adding to the toolbox: creating and maintaining a searchable database of events

IASSIST 2009, Tampere, Finland 26-29 May 2009

Adding to the Toolbox: Creating and Maintaining a Searchable

Database of Events

Tim MullenFederal Reserve Board


Background• “The Green Notebook”: notes and news clippings from 1948-

1975. Early years only have 10-20 entries per year. There are a few attempts to do a chronology of monetary policy that also covers international policy. Entry examples:

– Jul. 15, 1959 - Nationwide steel strike of 116 days. Involved 519,000 employees. Estimated loss of 41,900,000 man-days

– May 10, 1971 - Exchange Market Crisis. Bonn government floated the Mark.

– Aug. 11, 1972 - The United States ended its Vietnam ground combat role.

– Feb. 12, 1973 – US government announced 10 percent devaluation of the dollar.

– Dec. 13-14, 1973 – Truckers protest fuel crisis in two day strike.

• Idea (circa 1998): We should type these up to have electronically• Idea (circa 2001): We should create a web page.• Idea (circa 2004): We should put these in a database.• Idea (circa 2007): We should graph these.


Manually adding events to charts


A common way of displaying events


Using a timeline to display events


Adding filtering to a timeline


What can we do to visualize events?

• Located open source event charting software.

• Found easily incorporated seed data for events.

• Wrote connector for FAME databases


The next step—maintaining the database:• How do we add new events?

• What are the metadata requirements?– How do we categorize events?

• How do we find events?

• Flagging events for review and consistency


How do we add new events?

• What constitutes an event?– Almost anything; relaxed criteria in early stages of

populating database• Need verifiable source (website, book, paper, expert,

etc.)

– Trust users to know what events are relevant

• Who adds events?– Database administrator(s)

• Full read/write access

– Users• Restrictions on write access to database• After set number of submissions, grant admin privileges


What are the Metadata requirements?

• Event subject/main title• Event date – start/end• Location – event and impact?• Information source• Author of event entry (for follow up

questions)• Categorization for filtering• Distribution restrictions• Reviewed, but not currently using, existing

metadata structures


How do we categorize events?

• By type – fixed, high-level list– Economic, Financial, Political, Natural, Social

• By category – allow choice of known taxonomies– Journal of Economic Literature Classification

• Pros: well known and organized• Cons: focus on economics, lack of structure for social,

political, natural events

– North American Industry Classification System• Pros: well known and widely used• Cons: International events, changes every 5 years,

industry only


How do we categorize events (2)?

– Fed in Print Subject headings• Pros: known to our users, covers wide variety of

topics outside of economics• Cons: not used outside of Fed. Res. system, too

granular– Example of subjects starting with letter “G”:Gambling industry Government employees

Game theory Government lendingGarn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 Government National Mortgage AssociationGas industry Government ownershipGasoline Government Performance and Results Act of 1993Geithner, Timothy F. Government securitiesGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Organization) Government Securities Act of 1986General Motors Corporation Government spending policyGeography Government-sponsored enterprisesGlobalization Grain tradeGlobex Gramlich, Edward M.Going public (Securities) Gramm-Leach-Bliley ActGold Greenspan, AlanGold - Prices Gresham's lawGold - Purchasing Gross domestic productGold clause Gross national productGold reserves Gross state productGold standard Group of Seven countriesGovernment business enterprises Group of Ten countries


How do we find and report events?

• Text based search– Search title– Search body

• Filtering by:– Date, type, category, keyword

• Browse all events• Each event links to page with:

– Body and all metadata– Reporting form which will flag event for follow-

up


Future plans:

• Finalize submission form guidelines

• Finalize categorization choice set

• Create application to export events

• Higher frequency time display

• Incorporate use of vintage data


Last slide….

I would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions. Please feel free to call or

email:

Tim [email protected]

(202) 452-3898

adding to the toolbox: creating and maintaining a searchable database of events

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