Renear delivers keynote at this week's TEI conference

Allen Renear
Allen Renear, Professor

GSLIS Professor and Interim Dean Allen Renear delivered a keynote address at the Text Encoding Initiative's 2013 International Conference and Members’ Meeting (#tei2013). The theme of the conference, held October 2-5 in Rome, Italy, is "The Linked TEI: Text Encoding in the Web." Renear's address, "Text encoding, ontologies, and the future," was delivered on October 2.

Abstract:

SGML/XML text encoding has played a important role in the development of the global networked information system that now dominates almost all aspects of our daily lives — commercial, scientific, political, social, cultural. The TEI community in particular has made impressive contributions. Today the information organization strategies that provide the foundation for contemporary information technologies are undergoing a new phase of intense and ambitious development. There has of course been a period of skepticism, just as there was with SGML in the 1980s. But that period is now behind us, or should be. Ontologies, “linked open data,” and semantic web languages like OWL and RDF have proven their value and are beginning to yield practical applications. These developments are not radical new strategies in information organization, rather they are continuation of a long-standing trajectory towards increased abstraction, declarative formalization, and standardization—strategies with a solid track record of success. In the last thirty years the text encoding community has helped sustain and advance the evolution of these information organization strategies, and is now well-positioned to further contribute to, and exploit, recent developments.

I will discuss the significance of all this not only for libraries, publishing, data curation, and the digital humanities, but also for the global networked information system more generally. Without a doubt, advances in formalization will continue to bring us many new advantages, and so there is much to look forward to. But at the same time the low-hanging  fruit has been picked, and the problems we will encounter in the next decade or two will prove quite challenging.

Tags:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Knox appointed interim dean

Professor Emily Knox has been appointed to serve as interim dean of the School of Information Sciences, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Until officially approved, her title will be interim dean designate. The appointment will begin April 1, 2025.

Emily Knox

iSchool instructors ranked as excellent

Fifty-six iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Fall 2024 and Winter 2024-2025. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the ratings from the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

iSchool Building

Ocepek and Sanfilippo co-edit book on misinformation

Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek and Assistant Professor Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo have co-edited a new book, Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons, which was recently published by Cambridge University Press. An open access edition of the book is available, thanks to support from the Governing Knowledge Commons Research Coordination Network (NSF 2017495). The new book explores the socio-technical realities of misinformation in a variety of online and offline everyday environments. 

Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons book

Faculty receive support for AI-related projects from new pilot program

Associate Professor Yun Huang, Assistant Professor Jiaqi Ma, and Assistant Professor Haohan Wang have received computing resources from the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a two-year pilot program led by the National Science Foundation in partnership with other federal agencies and nongovernmental partners. The goal of the pilot is to support AI-related research with particular emphasis on societal challenges. Last month, awardees presented their research at the NAIRR Pilot Annual Meeting.

iSchool participation in iConference 2025

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2025, which will be held virtually from March 11-14 and physically from March 18-22 in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme of this year's conference is "Living in an AI-gorithmic world."