The Walden's Paths Virtual Directories Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III Texas A&M University Structuring Access to a Dynamic Collection of Digital Documents:

Walden’s Paths – Project Overview Facilitates inclusion of Web-based information in the K-12 curriculum Most information on the Web is not suitable for use in classroom education Information needs to be contextualized –To suit the curricular goals –To highlight focal points for students –To present issues of interest Paths are annotated lists of Web pages

Walden’s Paths – Project Overview WWW Host Web Page Internet Backbone A Path

Walden’s Paths – Project Overview Walden’s Paths as a part of larger Digital Library Internationalization Path Manager –Web pages change frequently –Monitor and report web page changes User testing in the U.S., Germany, Italy

The Walden’s Paths Server Annotation Frame Control Frame Content Frame –not controlled by the Path Author –Following links

The Walden’s Paths Server Off-Path traversal –Single click return to path Guided exploratory learning environment

The Walden’s Paths Server List of Paths Path Summaries Links to author directories

The Need for Virtual Directories Path Lists tend to get lengthy fast Limited amount of display real estate Paths may be added and deleted frequently Classifying Paths by author does not solve the issue In fact, no static classification scheme can satisfy the requirements of all readers Paths of interest to a reader may be spread over multiple physical directories

The Need for Virtual Directories

School ASchool B Path Server 8 th Grade7 th Grade8 th Grade7 th Grade Mrs. JonesMr. Smith

Virtual Directories Provide –content-based –location independent access Persistent queries –Query attributes are saved –Resolved at access-time Up to date information is presented to users A proven technique –Semantic File System (Gifford, 1991) –Hierarchy and Content (Gopal 1999)

The Walden’s Paths Virtual Directories Allow readers to access paths of interest without having to worry about their location Display all paths that are currently available and may be of interest to the reader Aid readers in reusing their past queries Allow readers to search their earlier queries (work in progress) Relationship with physical directories –A virtual directory created using author name as the search criterion

The Interface

Identical to the Path List interface Links for –Modifying the criteria of this directory –Returning to the main Path List

The Interface Save as new search or overwrite No security yet

Technical Details Baseline implementation Virtual directories are stored as text files Currently the directories can only be accessed via a direct URL which is presented to the readers when the directory is created The directories have identical look and feel as the Path lists Query terms are “OR”ed to yield the final result set Queries can be recalled and modified

Future Work Security and sharing of directories Cataloging of Paths in order to return correct matches –Keyword-based approach with designated catalogers –Ensure consistency of terms Better control over searches –Boolean and ranked queries –Use existing tools (MG?) User modeling for saving user preferences –Favorites –Paths to be excluded from search –Recall directories created by users

Conclusion Readers are not restricted to a single listing of paths –They can create directories to suit their needs –Easier to find paths that interest them Decouple the storage structure from the logical structure