pages tagged document readerENETDOWNhttp://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/ENETDOWNikiwiki2016-06-13T07:17:08ZThinking about metacognition for reading on screenshttp://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/thinking-about-metacognition/zaki2016-02-24T05:45:57Z2016-02-24T05:42:02Z
<p>If you've been around me for a while, you might have heard me go on and on
about my long-term project: creating the ultimate <span class="selflink">document reader</span>.
As I try to design it, I am thinking of ways that the cognitive process
of reading can be improved through computers and to guide my research, I have read a
couple books about the neuroscience of reading.</p>
<p>One book in particular was quite invaluable: Maryanne Wolf's <em>Proust and the Squid</em>. I
recently came across a few articles<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:maryanne-wolf-articles" id="fnref:maryanne-wolf-articles" class="footnote">1</a> in which she
discusses how she seems to have lost the ability to read and enjoy prose in
long-form. She claims that this is because of how reading on screens has
trained our brains to skim rather than use "deep reading" skills.
Maryanne Wolf's next books will be on this specific
topic and I look forward to reading them<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:maryanne-wolf-future-books" id="fnref:maryanne-wolf-future-books" class="footnote">2</a>.</p>
<h2 id="differencesbetweenreadingonpaperandonscreens">Differences between reading on paper and on screens</h2>
<p>Researchers in human-computer interaction, education, and psychology have long
looked at the differences between reading on paper versus on screens<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Dillon:1992">1</a>)</span>.
Getting to the root causes behind why there are differences between the two
in terms of reading outcomes (e.g., speed, fatigue, comprehension) has been
difficult because there really hasn't been a standardised methodology behind
all the studies. Early studies found that some of the differences could be
attributed to image quality and this seems to hold for single pages, but for
longer documents, the ability to navigate and locate information is a more
important factor.</p>
<p>Perhaps the difference can accounted for by our expectations of screen reading.
When reading on a screen, we tend to read shorter texts such as e-mail or the
news while doing other tasks such as checking notifications.
This task switching may be occur many times a day as we navigate our computers.
Some have suggested that the gap between these different modes of reading may be closed by <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/the-deep-space-of-digital-reading">adapting to screen
reading</a>
in the same way that people had to adapt from reading on scrolls to reading from a codex.</p>
<p>A study of high-schoolers showed that those that were successful with tasks
that required finding information online via a hypertext interface either had
prior skills in linear reading or prior skills in basic computer navigation<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Hahnel:2016">2</a>)</span>.
This implies that a combination of those factors may be necessary to make the
most of screen reading.</p>
<p>Another study compared students' performance with screen reading and paper
reading when given two scenarios<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Ackerman:2011">3</a>)</span>. In the first scenario, the
students had a fixed time to read the material when given an assessment. In the
second scenario, they were allowed to use as much time as they needed. What the
authors found is that for the fixed time scenario, the screen readers performed
on par with paper readers, but for the flexible time scenario, the paper
readers outperformed the screen readers. The author's suggest that this
difference can be accounted for by differences in how each group of readers
self-regulated their reading time and that this difference in self-regulation
comes from how readers perceive reading in each medium.</p>
<p>From these studies, I believe that two areas to improve when designing a
document reader are <em>document navigation</em> and <em>self-regulation of reading</em>. There are many approaches
to navigation, but I will not be covering that in this text. What I want to
know is, how can we train ourselves to have better self-regulation?</p>
<p>I had a thought along these lines while I was studying a
textbook. A major part of reading is going back to review what we just
read. As we read, we must use our limited working memory to both visually
process the words on the page and simultaneously pull out related concepts from
long-term memory so that we can associate new ideas with our prior knowledge. In
fluent reading, all this occurs in a short amount of time between reading
chunks of text, so the number of associations that we can make depends on how
quickly we can process all this information. In order to ease students into
re-treading over what they just read, many textbooks use small prompts at the
end of sections. These prompts are meant to help provide context for where the
information fits into a larger structure and confirm that the reader understood
what was written.</p>
<p>In an age where we have direct access to more information than ever before, many
have turned to speed-reading techniques as a way to read more material — however,
such approaches are not supported by eye-tracking research<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Schotter:2014">4</a>)</span>.
Others have tried to replace reading entire books with <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/please-be-brief/417894/">reading summaries</a>
and while these give a decent summary of the arguments in a book, they are but
tertiary sources — referencing a summary is not the same as referencing the
book itself. Furthermore, if you only read the summary, you might not give yourself
enough material to build a coherent model that you can recall later.
Both forms of reading have their place, but if we want to improve our
reading comprehension, it may be worth slowing down. </p>
<h2 id="metacognition">Metacognition</h2>
<p>The activities found in textbooks are meant to aid what is known as metacognition — thinking
about thinking. We apply metacognition whenever we take notes, break down a
problem into subproblems, or set goals for studying. Metacognition is
the process of recognising that we are thinking a certain way and applying a strategy to
regulate and improve how we think.</p>
<p>The following are all valid metacognitive strategies:</p>
<ul>
<li>using a consistent system for note-taking,</li>
<li>creating a sequence of tasks for working on a project,</li>
<li>planning to read 3 sections in the next 30 minutes,</li>
<li>doing all the exercises at the end of the chapter,</li>
<li>devising mnemonics to remember a certain sequence of events,</li>
<li>creating flash cards based on each new definition, and</li>
<li>cramming 1 hour before a test.</li>
</ul>
<p>These strategies might not be equally effective in all circumstances and for every
person, but what they have in common is that they all regulate how we think. What I would like to investigate is
can these metacognitive strategies be incorporated into the tools that we use
to read, so that it is easier to apply them effectively and
consistently?</p>
<p>The purpose of this text is to explore some thoughts on how to implement such a
system.</p>
<h2 id="annotations">Annotations</h2>
<p>When I started thinking about metacognition, my first thought led me to textual
annotations. Writing has long been suggested as a way to help improve memory.
It may even be more important when dealing with electronic media because
notetaking can be used to enhance the understanding of what we're reading.
A recent study from 2013 suggests that the difference between paper
and screen reading may be partially due to the distractions of multitasking;
however, the effect of multitasking can be mitigated by using notetaking on paper
as a way to retain focus<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Subrahmanyam:2013">5</a>)</span>.</p>
<p>Taking notes on paper is not a huge burden, but having those notes in digital
form allows for more portability and, since not everyone has filing cabinets,
makes it easier to retrieve years later. This ease of use comes with a tradeoff: digital notetaking may not be
as effective for memory recall as taking notes by hand.
In Mueller et al. (2014)<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Mueller:2014">6</a>)</span>, researchers looked at how students
wrote notes and found that students that wrote notes by hand were
able to <a href="http://www.crlt.umich.edu/node/80537">perform better</a> on assessments
than students that wrote notes on laptops. This may be because there is more
cognitive processing being done when choosing the salient points to
write down from a lecture than when typing out the lecture verbatim.</p>
<p>How can this additional cognitive processing be elicited when keeping
notes in digital form? One approach might be to use the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes">Cornell
method</a> for notetaking. One way of
using this method is to return to the notes after a day in
order to summarise what was written. This additional summary promotes
the synthesis and revision of the notes. When used correctly, the rewording
required for summarisation provides the extra cognitive processing needed for
learning.</p>
<p>Below is a simple mockup of how such a system might look like on a computer.
Instead of showing a single page as in most document readers, this interface
shows a page of the original document as well as another page where notes can
be kept. The cue column is one the left of this page, the note-taking column is
on the right, and the summary area is at the bottom of the page.
When the notes for a given unit of the text (e.g., a section or
paragraph) are complete, the time can be recorded so that when returning the next day,
the user can be given a reminder to write a summary.</p>
<table class="img"><caption>Mockup of Cornell notes UI</caption><tr><td><a href="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/cornell-method.svg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/cornell-method.svg" width="600" class="img" /></a></td></tr></table>
<h2 id="flashcards">Flashcards</h2>
<p>Another popular metacognitive strategy is to use flashcards. They make a good
supplement to the Cornell method as the cues can be turned into the front of a
flashcard and the notes can become the back. We can also create flashcards on
their own and link them back to the text if further clarification of the notes
are needed.</p>
<table class="img"><caption>Mockup of flashcards UI</caption><tr><td><a href="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/flashcard-page.svg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/flashcard-page.svg" width="600" class="img" /></a></td></tr></table>
<p>Just making the flashcards is not enough. They need to be reviewed. One way of
reviewing called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition">spaced repetition</a>
is based on creating an adaptive schedule so that difficult cards are seen more
often than easy cards until the difficult cards have been memorised.
There exist many techniques and tools for creating effective flashcards
and scheduling the revision of cards, so those can easily be integrated into
the document reader either by outputting data in the appropriate format or
reimplementing the algorithms<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:flashcard-tech" id="fnref:flashcard-tech" class="footnote">3</a>.</p>
<h2 id="triagingandcomparison">Triaging and comparison</h2>
<p>When researching a topic, using a single source of information may not be
enough. I often go to the library and grab almost every book on a topic so that
I can learn from many perspectives. As I read, I try to figure out the specific
strengths of each document: some may cover more theory than others or one may
have particularly informative diagrams. Being able to sort through each of
these documents and decide which ones are relevant is possible on a computer
through the use of folders and tagging, but this is sometimes very
unsatisfying. For example, if I am reading papers for a literature review, I
usually make a spreadsheet to organise details about what each paper is about. Before I
actually commit to making a spreadsheet, I try to stack the papers that I have
printed out into different piles based on quickly skimming the contents. This
is known as document triaging.</p>
<p>One example of how I would use this is to separate a set of papers into the
categories:</p>
<ul>
<li>Not relevant: papers that do not cover what I am trying to figure out in the
current project (ignore these);</li>
<li>Survey papers: papers that review the results of many papers at once (read
through these and find any references I might have missed);</li>
<li>Classic research: older research that may or may not be worth looking at
(skim over these — might only be of historical interest);</li>
<li>Recent research: more current papers (read these more closely).</li>
</ul>
<p>One approach to a GUI for this might be to emulate the layout of a desktop area
where different regions indicate different categories. This may be easier to visualise and work with than using
different lists or drop-down menus as it uses larger GUI elements (c.f., <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law">Fitts's law</a>).
An example of what it might look like is shown below.</p>
<table class="img"><caption>Mockup of document triaging UI</caption><tr><td><a href="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/document-triage.svg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/document-triage.svg" width="600" class="img" /></a></td></tr></table>
<p>The workflow proceeds as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>The user chooses a document from the Queue on the right.</li>
<li>The chosen document appears in the center Reading area where the user can
quickly look over the document.</li>
<li>Once a category for the document is determined, the user drags it to the
appropriate category region on the left.</li>
</ol>
<p>Perhaps this task can benefit from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning_(machine_learning)">active learning</a> which might be able to
suggest categories for papers based on metadata such as page length or year of publication.</p>
<p>Another related task is being able to compare multiple documents side by side.
Below is a picture of a bookstand modelled after a design that Thomas Jefferson
created for his office<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:jefferson-bookstand" id="fnref:jefferson-bookstand" class="footnote">4</a>. It allows for keeping multiple
books open at the same time and rotates so that switching between books is
easy.</p>
<table class="img"><caption>Picture of Jeffersonian revolving bookstand (taken from this <a href="http://lumberjocks.com/projects/109236">project showcase</a>)</caption><tr><td><a href="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/jeffersonian-bookstand.jpg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2016/02/24/gfx/jeffersonian-bookstand.jpg" width="712" height="700" class="img" /></a></td></tr></table>
<p>In a way, this is like browser tabs. However, there are times when you may want
to see two documents side-by-side rather than having to flip between them.
For example, if I was reading two books on history written by different
authors, I might want to see how both authors address the same topic. Whether
or not this should be implemented as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface">multiple document interface</a>
(with tabbing and docking) is still not clear to me.</p>
<h2 id="readingstrategiesandserendipity">Reading strategies and serendipity</h2>
<p>If you've ever read a scientific research paper, the first thing you'll notice
is that they are highly structured: there are sections that are always in every
paper (e.g., Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion).
These sections are meant to guide readers so that they don't have to read through the whole paper.
There are certain strategies to reading a research
paper<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:reading-research-strategies" id="fnref:reading-research-strategies" class="footnote">5</a> which emphasise that you have
to re-read the paper several times based on your goals (e.g., performing a
literature review versus trying to reproduce the results). On each pass, you
will try to answer different questions so you will want to spend more time
reading specific sections. Perhaps these reading strategies can be turned into
a checklist so that each paper has a progress bar that tells you how far along
in understanding the paper you are. That way you can skim over several papers
in one sitting and then slowly try to understand one paper at a time.</p>
<p>Sometimes the path you take with your reading does not follow a straightforward
checklist. There are times when you are searching for something and you come
across an unexpected connection which can lead to more creative thoughts.
This can either occur when discovering new material or coming
back to older material. Understanding how to create serendipitous encounters
might be a little tougher than the previous metacognitive strategies. As noted
in André et al. (2009) <span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Andre:2009">7</a>)</span>, serendipity is difficult to facilitate
and study in a laboratory setting. One approach that I would like to try is to
bring up older material that the user might have read months or years ago.
Perhaps the older material might be seen in a different light now that the user
is re-encountering it.</p>
<p>The system described by author Steven Berlin Johnson in this post titled <a href="http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html">Tool
for Thought</a>
describes an interesting workflow where he captures quotes from books and uses
a tool that can help find other related quotes in his library. This allows him
to start with a single idea and then find other ideas that might be related to
that original seed. One of the authors of <span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Andre:2009">7</a>)</span>, <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/sdumais/">Susan
Dumais</a>, worked on a
technique to do just this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_semantic_indexing">latent semantic indexing</a>.
However, at this point, I am not certain how large of a personal library is
needed for the gains from this technique to become apparent.</p>
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<p>As far as I can tell, none of these techniques exist within a single existing
application. Perhaps that is because using such a complex application would
become daunting — there would simply be too many features. Furthermore, since
each of these metacognitive strategies can be applied in many different ways,
another challenge will be creating tutorials that show how to use them
effectively.</p>
<p>I'd really appreciate any feedback on these ideas. They will certainly need
tweaking before they become usable.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:maryanne-wolf-articles"><p>The articles are <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader">Being a Better Online Reader</a>
by Maria Konnikova and an interview with Maryanne Wolf hosted by Robin Young <a href="http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/04/09/online-reading-comprehension">Is Online Skimming Hurting Reading Comprehension?</a>.<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:maryanne-wolf-articles" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:maryanne-wolf-future-books"><p>From <a href="https://ase.tufts.edu/crlr/team/wolf.htm">her page</a> at Tufts</p>
<ul>
<li>Wolf, M. & Gottwald, S. (To appear, 2016) <em>What It Means to Read: A
Literacy Agenda for the Digital Age</em>. Oxford University Press. In Series,
Literary Agenda, Editor: Phillip Davis.</li>
<li>Wolf, M. (To appear, 2016). <em>Letters to the Good Reader: The Contemplative
Dimension in the Future Reading Brain</em>. New York: Harper Collins.</li>
<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:maryanne-wolf-future-books" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></ul></li>
<li id="fn:flashcard-tech"><p>Some of these flashcard techniques and tools can be found in the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Wikipedia provides a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flashcard_software">list of flashcard software</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules">Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge</a>
gives tips for using flashcards effectively.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/6/1868.full">Education of a model student</a>
describes different mathematical models of memory that can be used for varying
the learning rate based the goals of the learner.</li>
<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:flashcard-tech" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></ul></li>
<li id="fn:jefferson-bookstand"><p>For details on how to make your own Jeffersonian bookstand, see this
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SD_jlH7Ez8">video</a> and these
<a href="http://www.davidcolarusso.com/handouts/jefferson_bookstand.pdf">instructions</a>.<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:jefferson-bookstand" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:reading-research-strategies"><p>A couple guides are
<a href="https://www.elsevier.com/connect/infographic-how-to-read-a-scientific-paper">here</a>
and <a href="http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/how-read-paper">here</a>.<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:reading-research-strategies" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="bibliography">
<hr />
<p>Bibliography</p>
<div id="Dillon:1992"><p>[1] <span class="item">Dillon, Andrew.
"<a href="https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Reading.htm">Reading from paper versus screens: A critical review of the empirical literature</a>."
<em>Ergonomics</em> 35, no. 10 (1992): 1297-1326.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140139208967394">doi:10.1080/00140139208967394</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Hahnel:2016"><p>[2] <span class="item">Hahnel, Carolin, Frank Goldhammer, Johannes Naumann, and Ulf
Kröhne. "<a href="https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/58831570/Paperb14a7b8059d9c055954c92674ce60032ICTb14a7b8059d9c055954c92674ce60032effects.pdf">Effects of linear reading, basic computer skills, evaluating online
information, and navigation on reading digital text</a>." <em>Computers in Human
Behavior</em> 55 (2016): 486-500.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.042">doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.042</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Ackerman:2011"><p>[3] <span class="item">Ackerman, Rakefet, and Morris Goldsmith. "<a href="http://iew3.technion.ac.il/~ackerman/papers/Ackerman%20&%20Goldsmith%202011%20-%20Metacognitive%20Regulation%20of%20Text%20Learning%20On%20Screen%20Versus%20on%20Paper.pdf">Metacognitive
regulation of text learning: on screen versus on paper</a>." Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Applied 17, no. 1 (2011): 18.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022086">doi:10.1037/a0022086</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Schotter:2014"><p>[4] <span class="item">Schotter, Elizabeth R., Randy Tran, and Keith Rayner. "<a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1218">Don’t Believe What You
Read (Only Once) Comprehension Is Supported by Regressions During Reading</a>."
<em>Psychological science</em> (2014): 0956797614531148.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614531148">doi:10.1177/0956797614531148</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Subrahmanyam:2013"><p>[5] <span class="item">Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, Minas Michikyan, Christine Clemmons, Rogelio Carrillo, Yalda T. Uhls, and Patricia M. Greenfield.
"<a href="http://www.cdmc.ucla.edu/KSb14a7b8059d9c055954c92674ce60032Mediab14a7b8059d9c055954c92674ce60032bibliob14a7b8059d9c055954c92674ce60032files/Subrahmanyam%20Michikyan%20et%20al%202014%20%28paper%20vs%20screens%29.pdf">Learning from Paper, Learning from Screens: Impact of Screen Reading and Multitasking Conditions on Reading and Writing among College Students</a>."
<em>International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL)</em> 3, no. 4 (2013): 1-27.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijcbpl.2013100101">doi:10.4018/ijcbpl.2013100101</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Mueller:2014"><p>[6] <span class="item">Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer.
"<a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1159">The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking</a>."
<em>Psychological science</em> (2014): 0956797614524581.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581">doi:10.1177/0956797614524581</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Andre:2009"><p>[7] <span class="item">André, Paul, Jaime Teevan, and Susan T. Dumais.
"<a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/sdumais/creativityandcognition09-fp392-andre.pdf">Discovery is never by chance: designing for (un)serendipity</a>."
In Proceedings of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition, pp.
305-314. ACM, 2009.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1640233.1640279">doi:10.1145/1640233.1640279</a>.</span></p></div>
</div>
a writeup on my document reader projecthttp://enetdown.org//dot-plan/posts/2013/09/22/a_writeup_on_my_doc_reader_project/zaki2013-09-22T21:59:52Z2013-09-22T21:59:52Z
<p>The last few months, I have been working on a project to treat text on
computers as more than just an electronic analogue of paper.</p>
<p>The idea is to make text structured and interactive. Text is not just a
blob of characters thrown on the paper/screen for reading, but one of
many ways communicate. Text is a medium for the conveyance of ideas and
these ideas do not stand alone. These thoughts are referenced
continually within a workflow.</p>
<p>I have read many papers and books (on my computer, tablet, and e-ink
screens, of course) over the past few months on the problems faced in
the fields of information science, interactive information retrieval,
digital libraries, active reading, and information extraction. To
achieve the goal of making a document reader that I would be happy with,
I need to implement several tasks which I will detail in the following
sections.</p>
<h1 id="annotations">Annotations</h1>
<p><em>Annotations</em> are the natural first step towards this goal. Annotations
are markers where we leave our thoughts. These thoughts can be
spontaneous "stream-of-consciousness" notes or they can be detailed
thoughts that are meant to tie multiple ideas together.</p>
<p>Annotations need to be <em>easy to create</em>. If you are reading and you have
to mess around with the interface, you will not be making annotations as
often as you would on paper.</p>
<p>Furthermore, annotations need to have the option to be <em>shareable</em>. There
is certainly a distinction made between annotations made for others and
those that are meant to be private. This kind of interaction must be
supported so that the choice of whether to share or not is
straightforward.</p>
<h1 id="catalogueandsearch">Catalogue and search</h1>
<p>Once you start using a computer to collect all your reading material,
inenvitably, the documents start piling up. It becomes difficult to return
to the same documents quickly. It is imperative that finding the same
documents again must be fast.</p>
<p>To support this, there needs to be an extensible metadata and indexing
tool. This tool should not only contain <em>bibliography metadata</em> that is
usually expected from a catalouge, but also develop <em>concept maps</em> from
the text. This is a difficult task and will require lots of <em>language
modelling</em>, but it is necessary for dealing with an area that has lots
of related information that is inherent in the meaning of the text.</p>
<p>An easier first approach to this comes from the old and well-studied
field of <em>bibliometrics</em>. Instead of trying to figure out what the
meaning of the text is, the indexer can start by using <em>citation
parsing</em> to find out the semantic structure between documents by seeing
how they are referenced in the text.</p>
<p>Together, these two approaches can lead to better approaches to the
problem of <em>document similarity</em>, or finding other documents that are
semantically close to each other. This is useful because it speeds up
the process of finding ideas to tie together. Instead of trying to hunt
down the appropriate documents, they can be presented to the user as
they are reading.</p>
<h1 id="findingmorereadingmaterial">Finding more reading material</h1>
<p>Usually, when trying to find new documents to add to one's collection,
researchers use search engines and try to explore a topic. <em>Interactive
information retrieval</em> is full of models of the cognitive states involved in
this process and there is a general agreement that it starts with a question
and an <em>uncertain state of knowledge</em> (USK). This is a state where the
researcher does not know enough about the field to know exactly what to search
for. The process to get out of this state is to search for related terms and
read the findings to understand more of the field to find out more about the
field of interest. Then, with this knowledge in hand, perform more searches to
see if they can approximate the original question better or if they need to
reformulate the question.</p>
<p>I believe that there are tools that can aid this kind of interaction.
Usually the questions being posed by the researcher have a context and
it is my hope that this context can come from what the researcher has
been reading and writing. Using this information, a search engine can
possibly provide better results by trying to use this contextual
information both expand the original search in the case where the query
is too narrow ( <em>query expansion</em> ) and then filter the results by looking
at usage patterns of the terms ( <em>entity recognition</em> ).</p>
<h1 id="aspecificworkflow">A specific workflow</h1>
<p>I’m going to separate the workflow into tasks:</p>
<ul>
<li>finding new papers:
<ul>
<li>current: I use PubMed and Google Scholar to find recent papers
and the lab’s collaborative reference manager to find older
articles.</li>
<li>desired: I would like a more unified interface that lets me
scroll through abstracts and categorise papers quickly. This
would include the ability to hide papers either individually or
based on certain criteria (authors, journal, etc.).</li>
</ul></li>
<li>storing and retrieving papers from my collection
<ul>
<li>current: Since I use a wiki, all I do is keep the papers in
directory on my server that I sync with all my computers.</li>
<li>desired: The current setup is fine, because a folder of PDFs is
the most portable solution for all my devices, but it is not the
most optimal for finding a specific paper. It would better if
there were a way to keep the folder setup, but have it managed
by a program that can match up citation keys and be used to only
show papers that I need to read and then send these to my
devices. I think that OPDS http://opds-spec.org/ (along with
OpenSearch support) and Z39.50/SRU could be useful in this
regard.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>following a citation:
<ul>
<li>current: I have scroll back and forth to see what paper a given
citation refers to. This is really slow on the Kindle’s e-ink
screen and not much faster with PDFs on other devices (many
journal’s actually do not accept PDF manuscripts that have
hyperlinks). The HTML version of papers that some journals
provide alleviate this problem somewhat, but PDFs are the
standard for most scientific literature.</li>
<li>desired: Automatic lookup (from either online or personal
collection) with the ability to jump back.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>adding annotations:
<ul>
<li>current: On a screen, annotations are rudimentary and slow to
use (this may be better on a tablet, but most tablets these days
are not built with high-resolution digitizer).</li>
<li>desired: Even if annotations are possible on any single device,
one can not use these across different platforms, nor share the
annotations easily. Annotations need to portable, searchable,
and support cross-references.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<h1 id="otherrelatedtopics">Other related topics</h1>
<ul>
<li>document layout — There is some information that is relevant for
navigation that is implicit in the document's structure and dealing
with documents that are not "born-digital" will require the automatic
extraction of this structure. This can be quite difficult even for PDFs that
are born-digital.</li>
</ul>
three books on readinghttp://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/three_books_on_reading/zaki2013-09-21T18:44:00Z2013-09-17T17:15:47Z
<p><style>
.img.left {
float:left;
}
.img.right {
float:right;
}
</style></p>
<p>In the past year, I’ve read three books about reading and books. I’ve been
working on a document reader, so I thought that it would be a good idea to
learn from people that have already thought about how we read.</p>
<h1 id="scrollingforwardlevy:2001">Scrolling Forward<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Levy:2001">1</a>)</span></h1>
<p>When most people think of documents, they think of the big things: books,
articles, bills, and the like. Instead of starting off with these, Levy uses
the lowly example of the receipt to address the question of what exactly a
document is. He points out that the receipt as a document is not just a piece
of paper, but a cultural artifact that only gains meaning through how we
interact with it. There are many unwritten assumptions we make when we deal
with documents — for example, when we use receipts, we assume that they will be
adequate proof of our transaction at a later date.</p>
<p>He then goes into the historical context behind how each type of document
developed its form and function. He explains that much of the bureaucracy that
we deal with from day to day is a result of the Industrial Revolution.
Increases in distances and production meant that the handling of logistics in
large organisations quickly became complex. Writing had to likewise become
faster and thus, the memo was born. Now that there was so much paper flying
around, naturally, the filing cabinet was created. Many of the office
supplies that we take for granted were invented to adapt to these changes in
how we worked.</p>
<p><a href="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/gfx/scrolling-forward.jpg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/three_books_on_reading/150x-scrolling-forward.jpg" width="150" height="225" alt="Cover of 'Scrolling Forward'" class="img left" /></a></p>
<p>Another point that Levy makes is how print has developed a system of trust that
we still have not replicated in the digital realm. The system of book
publishers, editors, reviewers, and libraries provide an infrastructure for
fact-checking, distribution, cataloguing, indexing, versioning, and
preservation that facilitate our interactions with literature. Again, because
of all this infrastructure, we make assumptions about the information we get
from books that their electronic counterparts lack. Levy recalls a medical
visit he made where the doctor needed to verify a fact in order to make a
diagnosis. Instead of looking in a textbook, the doctor suggests searching for
the information online. There is a fleeting moment where both Levy and the
doctor pause to justify their trust in the electronic information — a
justification that would not occur with a textbook. This infrastructure
was developed over a very long time<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fn:middle-ages-tech-support" id="fnref:middle-ages-tech-support" class="footnote">1</a> and duplicating
it for electronic books will take some effort.</p>
<p>To me, the most important thread in <em>Scrolling Forward</em> is Levy’s commentary on
two different kinds of interaction with documents. Levy presents these two modes
through the figures of Walt Whitman and Melvil Dewey. Walt Whitman represents
the ephemeral experience of reading as an activity. By pointing out that
Whitman constantly tinkered with the interpretation of even his earliest work
by issuing new editions, Levy illustrates that a document is rarely static. The
passage of time and the reader’s shifting life experience determine how we
understand a document. This sort of interaction requires introspection — we
allow the document to speak to us and we reflect on not only the semantics of
what we read, but how the text is connecting our thoughts to the author’s. It
is this connection that characterises what Levy terms the “spiritual” side of
reading.</p>
<p>This is in contrast to the more rational side of reading represented by Melvil
Dewey. Dewey has had a huge impact on how we deal with information. In his
twenties, not only did he invent the Dewey Decimal Classification system, but
also founded <em>The Library Journal</em> and was among the founders of the American
Library Association. He was quite a meticulous thinker — to the point that his
attempts at spelling reform extended to his own name, which he changed from
“Melville” to “Melvil”. He was very much a product of an aged that strove for
efficiency and our present age echoes the same sentiments. As such, Levy
associates with Dewey the kind of thinking that is primarily
“information-seeking”, which thrives in an environment where information
is organised and readily available. This describes Dewey’s libraries quite well,
and in some ways, the Internet has been an improvement in terms of scale and speed.</p>
<p>Consequently, Levy likens Whitman to the technology of paper and Dewey to the
screen. These technologies, of course, do not occur in isolation, as paper has
bookstores and reading rooms and screens have the Internet and search engines.
Each technology has ardent supporters that bemoan the existence of the other,
but he notes that both can co-exist in a supplementary fashion; they can each
support very different ways of thinking. In fact, 12 years later, in 2013, it
seems that they are doing just that — e-books have not replaced paper books and
the Internet has not replaced libraries: book readers use different
technologies to fulfill different needs.</p>
<p>However, Levy makes an assertion that we are beginning to lean more towards the
Dewey style of thinking and that this is a dangerous trend for the future.
Because this style is so focused on seeking information, it downplays the
importance of the kind of environment we need to facilitate lateral thinking.
He explains this more in a Google Tech Talk titled
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGcvj3JiGA">"No Time to Think" (March, 5 2008)</a>.
New technologies and the world’s never-ending drumbeat are vying for our
attention which could be spent thinking about problems creatively. IBM’s
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IZw2CoYztk">"Paperwork Explosion"</a>‘s
key phrase ("machines should work; people should think") sounds quite cloying
when we realise that machines are making us "think different", but not more
effectively. This is important to me because I enjoy joining different threads
and finding links between subjects. Losing this ability is particularly
disturbing as I believe complex problems require interdisciplinary thinking.</p>
<h1 id="proustandthesquidwolf:2007">Proust and the Squid<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Wolf:2007">2</a>)</span></h1>
<p>Whereas <em>Scrolling Forward</em> is more about our sociocultural interactions with
written language, <em>Proust and the Squid</em> looks at the neuroscience of reading
and how it changes how we think. I previously wrote about some of the
<a href="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/10/programming_and_reading/">thoughts</a> I had while
reading this book, but I’ll expand on more of the book’s content.</p>
<p>Firstly, Wolf discusses how the brain was never meant to read. Our ability to
see glyphs hijacks parts of our brain that are used for object recognition and
the development of the alphabetic principle hijacks our speech processing
circuits. This reuse is just another example of the brain’s amazing
neuroplasticity.</p>
<p><a href="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/gfx/proust-and-the-squid.jpg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/three_books_on_reading/150x-proust-and-the-squid.jpg" width="150" height="230" alt="Cover of 'Proust and the Squid'" class="img right" /></a></p>
<p>There is some discussion of humanity’s early history with written language and
Wolf takes this opportunity to share the how different writing systems use
different parts of the brain. Quite literally, the brain of a Chinese reader is
different from that of an English reader when viewed with the tools of
functional imaging. Later on, Wolf writes about Socrates’ rebukes of reading
(in <em>Phaedrus</em>) which I found to be extremely interesting. Socrates’ first
objection is based on his view that written language does not dialogue with the
reader the same way a teacher would with a pupil. Wolf and many others argue
that reading dialogises differently and written language has advanced in ways
Socrates never foresaw. Socrates’ second objection is raised from his
elevation of oral culture’s capacity for memory — in his view, written language
will diminish this capacity to the point that students will no longer be able
to achieve of the fluidity of retrieval needed for dialogue. Socrates’ final
objection is that reading will make knowledge available to those that do not
appreciate it fully. It will give people a false impression that they have
knowledge when they have only understood the surface. This recalls Levy’s
arguments in “Scrolling Forward” and Wolf also wonders if the Internet will
have a similar effect on readers.</p>
<p>Much of the rest of the book is devoted to explaining how the brain adapts to
written language in the few years of childhood, a development which took
humanity many millennia to attain. As you can imagine, there are lots of
potential stumbling blocks in this marathon. Wolf has separated learning to read
into the stages of: 1) emerging pre-reader, 2) novice reader, 3) decoding reader, 4)
fluent comprehending reader, and 5) expert reader. As I read about the details
of each stage, I joyfully saw the points in my own reading development where I
entered each stage; Wolf shares her own experiences in each stage as well as
those of children that she has helped at the <a href="http://www.ase.tufts.edu/crlr/">Center for Reading and Language
Research</a>. She closes with a description of the
intricate neural pathways that allow expert readers to decode and understand
words in the space of hundreds of milliseconds.</p>
<p>The final part of the book discusses when the brain can not learn to read —
dyslexia. As a society, we make many assumptions about literacy that may need
to be rethought. There is a stigma associated with unfluent reading that can be
quite damaging to those with dyslexia especially if it remains undiagnosed.
Wolf expands upon the neural pathways involved in reading with several theories
as to why dyslexics have difficulties reading. She stresses that, at a very
basic level, dyslexics’ brains work differently and that we should embrace the
creativity that comes from that.</p>
<p>Wolf really loves the reading brain and after reading this book I watched a
recording of a her <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Squi">book discussion on C-SPAN</a>.
Her enthusiasm there matches what I encountered in her book perfectly.</p>
<h1 id="readingandwritingtheelectronicbookmarshall:2009">Reading and Writing the Electronic Book<span class="markdowncitation"> (<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#Marshall:2009">3</a>)</span></h1>
<p><a href="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/gfx/reading-and-writing-the-electronic-book.jpg"><img src="http://enetdown.org//outgoing/posts/2013/09/17/three_books_on_reading/150x-reading-and-writing-the-electronic-book.jpg" width="150" height="185" alt="Cover of 'Reading and Writing the Electronic Book'" class="img right" /></a></p>
<p>This book is more concrete when it comes to designing my document reader. It is
mainly a review of prior work in the design of e-books and psychological
studies of how we read both on paper and electronically. I found Marshall’s
characterisation of the different kinds of reading quite informative and early
on, it stressed to me that the needs of readers can vary greatly. This theme is
carried throughout the book, for example, in the study of annotation types and
of group reading.</p>
<p>Catherine Marshall references David Levy when she calls reading an “inherently
social” activity. That is why I am writing this review, right? Readers discuss
what they’ve read on their own, and in some cases of group reading, discuss
what they’re reading through shared focus. Studying these kinds of interactions
between readers may help facilitate collaboration.</p>
<p>However, reading studies are difficult to run because watching people read is
considered “creepy”. When it comes to doing a study on electronic-based
reading, one could use both eye-tracking and software instrumentation to log
the reader’s interactions. I actually plan on doing this, because I am
interested in the aforementioned different reading strategies and how an
interface can shift to accommodate each one.</p>
<p>The final chapter is really worth a read because it talks about all the
different ways we can bring the book into the digital age by giving it
capabilities that are difficult to realise with paper. Some, such as search and
hypertext, have been done many times, but there is still room for improvement.
Others, like document triage and browsing, really must be incorporated into
tools that the general public can use so that electronic books can achieve
parity with paper.</p>
<p>I think one thing I got out of this is that to validate my designs, I will have
to do user studies. When I get to that point, I’ll write another blog post!</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:middle-ages-tech-support"><p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE">Middle Ages Tech Support
skit</a> imagines how the codex might
have been introduced in the Middle Ages.<a href="http://enetdown.org//tag/document_reader/#fnref:middle-ages-tech-support" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="bibliography">
<hr />
<p>Bibliography</p>
<div id="Levy:2001"><p>[1] <span class="item"><a href="http://dmlevy.ischool.uw.edu/">David M. Levy</a>: <em>“Scrolling
Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age”</em>. Arcade Publishing. New
York, NY. 2001. <a href="urn:isbn:978-1559706483">ISBN: 978-1559706483</a> </span></p></div>
<div id="Wolf:2007"><p>[2] <span class="item"><a href="http://ase.tufts.edu/epcd/faculty/wolf.asp">Maryanne Wolf</a>:
<em><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Proust-Squid-Maryanne-Wolf/?isbn=9780060186395">“Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain”</a></em>.
HarperCollins. New York, NY. 2007. <a href="urn:isbn:978-0-06-018639-5">ISBN: 978-0-06-018639-5</a>.</span></p></div>
<div id="Marshall:2009"><p>[3] <span class="item"><a href="http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/">Catherine C. Marshall</a>:
<em><a href="http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00215ED1V01Y200907ICR009">Reading and Writing the Electronic Book</a></em>.
Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services. Morgan & Claypool. 2009.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2200/S00215ED1V01Y200907ICR009">doi:10.2200/S00215ED1V01Y200907ICR009</a>.</span></p></div>
</div>