To: announcements.chi@xerox.com (Chi Announcements)
The report of the NSF/IRIS Workshop "Research Priorities for the World-Wide
Web" is now available via the Web, at URL
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/nsf-ws/report/Report.html.
The report was written by Robert Berwick, John Carroll, Chris Connolly, Jim
Foley, Ed Fox, Tomasz Imielinski, and V. S. Subrahmanian, and was edited by
Jim Foley and James Pitkow.
Extracts from the Executive Summary follow:
The Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems Division
(IRIS) of the National Science Foundation commissioned a workshop to
provide a set of recommendations concerning:
1. Opportunities for NSF's use of WWW for information delivery to the
public and research communities.
2. Research which NSF in general and IRIS in particular should
consider undertaking with respect to the WWW, its accessibility,
and its usability.
3. Use of WWW as an experimental platform for collaborative efforts in
the IRIS and computer science research communities, including
potential enhancements to WWW in support of such collaborations.
This report summarizes a set of strategic recommendations for NSF and
elaborates a recommended research agenda surrounding the Web.
Key Strategic Recommendations:
1. Establish and fund an NSF office to focus special attention on
research issues concerning the WWW, and to help fund the
implementation of selected Web enhancements which would greatly
benefit the conduct of research, just as some years ago a special
office was formed to handle networking.
2. Target supplemental funding to PIs to do their research in the
context of the WWW. For instance, a program which simulates a new
chip fabrication process could be written to be usable via the WWW.
An innovative search engine or visualization tool could be ported
to the Web.
3. Include criteria, when relevant, in peer reviews with respect to
impact on the information infrastructure of science and
engineering.
4. Begin an active, phased program wherein the WWW becomes the
standard electronic means for NSF to disseminate information to its
research communities and to the public.
Research Agenda Recommendations:
Indexing, Semantics & Representation
From HTML to HTIML; Syntax and Semantics; Information Brokers;
Intelligent Agents; Federal Agency Efforts; Knowledge
Representation & Interchange Schemes.
Architecture & Performance
Improvement Techniques for Web Performance; Comparative Analysis o
Link Specification and Maintenance; Comparative Analysis of
Multimedia Routing Protocols; Modeling and Simulation of the WWW.
Resource Discovery
Information Retrieval Research; Continued NSF Support for Digital
Libraries; Perform Needs Analysis of NSF; Targeted Research Areas.
Visualization
Research on Information Road Maps; Visualization of Bibliographic
Search Results; Web Viewers as the New Desktop Metaphor; Scaling
the Visualization to Different Platforms; Tools to Develop Context-
Sensitive Visualizations.
Authoring Tools
Knowledgeable Authoring Tools; Active Papers and their Authoring
Tools
Usability Evaluation
Task and Information Needs Analyses; WWW Usability.Evaluation &
Methodology Research; Create a WWW Information "Model Farm"; Track
the Development of the Web.
Learning & Self Organization
Request Organization and Learning; Service Reorganization and
Learning; Adaptive Links; Different Presentation Modalities.
--
Jim Foley
GVU Center & College of Computing Phone 404 853 0671
Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Fax 404 853 0673
GVU home page - http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/gvutop.html
--- End of forwarded mail from foley@cc.gatech.edu (Jim Foley)