roundtable: Re: New way to label information on the Internet(A Primer)

roundtable: Re: New way to label information on the Internet(A Primer)

Re: New way to label information on the Internet(A Primer)

Karen Coyle (kec@stubbs.ucop.edu)
Fri, 22 Dec 95 10:23:17 PST 

Date: Fri, 22 Dec 95 10:23:17 PST
From: Karen Coyle <kec@stubbs.ucop.edu>
Subject: Re: New way to label information on the Internet(A Primer) 
To: roundtable@cni.org
Message-Id: <Chameleon.4.00.2.951222104319.kec@MONA.UCOP.EDU>


There is quite a bit of work going on in the development of new 
models of information retrieval that are appropriate to networked 
information.  I refer you to the  CNI white paper on Networked 
Information Discovery and Retrieval:

   http://www.cni.org/projects/nidr/www/toc.html

as a good starting point.

Part of this process is the development of metadata models for net 
resources.  Work on this is taking place in a variety of contexts - the 
URC work being done through IETF, the OCLC metadata paper from 
the library world: 

(http://www.oclc.org:5046/conferences/metadata/dublin_core_report.html)

and other projects focussing on metadata for GIS data, biological data, etc.

In addition, part of the research being undertaken by the Digital 
Libraries projects that were funded last year (through NTIA, I 
believe) includes search and retrieval models.  As an example, here's 
the URL for the UC Berkeley project, which focuses precisely on that 
area: 

   http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/.

It's clear that search and retrieval in the future will not follow the 
linear model of the traditional library - we are no longer limited to 
shelves and card catalogs.  All of the models above assume that 
searching is an iterative process, and that both the searcher and the 
system learn as the search takes place.  Ideally, this learning could 
also be carried over search sessions, with search systems that retain 
information about your past search behavior, what resources you 
have already encountered and rejected, etc.  This is getting into a 
rather futuristic level of intelligence for the search system, but I think 
it is a worthy goal.

Karen Coyle     ---    kec@stubbs.ucop.edu
University of California, Library Automation
http://stubbs.ucop.edu/~kec

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