alex galloway:

we've just added a new element to RHIZOME. all texts at RHIZOME are now
cross referenced by "keyword," "title," "place" and "name." so now it is
much easier to navigate *between* similar text objects. just look in the
box marked "Xref." if you click on a link you will be taken to other
texts that share that same characteristic. this is the RHIZOME robot in
its full glory. ;-)

this is all part of an initiative at RHIZOME to develop new ways of
mapping textual information. stay tuned for new graphical interfaces!

Nino Rodriguez wrote:

Good job on the search engine.

One question arising from nothing but pure self-interest: How does the
robot decide whether a person or place gets cross-referenced, or is that
an editorial decision?

alex galloway replied,

cross-referencing works like this:

rachel and i index every text object at RHIZOME by place, keyword, name,
date, etc. these are basic editorial decisions that we make. then, when
you view a text object the RHIZOME robot looks at the object's index
fields and trys to match other texts in the CONTENTBASE that share those
same index fields. the robot only gives a link if it makes a match.

for example, this week's FRESH article, "Illuminating Blake" by robbin
murphy, is indexed under the *name* "William Blake," but since no other
text objects in the CONTENTBASE share that name in their indices, the
name is not shown as an active link. All three keywords–publish,
offline and archive–are non-unique so they appear as links.

one consequence of this is that cross-referencing only searches through
a set of indices and not the texts themselves. this makes for good
browsing, but for deeper searches you must use the regular QUERY
function.