Library
Portions of the
I.S.C.E. library database are now available online - the
library comprises around 1000 books that have been read,
skimmed, quoted, etc. over the past 10 years by key
full-time I.S.C.E. staff in their explorations into
complexity thinking.
Some of these
titles explicitly deal with complexity, but the vast
majority do not - complex systems need to be explored from
many different directions and the greatest understanding
often comes from sources that we might least expect.
ISCE will
soon have its library accessible in full-text form to
assist in conducting research. (Note only 150 of the books
are presently up in full-text form -- if you click a
link and are turned to this page then that book is not
yet available)
Please email us for
password access to the full-text versions.
When we are
up and running -- the full text versions will only be
available to library members who will need to check out
each book for viewing in 2 hour increments -- much like
a regular library's reserve room. No books are
available for download.
The
currently available books are here.
Our goal with the library is to give the user an Internet
version of serendipitously browsing in a library
stacks. To do so, we provide several tools to help
you find items which are "more like this" -- where "this"
is the focus of your query.
On each book's page there is a "Key Concepts" table which displays the key concepts from the book. Clicking on a link in the table will bring up the definition of that concept in the dbpedia database.
On each book's page
there is a word cloud which displays the keywords from the
book. Clicking on a word in the cloud will bring up
a search of related books found in the ISCE library.
To search the library database please begin with the box below. Search results will display both the descriptor pages of books and links to relevant "chunks" of books. On the "chunk" pages clicking the link marked "ISBN: xxx Description and Links" will bring you to the descriptor page for the book from which the "chunk" was extracted. Each "chunk" page also displays a Key Concepts table and a Word Cloud which operate as described above.