• General Information
• Code of practice
• Lecture Schedule and Slides
• Sections and Readings
• Projects

This course examines distributed information systems built on the World Wide Web.  Some examples of these systems are digital libraries, distributed e-commerce sites, and virtual laboratories.  Throughout the semester we will study the technical, economic, legal, and social issues in establishing higher levels of organization and management on Web architecture and resources.   Examples and topics will be drawn from both traditional libraries and networked information systems that are the result of emerging research in the computer science, information science, Web, and library communities.

The major themes of the course are:

• the cost and functionality aspects of centralized  information environments such as traditional libraries versus decentralized environments like the Web
• the opportunities for exploiting raw computing power and intelligent algorithms and architectures to efficiently organize and manage distributed information at a low cost
• the role of people in managing distributed information systems and the effect of those systems on organizations and people

The general topics covered in the course include:

• Information Systems Overview
  • Libraries and the Information Tradition
  • The Web and the Networked Information Infrastructure
• Information Theory and Organization
  • Bibliographic theory
  • Identity and data types
  • Library cataloging tradition
  • Metadata in the digital context
• Tools for semi-structured Information
  • Markup languages
  • Schema
  • Manipulating XML data: parsing, XSLT
• Networked Information Infrastructure
  • Document and repository architecture
  • Interoperability protocols
  • Web crawling
  • Networked information discovery
• Semantic Web
  • Ontologies
  • Semantic web modeling: RDF, RDFs, OWL
• Issues in digital information
  • Intellectual Property and Digital Rights Management
  • Preservation and longevity
  • Social networks
• Case studies
  • Scholarly communication
  • Legal information
  • National Science Digital Library

Course work includes readings, critical reviews, and technical projects that build expertise in tools and mechanisms for presenting and organizing information.