Academic Collaboration Environment

Christine J. JonesColleen S. Whitney

May 12, 2006

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Problem

Diverse resources and tools for:– gathering– organizing– sharing

Needs vary from:– discipline to discipline– individual to individual

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Project Overview: Goal Architecture to support academic

community Support multiple tasks:

– Search multiple, diverse resources – Manage resources – Add metadata– Share lists and annotations with others – Reuse and extend material

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Project Phases Preliminary project scope Literature review Needs assessment Comparative tool survey Information modeling Refined scope and requirements Architecture Lightweight prototype

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Literature Review

Networked applications Digital libraries Computer-mediated communication (CMC) Computer-supported cooperative work

(CSCW) Scholarly work practice

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User Needs Assessment Defined audience Conducted interviews Created personas Constructed use cases and scenarios

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Comparative Technology

Surveyed existing tools Assessed them based on broad functional

groupings Considered each for integration into ACE

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Functional Groupings

Search: – Scholar’s Box

Object/project management: – Firefox Scholar, Web Scrapbook

Sharing/reusing content– RefWorks/RefShare, Student Vision

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Functional Groupings

Annotating/tagging/bookmarking– CiteULike, Connotea

Collaboration– Sakai, Bspace

Personalization/customization– Zojam, Protopage

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Information Modeling

Broader community– REST, SOAP – OpenSearch

Library community– SRU, SRW – Z39.50 – OAI

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Results: Structure

Web pages– URL– Description– Title

Bibliographic records– ISBN/ISSN– Title(s)– Author(s)– Publication date– Publisher– Notes– Language– Format– ...

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Results: Schemas

Custom XML schemas MarcXML MODS Dublin Core

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Requirements

Defined terminology:– Search tool– Item– Project– Collection

Prioritized functionality

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Requirements

Core:– Personalized Workspace– Search– Save and annotate items– Manage personal projects

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Requirements

Important:– View selected items in multiple formats– Create, customize default list of searchable

resources– Export metadata– Search the workspace (within or across

projects) for specific items

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Requirements

Desirable– Create, customize tailored lists of searchable

resources– Create and manage user groups– Share projects with one or more groups (read,

read/write access) – Invoke a browser bookmarklet to add a new

item to one or more projects while browsing

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Requirements

Nice– Locate new searchable resources by

browsing or searching

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Overview

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ACE Prototype

Lightweight prototype Core functionality only MySQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript

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Challenges

Defining a common language Scoping the project Technical challenges Prioritization

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Future Work

Iterative UI Design Integrate local items Enhanced export and rendering Support for sharing and collaboration

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Thanks to.....

Ray Larson Anya Kartavenko Minakshi Mukherjee Kim Carl Peter Brantley Patricia Martin