About Enference

Enference is Hans Nederbragt. Until 2000 working as an independent contractor, from 2000 to 2013 working for Trezorix as founder, functional designer and expert on modelling of knowledge systems. From 2013 working again as an independent contractor, under the name Enference.

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Clients

For more than twenty years Enference has been involved in the design and realization of digital knowledge systems. A selection of clients:

  • De Bibliotheek (Dutch public libraries)
  • Delft Municipal Museums
  • Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency
  • Eindhoven University of Technology
  • Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management)
  • IJmuiden Steelworks (now Tata Steel IJmuiden)
  • Kennisnet (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science)
  • Ministry of Agriculture (now part of Ministry of Economic Affairs)
  • National Military Museum
  • National Museum of Antiquities
  • National Museum of Ethnology
  • National Museum of Natural History / Naturalis Biodiversity Centre
  • Rabo Bank
  • Twente University
  • Tylers Museum

Projects

There are many projects that have played an important role in learning about the ins and outs of reference networks, and have yielded a wealth of very useful information about all sorts of patterns and best practices. A selection of representative examples:

The new Naturalis (1995-1998)

In 1998 a new, modernized version of the old Dutch National Museum of Natural History was opened in Leiden with a new name as well: Naturalis. As a project manager and designer Enference was involved in the realization of the very successful series of applications in the exhibitions and on the internet, which made the museum in short time known as a leading example of a new style knowledge institution.

The cooperation lead in 2000 to the foundation of the company Trezorix. Naturalis and Trezorix worked together for more than ten years, devising and developing applications that enabled Naturalis and her partners - nature related organizations, scientific institutions, and the Ministry of Agriculture ‑ to present themselves as modern knowledge institutions, and to combine their information in a unique knowledge cluster on biodiversity.

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Naturalis

RNA project (2004-2008)

toy tools

The RNA project was a cooperation between on the one hand a couple of institutions that were involved in the dissemination of knowledge on cultural heritage and nature, and on the other hand departments of two universities and a couple of small companies which were looking for new solutions in the area of semantic networks and language technology. RNA is an acronym of Reference Network Architecture.

Main activity were experiments with a range of solutions for the retrieval of knowledge in dynamic knowledge systems. The focus was on two important aspects: connecting relatively small reference structures (thesauri) into a large coherent network of concepts (notions, keywords), and dynamically linking content (knowledge) to these concepts. Given an ever changing repository of knowledge, how can you preserve ‑ with as much automation as possible ‑ the links between the content and the concepts of the knowledge domain in order to constantly maintain optimal findability?

The project was supported by SenterNovem / Prima (Ministry of Economic Affairs).

toy tools

Dutch Species Register (2007)

species register

The Dutch Species Register was realized in a set of projects of Naturalis, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture (LNV) and other partners. The goal was to improve access to the dispersed information on Dutch biodiversity by offering a single point and standardized entry . This was done by linking the many related sources via a central reference netwerk, and give end users access to this reference network and the connected sources via the web.

The core of the Species Register, the reference network, is an hierarchical structure which houses all Dutch species (plants, animals and other living beings), the so called taxonomic thesaurus. To this thesaurus all sorts of records are linked, with data in the area of nomenclature (names in different languages, synonyms, current names and old names), conservation status, presence in The Netherlands, et cetera. There is also an ever growing image library with pictures linked to the about 45,000 species that are part of the thesaurus.

Facet determination (2009)

facet determination

The goal of the project Facet Determination was to develop tools and workflows that enable "computer illiterate" experts (like many biologists) to build end-user-friendly determinition systems in a very easy way. The project was aimed at different user groups, like amature scientists and officials involved in the enforcement of international regulation on trade in endangered species.

The determination system that was developed in the project has the advantage over existing systems that the determination process is not tied to a predefined sequence of steps. Selection of the different properties of the objects to be determined can be done in any random order, until an end result is obtained. Another advantage is that no complicated and time consuming decision trees have to be designed or adjusted, like in traditional systems. All the expert has to do is place his determination data ‑ for instance characteristics of beetles ‑ in a simple table (spreadsheet), and the determination system for the specific set of objects is as good as ready.

The project was supported by SenterNovem / Digitaliseren met Beleid (Ministry of Economic Affairs).

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facet determination

Sterna project (2008-2010)

The Sterna project was thought up by Naturalis and Trezorix and was supported by the European Commission in the context of the eContentPlus programme. The goal of the project was to develop best practices for dynamic and multilingual knowledge systems that use dispersed sources with a multitude of different data models. Sterna is an acronym of Semantic web-based Thematic European Reference Network Application.

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The leading theme was "birds", the content related to this theme could vary from scientific data and articles to illustrations, photographs, films and audio fragments. Thirteen European organizations participated in Sterna, almost all of them were some way or another involved in the area of biodiversity and natural history.

For Sterna tools were developed that enabled the partners to build findability systems that could retrieve their content both in their native language as well as in the different langauges of the partners. The specific modelling of this environment made it possible that the large amount of taxonomic data could be made available in a scientifically sound way, while at the same time there was enough flexibility to integrate the many other kinds of content into Sterna, like a large database of bird sounds and a collection of rare bird drawings from antique books.

The project was supported by the programme eContentPlus (European Commission).

Sterna-project

DocumentChecker (2011)

DocumentChecker

As part of the CatchPLus program and in cooperation with the former National Service for Archaeological Heritage and the Tilburg University a tool was developed for metadating documents in a largely automated process with the use of natural language processing. This DocumentChecker compares the content of the documents with the terms in a pre-specified set of thesauri, combined with datasets of all sorts of variants of words (like those from the Dutch Language Union). Possible "hits" are rendered with background colours in the original text, after which they can be accepted or rejected by editors in user-friendly interface. The result is a set of metadata records that go with the original documents and are linked to the relevant terms in the used set of thesauri.

The project was supported by the CatchPlus programme.

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RCE Semantic Network (from 2010)

The Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency (with the Dutch acronym RCE), part of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, strives to make as much knowledge available as possible to support citizens, entrepreneurs, knowledge institutions and governmental organizations in the realization of their initiatives and the performance of their tasks. The motto is "linking of knowledge domains" (archaeology, build and movable heritage, culture landscapes and spatial planning).This requires an efficient digital infrastructure connecting data from many different sources.

RCE windmills

Currently the Agency is in the process of implementing such an infrastructure, where many participants ‑ from regulation officials to owners of listed buildings (like historical houses or windmills) ‑ can share data, where findability of information is easy and focused, and where availability of relevant knowledge is fast and cheap for a large group of potential users.

The source data remain in the original databases ("store only once") and are interconnected via a reference network, the RCE Semantic Network. The original databases are maintained and amplified by their separate owners, while with use of the reference network all these sources are made searchable is if they are one entirety. This way all participants have a large amount of new and useful information at their disposal, which they can use to focus and accelerate their processes.

Framework for Educational Concepts (2011-2013)

OBK framework

The Framework for Educational Concepts (Dutch acronym OBK) is an initiative of Kennisnet (Knowledge Net), a service from the Ministry of Education with the role of "public educational organization which supports and inspires Dutch primary, secondary and vocational institutions in the effective use of information technology".

The Framework houses all formal and informal information which is being developed in the context of design, planning, realization and evaluation of (formal) education in The Netherlands. The Framework can be used to provide educational materials with metadata, to provide metadata to the sources of educational materials, to compare the educational track records of pupils with the formal educational plans, and to mutually compare the performance of schools.

Digital Heritage Searcher (from 2014)

During realization of her Semantic Network pilot the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE, see above) run into two points of attention: it is abslolutely necessary the knowledge workers have a direct way to test their content on it's findability qualities, and application developers shouldn't have to to reinvent the wheel all the time when building properly working search interfaces. These questions lead to the demand for a reliable generic standard search method and an example of it's implementation. This would enable knowledge workers to easily test their daily work, and application builders could use it as a foundation for their specific search interfaces.

The Digital Heritage Searcher (in Dutch: Doorzoeker Erfgoed Digitaal) is a pilot implementation of such a standardized search method. The pilot must gain more insight into the relation between the rules for modelling knowledge to be imported on the one hand (in what form will the data be stored?), and the rules and strategies for retrieving data in a very focused way on the other hand. The Searcher should serve as a template for further developments in the area of findability in the RCE Semantic Network.

RCE heritage searcher

Trexyz: modelling and findability (2014-2024)

Analysis of digitizing projects that were realized in the past years shows that what is missing is a clearly formulated generally useful theoretical framework for the design of flexible knowledge systems. This has the effect that problems on the content level are too often approached from a sheer technical prespective. This on it's turn has the effect of seriously diminished grip by general (non-technical) management and content experts. And finally all this sums up to decrease of flexibility and, with that, viability.

Modelling

The goal of the project Modelling and Findability is to investigate the formulation of an generic theoretical framework that is useful for non-technical management and content experts to design knowledge systems as a reference network (semantic networks, linked data, thesaurus-centric sytems). The result of the research should support a methodic approach of the question: in which form can you store your knowledge (modelling) to achieve, in the context of a certain set of search questions (purpose), the desired findability?

The project is supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Ministry of Economic Affairs).


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