Information is notoriously a polymorphic phenomenon and a polysemantic concept so, as an explicandum, it can be associated with several explanations, depending on the level of abstraction (Floridi [2008]) adopted and the cluster of requirements and desiderata orientating a theory. The reader may wish to keep this in mind while reading this entry, where some schematic simplifications and interpretative decisions will be inevitable.

There is a first layer where we deal with libraries, their contents and services. Compare this with the accountant’s calculations and financial procedures. One may wish to develop a theory of everyday mathematics and its social practices—surely this would be a worthy and interesting study—but it seems impossible to confuse it with the study of mathematics as a formal science. The latter is a second layer. It is what LIS amounts to, what one learns, with different degrees of complexity, through the university curriculum that educates a librarian or an information specialist. There is then a third layer, in which only a minority of people is interested. We call it foundational. For mathematics, it is the philosophy of mathematics. I suggested PI for LIS. My point here is that it is important to acknowledge and respect the distinction between these three layers; otherwise one may criticize x for not delivering y when x is not there to deliver y in the first place. When checking whether the bank charged you too much for an overdraft, you are not expected to provide an analysis of the arithmetic involved in terms of Peano’s axioms. Likewise, a scientist may be happy with a clear understanding of statistics without ever wishing to enter into the philosophical debate on the foundations of probability theory. So I do not see why LIS cannot be provided with an equally theoretical approach, capable of addressing issues that the ordinary practitioner and the expert would deem too abstract to deserve attention in everyday practices.

Identity is often said to be a relation each thing bears to itself and to no other thing (e.g., Zalabardo 2000). This characterization is clearly circular ("no other thing") and paradoxical too, unless the notion of "each thing" is qualified. More satisfactory (though partial) characterizations are available and the idea that such a relation of absolute identity exists is commonplace. Some, however, deny that a relation of absolute identity exists. Identity, they say, is relative: It is possible for objects x and y to be the same F and yet not the same G, (where F and G are predicates representing kinds of things (apples, ships, passengers) rather than merely properties of things (colors, shapes)). In such a case ‘same’ cannot mean absolute identity. For example, the same person might be two different passengers, since one person may be counted twice as a passenger. If to say that x and y are the same person is to say that x and y are persons and are (absolutely) identical, and to say that x and y are different passengers is to say that x and y are passengers and are (absolutely) distinct, we have a contradiction. Others maintain that while there are such cases of "relative identity," there is also such a thing as absolute identity. According to this view, identity comes in two forms: trivial or absolute and nontrivial or relative (Gupta 1980). These maverick views present a serious challenge to the received, absolutist doctrine of identity. In the first place, cases such as the passenger/person case are more difficult to dismiss than might be supposed (but see below, §3). Secondly, the standard view of identity is troubled by many persistent puzzles and problems, some of recent and some of ancient origin. The relative identity alternative sheds considerable light on these problems even if it does not promise a resolution of them all.

Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the disagreement between advocates of perdurance and advocates of endurance as analyses of identity over time; the notion of identity across possible worlds and the question of its relevance to the correct analysis of de re modal discourse; the notion of contingent identity and the notion of vague identity. A radical position, advocated by Peter Geach, is that these debates, as usually conducted, are void for lack of a subject matter: the notion of absolute identity they presuppose has no application; there is only relative identity. Another increasingly popular view is the one advocated by Lewis: although the debates make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. Identity is an utterly unproblematic notion. What there are, are genuine problems which can be stated using the language of identity. But since these can be restated without the language of identity they are not problems about identity. (For example, it is a puzzle, an aspect of the so-called “problem of personal identity”, whether the same person can have different bodies at different times. But this is just the puzzle whether a person can have different bodies at different times. So since it can be stated without the language of personal “identity”, it is not a problem about identity, but about personhood.) This article provides an overview of the topics indicated above, some assessment of the debates and suggestions for further reading.

The principal metaphysical questions concerning natural kinds are threefold. First, are the kinds that we think of as ’natural’ kinds genuinely natural? Second, do natural kinds have essences? Third, are natural kinds basic ontological entities or are they derived from or reducible to other entities (e.g., universals)? As regards the first question, the general problem is to determine which of the kinds to which science makes appeal, if any, correspond to real natural kinds—those existing in nature, so to speak—and which of these kinds are merely conventional—those whose boundaries are fixed by us rather than nature. As regards the second question, the problem is whether there are properties that might be essential for kind membership. Natural kind essentialists hold that natural kinds have essences (Ellis 2001, 2002, 2005). The essence of a natural kind is a property or set of properties whose possession is a necessary and sufficient condition for a particular's being a member of the kind. That fact is a "so-called" essential fact concerning the kind; it is a fact that, in Fine's terms, stems from the identity or nature of the kind (Fine 1994). Some anti-essentialists argue that there is no non-question begging way of motivating the appeal to essences (Mellor 1977). Mellor argues that the existence of essences in essentialist accounts of natural kinds is simply a gratuitous assumption. (Mellor, 1977: 309). Others use examples from the empirical sciences such as biology to argue that essentialism is too limited to capture the kinds we find in the special sciences (Dupré 1981, 1993) . In particular, essentialist accounts of kinds construe them as immutable or static, whereas examples from the natural sciences delineate mutable and dynamic kinds. Finally, even if we regard natural kinds as genuinely natural and possessing essences, the third question regarding the ontological status of natural kinds remains. One might regard natural kinds as irreducible, basic, sui generis entities (alongside, for example, particulars and universals) (Ellis 2001; Lowe 1998). Alternatively one might adopt some kind of reductionism, e.g., to universals (Armstrong 1978, 1997) or to clusters of properties (Boyd 1991, Millikan 1999).

Ordinary discourse recognizes several different kinds of things as possible objects of definition, and it recognizes several kinds of activity as defining a thing. To give a few examples, we speak of a commission as defining the boundary between two nations; of the Supreme Court as defining, through its rulings, “person” and “citizen”; of a chemist as discovering the definition of gold, and the lexicographer, that of ‘cool’; of a participant in a debate as defining the point at issue; and of a mathematician as laying down the definition of “group.” Different kinds of things are objects of definition here: boundary, legal status, substance, word, thesis, and abstract kind. Moreover, the different definitions do not all have the same goal: the boundary commission may aim to achieve precision; the Supreme Court, fairness; the chemist and the lexicographer, accuracy; the debater, clarity; and the mathematician, fecundity. The standards by which definitions are judged are thus liable to vary from case to case. The different definitions can perhaps be subsumed under the Aristotelian formula that a definition gives the essence of a thing. But this only highlights the fact that “to give the essence of a thing” is not a unitary kind of activity.

Metaphor is a poetically or rhetorically ambitious use of words, a figurative as opposed to literal use. It has attracted more philosophical interest and provoked more philosophical controversy than any of the other traditionally recognized figures of speech.

This book features a collection of essays by Donald Davidson that explore the relations between language and the world, speaker intention and linguistic meaning, language and mind, mind and body, mind and world, and mind and other minds. Davidson’s underlying thesis is that we are acquainted directly with the world, that thought emerges through interpersonal communication in a shared material world, and that language depends on communication. He also finds interconnections between his views and those of major philosophers of the past.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002) was founded in 1995 as a non-profit organization to provide open access to detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy. The Encyclopedia receives no funding, and operates through the volunteer work of the editors, which consists of editors, authors, volunteers, and technical advisers. At present the IEP is visited by over 500,000 persons per month.

Most of the articles in The IEP are original contributions by specialized philosophers; these are identifiable by the author’s name at the foot of the article. Others are temporary, or “proto articles,” and have largely been adapted from older sources. They are identifiable by the inclusion of the initials “IEP” at the close and will in time be replaced by original articles.

Nominalism comes in at least two varieties. In one of them it is the rejection of abstract objects; in the other it is the rejection of universals. Philosophers have often found it necessary to postulate either abstract objects or universals. And so Nominalism in one form or another has played a significant role in the metaphysical debate since at least the Middle Ages, when versions of the second variety of Nominalism were introduced. The two varieties of Nominalism are independent from each other and either can be consistently held without the other. However both varieties share some common motivations and arguments. This entry surveys nominalistic theories of both varieties.

Why, for example, are philosophers housed in philosophy departments? Should groups of two or three philosophers be placed in departments across campus, to draw out the philosophic aspects of chemistry, economics, and business? Why is there no "lab" or "field" component for philosophy courses? Given the transformative nature of contemporary science and technology, in areas from synthetic biology to nanotechnology to climate change, are there opportunities for philosophic research--and employment--within the public and private sectors? Why are we not training philosophers to work at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service, and a similar set of places across the private sector?

“Getting out into the field” means leaving the book-lined study to work with scientists, engineers and decision makers on specific social challenges. Rather than going into the public square in order to collect data for understanding traditional philosophic problems like the old chestnut of “free will,” as experimental philosophers do, field philosophers start out in the world. Rather than seeking to identify general philosophic principles, they begin with the problems of non-philosophers, drawing out specific, underappreciated, philosophic dimensions of societal problems.

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted. The centerpiece of Rorty's critique is the provocative account offered in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979, hereafter PMN). In this book, and in the closely related essays collected in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982, hereafter CP), Rorty's principal target is the philosophical idea of knowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. Providing a contrasting image of philosophy, Rorty has sought to integrate and apply the milestone achievements of Dewey, Hegel and Darwin in a pragmatist synthesis of historicism and naturalism. Characterizations and illustrations of a post-epistemological intellectual culture, present in both PMN (part III) and CP (xxxvii-xliv), are more richly developed in later works, such as Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989, hereafter CIS), in the popular essays and articles collected in Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), and in the four volumes of philosophical papers, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991, hereafter ORT); Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991, hereafter EHO); Truth and Progress (1998, hereafter TP); and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007, hereafter PCP). In these writings, ranging over an unusually wide intellectual territory, Rorty offers a highly integrated, multifaceted view of thought, culture, and politics, a view that has made him one of the most widely discussed philosophers in our time.

Patrick Wilson's classic treatise.

This essay forum strives to build an integrative discussion for what is a fragmented interdisciplinary field of study on the public sphere. It is meant to accompany a mapping project we are calling the Public Sphere Guide and is co-sponsored by NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. The forum provides a platform for discussions around current or emerging projects in this area and serves as a gateway to ongoing conversations around sub-themes that have resulted in other stand-alone forums or blogs at the SSRC.

A close reading of the text of Karl Marx's Capital Volume I in 13 video lectures by David Harvey.

On October 29 I left London for what was to be a month tour of California. On all previous trips I prepared very little. This time though I spent two weeks organizing a Social Web Camp in order to build up contacts in the Bay. But things took a very different turn.

At Hexagram 64 of the Yi Ching - the oldest book in China - entitled "Before Completion", one can read:

The caution of a fox walking over ice is proverbial in China. His ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice, as he carefully and circumspectly searches out the safest spots. A young fox who as yet has not acquired this caution goes ahead boldly, and it may happen that he falls in and gets his tail wet when he is almost across the water. Then of course his effort has been all in vain. Accordingly, in times "before completion," deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success.

Flight to San Francisco
The British Airways flight left in the late morning from London Heathrow. To keep me busy for the 10 hours trip I had bought the UK and US editions of Wired Magazine at the airport to complement the 1300 pages long collections of essays by Francois Jullien comparing European and Chinese approaches to wisdom which I had bought in Paris a few weeks earlier. ( some of these are available on Google Books in English ).

The plane took off and we were a served a very good and healthy lunch - I was pleasantly surprised. The shades were then pulled down to allow people to sleep or watch films. Even though I woke up at 5am that morning, I was too excited to sleep. So I read the easier Wired magazines from beginning to end to help me get back into the Silicon Valley spirit. One article that caught my attention and that was reprinted in both editions was Neil Christy's "Empty the Prisons" in the "12 Shocking Ideas that Could Change the World" Section. The following diagram makes the point very simply:

The cost of putting people in prisons is very high. Not just the monetary cost, but also the cost to Liberty. The easier it is for the state to put people in prison, the easier it is for this to be abused by underground operatives to put pressure on people to do things they would not have done otherwise. Perhaps there are crimes that should not be crimes. Not impossible: Alcohol was illegal in the 30ies in the US before being legalised after the complete failure of the program.

Having finished those mags I started reading a longer article by Francois Jullien on the different conceptions of Evil and negativity in the East and the West. It is an interesting story that goes all the way back to the earliest conceptions of religion. If God is pure good, how does evil enter the world? Is evil just the lack of Good, as Socrates would have had it? Or is the universe a battle between two equal forces, Good and Evil, as Saint Augustin, had been tempted to think in his earlier days as proponent of the Manichean religion. Or as the Taoists would have it, and as is symbolized so well in the Taoist Tajitu symbol, are these concepts such that they cannot exist without one another? Just as light cannot exist without dark, or high without low, perhaps good cannot exist without bad. And perhaps there is bad in the good and good in the bad? Certainly the Good of One can be the Bad of the other, as this poem - which is part of John Cage's Indeterminacy series -
so nicely illustrates:

Kwang-tse
   points         out
               that         a         beautiful

                                                woman

                 who         gives

                           pleasure

                                                 to         men

    serves
 only                                                                                             to

      frighten

                             the         fish

                                                                                when         she

   jumps
                                                                 in         the          water.

Moving away from the desire for purity, may be a very healthy thing to do.

I was tired and would not have had time to finish the 200 page article. Dinner was served. It was then just a short wait till we arrived. The plane dipped. I yawned to relieve the pressure on my ears, and looked out of the window, to what was the only view of the Bay I was going to be allowed to have. The plane landed around 3pm California time, which would have been 11pm London time.

Arrest

I had not filled in the forms for immigration, so I decided to do that comfortably in the plane. Those are the sheets where you are asked questions such as "Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?" One has to enter 3 or four times the same information. I had to look up the address and phone number of my contacts in the Bay Area. As a result I was the last person to get out of the plane. A huge line awaited me at the passport control check point, and I was upset with myself for not getting out faster. I still wanted to get my bicycle out of the box, and go to Menlo Park to get a few posters for the Social Web Camp and place them around the Bay Area.

I arrived at the control point, gave the officer my passport and cards. But I had forgotten to enter my birth date on the back of one form, so he ordered me to the side to do that, while he dealt with another traveler. I came up, he processed the forms, asked me to put my hand on a fingerprint machine. Something beeped. He did not seem too happy, and told me to go down to the corner of the huge room, to the door I could see in the distance. "Straight down there", he said. I wondered what that was about.

As I entered the room I first saw a row of benches with a little under 10 people sitting there waiting to be processed. I was told to put my passport in a slot and sit down. I thought I could perhaps phone someone, but one was not allowed to make calls there for some reason. I did not want to bother anyone before I knew what the problem was anyway, so I just waited. Slowly people were processed. Some came out of interview rooms. A Woman was asked if she knew someone the Bay Area. She seemed not to understand. An interpreter came around. Her son was called...

I was asked to step to the back office, where they passed my hand through a machine which took the prints of my whole hand and of the side of my hand. They took a few photos. Then they asked me if I knew why I was arrested. No I did not. I thought perhaps I had failed to pay a parking ticket, but I could not imagine that that would warrant my being stopped at the border. So no, I did not understand.

It turns out that a case from 2001, which I was certain had been closed had popped up in their systems. This was from my last year working in the Bay Area, when I had moved to San Francisco to work for E-Translate, at the end of the dot.com boom. So quite some time ago. I had come to the Bay Area three or four times since then, which seemed to shock them, as much as their bringing this issue up shocked me. I told them this was certainly a mistake. Everything had been taken care of. I would be certainly very happy to get this problem cleared up at the courts, and I told them it would very certainly not take much time - Indeed when 6 days later I saw the judge it took him 30 seconds to clear the case. But the officer in front of me did not know that. The information against me on the computer looked bad enough for him, and that was it.

By this time they had taken my telephone, passport and other material, and I was no longer in a position to get advice. I certainly had never been read any rights, and I could not ask anyone for help - I suppose that is just for US citizens. In fact by signing the entry papers I had waived my rights to an immigration court hearing I was told. The interrogating officer, very slowly typed up a report. The first question on the report was: "How are you feeling?" My answer: very tired. It was probably 3am in the morning UK time.

I had pleaded with the officer that I had come just to talk at a conference which I had organized, and to then present talks in different venues. My interest was to have a clear record, and so I would certainly show up in court. Somehow he made me think that I could get bail, and that from there on I could organize the hearings. That seemed like a good enough solution. I felt relieved. Shit happens. At least I'd get a free ride in a cop car.

Ride in a police car
After another long wait, I was asked to remove my shoe laces, empty all my pockets, was handcuffed and walked out to the front of the San Francisco airport. There a couple of policemen were waiting for me. I squeezed into the back seat on the very narrow bench separated by glass and metal from them. They closed the door and drove off, the bag with my cell phone, passport and other bits and bobs with them in the front seat.

They were quite entertaining. One of the officers asked the other if he wanted to go for a pizza, to which the first officer replied that he could no longer eat greasy foods since his appendicitis operation. He went into detail to describe both the cause of appendicitis, the operation, the stones they found in the appendix and the whole trouble that this caused. His colleague did not abandon the pizza idea, and described in detail a famous low cost pizza place where there were only 4 types of pizza available, and where you had better be careful not to ask for[…]

"As Bruno Bachimont uses to say, an ontology is mainly a tool to explicit inconsistencies of our knowledge, pointing to new questions for research. After that, you can throw it away."

Transcendental arguments are partly non-empirical, often anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what the opponent questions.

Perspectives on the Romantic Chronology by its Editors: Laura Mandell, Alan Liu, Rita Raley and Carl Stahmer.

This is the peril of hermetic rigorism and abject professionalization: if you believe that whatever it is you have chosen to hypostasize—truth in epistemology, the class structure in economics, the drive for status in social relations—is the only thing ultimately worthy of discussion, you stand a good chance of finding yourself on the defensive, with fewer and fewer people to talk to and increasingly occult things to talk about. Whenever a discipline becomes too self-congratulatorily reflexive, when it thinks, for example, that the corrections to the blind spots of sociology will be illuminated in an infinite regress of ever more sociology, that discipline has become moribund.

James is one of the most attractive and endearing of philosophers: for his vision of a "wild," "open" universe that is nevertheless shaped by our human powers and that answers to some of our deepest needs.

Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia.

The Epistemological Lifeboat is an attempt to guide students and researchers into the complex field of epistemology/philosophy of science.

"Wikipedia's philosophy is seated firmly in the quantum camp, whereby there can be no objective Truth, only subjective observations made by sentient humans." (IMO, Haraway's notion of 'webbed objectivity' would be a better WP philosophy.)

Mainly working on the ontology of mental attitudes and intentional agents in general.

Flickrites debate about what a photo is. Time for a "Flickr for drawings?"

Audio, written or visual representations of sexual acts and exposed body parts, primarily designed to produce sexual arousal.

Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions -- technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public.

"That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."

Not just for musicians, but for anybody who is interested in music or philosophy...

"All theory may be regarded as a kind of map extended over space and time."

Habermas's 1962 study examines the creation, brief flourishing, and demise of a public sphere based in rational-critical debate and discussion.

This book is brilliant for its microscopic and short term analysis of what is just, but it leaves out the possibility that short term microscopic violations of liberty can ensure the long term maximization of liberty...

This book disappointed me, because I expected to be able to somehow apply or utilize the information within...

As most films, like most novels, have some sort of narration flowing through them, David Bordwell's "Narration in Fiction Film" is a very useful and important book in the world of film theory...

John Locke's Second Treatise on Government is the Natural Rights philosophy's greatest essay...

Against Method calls into question the position that science enjoys in modern society (politics, education, etc...

I had great expectations for this book, with all the rave reviews and the topic looking highly relevant for my own research...

It is often said that Descartes is the father of modern philosophy; but much of modern philosophy would be unthinkable without the writings of Rousseau...

"We do not know: we can only guess...

I've been a big Kuhn fan for years...

This book is a collection of essays that Metz wrote regarding the semiotics of film...

This book is one of the most important philosophy texts of the 20th century, if for no other reason than as an eye-opener...

It is a new century, a new reality...

Having read three out of the four books in this series so far, all I can say is that if you are interested in arbitrary and very personal pseudo-metaphysical remarks about architecture, this is a sort of must-read for you...

Though no book will make you a filmmaker, some will help you refine your vision...

The above review of this book does a great job already, so I will try to complement it as best I can...

This book is a basic philosophical treatment of computing...

i loved this book: it questions the idea of repeatability, which means that it questions the religion of science (as practiced by amateurs)and it shows you how language has served the impulse towards duplicity...

If the very idea that chemical and physical or biological and social phenomena could be causally connected takes you by surprise, then I strongly recommend this book to you...

Steiner wrote with in an exceptioanlly clear style...

As a photographer, I know that the look of my product determines how much money I can potentially make...

Two science academics, one dead one alive, get themselves in a first person singular dither about all kinds of things - siblings, mothers, neighbours, aloneness, the point of existence, suicide, parents, self, the apparent conflict in EVERYTHING...

I first bought this book over 30 years ago when I was learning to cut film...

Baudrillard's book will disturb you...

Most everything in modern societies rests on rules, standards, and regulations of one kind or another...

I'm sure the translation is as poor as everyone says, but for God's sake, this is one of only three or four absolutely essential twentieth-century books on the history of games and gaming...

My mom made me read this book because I expressed an interest in psychology...

this book is basically an in depth communist manifesto, it backs up his claims of the communist society and goes into much detail...

If you thought scientific knowledge was clear, objective, and unbiased, but fortunately became enlightened by your readings of Kuhn, think again!! Rediscovered by Kuhn himself, Fleck exposes in a brief, very-well illustrated monogrpah, how facts -such...

1. Infuriating style? You're missing most of the irony...

Read Elizabeth Grosz's new book, In the Nick of Time, for a lucid account of Matter and Memory that could serve as a guidebook for the uninitiated who might find Deleuze equally tricky...

Bruner raises some interesting points and rather validly questions some of the developments in psychology and the search for meaning...

A collage of bits and pieces of wisdom that designer Milton Glaser has assembled over 50 years.

What would an object-oriented democracy look like?

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science for Information Scientists.

The Council for Secular Humanism is North America's leading organization for non-religious people.

In this paper we take a rather unusual, non-technical approach and investigate object-oriented programming and the prototype-based programming field from a purely philosophical viewpoint.

A manifesto about software for collaboration -- why the world's future depends on it, why the current crop of tools isn't good enough, and what programmers can and must do about it.

Features of the phenomenological approach; the spread of phenomenology; stages within philosophical phenomenology; phenomenology into the 21st century.

Professor of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with special interest in the theory of perception.

Hungarian philospher. "Philosophy, hitherto concerned with pure texts, now necessarily becomes involved in the analysis of multimedia documents."