The Mathematics Genealogy Project slows to a crawl?

Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on May 18, 2006

A friend of mine, Paul Trafford, has observed that the Mathematics Genealogy Project appears to be slowing to a crawl, in more ways than one.

The centrally organised database project collates a research genealogy for mathematics, recording who studied under whom for their Ph.D. Unfortunately there appears to be currently a single grad student maintaining the database and updating takes a week.

This sounds like an ideal use for RDF/FOAF to me. Individuals host and update their own data (which naturally they are the authorities on), with links to the libraries holding copies of the thesis as evidence that the thing exists. They also link (naturally) to their supervisors and colleagues data, and so a crawler can build up a web. People can then build their own interfaces and more importantly, data can be updated in real time.

But, maybe I just have RDF on the brain.

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		The Mathematics Genealogy Project slows to a crawl? Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on May 18, 2006 A friend of mine, Paul Trafford, has observed that the Mathematics Genealogy Project appears to be slowing to a crawl, in more ways than one. The centrally organised database project collates a research genealogy for mathematics, recording who studied under whom for their Ph.D. Unfortunately there appears to be currently a single grad student maintaining the database and updating takes a week. This sounds like an ideal use for RDF/FOAF to me. Individuals host and update their own data (which naturally they are the authorities on), with links to the libraries holding copies of the thesis as evidence that the thing exists. They also link (naturally) to their supervisors and colleagues data, and so a crawler can build up a web. People can then build their own interfaces and more importantly, data can be updated in real time. But, maybe I just have RDF on the brain. FOAF \| RDF \| Semantic Web \| XML Stuart's blog Login or register to post comments 4075 reads
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