Checking out my recent postings both here and on my personal travelogue blog It Occurs, you may have noticed I’ve been in Australia for the last couple of weeks.

The main reason I was  there, and the highlight of the trip was the National Library of Australia’s Innovative Ideas Forum, held a the National Library in Canberra on Thursday last.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it, when I saw the published program.  The organisers describe it as an eclectic mix, and they are not wrong.  Nevertheless it is a mix that works, and works well.

In town, in fact in library, at the same time was the IIPC with their General Assembly Meeting and a series of workshops where those that are interested in archiving and preserving the content of the Internet, were getting their head around the issues both technical and co-operational in this sphere.

As you can imagine the folks from the Internet Archive play a major role in the IIPC and were well represented.  The Innovative Ideas Forum organisers took advantage of this, and Kris Carpenter Negulescu provided a fascinating  presentation [ppt] in the morning, and her colleague Gordon Mohr closed the day with his thoughts on the future of archiving the web [ppt].

Archiving was only one theme for the day, the other, kicked off by myself [pdf] was the coming of the Semantic Web.  My message of Web 2.0 being a stop on the journey that the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0, will build upon, was well received. 

During the afternoon Stewart Wallace gave us a view of the issues around building the Dictionary of Sydney.  This historical site, going live very soon, which captures the history and connections between people, places and artifacts associated with Sydney and the area around it.  This throws up many issues, such as how you track the different uses a site has had of the years, what buildings have been on that site, and who the architects and benefactors have been.  Stewart confided in me at lunchtime that he was very pleased that I had introduced the Semantic Web before his presentation, making his job easier.  You can see why,  when you analyse their problem of associating, what the terms factoids, with artifacts. 

A factoid being of two types: Intransitive - Francis Greenway Architect – 1814-1828; and Transitive - Francis Greenway ArchitectOf – Hyde Park Barracks – 1817-1819.  The second, transitive factoid being the difficult one to represent as Francis Greenway was only ArchitecOf Hyde Park Barracks in the period between 1817-1819, he was ArchitecOf other places at other times, and the Barracks could have had other architects.  His concept of factoids is one that maps well with the ones espoused in the Semantic Web - I like the word as well.

Other presentations, including some great overviews of what the NLA itself is up to, made for a great day which was well appreciated by the 300 folks that attended.

Share This