tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15893824.post114762297623698962..comments2024-03-22T10:46:55.863+00:00Comments on Paul Trafford's blog: A Research Genealogy Project? (2)Paul Traffordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06180404719893389714noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15893824.post-1148591927550800792006-05-25T22:18:00.000+01:002006-05-25T22:18:00.000+01:00Hello Thurston, Thanks for leaving your comments. ...Hello Thurston, <BR/><BR/>Thanks for leaving your comments. It's nice to hear how your project was sparked though, as you have experienced, any kind of 'family' genealogy project soon becomes quite a commitment if the number of maintainers doesn't grow in line with the number of people in the genealogy. It then becomes very much a task for dedicated enthusiasts only!<BR/><BR/>Your idea of a wiki certainly addresses the problem of scalability, distributing the workload and allowing the project to grow organically. It's got a good chance of coverage now that the majority of academics are online, but who can edit whose entry? It's difficult to assure the accuracy without some form of identity management. Such issues have been quite exposed in Wikipedia, though I'm actually very fond of this encyclopaedia and carry a snapshot with me on a PDA.<BR/><BR/>I'm lucky in that I get to chat to some tech-savvy people at work (often on Friday lunchtimes, when fish and chips is a popular British menu item!), one of them being Stuart Yeates of OSS-Watch. He suggests (being rather blunt about the scalability issue) <A HREF="http://connect.educause.edu/blog/stuartyeates/the_mathematics_genealogy_project_slows_to_a_crawl/2338" REL="nofollow">RDF/FOAF as a solution</A>, which very much puts individuals in control of their own records, though how does one fill in the gaps? <BR/>Of course, maintaining one's own record won't be sufficient as it only covers people alive today. I also think that there are certain structures that need to be designed in to allow us to answer certain questions. <BR/><BR/>This project could be a real test of the 'semantic web' :-)Paul Traffordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06180404719893389714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15893824.post-1148503627188729782006-05-24T21:47:00.000+01:002006-05-24T21:47:00.000+01:00Paul,I am the person that created the academic gen...Paul,<BR/><BR/>I am the person that created the academic genealogies at the University of Notre Dame. My inspiration was visiting the chemistry dept at the Michigan Statue Univ. They put the academic genealogy of the dept on the wall of the main lobby of the bldg.<BR/><BR/>The project of creating an academic genealogy at first seems rather easy and straight-forward. But the more I have grown it the more difficulties I encounter - adding updates, verifying information, site maintenance, and personally, a lack of computer experience. I am begining to think that a wiki might be the way to distribute/centralize the work.<BR/><BR/>You might be interested to know about the Chemistry academic genealogy at Univ. Illinois (http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/Web_Genealogy/). Vera Mainz, the creator, tries to include who was influenced by whom in addition to the advisor plus a little bio for each person.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com