be much simpler to program the robots mentioned earlier to find their
way to the geographic stamp in a web page. Basically, this just means
adding a couple of extra tags to the HTML from the Dublin Core set of
tags. Adding the particular Dublin Core tag, called "coverage", is
very straightforward and the process shouldn't be allowed to frighten
or intimidate anyone. For an example of how one might encode a web
page in this way, click the "geocodes" link at <http://www.gogeo.net>.
Conclusions
-----------
With the number of internet sites ever expanding, adding geographical
relevance to a search provides an obvious benefit to many researchers.
It provides speed and accuracy to what is often a long-winded and
frustrating experience for those interested in genealogy, local
history, archaeology and potentially many other fields.
Links
-----
Understanding the British National Grid Referencing System
<http://digbig.com/4bhps>
Dublin Core
<http://dublincore.org/>
<http://digbig.com/4bhpt>
GIS-Enabled Search Engines
<http://local.google.com/lochp>
<http://local.google.com/help/faq_local.html>
GIS-Enabled Web Sites
<http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/>
<http://www.digital-documents.co.uk>
<http://www.ahds.ac.uk/archaeology/index.htm>
GIS Discussions
<http://www.vivavip.com/go/w165>
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Chris Kutler's time is spent between maintaining and developing the
Archaeology UK website <http://www.archaeology-uk.com> and working as
a Perl/XML developer at the National Archives, Kew, UK. He has an
honours degree in Applied Biological Sciences and a Masters degree in
Applied Computing Technology. He has also studied Field Archaeology at
Birkbeck College, London.
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