Objectives

From the Course Objectives a key point is to: critique, contrast, compare, and evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and utility of commercially available and research prototype systems for IS&R. In this Unit, you will accordingly work with KMS, Adobe Acrobat, and versions of the World-Wide Web software. (It is hoped that you have some familiarity with HyperCard.)

Regarding the objective to: discuss and explain the main issues relating to developing digital libraries and related services, you will be prepared by learning what is involved in constructing and using hyperbases and hypertext systems, whether personalized or usable over a wide area network.

Finally, regarding the objective to: read and understand research contributions ..., you will gain experience by reading the two CACM articles, and using the online (hypertext) documentation for the software packages and hyperbases used with the exercises.

This Unit has the following objectives, for students to be able to:

1. describe the benefits of hypertext for creating, extending, representing, accessing, and sharing information;

2. describe the benefits of hypertext tools like KMS, Adobe Acrobat, and World-Wide Web software like Netscape; and

3. describe the technical and interface problems, along with possible solutions, regarding making hypertext more of an integral part of our information bases and computer systems.