CS 502 Architecture of Web Information Systems and Digital Libraries

Who am I? Founder of Cornell Digital Library Research Group – Information Science Program – Research areas: interoperability architecture, metadata, content architecture Publications, Personal, etc. –

Course Web Resources 02/2002SP/ 02/2002SP/ Logistics: 02/2002SP/logistics.htm 02/2002SP/logistics.htm Code of Practice: 02/2002SP/code.html 02/2002SP/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-offs Cost Functionality

Syllabus and Readings 02/2002SP/syllabus.htmhttp:// 02/2002SP/syllabus.htm 02/2002SP/readings.htmhttp:// 02/2002SP/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 21 st 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 20 th 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