Exhibit

"Mapping Science" Exhibit at the NYPL Science and Business branch (Madison/34th)


Places & Spaces: Mapping Science

Contact | When | Where | What | Lectures and Events | Acknowledgements | Reading List | Press

Today, the word "science" encompasses myriad arenas of physical and abstract inquiry. This unique exhibition, at the Healy Hall in midtown Manhattan, uses innovative mapping techniques to physically show what and where science is today, how different branches of science relate to each other and where different branches of study are heading, where cutting edge science is erupting as archipelagos in the oceans of the yet unknown - and - how it all relates back to the physical centers of research. The world of science is turned into a navigable landscape.

Modern mapping imagery has come a long way from Ptolemy. In this stimulating show compelling for all ages and backgrounds, audiences will both visually and tactilely uncover how contemporary scientific thought has expanded. Such visualization of scientific progress is approached through computer-generated relationships, featured on large panels as well through the collaboration of New York based artists W. Bradford Paley, Digital Image Design Incorporated and Columbia University and Ingo Gunther with renowned scientist from the field of scientonometrics: Eugene Garfield, Henry Small, André Skupin, Steven A. Morris, Kevin Boyack and Dick Klavans.

Scientists will be stimulated, students and teachers encouraged, and the general public fascinated by this multi-layered accessible approach to the worlds of modern scientific thought.

Science in the City Podcast: Places & Spaces: Mapping Science a guided audio-visual tour through the exhibit, New York Academy of Sciences, May 12th, 2006.

CONTACT:
Exhibit Curators:
Dr. Katy Börner, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN <katy@indiana.edu>
Deborah MacPherson, Accuracy&Aesthetics, Washington, D.C. <debmacp@gmail.com>
Exhibit Advisor:
John Ganly, Assistant Director for Collections, Science, Industry and Business Library of The New York Public Library, New York, NY <jganly@nypl.org>

WHERE: Healy Hall at the Science, Industry and Business Library of The New York Public Library
188 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
(212) 592-7000

WHEN: April 3rd - August 31st, 2006

Photos from the opening on April 3rd, 2006:

More pictures are available here.

WHAT:
Four Early Maps of Our World VERSUS Six Early Maps of Science (1st Iteration of Places & Spaces Exhibit)

This iteration aims to show the power of maps to help us understand, navigate, and manage both physical places and abstract knowledge spaces. The first maps of our planet were not perfectly correct. Yet they were invaluable for navigation, exploration, and communication. Maps of science generated today cannot be comprehensive as they are generated based on only a small portion of mankind’s knowledge. The generation of a comprehensive map requires proper interlinkage of multilingual, multidisciplinary, multi-media scholarly knowledge. Note that each of the six early maps of science displayed here uses a different metaphor. We are interested in inspiring discussion about which metaphors will be most effective in designing a visual index of mankind’s knowledge.

Click on any map below for more information.



Four Existing Reference Systems VERSUS Six Potential Reference Systems (2nd Iteration of Places & Spaces Exhibit)

This iteration aims to inspire discussion about a common reference system for all of mankind’s scientific knowledge. Scientists in many disciplines battled to agree on standardized reference systems such as the electromagnetic spectrum, the periodic table of elements, geographic mappings, and the celestial reference systems shown here. These standardized systems are invaluable for indexing, storing, accessing, and managing scientific data efficiently. Note that each of the six potential reference systems— from the one-dimensional time-based system to the geospatial system to the semantic system—could be used potentially to identify the “location” of an author, paper, patent, or grant, or to show the dynamics of an author’s trajectory or contribution, as well as the impact of a particular work.

Click on any map below for more information.


Worldprocessor Globes


Foreign US Patent Holders [Worldprocessor #294]
This globe represents half of all patents in the US - those registered to foreign holders. Countries with more than 1000 patents registered in the US are indicated by name, with the point size of the representative text scaled according to the square root of the total number of US patents held. Were the number of domestically held US patents to be indicated according to this logic, the entire surface of the globe would be covered. Special thanks to John Burgoon, Monika Zhu, and Stephen Oh © 2006 Ingo Gunther

Patterns of Patents & Zones of Invention [Worldprocessor #286]
This globe plots the total amount of patents granted worldwide, beginning in 1883 with just under 50,000, hitting 650,000 in 1993 (near the North Pole), and (shifting the scale to the southern hemisphere) continuing to 2002 on a rapid climb towards 1 million. Geographic regions where countries offer environments conducive to fostering innovation are represented by topology. Additionally, nations where residents are granted an average of 500 or more US patents per year are called out in red by their respective averages in the years after 2000. © 2005 Ingo Gunther

Shape of Science
This rendering is of a prospective tangible sculpture of the Shape of Science, based on the research of Richard Klavans and Kevin Boyack, spatializing the quantified connectivities and relative flows of inquiry within the world of science. © 2006 Ingo Gunther w/ Stephen Oh

Illuminated Diagram Display

The illuminated diagram maps and installations were created by Kevin W. Boyack (scientometrics and data shaping), John Burgoon (geographic mapmaking), Peter Kennard (system design and programming), Richard Klavans (scientometrics and node layout), W. Bradford Paley (typography, graphics, and interaction design); data courtesy of Thomson ISI; images © 2006.
W. Bradford Paley, all rights reserved.

Topic Map

The word “science” covers a huge diversity of topics: from mathematics and astronomy to medicine, even to certain approaches to the humanities. This map begins to show how distinct areas of study are defined and how they are related.

Seven hundred seventy-six nodes are distributed around a generally ring-like structure. They represent scientific topics, more properly called paradigms, and are essentially groups of recently published papers. Each node represents tens or thousands of papers; this map was created by scrutinizing more than 1.3 million of them.

The writers of scientific papers are careful to reveal all the work they build on, so we can think of each paper’s author as a micro-librarian: gathering all the other papers relevant to his or her topic. In this map we put two papers in the same node if four authors gathered them into a later paper. Nodes are labeled with the unique terms that occur most often in the papers, provided those terms can be understood in a wider context. Thus you can read the actual language used by the scientists exploring each topic.

The curving links between nodes show how topics are related: the more strongly two topics are related, the darker that link is drawn. Links curve to make them easier to follow with the eye. We show 4,370 links here, leaving thousands of fainter ones undrawn.

The circular structure is no accident, nor is it arbitrarily imposed on the data; it comes from the structure of science itself. If you imagine that every link is a rubber band (stronger when it’s darker), and every node has a small force field around it, pushing away nearby nodes, this dynamic balance of forces automatically creates the layout. Thus we can see that Physics (at approximately 1:00) relates through Astrophysics to Astronomy (around 12:30), but it also relates to Chemistry (more toward 2:00). And the jutting peninsula of Organic Chemistry at 3:00 has unexpectedly few connections to the thicket of Medicine, spread from 5:30 to 7:00. Instead, it connects to Medicine through Analytical Chemistry: the tool base of applied chemistry actually used in medicine, which studies techniques like Spectroscopy and Proteomics (the large node at the base of the peninsula).

Geographic Map

Here we have arranged the same papers on a more familiar map. Each tiny glyph on the map represents not cities, but a number of papers that have an author in that location. In the field of Information Visualization there is an expectation that if you show the same data in two different views you can get a better feel for it, much as an architect will look at both floor plan and elevations to understand a building. But how can we tell where in the world papers in one topic node were published? Or what topics are studied in a specific geographic location? We simply paint them to look the same in both views. The InfoVis technique called “brushing and linking” lets you do exactly that. Paint a location (by brushing your finger over an area on the lectern’s touchscreen) and it will glow on the geographic map. Since the views are linked by the computer, it can paint topics studied in that area on the topic map: the brighter a topic glows, the more papers on that topic originated in your brushed area. Conversely, touching a topic node will tell you where in the world that topic is studied. We use a display technique called “Illuminated Diagrams” to add the flexibility of an interactive program to the incredibly high data density of a print.
This technique is generally useful when there is too much pertinent data to be displayed on a screen but the data is relatively stable. The computer can direct the eye to what’s important by using projectors as smart spotlights, animating stories in the static data (such as the spread of an idea’s influence), giving a radar-like “grand tour” of science, or highlighting query results (as when you touch the lectern) with an overlay of moving light.

Lectures and Events

2006

  • April 4: Mapping Science Workshop, New York Academy of Sciences, New York.
  • May 4, 2:30pm: Katy Börner gives a talk on "Mapping Science" research at SIBL, NYPL, Rm. 018.
  • May 5, 10am: Katy Börner & W. Bradford Paley give a guided tour of the exhibit to attendees of the Gel Conference, New York.
  • May 5: Katy Börner presents "The Story of Mapping Science" at the Gel Conference, New York.
  • May 22: Book Signing "Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed" with David Rumsey at SIBL, New York.
  • May 21st: Modeling Science Workshop, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
  • Dick Klavans, 10th Anniversary celebration, SIBL, NYPL.
  • Watch out for the NYPL-SIBL/Information Esthetics lecture series organized by W. Bradford Paley.
  • See also the Schedule of Physical Showings of this exhibit.

Acknowledgements

Places & Spaces is curated by Dr. Katy Börner, School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, and Deborah MacPherson, Projects Director of the nonprofit organization Accuracy&Aesthetics in Vienna, Virginia. Places & Spaces also receives input from the Advisory Board listed on the website. John Ganly, Assistant Director for Collections at SIBL, is adviser for the exhibit.

Places & Spaces is sponsored by National Science Foundation awards IIS-0238261 and CHE-0524661; Thomson Scientific; The New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library; InfoUSA; Thomson Gale; the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, University Information Technology Services, and the School of Library and Information Science, all three at Indiana University. Much of the data used to generate the science maps is from Thomson Scientific.

Reading List

Science Map History Science Maps Today Science Map Future Books on Maps Books on Data Graphics

Press