SIMILE demo storyboard feedback

Here are some comments on the Demonstrator Storyboard, which I had a
chance to review more thoroughly.  These comments refer to version 2.

First, I agree with MacKenzie that the Venn diagrams need more work.  In
particular, the first one is confusing. There is no overlap between
"images of artifacts designed by FLW" and "courses about FLW".  Even if
you use "images of artifacts..." and "materials from courses..." there is
no real overlap, unless each community has the exact same image cataloged.

I think instead what needs to be conveyed is that there are two disjoint
sets of information, those cataloged in VRA-Core and those cataloged in
IMS, but that the information need spans both.  I've made a mockup of what
I have in mind http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/matsakis/simile-venn.png

I think the second Venn diagram is also a little bit incorrect.  There are
no elements that are both VRA-Core elements and IMS elements.  Rather,
there are elements that are "expressible in VRA-Core" and "Expressible in
IMS".  A subtle distinction, but probably worth making. It is the overlap
between these two sets that is represented by the vocabulary mappings.

In the section on vocabulary mapping, I think it is perhaps sweeping some
things under the rug to say that in the free text search the system will
"know that 'Wright, Frank L.' is equivalent to 'Frank Lloyd Wright'".
Making this mapping can be viewed as part of the demo.  For the templated
search, I'm not sure I understand why the IMS records would not be
returned.  Is it that the lifecycle.contribute.author will be the
photographer, rather than FLW, or that there is not
lifecycle.contribute.author field in those records?

Nick Matsakis

Received on Wednesday, 29 October 2003 16:25:53 UTC