CS 431
Architecture of Web Information Systems
Spring 2005

Discussion Section and Readings

Readings

The subject of the course is a dynamic area.  Most of the material in the course is the result of research and implementation over the past 3-5 years.  Fortunately almost all of this work is available through papers on the open-source Web.  Readings are assigned for each week's discussion section as listed in the schedule below.  The content in each week's section is linked to that presented in coincident lectures, listed in the syllabus.

Students are expected to approach each week's readings critically.  Are the ideas sound?  What are the alternatives and trade-offs?   How well do the ideas fit into the larger information context?  What are the barriers to success: technical, social, legal, and economic. Weekly sections are meant to be a forum for discussing these critical reactions, driven by student participation and NOT by instructor or teaching assistant presentations.  The amount of section participation and the degree to which it represents critical evaluation of the readings is an important criteria of grading. 

Date Topic and Readings
Section 1
1/30		 From libraries to the Web: points on a spectrum
Section 2
2/04		 Bibliographic and Information Systems and Theory
Section 3
2/11		 Cataloging and Identifiers
  • H. Van de Sompel and O. Beit-Arie, "Open Linking in the Scholarly Information Environment Using the OpenURL Framework," D-Lib Magazine, 7 (3), 2001. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/vandesompel/03vandesompel.html 
  • D. Levy, "Cataloging in the Digital Order," presented at The Second Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, 1995. http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/DL95/papers/levy/levy.html  
  • T. A. Phelps and R. Wilensky, "Robust Hyperlinks: Cheap, Everywhere, Now," Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol. 2023 (2004) Springer-Verlag, electronic version available from the Cornell Library Catalog.  
Section 4
2/20		 Metadata: Issues and Simple Answers
Section 5
2/25		 Beyond Simple Documents
Section 6
3/4		 Federation Architecture
  • Davis, J. and Lagoze, C. NCSTRL: Design and deployment of a globally distributed digital library, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(3), 2000, (Locate through Google Scholar)
  • Lagoze, C. and Van de Sompel, H., The Open Archives Initiative: Building a low-barrier interoperability framework. in Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, (Roanoke, VA, 2001). (Locate through Google Scholar)
  • Lagoze, C., Arms, W., Gan, S., Hillmann, D., Ingram, C., Krafft, D., Marisa, R., Phipps, J., Saylor, J., Terrizzi, C., Hoehn, W., Millman, D., Allan, J., Guzman-Lara, S. and Kalt, T., Core Services in t+he Architecture of the National Digital Library for Science Education (NSDL). in Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, (Portland, Oregon, 2002), ACM/IEEE. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0201025
Section 7
3/11		 Beyond Human-Generated Metadata
Section 8
4/1		 Semantic Web Introduction
Section 9
4/8		 Web Scale Information Analysis
Section 10
4/15		 Trust and Reputation
Section 11
4/22		 Scholarly Publishing
Section 12
4/29		 Longevity of Digital Information

Reaction Papers

The reaction paper assignments are structured as follows: you should cover at least two closely related papers relevant to the current section of the course.  One of the papers should be from the course syllabus (assigned for discussion section on which the paper is due or the two preceding sections).  Another should be a related paper that you discover via another method such as references in the papers you have read, searching on Google, Google Scholar, via the library gateway, or from other information source.  Think of finding this paper as a mini resource discovery exercise.  The beginning of the reaction paper should include citations (with URLs) to the two papers you have chosen.

You should then write approximately 3-4 pages (approximately 1500-2000 words) in which you address the following points:

Reaction papers should not just be summaries of the papers you read; most of your text should be focused on synthesis of the underlying ideas, your own perspective on the papers, and thinking on how the content of the papers relates to the overall content of the course. Reaction papers should be done individually (i.e. not in groups). 

The reaction papers will be graded on a 12 point scale, with points allocated in the following categories:

 

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Carl Lagoze
(lagoze@cs.cornell.edu)
Last changed: April 25, 2005