Creating Links into the Future

We are approaching an era where research materials will be stored more and more as digital resources on the World Wide Web. This of course will enable easier access to online publications. As the number of electronic publications expands, it will, however, become a challenge for individuals to find related or relevant papers. Related papers could be papers written by the same team of authors or by one of the authors, or even papers that deal with the same topic but were written by other authors. This, of course, raises the issue of linking to papers forward in time, or as we call it “links into the future”. To be concrete, while reading a paper written in the year 1980, it would be nice to know if the same author has written another related paper in 1990’s or if the same author has written a paper earlier, all this without making an explicit search. Based on the ascertained interest of a person reading a particular paper from a digital repository, an auto-suggestion facility could be useful to indicate papers in the same area, category and subject that might potentially be of interest to the reader. One is typically interested in finding related papers by the same author or by one of the authors of a paper. This feature can be implemented in two ways. The first is by creating links from this paper to all the relevant papers and updating it periodically for new papers appearing on the World Wide Web. Another way is by going through the references of all papers appearing on the WWW. Based on the references, one can create mutual links to the papers that are referred to

What we Expect from Digital Libraries

Digital Libraries have been the subject of more than a decade of attention by researchers and developers, and yet in all this time the implementations have not matched the promises. By far the majority of systems have concentrated on content and provided limited or basic functions for users. In this article we offer a new look at what can be expected from a digital library system based on contemporary developments in Information and Communications Systems and Technology. First, we sketch out the basic functions which are provided to support finding and accessing material by a reader. Next we explain some extended functions which support the use and re-use of documents - links and annotations - and the need to support learners in addition to readers and writers. Finally, we present our visions for a modern digital library and e-Learning portal system which includes for example intelligent and conceptual search support including results visualization, white lists, and adaptive user interfaces. 1) On sabbatical from Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australi

What We Expect from Digital Libraries

Digital Libraries have been the subject of more than a decade of attention by researchers and developers, and yet in all this time the implementations have not matched the promises. By far the majority of systems have concentrated on content and provided limited or basic functions for users. In this article we offer a new look at what can be expected from a digital library system based on contemporary developments in Information and Communications Systems and Technology. First, we sketch out the basic functions which are provided to support finding and accessing material by a reader. Next we explain some extended functions which support the use and re-use of documents - links and annotations and the need to support learners in addition to readers and writers. Finally, we present our visions for a modern digital library and e-Learning portal system which includes for example intelligent and conceptual search support including results visualization, white lists, and adaptive user interfaces