Moderator:

Bipin C. DESAI - <bcdesai@alcor.concordia.ca> or <bcdesai@cs.concordia.ca>

This page maintained by:

Bipin C. DESAI <bcdesai@cs.concordia.ca>

Presentation by:

• Hans C. Arents <hca@mtm.kuleuven.ac.be>

• Ian Cooper <ihc@ukc.ac.uk>

• Peter Doemel <doemel@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de>

• Dieter Rueffler <dieter@prz.tu-berlin.de>

On-line Presentation by:

• Bipin C. Desai<bcdesai@alcor.concordia.ca> or <bcdesai@cs.concordia.ca>

• Haim Kilov <haim@cc.bellcore.com>

Participants:

• Gisle Aas <aas@nr.no>

• Hans C. Arents <hca@mtm.kleuvven.ac.be>

• Andrea Baruffo <baruffolo@astrpd.astro.it>

• Gavin Bell <gavin@jupiter.qub.ac.uk>

• Ian Cooper <ihc@ukc.ac.uk>

• Mike Dolan <miked@cerf.net>

• John Ellson <john.ellson@att.com>

• Hans Joseph <hjoseph@cicg.edu>

• Ammar Kheirbek <Ammar.Kheirbek@imag.fr>

• Jean-Yves Le Meur <jean-yves_le_meur@macmail.cern.ch>

• Doug McKee <doug@navisoft.co>

• James Pitkow <pitkow@cc.gatech.edu>

• Bernd Pollerman <bernd@cernvm.cern.ch>

• Reinier Post <reinpost@win.tue.nl>

• Dieter Ruffler <dieter@prz.tu-berlin.de>

• Alexander Sigel <sigel@rz.uni-potsdam.de>

• Herald Skardal <harald@ftp.com>

• Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner <jons@hal.nta.no>

• Bill Weihl <weihl@mit.edu>

• Chris Weikart <weikart@prl.dec.com>

Issues Raised:

• Lost User

• Index

• What is it?

• Who creates it?

• Is it maintained/correct?

• Separate Document from the meta document

• meta document would include the navigation links

• Text or document proper

• Ease of maintenance

• Link types: Do we restrict the number of types?

• Usage Profile

• What is a path?

• Suggested Traversal of path

• Use of indexing schemes such as ALIWEB

• Semantic Header

• Title

• Author(s)

• Name

• Organization

• Address

• Subject/Sub-subject

• Keywords/key concepts

• Surrogate titles etc.

• Dates

• Created/Published,

• Date Last updated,

• Date Expires

• Type of document

• Classification/Control Infomation

• Related Document(s)/Annotation(s)

• Call No, URL

• Cost, Currency

• meta document/navigation links

Summary

There were brief presentations by Arents, Cooper, Doemel, and Rueffler and a note that additional on-line presentations were submitted by Desai and Kilov. The audience raised a number of issues which are noted above.

One of the important aspects of navigation through the Web was to ascertain that a user does not get lost and spend a lot of time traversing links. The demonstration by Doemel and the paper by Desai have similar mechanisms to present a graphical map to the user which records the route travelled and allows the user to go to any of the previously visited documents.

The ideas of indexing and searching were discussed: the utility of an index is limited by its currency and validity. Also, it is difficult to pin-point a document based on its title only. To this end Desai suggested the idea of a Semantic header or cover page which is discussed at greater length in a companion Web document (currently in draft form).

With the increasing traffic on the Internet, it was felt that the bandwidth would soon become a bottleneck. However, participants from the telecom community were of the opinion that the bandwidth will keep up with the demand.

The use of the Web by handicapped persons was debated briefly. Currently, there are no browsers available for the visually handicapped. Some attention must be paid to the needs of this community.

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bcd