Hi David and David,
Forgive me if I'm not seeing the forest for the trees (it's happened
before!), but I have this general impression of the role of Exhibit and
search engines (Google):
content --> characterization (structure) --> Exhibit
|
|
\ /
full-text indexing/searching
In this shorthand, Exhibit plays the role of organized structure display
(publication) and manipulation (sorting + filtering by structure).
By referencing characterized content in Exhibit, that content (such as
the professor's publications, assuming they have their own static link)
is still discoverable/searchable, but NOT in reference to the Exhibit
home page. But isn't that OK? The purpose of Exhibit is to provide
more meaningful characterization and structure to the underlying dataset
of all relevant content, not a full-text representation of any specific
content item.
By "stuffing all publications into Exhibit" value is being added to the
organization and characterization of that content. It's a value add,
not a replacement. And it in no manner keeps the underlying content
hidden. (It just doesn't in-and-of-itself reveal it, but need it do so?)
Thus, if I want the most meaningful entry point to ALL of the
professor's publications, I want to go to Exhibit. If I'm looking for
foobar and widget which might be mentioned in one of the publications
(as well as from potentially many others), I go to Google or do a local
site search.
The real issue I was trying to get at was the importance of describing
the purpose of the Exhibit in the first place so that it can be
adequately discovered by Google to fulfill its unique purpose. An
Exhibit plopped on a page without lead-in or explanation will remain
"invisible" to search engines and therefore not usable for its real
purpose.
The reason I got so excited about Exhibit in the first place was that it
is a simple and easily implemented way to layer a structured
characterization over relevant content. In other words, it adds logic
and organization to datasets of content (which, later on, can be subject
to semantic mediation). Way cool.
If the underlying content has value in its own right, put it somewhere
in a static link for its own discovery. That (IMHO) is not the purpose
or unique innovation of Exhibit.
What is so remarkably impressive about so many of the Simile and MIT
projects is that they are providing, brick-by-brick, needed parts to the
Web's emerging semantic foundation. What (IMHO) is truly needed now is
more glue and mortar. (Despite the fact I will ask for more features on
occasion! :) Oh well, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!)
The combination of PB, Solvent, RDFizers, Babel, Exhibit, Sifter and
many, many others (I am still learning about) is where I hope the next
major thrust occurs. What is the glue that will tie all of this
together? Does JSONP represent the lowest common denominator canonical
data format at the core of the client side? Should client side use
SQLite and Firefox with Java-based RDF triplestores on the server side
for scalable collaboration? Is it too early to talk about architecture,
piece parts and modularity? And what are the best pieces? I certainly
think Exhibit has the potential to be one of them.
Sorry for heading off on a rant. Again, thanks to all for producing
such fine work, and I in no manner want to get discussions off track (so
I will shut up!). I really am excited about all of this stuff . . . .
Thanks, Mike
David Huynh wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> People who have seen Exhibit very often ask if Google would see their
> data. To convince a professor to stuff all of her publications into
> Exhibit, we need to assure her that her publications are still
> searchable because they are in their current form.
>
> Thank you for the link to Google sitemap. I can't seem to find out how
> to make Google index exhibit json data linked from an html page as if
> the data itself were inside that html page. (This is because I don't
> want Google searchers to end up looking at the json rather than the
> html.) Do you know how?
>
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