Workshop on collaborative features for ResearchSpace system for cultural heritage research

1. Collaborative Features
Barry Norton
February 2015

2. Schedule
• In previous workshops:
– Dominic has presented a project overview
– Barry has given a technical overview of search
features
– Alan has provided some intuition of what search
between concepts means
• In this presentation we will cover some of the early
features for collaboration
• In future workshops we will cover:
– Data Annotation (March)
– Image Annotation
– Forum & Workflow (advanced collaborative features)

3. Project Update
• Previously we introduced:
– Sarah Mengler (RA)
– Alan Outten (UI/UX)
• We are now joined by:
– Chris Dijkshoorn (Placement from VUA)
• Next week we hope to be joined by:
– Daniela Butano (Lead Developer)
• As suppliers we are about to start our second
contract with metaphacts:
– Peter Haase (Architect)
– Artem Kozlov (Developer)

4. Background:
Information Workbench
• Wiki, like Wikipedia (Media Wiki) allows:
– pages to be written in simple ‘mark-down’
– collaborative editing
• Plus visualisation and interaction via ‘widgets’:

5. Background:
Rijkstudio Sets
• User-defined collections
• Focussed on images/image regions
• Sharable:

6. Background:
Spotify Playlists
• User-defined lists of tracks
• Can be shared, often used for collaboration and
(it’s not a stretch to say) back up articles:

7. Intuition
• In Spotify playlists are just lists of tracks
(ignoring even albums)
– If one were researching and communicating about
music, one would want to collect and share:
• tracks, albums, artists, labels, etc.
• In Rijkstudio sets are just images or image
regions
– If one were researching and communicating about
cultural heritage, one would want to collect and share:
• people, places, events, materials, techniques, etc.

8. RS Search and Sets
• The new UI design for search, informed by
the last workshop, produced by Alan and
narrated by Dominic are now available:
http://www.researchspace.org/home/project-information/design
http://youtu.be/VUGMlDc9B5w

9. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• In last workshop we gave intuition how one
search (e.g. for objects) can be used to start a
new search (e.g. for people):

10. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• In last workshop we gave intuition how one
search (e.g. for objects) can be used to start a
new search (e.g. for people):

11. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• However, we actually plan to offer four options in
choosing search terms:
Arbitrary object by
autocomplete

12. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• However, we actually plan to offer four options in
choosing search terms:
Arbitrary object by
autocomplete
Existing search
yielding objects

13. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• However, we actually plan to offer four options in
choosing search terms:
Arbitrary object by
autocomplete
Objects already
visited and copied
to clipboard
Existing search
yielding objects

14. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• However, we actually plan to offer four options in
choosing search terms:
Arbitrary object by
autocomplete
Objects already
visited and copied
to clipboard
{User-defined
sets/collections of
objects
Existing search
yielding objects

15. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• Furthermore, we plan to allow users to build up
sets/collections from search results:

16. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• Furthermore, we plan to allow users to build up
sets/collections from search results:
Copy individual
result to clipboard

17. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• Furthermore, we plan to allow users to build up
sets/collections from search results:
Copy individual
result to clipboard
Create new
set/collection with
individual result as
first member

18. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• Furthermore, we plan to allow users to build up
sets/collections from search results:
Copy individual
result to clipboard
Create new
set/collection with
individual result as
first member
Add individual
result to existing
set/collection

19. RS Search and Sets (cntd.)
• Furthermore, we plan to allow users to build up
sets/collections from search results:
Copy individual
result to clipboard
Create new
set/collection with
individual result as
first member
Add individual
result to existing
set/collection
Create new
set/collection with
all results

20. Motivation
• I have from Richard Parkinson and Malcolm
Mosher respective manuscripts that list
objects:
– in an endnote to the manuscript source (i.e. not
published)
– distributed across footnotes
• Potential advances:
– manage these collections during research;
– aid collaborative research;
– ease publication of linked (reproducable) results.
More later, but first some questions…

21. Questions
• We’ve used both the terms
– ‘set’ –
• consistent with Rijkstudio,
• (for better and worse) mathematically valid;
– ‘collection’ –
• possibly more intuitive,
• potentially ambiguous wrt museum collections;
• less intuitive for sets of, e.g., events.
• Perhaps ‘user-defined collection’?
Alternatives?

22. Questions (cntd.)
• There’s a subtle difference between:
– saved search definition –
• re-runs search, perhaps as part of a larger search;
– saved search results –
• never change (even if subject data does),
• can be manipulated (explicitly add or remove
members).
• Is this too confusing? Useful?

23. Questions (cntd.)
• One can imagine (as a technologist)
making sets more structured
– e.g. hierarchical:
• define a set of Naukratis objects,
• define a subset of BM Naukratis objects,
• define a different subset of religiously-themed
Naukratis objects.
• Is this over-complicated? Would users be
happy with such sets without formal
relationships between them?

24. Clipboard vs. Sets vs. Pages
• Sets (/Collections) are deliberately defined as
homogenous
– e.g. an object set can only have objects added
• Sometimes one might want to keep track of a
collection of entities
– e.g. a set of places, and the objects found there,
and their original owners
• The clipboard will be a heterogenous
assembly of copied entities (i.e. not just one
entry – cf. Microsoft Office)
We’ll come back to this in next workshop on Data Annotation….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipboard_manager

25. Clipboard vs. Pages
• We had considered ‘shared clipboards’
• The Information Workbench platform
however motivates different approach:
– The platform will provide a page per object,
person, place, event, etc.
– Search results (later forum posts, textual
annotations), etc. themselves become pages
– As a Wiki, it’s natural that users can make new
pages

26. User-Defined Pages
• User-defined pages:
– allow simple authoring of text in ‘mark-down’;
– could be aided further with a WYSWYG editor
(with buttons for formatting, rather than mark-
down);
– would be a target for pasting from clipboard
(objects, places, etc. also image/regions and
later beliefs and arguments);
– naturally become a target for clipboard
copying.

27. User-Defined Pages
• Although speculative we could even view
pages as collaborative ‘proto-publications’:
– attach argument and belief (see next
workshop) into larger discussions;
– typed links (so, instead of just pasting you
specify whether this supports your narrative,
whether you’re contradicting it, etc.);
– draft sections of papers;
– tie together and automate article publication
with data publication.