Exploring the Emerging Intellectual Structure of Archival Studies Using Text Mining: 2001-2004    

Archival science, like other disciplines, is evolving into more specific interdisciplinary subfields. To determine this intellectual structure of archival science, the text mining method was used. The data were 432 articles from 2001 to 2004, and we produced 43 clusters of documents using the within-group average method in SPSS. Then we generated pathfinder networks of 43 clusters and grouped them into seven subject categories: digital libraries and digital archiving technologies, online resources and finding aids, archives and archivists, legal and political issues, electronic records and technical issues, records and information management, and e-mail and information professionals. Finally, these seven subject categories were merged into three sectors: digital library, archives and RIM (Business). This study describes dynamic change in the 2001—4 research themes from traditional single-subject areas to emerging, complex subject areas. These results also show that research areas in archival sciences have much growth potential and will continue to expand.

Lee, Jae Yun. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Web Design

Linking DITA Topics Through Relationship Tables

DITA provides a powerful means of linking using relationship tables. The benefit of using a relationship table is the ability to create and maintain links in one place with the map rather than in the topics. Links can be created both between topics of the same information type and between topics of different information types that are not directly related through parent/child relationships. Therefore, the best practice for linking in DITA is to use a relationship table within a map.

Bruski, Kylene. Center for Information-Development Management (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

Specializing Topic Types in DITA

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) provides a way for documentation authors and architects to create collections of typed topics that can be easily assembled into various delivery contexts. Topic specialization is the process by which authors and architects can define topic types, while maintaining compatibility with existing style sheets, transforms, and processes. The new topic types are defined as an extension, or delta, relative to an existing topic type, thereby reducing the work necessary to define and maintain the new type.

Priestley, Michael. IBM (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 1: Simple Steps to Move from HTML to DITA

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has emerged as a standard topic-oriented document architecture. DITA holds many advantages over information authored directly in HTML, including better reuse, easily changed presentation styles, and easy single sourcing. This article, the first of two parts, explains how to get a quick start with DITA using HTML topics that are already available. It shows you how to use the provided XSLT transform to do the migration, and examines what is needed to ensure quality results.

Anderson, Robert, Don Day and Erik Hennum. IBM (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

Why Use DITA to Produce HTML Deliverables?

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based format for structuring and authoring technical content. This article explores advantages DITA provides for producing HTML content -- including easy global changes, portability through standards, superior linking and Web management, conditional processing, content and design reuse, and better writing through focused content. DITA consolidates all of the benefits in a consistent, overall information architecture that can evolve and grow along with your product information needs and delivery modes, and with the evolution of standard tools for delivering XML as the presentation mechanism.

Hunt, John, Don Day, Erik Hennum, Michael Priestley and Dave Schell. IBM (2005). Articles>Information Design>HTML>DITA

Migrating HTML to DITA, Part 2: Extend the Migration for More Robust Results

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) holds many advantages over information authored directly in HTML, including better reuse, easily changed presentation styles, and easy single sourcing. In Part 2 of this two-part series on how to quickly migrate HTML topics to DITA, the author explains the details of migration, and shows you how to override parts of this process for ideal results.

Anderson, Robert. IBM (2005). Articles>Information Design>HTML>DITA

The RDF.net Challenge

Some general notes on RDF, its history and prospects, and a Grand Challenge to the RDF community.

Bray, Tim. Aaron Swartz Weblog (2008). Articles>Information Design>XML>RSS

STC Body of Knowledge Site Map (draft)

A draft site map to attempt to represent the field(s) of technical communication within a hierarchical tree diagram.

STC (2008). Articles>TC>Information Design>Body of Knowledge

Using Definition Lists: Question and Answer Formatting

There are two big differences between unordered lists and definition lists. One, there are two different elements that belong in a definition list: dt’s & dd’s. In unordered lists, all you have is li’s. Two, the only default styling applied to definition lists is a bit of a left-margin to the dd elements — no bullets or other strange positioning to fight. Having two different tags to work with is what makes definition lists valuable.

Coyier, Chris. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>CSS

Five Ways to Set Your Unordered Lists Apart

Unordered lists are one of the most pervasive elements on the web, probably just behind paragraphs and hyperlinks in terms of their bunny-like abundance. And for good reason: bulleted (i.e., unordered) lists are a great way to convey a bunch of related information in a rather small space, which is often the preferred way to read on (and thus, write for) the internet.

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>CSS

When to Use CSS IDs and Classes

There are three different ways in CSS you can dictate which elements you want to style. Each way is useful for a specific set of purposes, but by using all three together, you can really harness the cascading power of style sheets. The three methods of describing objects on a page are by their tag name, their ID, or their class.

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>CSS

Intelligent Navigation Bars with JavaScript and CSS

I’ve developed a trick over the years that I’ve used on a number of websites now for making my sites’ navigation bars “intelligent” or “self-aware.” By that, I mean that the navigation bar automatically knows which tab/button/whatever should be considered the currently active link, without having to manually specify a class or ID on either the body tag or on the links themselves.

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>DHTML

How Does the Internet Work?

This article covers the underlying technologies that power the World Wide Web: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); Domain Name System (DNS); Web servers and web browsers; Static and dynamic content.

Lane, Jonathan. Opera (2008). Articles>Information Design>Online

Information Architecture - Planning Out a Web Site

This article is going to look at the early stages of planning out a web site, and a discipline that is commonly referred to as Information architecture, or IA. This involves thinking about who your target audience will be, what information and services they need from a web site, and how you should structure it to provide that for them.

Lane, Jonathan. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design

Building Up a Site Wireframe

Every web designer should know and understand a Web site’s parameters before lifting a finger to start designing the site. In this article, you will learn the basics required to start designing business Web sites. While this information is useful if you want to build sites for others, it can also serve as a checklist article for sites you want to build for yourself.

Goin, Linda. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>Information Design

Choosing a JavaScript Framework

once you’ve decided that using a JavaScript framework is appropriate for the task you’re faced with, it can be hard to choose the one that is right for you. And to make things worse, what is right for you may not be right for your co-workers.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>JavaScript

How to Choose a JavaScript Framework

A JavaScript framework may not make you a better programmer, but it will make you more efficient. That alone should be reason enough to choose a JavaScript framework, or library if you prefer. Unless you decide to build your own, there are plenty of options available to developers. However, choosing the right framework can be tricky, and weeding through a mess of opinionated fanboys (myself included) is intimidating.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>JavaScript

Marking Up Textual Content in HTML

In this article I will take you through the basics of using HTML to describe the meaning of the content within the body of your document.We will look at general structural elements such as headings and paragraphs and embedding quotes and code. After that we will look at inline content, such as short quotes and emphasis, and finish with a quick examination of old-fashioned presentational content.

Francis, Mark Norman. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>HTML

Pageless Pagination: Cease and Desist

Pageless pagination is a substitute for the paging functionality that appears on the majority of Web sites today. A typical paging mechanism is on a search results page, and it uses numbers to represent additional pages of results. For most users this has long been the acceptable browsing standard for everyday surfing, searching and shopping, and it requires little effort to recognize or learn a paging component. In a quest to improve upon outdated methods, someone decided to overhaul this standard. With pageless pagination, when the user scrolls down the page to bring more results into view, the Web site detects that the event is happening. After the scrollbar reaches a threshold, a script grabs more results and dynamically appends them to the bottom of the results already in view.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design

Intelligent Site Structure for Better SEO!

Search engines are one of the most important traffic drivers to sites these days, which is why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming more and more important. SEO is often thought to be just a set of some technical tricks, and as a professional SEO, I confess to spending a lot of time with clients fixing technical issues. A site's structure though, is just as important. Your site's structure determines whether a search engine understands what your site is about, and how easily it will find and index content relevant to your site's purpose and intent. By creating a good structure, you can use the content you've written that has attracted links from others, and use your site's structure to spread some of that "linkjuice" to the other pages on your site.

De Valk, Joost. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

XFN Encoding, Extraction, and Visualizations

In this article I will take a good look at XFN - the microformat for describing relationships between people. I will look briefly at what it is and the basic markup needed to add the information to your sites, before then going into depth, looking at the benefits you can get from that data by extracting it and using it in different ways. Extracting the data is easier than you think - there is probably a library for your favorite language already! If not, there are also some web services that could do the job that I'll show you below.

Suda, Brian. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Collaboration

Extend Enumerated Lists in XML Schema

The addition of new values to a list is a common and necessary requirement. Schema designers often seek to build into the architecture a means to permit additional values that were unknown at design time. How can schema designers create an enumerated value list that is extensible and easy to implement? Discover several approaches used to achieve this goal.

Kiel, W. Paul. IBM (2008). Articles>Information Design>XML>Databases

Building a More Semantic Web With Microformats

This paper will introduce the Semantic Web, the next stage in the development of the web. We will explain why semantics are important, how they can help computers catalogue data, and how this will benefit us as individuals. We will also look at microformats, an ongoing project the aims to help us create a more semantic web. We assume you have a good knowledge of XHTML.

Mercurytide (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>XHTML

Concept Design Tools

Designers of digital products and services like ourselves can dramatically improve our work by generating more concepts early in our projects. In this article, I’ll try to make concept design easier to learn by illustrating three simple tools for generating concepts.

Lombardi, Victor. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Information Design>Methods

Getting The Most Out Of Your Library

Think of the library system as something akin to the open-source movement before software. Subsidized institutions buy books, subscribe to journals and proprietary databases, and pay people to help you find “stuff”, all essentially at no cost to you.

Hicks, William. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Academic>Information Design