Less is More! Re: Reader-Designated HyperLinking In/Between/Among E-Journals

[Eric Hellman]

Gerry,

Permit me to make a devil's advocate comment on your endeavors, which 
I find really interesting and worthwhile.

There are two things that e-journals can do with technology. They can 
make publishing cheaper, or they can add functions. I would argue 
that the best way to add function is to do one function very 
efficiently, and through open standards allow other generic 
technologies and organizations to layer on added functionality.

Thus, because free-to-read, pay-to-publish journals such as MRS 
Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research 
(http://nsr.mij.mrs.org/)  put little or no effort into things like 
annotation or self-organization, they can be freely available for 
annotation at sites such as thirdvoice (http://www.thirdvoice.com), 
and re-organized at bookmark sites like backflip 
(http://www.backflip.com).

Similarly, I would argue that for a scientist, exposing an e-journal 
to google (etc.) indexing adds more value at lower cost to an 
e-journal than almost ANY of the innovative functions that you've 
been cataloguing. It would be interesting to compile robot.txt files 
from e-journals.

Less is More!

Eric




>                    _Reader-Designated HyperLinking_
>
>    In the process of reading/re-reading Web sites describing Ted Nelson's
>Project Xanadu  , e.g.,
>
>Professorial Home Page of Ted Nelson
>[http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/ ]
>
>Project Xanadu  [  http://www.xanadu.net/ ]
>
>Ted Nelson and Xanadu
>[  http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0155.html  ]
>
>
>   I was struck by a description of the 'Parallel Textface' component of
>Project Xanadu  in a Web essay entitled "The World Wide Web: The Beginning
>and Now" prepared by  Matt Kazmierski
>[ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mattkaz/history/hypertext2.html ].
>
>In his brief overview, Kazmierski noted that the 'Parallel Textface' was
>
>"unique because it _allowed a *user* to create links between documents_ even
>if they were *not* related [emphasis added].
>
>In considering this statement, it occurred to be that if would be quite
>beneficial for a reader of an e-article to have the ability to create
>*personalized* links between segments of an article, and/or to do the same
>across articles in the same journal and/or provided by the same publisher,
>and/or to e-journal provided by *other* publishers.
>
>[In a way, this would be a very advanced form of an e-journal Annotation
>feature within what I call  the 'Eclectic Journal'
>
>[ http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/0101/0131.html ]]
>
>One could imagine a functionality that would allow a user to mark a section
>of text in one e-article then to do the same in another e-article and then
>to automatically create a link between the two segments by an appropriate
>right-hand mouse selection and click and/or appropriate keyboard command
>[Ctrl-L [:->]
>
>[One could also imagine hyperlinking text to one (or more) multimedia
>objects (e.g., a QuickTime movie))
>
>   I'd be interested in learning if such 'Reader-Designated HyperLinking'
>exists
>in some form or other, particularly in any existing e-journal or one
>currently being designed or revamped. I would also be interested in learning
>about any literature or technology relevant to the concept of
>'reader-designated hyperlinking'.
>
>   As Always, Any and All contributions, suggestions, critiques, compliments,
>complaints, queries, Cosmic Insights, etc. are Most Welcome!
>
>   Regards,
>
>/Gerry McKiernan
>HyperLinked Librarian
>Iowa State University
>Ames IA 50011
>
>gerrymck at iastate.edu
>
>       Don't Confuse Ability with Opportunity nor Opportunity with Ability.
>
>BTW: Ted Nelson is credited with coining the word 'hypertext'
>and Xanadu is considered by some as an inspiration for the World Wide Web,
>e.g.,
>
>[ http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~weberwu/ds/TedNelson.html]
>[ http://www.callnetuk.com/home/billkennelly/who.htm ] ]
>[ http://www.scope.at/program/speakers/nelson.html]

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           21st Century Information Infrastructure
LinkBaton: Your Links that Learn     http://my.linkbaton.com/