Compendium (software): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:30, 3 September 2022

Revision as of 04:20, 22 September 2022

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| website = {{url|compendium.open.ac.uk}}

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'''Compendium''' is a computer program and [[social science]] tool that facilitates the mapping and management of ideas and arguments. The software provides a visual environment that allows people to structure and record collaboration as they discuss and work through "[[wicked problem]]s".

The software was released by the not-for-profit Compendium Institute. The current version operationalises the [[issue-based information system]] (IBIS), an argumentation mapping structure first developed by [[Horst Rittel]] in the 1970s. Compendium adds [[hypertext]] functionality and [[database]] [[interoperability]] to the issue-based notation derived from IBIS.

Compendium source code was fully released under the [[GNU Lesser General Public License|LGPL licence]] on 13 January 2009.<ref>{{cite web |last=Buckingham Shum |first=Simon J |title=Compendium released open source |publisher=Compendium Institute |date=13 February 2009 |url=http://compendium.open.ac.uk/news/rostra/news.php@r=55&t=2&id=41.htm |access-date=11 January 2015}}</ref> Compendium can still be downloaded, but is no longer actively maintained.<ref>{{cite web |title=Compendium Institute |url=http://compendium.open.ac.uk |website=compendium.open.ac.uk |access-date=26 August 2018}}</ref>

== Applications ==

Compendium visually represents thoughts and illustrates the various interconnections between different issues (or, questions), ideas (or, answers), and arguments. It can be used for applications as varied as: issue mapping in meetings, [[design rationale]]s and [[requirements analysis]], meeting management ([[Agenda (meeting)|agendas]] and [[minutes]]), [[action item]] and [[Issue tracking system|issue tracking]], [[requirements management]], classification, management templates, and reference databases (such as [[personal knowledge base]]s).

The creation of [[issue map]]smaps graphically represents the relations between issues and ideas, and facilitates the understanding of interconnected topics through [[Diagram|diagrammatic]] representation.

The software can be used by a group of people in a collaborative manner to convey ideas to each other using visual diagrams. A group [[Facilitation (business)|facilitation]] method called [[dialogue mapping]] is especially suited for use with Compendium.<ref>{{harvnb|Conklin|2006}}; {{harvnb|Zubizarreta|2006}}</ref>

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== Features ==

Ideas are represented as icons called [[Node (computer science)|node]]s. There are ten types of node: question, answer, list view, map view, pro, con, note, decision, reference, argument. There are three types of relationship between nodes: associative, transclusive, categorical. Images can be placed directly into a view, assigned to a node, or assigned to the background picture. Features of Compendium include:

* Drag and drop documents and websites onto a map

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Users can choose to use Compendium with either the [[Apache Derby]] (internal) or [[MySQL]] (external) [[relational database management system]].

The software is networked and supports concurrency and different views when using [[MySQL]].

== History ==

Compendium is the result of fifteen years of development in collaborative modeling, initiated in the mid-1990s by Al Selvin and Maarten Sierhuis at [[NYNEX]] Science & Technology; the theory behind the software hails from the 1970s, when IBIS ([[issue-based information system]]) was first conceptualised by [[Horst Rittel]]. Selvin and Sierhuis built on Jeff Conklin's earlier hypertext issue mapping software: gIBIS and QuestMap.<ref>{{cite web |title=Compendium project |publisher=Knowledge Media Institute, [[Open University]] |date=2009 |url=http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/compendium/ |access-date=11 January 2015}}</ref>

Many associations have thence contributed ideas to the development of Compendium. These institutions include Blue Oxen Associates, Center for Creative Leadership, [[Open University]]'s Knowledge Media Institute, [[Verizon]], CogNexus Institute, and Agent iSolutions.<ref>{{cite web |title=Participating institutions |publisher=Compendium Institute |date=2007 |url=http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institutions.htm |access-date=11 January 2015}}</ref> In 2012 the Compendium community established CompendiumNG to further advance and develop the software.<ref>{{cite web |title=CompendiumNG wiki |publisher=CompendiumNG |date=2017 |url=https://github.com/CompendiumNG/CompendiumNG/wiki |access-date=22 February 2017}}</ref>