Abstract: Ontologies are set to play a key role in the "Semantic Web", extending syntactic interoperability to semantic interoperability by providing a source of shared and precisely defined terms. DAML+OIL is an ontology language specifically designed for use on the Web; it exploits existing Web standards (XML and RDF), adding the familiar ontological primitives of object oriented and frame based systems, and the formal rigor of a very expressive description logic. The logical basis of the language means that reasoning services can be provided, both to support ontology design and to make DAML+OIL described Web resources more accessible to automated processes.

Abstract: Similar to traditional data mining, three important Web mining operations include clustering, association, and sequential analysis. Typical clustering operations in Web mining involve finding natural groupings of Web resources or Web users. Researchers have pointed out some important differences between clustering in conventional applications and clustering in Web mining. For example, the clusters and associations in Web mining do not necessarily have crisp boundaries. Moreover, due to a variety of reasons inherent in Web browsing and Web logging, the likelihood of bad or incomplete data is higher. As a result, researchers have studied the possibility of using fuzzy sets in Web mining clustering applications. The paper describes how rough set theory can also be used to develop clustering schemes for Web mining. The unsupervised classification described in the paper uses properties of rough sets along with genetic algorithms to represent clusters as interval sets. The paper also describes the design of an experiment including data collection and the clustering process. The experiment is used to create interval set representations of groups of Web visitors.

Abstract: This document lays out general definitions of and mechanisms for establishing Uniform Resource Names (URN) "namespaces". The URN WG has defined a syntax for URNs in RFC 2141, as well as some proposed mechanisms for their resolution and use in Internet applications in RFC 3401 and RFC 3405. The whole rests on the concept of individual "namespaces" within the URN structure. Apart from proof-of-concept namespaces, the use of existing identifiers in URNs has been discussed in RFC 2288.

Abstract: A company's local data is often insufficient for analyzing market trends and making reasonable business plans. Decision making must also be based on information from suppliers, partners and competitors. Systematically integrating suitable external data from the Web into a data warehouse is a meaningful solution and will benefit the enterprise. However, the autonomy and dynamics of the Web make the task of selecting relevant and qualified external data from the Web challenging. We develop a set of criteria for evaluating and selecting Web resources as external data sources of a data warehouse and discuss how to screen Web data sources using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. The final decision with respect to selecting Web sources is sensitive to critical factors, i.e., the criterion weight and performance score of alternatives in terms of each criterion. We analyzed the sensitivity of the final rank of alternatives in terms of critical factors in order to gain an insight into the stability of our final decision. The comparison of several MCDM approaches for Web source screening is also presented.

Abstract: Four surveys conducted over a decade provide insights about changes that have occurred in academic library reference services due to new and rapidly evolving technologies. Surveys were sent to the academic members of the Association of Research Libraries four times during the past decade: 1991, 1995, 1997, and 2000. The surveys contained both open-ended questions to gather opinions and factual questions to measure what libraries offer. Libraries adopted digital information sources and services at an increasingly accelerated rate in the 1990s due to the availability of the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web. Digital sources have brought about changes in the physical environment of the reference room, in the type and range of resources available, and in the attitudes and expectations of reference librarians and patrons. The Web is changing what resources are searched, how results are distributed, how instruction is delivered, and relations with faculty. Quality service is still highly valued by reference librarians. The reference librarians surveyed think that as the reference environment has changed, it has helped them to provide better services to patrons. ********** There is no doubt that the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web has transformed university reference departments. Today we take for granted Web-based online catalogs, library-provided portals to quality Web sites, and a plethora of commercial online databases, the most popular of which are Web versions. Hundreds of workstations, complex internal and external network connections, and a mix of in-house and online resources define reference services of the twenty-first century. Although automation has been a part of reference services for more than thirty years, the most profound changes occurred within the last ten years and were accelerated by the phenomenal growth of the Internet. The authors surveyed university libraries four times during the decade of 1991-2001 in order to track those changes in detail. During the past decade, automation of reference resources went from affecting a few librarians and specialized users to affecting everyone in the library, from an add-on service to the predominate service, from intermediary assistance to self-service. Our surveys revealed that expectations of both reference staff members and patrons changed profoundly during the last decade of the century as well. Now both groups believe that an answer to almost every question can be found if the right combination of resources and search strategies is chosen from the multitude of Web resources and online services accessible. Previous Surveys Both the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association's Association of College and Research Libraries division (ACRL) regularly collect information from academic libraries, including some that helps track changes in reference departments throughout the 1990s. (1) Other organizations regularly survey libraries to gather general information. The National Center for Education Statistics has published data about academic libraries for more than a century and has surveyed academic libraries biennially for a decade. (2) Since 1979 ARL has issued a biennial report that includes trends and statistics of academic libraries, including expenditures, collections, and services. Lynch, of the American Library Association Office for Research and Statistics, summarizes these important surveys and other relevant reports. (3) Lynch conducted a survey of electronic services in all types and sizes of academic libraries. (4) She found that by 1996 almost all academic libraries offered access to the Internet (especially the Web), commercial bibliographic online databases, and CD-ROM databases. A smaller percentage offered access to full-text electronic journals, but 71 percent of doctoral granting institutions did. Data gathered over time by ARL were analyzed by Kyrillidou to provide insights into the changing conditions in reference libraries. …

Abstract: A collaboration of resources in a distributed environment using credentials and encryption keys is described. According to one embodiment of the invention, a first resource entity receives a communication from a second resource entity over a network. The communication is decrypted with a secret and includes a set of one or more credential and a contact identifier of the second resource entity. The second resource entity is allowed to access a resource on the first resource entity based on the one or more credentials associated with the contact identifier.

Abstract: This study investigated the dimensions of self-exploration in Web-based learning environments using an attitude survey given to 209 college students. Through factor analysis, five dimensions of self-exploration in Web-based learning environments were identified. One-way analysis of variance revealed statistically significant differences in levels of self-exploration in three dimensions by gender and in four dimensions by native English speaking ability. Understanding the dimensions of self-exploration in Web-based learning environments among college students may help educators (1) design effective Web-based instructional materials, (2) identify Web resources that draw on students’ learning needs and interests, and (3) consider different interests of students who speak English as a second language.

Abstract: This article describes the use of the World Wide Web as a valuable name authority resource and tool for special collections analytic-level cataloging and the specific goal of “fully discovering” the names of people who lived in the past as well as those from the present. Current tools and initiatives such as the Name Authority Component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (NACO) and the Library of Congress Name Authority File have a specific mission and are partially helpful. Web resources encompassing special collections are often intricate and require global and enhanced resources to continue what have been the guiding principles, tradition, and value of cataloging: to discover works via many points of entry; to find works by or about the same person, topic, or title; and to continue the great cataloging legacies of standards and cooperation.

Abstract: Description Logics are a family of class based knowledge representation formalisms characterised by the use of various constructors to build complex classes from simpler ones, and by an emphasis on the provision of sound, complete and (empirically) tractable reasoning services. They have a wide range of applications, but their use as ontology languages has been highlighted by the recent explosion of interest in the Semantic Web, where ontologies are set to play a key role. DAML+OIL is a description logic based ontology language specifically designed for use on the web. The logical basis of the language means that reasoning services can be provided, both to support ontology design and to make DAML+OIL described web resources more accessible to automated processes.

Abstract: We describe ongoing work on I2I, a system aimed at fostering opportunistic communication among users viewing or manipulating content on the Web and in productivity applications. Unlike previous work in which the URLs of Web resources are used to group users visiting the same resource, we present a more general framework for clustering work contexts to group users together that accounts for dynamic content and distributional properties of Web accesses which can limit the utility URL based systems. In addition, we describe a method for scaffolding asynchronous communication in the context of an ongoing task that takes into account the ephemeral nature of the location of content on the Web. The techniques we describe also nicely cover local files in progress, in addition to publicly available Web content. We present the results of several evaluations that indicate systems that use the techniques we employ may be more useful than systems that are strictly URL based.

Abstract: Recent increases in the use of Web-based resources by faculty in higher education appear to be reaching a plateau. To better understand how to encourage the use of Web resources a survey was designed to examine faculty perceptions about the navigability and content of a specific Web-based resource and their attitudes about the instructional use of Web-based resources in general. Results of the survey indicated that faculty with more years of experience and those teaching at research and doctoral institutions expressed the most favorable attitudes toward the provided Web resource. In addition, gender differences were found pertaining to the factors most likely to influence the use of Web resources. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for increasing the use of Web-based resources in higher education.

Abstract: Currently the Web is the largest available environment for the deployment of agents, and much work in agent research is driven by Web-based applications (Luke et al. (1997), Joachims et al. (1997), Bollacker et al. (1998), Doorenbos et al. (1997) are just some examples; see also the May 2000 special issue of the Artificial Intelligence Journal on intelligent internet systems, 118 (1–2)). However, such applications of agent technology are hampered by the fact that the Web is not geared towards agent use, but is rather designed for human use. Current Web resources are lacking in explicit, machine-accessible descriptions of their contents; they are only fully accessible to agents with a competent grasp of English (i.e. limited to human agents only).

Abstract: A system and method providing an optimal way to create, manage and use resource data is provided. In an exemplary embodiment, the system and method provide the ability to store resource data in a library, namely a resource library. A resource library includes resource files that can be attached to a regular data file either automatically, for example, by setting an environment variable, or manually. More than one resource library or resource file may be created and simultaneously attached to a data file. The resource file defines attributes of elements that may be used in creating the CAD model. Typically, the resource library includes attributes that are to be standardized across a project, file, or model.

Abstract: The Semantic Web is a vision of the next generation Web, in which semantic markup will make Web resources more accessible to automatic processes. Description Logics (DLs) are of crucial importance to the development of the Semantic Web, where their role is to provide formal underpinnings and automated reasoning services for Semantic Web ontology languages such as DAML+OIL. In this paper, we show how the description logic SHOQ(D), which has been designed to provide such services, can be extended with n-ary datatype predicates and qualified number restrictions with n-ary datatype predicates, to give SHOQ(Dn), and we present an algorithm for deciding the satisfiability of SHOQ(Dn) concepts, along with a proof of its soundness and completeness. The work is motivated by the requirement for n-ary datatype predicates and qualified number restrictions with n-ary predicates in relation to "real world" properties in semantic Web ontologies and applications.

Abstract: Dynamic Web content provides us with time-sensitive and continuously changing data. To glean up-to-date information, users need to regularly browse, collect and analyze this Web content. Without proper tool support this information management task is tedious, time-consuming and error prone, especially when the quantity of the dynamic Web content is large, when many information management services are needed to analyze it, and when underlying services/network are not completely reliable. This paper describes a multi-level, lifecycle (design-time and run-time) coordination mechanism that enables rapid, efficient development and execution of information management applications that are especially useful for processing dynamic Web content. Such a coordination mechanism brings dynamism to coordinating independent, distributed information management services. Dynamic parallelism spawns/merges multiple execution service branches based on available data, and dynamic run-time reconfiguration coordinates service execution to overcome faulty services and bottlenecks. These features enable information management applications to be more efficient in handling content and format changes in Web resources, and enable the applications to be evolved and adapted to process dynamic Web content.

Abstract: Described is a system and mechanism by which a client computer may issue a conventional request for a resource on the Web A response to that request is annotated with information indicating that metadata is available for the resource Specifically, a special tag or instruction may be included in the response document that indicates the existence and location of a discovery document containing metadata about the resource The client computer may then retrieve the metadata from the location identified in the response

Abstract: This study focuses on how to automatically locate text sources published on the World Wide Web in order to produce adequate and upto-date learning materials for second language learners of Nordic languages. The Web is an excellent source of authentic text materials. However, the large amount of information available on the Web makes search services necessary. Hence, we are developing Squirrel, a prototype Web meta-search service, described in this paper, which collects text material in the Nordic languages according to language, topic and difficulty level. Our primary target group consists of exchange students to Nordic institutions of higher education, and their language teachers, although in the longer perspective, we would also like to be able to do something for minority language communities. We describe the basic implementation of Squirrel, and present preliminary results from trying it out. Finally we discuss the (lack of) Web resources in less prevalent languages, and how we imagine that applications like Squirrel could fit into a second or foreign language learning situation.

Abstract: Additional copies are available for $20 per copy. Orders must be placed online through CLIR's Web site. Louis A. Pitschmann is the incoming dean of libraries at the University of Alabama. At the time of this report's publication, he was completing a fifteen-year tenure as associate director for collection development and management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before that, he worked for almost a decade at the Cornell University Libraries. Mr. Pitschmann received his Ph.D. and M.L.S. from the University of Chicago. He has presented papers and written several articles on various aspects of collection development and management in research libraries.

Abstract: Several computer science departments include Internet or Web programming courses for both computer science majors and nonmajors. A large component of these courses is Web page development and design using HTML and other technologies. While the need for increasing the level of accessibility to Web resources by the disabled has become more prominent, the topic is often missing from these relevant courses. This paper presents the need for introducing accessibility topics as well as the technical details and tools that can be used to create more accessible Web sites and software.

Abstract: The use of Web resources is becoming a core part of teaching computer architecture. In this paper we identify five notable Web sites that specialize in teaching tools for computer architecture instructors and discuss the role they can play in facilitating learning. While these Web sites contain a wide range of valuable resources, there remain gaps in what is available online. Community support appears meager for making tools and resources available. We conclude that the computer-architecture community faces challenges both in the content of Web-based materials (accurate and appropriate information) and the process (making information known and available to academic community).

Abstract: The World Wide Web offers a great availability of heterogeneous educational resources. This suggests the idea that such materials can be reused in compose courses. In this paper we address this issue by proposing an architecture for composing teaching courses using "the best parts" of heterogeneous educational materials available on the Web. Course composition relies on a simple but effective evaluation methodology which reproduces real techniques used by teachers in composing and improving classroom courses. The final goal of this article is to help the teacher to construct his course until the obtension of a steady course. We present our initial work and discuss about future developments.

Abstract: The modern operating systems must integrate various Internet services, especially World-Wide Web facilities to access different Web resources using file system mechanisms. In this paper we present a high-level model to access via Web the resources of a distributed file system. The proposed description is based on Resource Description Framework (RDF) recommendation of the World-Wide Web Consortium, a standardized foundation for processing metadata.

Abstract: Summary Basic, advanced, and related cataloging courses were examined to demonstrate the extent of integration of electronic Web resources into cataloging instruction in LIS programs in the U.S. Forty-five library school programs are analyzed to determine the extent of integration of Web resources, the major and sub-topics covered in full courses in cataloging Web resources, the methods of teaching, and the extent of integration of Web tools and standards into cataloging instruction. Seven full courses devoted to the instruction of cataloging electronic resources were identified. An early stage of cataloging instruction in electronic resources and some of the challenges in teaching are presented.

Abstract: Academic librarians from six different institutions of higher learning were interviewed regarding their experiences with cataloging of Internet resources for inclusion into online public access catalogs. They discussed selection procedures and how they began cataloging these resources. They identified problems which have been encountered in the process, described their efforts at maintaining web addresses, and discussed access to web resources both through the catalog and library web pages. They also shared philosophical thoughts on the catalog and the need to catalog electronic resources.

Abstract: The rapid growth of Web resources makes very difficult the task of Web search engines. Nevertheless powerful search crawlers have been developed to aid in locating unfamiliar document (by means of category, contents or subject based approaches), often queries return inconsistent results. The main lack of Web searching is in the deduction capability: nowadays Web searching put much attention in matching user's queries that are too weak to cope with the user's expressiveness. First attempts in extending searching towards deduction capability are essentially based on two-valued logic and standard probability theory. The complexity of the problem (8.4 million of Web sites), the features of the space domain (unstructured data, immature standards) demand a strong deviation from this trend. This work presents some results stemmed from a research projects where different technologies (in particular mobile agents and approximate reasoning) have been merged into an operational architecture suitable for Web searching/Web discovering. This paper discusses a different approach to Web searching where the input to the retrieval process is described through a Web page. The system reacts to this kind of query by returning a set of Web pages that reflect a similar context and deals with related arguments.

Abstract: The Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand is to implement an electronic curriculum for a new Graduate Entry Medical Program at the beginning of 2003. The literature relating to the provision of electronic problem‐based learning curricula indicates that most libraries involved in the provision of resources for such programs have simply provided a quickly outdated bibliographic list of databases and e‐resources for further consultation. As part of a multidisciplinary teaching and design team, the Witwatersrand Health Sciences Library (WHSL) has set up a proactive intranet of Web‐based links to e‐resources and multimedia that are integrated into the actual e‐case studies. It appears that WHSL has designed a truly integrated and interactive Web‐based resource intranet, with direct links from the actual curriculum material to the information resources themselves.