Journal of Digital Information (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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Implementation Challenges Associated with Developing a Web-based E-notebook - Addendum on Related Work
No full textThe addendum provides a brief history of the NetNotes development, and discusses relevant research not included in the original paper, responding to comments from a JoDI editor that the paper may have missed some related work in the hypermedia systems field
The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems
No full textAt the ACM Hypertext Conference a panel discussed "The Next Big Thing Inc." in the area of hypertext and hypermedia. The Web has been the "Big Thing" during the past 10 years, but its success has also made it very difficult to find the appropriate information in an ocean of over 3 billion pages. Whereas search engines achieve incredible precision, they suffer from the same "one size fits all" approach that characterizes the Web sites they index. The paper defends the position that personalization, and in particular automatic personalization or adaptation, is the key to reach the goal of offering each individual user (or user group) the information they need. During the panel discussion there was debate about whether the user should always have access and control over the entire (hypertextual) information space. There were different views on whether the "right" to all the information is best guaranteed by offering tools that reduce the information space the user perceives so that the user can actually find and reach the information, or by offering unfiltered access to an ocean of information in which everything is available but in which perhaps nothing can be found. We argue in favor of adaptation but at the same time point out flaws in the way adaptive hypermedia has been used until now. The paper then proposes a new, modular adaptive hypermedia architecture that should lead to adaptive Web-based systems as the "Next Big Thing" indeed. In this architecture, different applications can collaborate in creating and updating a user model. Shared user model servers are not just needed for adaptive Web sites, but are also the key to enabling the development of ambient intelligence. (Many small systems then need to work together and base their actions on common knowledge about their user(s).) Sharing user models can of course cause a "big brother" problem. Legislation is already in place to protect users\u27 privacy by placing legal limits on the kind of user modeling and sharing of user models that is allowed. The paper briefly reviews the legal issues of user modeling and adaptation in order to provide not just a future outlook based on "wild imagination" but based on a realistic vision of what will not only become technically possible but also of what will be "acceptable"
The PlumbingXJ Approach for Fast Prototyping of Web Applications
No full textThe paper presents the PlumbingXJ approach for fast prototyping of hypermedia Web applications. PlumbingXJ is a process model driven by the use of the hypermedia-oriented model Pipe. Pipe is a formalised graphical notation that splits the characterisation of hypermedia applications into two parts: the contents graph and the navigational schema. The contents graph is focused on the contents of the application and their semantic relationships. The navigational schema is focused on the characterisation of the graphical user interface, and the navigational relationships among the elements of this user interface. Both components are related with the canalisation functions that describe the navigational interpretation of the contents and relationships in the user interface. In addition, Pipe presents a default browsing semantics that describes the behaviour of the application after an anchor has been selected. The use of the Pipe model at the conceptualisation stage of a well-known process model produces the Plumbing process model. Our approach uses a specialised Plumbing process model using XML and Java to materialize the Pipe structures at the prototyping stage, obtaining another process model called PlumbingXJ. The paper describes the graphical notation associated with Pipe, the Plumbing process model, and how the use of XML and Java at the conceptualisation stage in PlumbingXJ produces a viable approach for fast prototyping of Web applications. The XML and Java techniques are compared with several markup technologies available for the development of hypermedia and Web applications
MERLOT: A Model for User Involvement in Digital Library Design and Implementation
No full textMERLOT is an international consortium comprised of over 20 institutions and systems of higher education and industry partners who collaborate to produce a premier online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share online learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT\u27s mission is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by expanding the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty-designed courses. Created in 1997 by the California State University, in 1999 MERLOT expanded by inviting other partners to participate in creating and implementing MERLOT as a free, Web-based resource for higher education. MERLOT emphasizes both the quality and review of materials as well as services for the broad community it serves. MERLOT\u27s partners are integral to the functioning of MERLOT and its services, from initial design and testing to deployment and management
A framework for the implementation of Application Profiles in XML Schemas
No full textThe concept of an application profile (AP) has been developed to allow implementers to draw on metadata terms from existing vocabularies and customise them for a local application. APs play an important role in enhancing interoperability between diverse applications. From our experience of encoding an AP targeted to the digital heritage domain, we have devised a generalized XML Schemas Definition (XSD) framework capable of satisfying the functional and modelling characteristics of APs with either flat or nested structures. This paper presents the framework and its technical implementation, its potential impact on the development of dynamic machine- processible APs, and its current limitations. The framework presented has a layered structure to explicitly separate the authoritative, the non-authoritative, and the application profile schemas. We believe this framework to be an important step in encoding APs that can be dynamically updated with information relating to the terms they reuse, directly from schemas on remote locations (e.g. the web), enabling the automatic creation and validation of AP instance records
Scholarly Communication and the Digital Library: Problems and Issues
No full textThis paper considers a range of definitions for a digital library from the perspective of scholarly communication and the properties of a traditional research library. It then explores some of the problems and issues involved in creating and maintaining a digital library, depending on the characteristics one wants it to have. The paper stresses the need to consider the requirements of scholarship and research as we build the digital libraries of the future
The World Wide Web - Past, Present and Future
No full textTim Berners-Lee was awarded a Distinguished Fellowship of the British Computer Society on July 17, 1996 at the new British Library in London. The following is a transcript of his presentation
OHRA: Towards an Open Hypermedia Reference Architecture and a Migration Path for Existing Systems
No full textThe open hypermedia research community recognised that to make progress on defining a protocol to enable third party applications to access open link services, it was necessary to first establish a reference architecture for open hypermedia systems upon which to base discussions. In this paper we argue that there is a need to extend yet further the scope of these requirements. We propose an overall architecture for the integration of existing open hypermedia systems in a distributed and collaborative model, and provide a clear evolution path towards achieving this goal
Towards Universal Serial Item Names
No full textThe Universal Serial Item Name (USIN) scheme is proposed as a framework for a single global namespace of articles and other contributions published in organized serial collections. Requirements for USINs are analysed with an emphasis on the use of USINs in scholarly communication. A uniform naming model is described based on the hierarchical naming of serial publications and the hierarchical numbering of serial items. A number of concrete design ideas for USIN syntax are presented. A USIN Global Registry and a USIN Global Database are proposed and analysed in terms of specific architectural features that interact to meet the requirements of publishers, librarians and scholars. Applications of the USIN concept to literature research, document retrieval, bibliography preparation and addressing the \u27broken links\u27 problem of the World Wide Web are considered
