CS 502

Architecture of Web Information Systems and

Digital Libraries

Who am I?

• Founder of Cornell Digital Library Research Group– http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/

• Information Science Program– http://www.fci.cornell.edu/infoscience

• Research areas: interoperability architecture, metadata, content architecture

• Publications, Personal, etc.– http://www.cs.cornell.edu/lagoze/

Course Web Resources

• http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/

cs502/2002SP/ • Logistics:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs502/2002SP/logistics.htm

• Code of Practice: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs502/2002SP/code.html

What is a library?

• Functions– Selection– Organization– Support– Preservation

• Characteristics– Standardized– Professionalized– Service-oriented– In it for the long-haul– Conservative

What is the Web?

• Decentralized/Anarchic/Illegal• Agreements are technical (at best)• Roles are undefined and fluid• You don’t have to be an expert (or “no

one knows you are a dog”)• Immediate• Ephemeral

What is a Digital Library?

Evolutionary perspective: digital libraries as institutions that are the continuation of libraries (library automation and digitization as the link between libraries and digital libraries).

Revolutionary perspective: digital libraries as technical/organizational/economic/legal layers on top of networked information (the Web) that render existing libraries obsolete.

What is a Digital Library?

Digital Libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interprete, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities [Waters 1998]

What is a Digital Library?A Digital Library is a collection of information which is both digitized and organized [Lesk 1997]

[Lesk 1997] addresses other aspects when answering the questions: “What does it take to build a Digital Library?”:• Digital content• Access to content (search and retrieval)• Preservation of content• How to pay for digitial libraries (in parallel to maintaining traditional libraries)• Social issues (access to information ~ democracy ; resistance to reading on-line)

What is a Digital Library?

A digital library is a managed collection of information, with associated services, where the information is stored in digital formats and is accessible over a network. [Arms CS502 sp00]

Many facets of the problem/solution

technology

law

economy

sociology

Technical Trade-offsCost

Functionality

Syllabus and Readings

• http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs502/2002SP/syllabus.htm

• http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs502/2002SP/readings.htm – You don’t have to go to the library!

And now for some history…

Library of Alexandria

• Established by Ptolemy I in 290 BC

• 532K papyrus rolls• Acquisition by

copying mandate• Destroyed in 490 AD

during burning alive of Hypatia, the last keeper of the library

Melvil Dewey• “Father of modern

librarianship”• Frustrated by dedicated

shelving method• Invented method of

classifying into 10 categories

• 21st edition of Dewey Classification system now published

• Started ALA

S. R. Ranganathan

• Colon Classification System

• 42 main classes• Subject classification

by appending facets within class: who, what, when, where

Vannevar Bush

• “As We May Think” Atlantic Monthly 1945

• Pivotal landmark in hypertext research

• “This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing”

Claude Shannon

• “Father of Information Theory”

• Seminal “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”

• Data vs. Information

Henriette Avram

• “Mother of MARC”, “Melvil Dewey of the 20th Century”

• Developed MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC)

• Allows standardization and sharing of bibliographic records

J.C.R. Licklider

• “Man-Computer Symbiosis”

• Developed the idea of the “universal network” and interactive computing

• Developed and led ARPANET funding initiative

Inventors of Internet

• Cerf, Kahn, Metcalfe, etc.

• Packet rather than circuit switching

• Layered protocols (TCP/IP, telnet, ftp…)

Ted Nelson

• Inventor of the notion of “non-sequential writing” and term “hyptertext” and “hypermedia” circa 1960

• Founder of Project Xanadu

Gerard Salton

• Preeminent figure in modern information retrieval

• SMART information retrieval system: basis of many well-known IR concepts

• Among founders of Cornell CS department

Tim Berners-Lee

• Inventor of the World Wide Web – CERN 1989

• First client and server 1990

• Directory of World Wide Web Consortium and faculty at MIT