Section and Reading Schedule

Topics covered in section will generally match or compliment the lecture material.  The table below will list specific section reading assignments as the semester progresses.  Readings for the week will be posted no later than Monday evening preceding the section.

Reading Guidelines

Readings assigned for sections come from three types of sources:

• The open-access web, in which case a URL will be listed.
• Cornell licensed materials, in which case you should use Google Scholar from the cornell.edu domain to locate the appropriate licensed copy.
• Reserve materials at the Carpenter Library.

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? How is the content of the readings related to the topics presented in the recent lectures? 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.

On-line Discussion

The success of section depends on how prepared students are to critically evaluate the assigned readings. To encourage preparation, a blog has been set up for on-line discussion of the weekly readings. The blog is located at https://blogs.cit.cornell.edu/cs431/. You login id is your netid - all passwords have been set to a string that will be announced in class. Please go to the site as soon as possible and access your profile to change your password. Since you will be held responsible for posts associated with your netid, we recommend you make your password change immediately.

The guidelines for the use of this blog are as follows:

• When you go to the post page you will note that you can choose from a number of post categories. The default category for posts is "readings". Please use this category only for discussions about the section readings. There are other categories (e.g., lectures, projects, etc.) - you may use these for posts related to those subjects. Help keep the blog organized by using the proper category.
• Each student will act as a "discussion provocateur" three times during the semester (Each week's discussion provocateurs will be posted a week in advance.). A student with this role during a specified week should submit, no later than Wednesday night at 11:59PM, a post that raises discussion questions or issues relevant to the week's readings. Note that a good discussion question or issue is one that will get students thinking critically about the reading and its relationship to the content of the course. These do not have to be lengthy posts: 3-4 discussion points per reading is an adequate scale.
• Students who are not "discussion provocateurs" on a selected week may post comments in response to the original posts - these comments can be a start of the discussions in class on Friday.
• Students are encouraged to further comment and dialogue about the readings with additional postings or comments.
• The instructor and TA will monitor these posts, and base the in-class discussion section on the issues raised on-line. The quality of contributions to this on-line forum will be one factor in evaluating students' scholarly attitude (a factor in final grade computation).
• When composing a blog post you should consider our criteria for a "good blog enty":
  • It should demonstrate understanding of the readings by talking specifically to contents of readings. Do not summarize the entire reading, just the specific content you are speaking to. Do not write an essay; assume everyone has read the article.
  • It should indicate ‘deeper’ analysis by mentioning your own stance or opinion on the question/issue raised.

Reaction Papers

There are two reaction papers due during the semester.  The tentative reaction paper due dates are March 7 and April 21 at 11:59PM. 

For each reaction paper you should choose a topic covered in the course thus far.  The notion of a "topic" is reasonably fuzzy but broadly it is something that you can use as a vehicle for framing a discussion about three papers.  Examples of topics are "Libraries in the digital age", "Information Interoperability", "Semantic Web", etc.  You should then choose one of the assigned readings from the course thus far that are related to your topic of choice.  Then choose two related papers 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. Make sure to include proper citations to the three papers you have chosen. 

You should then write approximately 5 pages (approximately 2500 words) in which you address the following points:

• What are the major issues in the topic that you have chosen?
• What are the contributions of the papers you have chosen to your topic?
• Compare and contrast the papers to each other and the lecture material?  Do they overlap, disagree, compliment each other?
• What are the weakness of the papers, and how could they be improved? Do you disagree with the papers or agree?
• Do these papers and the lecture content raise any outstanding issues?  Do you see opportunities for research/development in the selected area?

A few additional guidelines on the papers are:

• Don't write book reports. A reaction paper that merely summarizes three papers will receive only a passing grade.
• Reaction papers should reflect your original work and ideas.  Plagiarism in any form is a violation of academic integrity.
• Part of the process of writing a good reaction paper is the choice of your source papers.  Carefully choose three around which you can form a coherent discussion. In general, articles from trade magazines are not appropriate (e.g., macworld, xml news). Chosen papers should be "scholarly" - that means they should have content that is supported and cited. Note that in the current changing scholarly environment, certain blogs fall into this category.

The reaction papers will be graded on a 20 point scale, with points allocated in the following categories:

• Choice of papers (4 points) - Points will be awarded based on the thinking reflected in your paper choice and especially the scholarly nature of the external paper that you choose.
• Presentation (4 points) - Points will be awarded based on clarity in preparation and coherence of ideas presented.
• Content understanding and summarization (6 points) - Points will be awarded based on the demonstrated understanding of the content of the papers and the way in which that understanding demonstrates an understanding of the course content in general.
• Synthesis (6 points) - Points will be awarded based on the depth of analysis of the chosen topic and the relationship of the papers to that topic, the critique of their content, and integration into the issues raised by the course in general.

Papers will be submitted via CMS, and should be in word (doc) or pdf format.