Use Case 7

Use Case 7: Display Concept Connections Dynamically - Individual Concept Lineages

Actors

Primary Actor: most likely an individual researcher, ecologist analyzing "legacy data" or (more commonly) taxonomist, or anyone interested in viewing changes in name/meaning relations through time.

Other Use Cases address the synonymy and parent/child connections among concepts on a one-to-one basis. They answer the question "how is concept 1 related to concept 2" in one step, and then "how is concept 1 related to concept 3" in a separate step. The results of such queries are thus more or less extensive listings of "token" (one-to-one) connections among synonymous or hierarchically related concepts, each pertaining to a unique reference and time. However. there is another way to view the relationships among published concepts through time. The authors of Nomencurator (Ytow et al. 2001, BJ Linn. Soc. 73: 81-98) refer to this as a "dynamic perspective" on concepts, where changes are presented in the same temporal sequence in which they occurred in the (primary) taxonomic literature. One can thus view partial or entire concept lineages, i.e. how concepts have changed from the time they orginated until their latest "reincarnation" in a recent taxonomic publication. These changes involve both synonymy and parent/child connections. There are multiple textual or visual ways to capture this; one is illustrated in slide 8 of the Vegbank Powerpoint presentation by Dr. Robert Peet (see TaxonMeeting_23_January_2004). In addition to individual concept lineages, one can imagine dynamic perspectives on changes among entire classification systems. These are treated in a separate Use Case.

Flow of Events

Pre-conditions

The Primary Actor has already queried the SEEK Taxon database with a name and obtained a listing of matching concept short-hands - e.g. Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997 - one of which (the "candidate") is selected for complete concept entry viewing.
It must also be specified (or specifiable at this stage) which (primary) taxonomic sources are available to generate a dynamic perspective on the various concepts connected to the chosen one, i.e. what "nodes" in the "chain" of concepts will be displayed. At the moment, such perspectives are rarely explicit in the literature (i.e. one has to extract them piece by piece), or present in taxanomic databases (German mosses being an exception to the rule).

Basic Flow

Having viewed the complete entry of a candidate concept, the Primary Actor now selects an option "display connections to synonymous and parent/child concepts dynamically".
In the Use Case considered here, the returned listing should only include "expert-made" connections among concepts, since the intent is to present a summary of changes already published (not: calculated) in the literature (other databases included).
A textual and/or visual display is returned to the user, illustrating the lateral (synonymy) and vertical (parent/child) relations of concepts that have been connected to the candidate concept over the time period that the selected information sources cover.
Depedending on the number of concepts involved, the lineage might be presented in one summary and/or in multiple segments.
Based on the results, the user can now assess how the candidate concept would have been "addressed" before and after the time it was created.

Examples

See example on Rhynchospora plumosa (sensu lato) on slide 8 in Dr. Peet's presentation (see URL above). Say, the candidate concept is "Rhynchosphora plumosa var. intermedia Chapman sec. Chapman, 1860", and the entire lineage extends among synonymous and hierarchically nested concepts published from 1816 to 2004.

Post-conditions

This Use Case will assist "experts" in manually adding connections among concepts stored in the SEEK Taxon database that did not exist before.

Alternative Flows

See Use Case on dynamic relations among partial or entire classification systems.

Further Details

See other Use Cases involving or expanding on queries.

Non-functional Requirements

Digital availability of the relevant information. This is a way to achieve informed concept matching through time without having to rely (mostly) on probabilistic algorithms. An ideal tool for taxonomists or ecologists analyzing "legacy data" to make sense of the taxonomic literature and communicate with others. However, in the short to mid term it will it be restricted to a relatively small set of taxa.

Issues

This Use Case requires more complex visual tools and database structures than others, and is more dependent on not-yet-digitally-available information, which might make it less of an immediate priority. Selected, particularly well documented data sets could be exploited, however, to illustrate the advantages of such a tool.

History

26 March 2004: (NMF) Use Case created from previous Word document.

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This page last changed on 30-Jun-2004 13:11:12 PDT by LTER.stekell.