The keynote on this final day of the Semantic Technology Conference saw Robert Larson and Evan Sandhaus of the New York Times talk about the paper’s innovative adoption of semantic technologies;
“The first semantic search system for The New Times was released in 1913 and was available bound in either paper ($6) or cloth ($8). In the 96 years since the advent of The Historical Index to The New York Times, semantic technology has become central to The New York Times’ daily operations and the focus of much internal research and development. In our keynote, Rob Larson, VP of Digital Production, and Evan Sandhaus, Semantic Technologist, will review the long history of semantic technology at The New York Times; discuss the application of this technology in our operations; and review an innovative initiative to enlist the global community in solving some of our toughest challenges.”
Sandhaus and Larson begin by referring back to the Times‘ long history, and the early importance of the paper’s emphasis on building - and selling - a comprehensive abstracting and indexing service to stories in the paper. This, they suggest, was important in leading to the paper being considered as the paper of record, ahead of its numerous competitors.
Building upon the paper’s nine-month old ‘Annotated Corpus’ and its associated APIs, Larson closed the session by announcing that the Times‘ thesaurus is to be made available using a license and APIs that will see it available to play a part in the wider Linked Data cloud.
