The Open Hypermedia Systems community has been largely concerned with interoperability between hypertext systems which share the same paradigm. It has evolved a component based framework for this purpose, in which specific but incompatible middleware components are designed for each hypertext domain, such as navigational hypertext, spatial hypertext or taxonomic hypertext. This paper investigates the common features of these domains and introduces FOHM, a Fundamental Open Hypertext Model, which defines a common data model and set of related operations that are applicable for all three domains. Using this layer the paper explores the possible semantics of linking between different hypertext domains, and shows that each can introduce features which benefit the other domains.

While surprisingly little has been written about context at a meaningful level, context is central to most theoretical approaches to information seeking. In this essay I explore in more detail three senses of context. First, I look at context as equivalent to the situation in which a process is immersed. Second, I discuss contingency approaches that detail active ingredients of the situation that have specific, predictable effects. Third, I examine major frameworks for meaning systems. Then, I discuss how a deeper appreciation of context can enhance our understanding of the process of information seeking by examining two vastly different contexts in which it occurs: organizational and cancer-related, an exemplar of everyday life information seeking. This essay concludes with a discussion of the value that can be added to information seeking research and theory as a result of a deeper appreciation of context, particularly in terms of our current multi-contextual environment and individuals taking an active role in contextualizing.

Capturing, defining, and modeling the essence of context are challenging, compelling, and prominent issues for interdisciplinary research and discussion. The roots of its emergence lie in the inconsistencies and ambivalent definitions across and within different research specializations (e.g., philosophy, psychology, pragmatics, linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence). Within the area of computer science, the advent of mobile context-aware computing has stimulated broad and contrasting interpretations due to the shift from traditional static desktop computing to heterogeneous mobile environments. This transition poses many challenging, complex, and largely unanswered research issues relating to contextual interactions and usability. To address those issues, many researchers strongly encourage a multidisciplinary approach. The primary aim of this article is to review and unify theories of context within linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Summary models within each discipline are used to propose an outline and detailed multidisciplinary model of context involving (a) the HUMAN--COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2005, Volume 20, pp. 403--446 Copyright 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Context−aware artifacts can be seen as an important class of socially adept technologies. In this paper, we focus on the fact that disregarding trivial notions of context, context−aware artifacts are far from being capable of recognizing situations. Similarly, we are not aware of any other technologies that are able to understand social settings in a non−trivial way. In this paper, we sketch the underlying reasons and discuss some issues concerning the design of context−aware artifacts and socially adept technologies in general that result from these limitations.

We elaborate on Pettigrew’s (1998, 1999) theory of information grounds while using an outcome evaluation approach enriched by its focus on context to explore the use of need-based services by immigrants in New York City. Immigrants have substantial information and practical needs for help with adjusting to life in a new country. Because of differences in language, culture, and other factors such as access, new immigrants are a difficult population to study. As a result, little research has examined their predilections from an information behavior perspective. We report findings from a qualitative study of how literacy and coping skills programs are used by and benefit the immigrant customers of the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL). From our interviews and observation of 45 program users, staff, and other stakeholders, we derived a grand context (in Pettigrew’s terms) woven from three subcontexts: the immigrants of Queens, New York; the QBPL, its service model, and activities for immigrants; and professional contributions of QBPL staff. Our findings are discussed along two dimensions: (a) building blocks toward information literacy, and (b) personal gains achieved by immigrants for themselves and their families. We conclude that successful introduction to the QBPL—as per its mission, programming, and staff—can lead immigrants to a synergistic information ground that can help in meeting broad psychological, social, and practical needs.

Open Hypermedia Systems are designed to allow links to be authored and followed on top of any media format. The link structures are held separately from the documents in a software component called a Link Server. As hypermedia has matured as a research topic attention has turned to standardising the way in which components talk to Link Servers in order to provide interoperability. The Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group took up this challenge and proposed an Open Hypermedia Protocol (OHP). However, the scope of this proposal proved to be too large and the protocol was divided into domain specific parts (Navigational, Spatial and Taxonomic Hypermedia), tackling each domain differently, but consistently. It is questionable whether this step was the correct one, as the domains share many similar features. In this thesis I present a detailed examination of the information spaces that the OHP was attempting to model (from all these considered hypertext domains), which incorpo-rates notions of both behaviour and context. This examination looks at what it means to navigate around the many dimensions of information, across these domains, and reveals a cohesive and continuous structure that I call the Information Continuum. The Fundamental Open Hypermedia Model (FOHM) is presented, which is capa-ble of representing the structures of this continuum in a consistent and meaningful way. FOHM is coupled with an agent infrastructure to produce an implementation that demon-strates the model being used for cross-domain interoperability.

Future users of digital objects will likely have numerous tools for discovering preserved digital objects relevant to their interests, but making meaningful use and sense of the digital objects will also require contextual information. This paper provides an analysis of context, distinguishing three main ways in which that term has been used within the scholarly literature. I then discuss contextual information within digital collections. I present a framework for contextual information that is based on nine classes of contextual entities: object, agent, occurrence, purpose, time, place, form of expression, concept/abstraction, and relationship. The paper then discusses existing standards and guidance documents for encoding information related to the nine classes of contextual entities, and it concludes with a discussion of potential implications for descriptive practices through the lifecycle of digital objects. “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. ”- Eliel Saarinen (The Maturing Modern, 1956) “…if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. ”- Douglas Adams (1980) 1.

Many scientific fields share common interests for research and education. Yet, very often, these fields do not communicate to each other and are unaware of the work in other fields. Understanding the commonalities and differences among related fields can broaden our understanding of the interested phenomena from various perspectives, better utilize resources, enhance collaboration, and eventually move the related fields forward together. In this article, we present a conceptual framework, namely the Information-Model or I-model, to describe various aspects of information related fields. We consider this a timely effort in light of the evolutions of several information related fields and a set of questions related to the identities of these fields. It is especially timely in defining the newly formed Information Field from a community of twenty some information schools. We posit that the information related fields are built on a number of other fields but with their own unique foci and concerns. That is, core components from other fundamental fields interact and integrate with each other to form dynamic and interesting information related fields that all have to do with information, technology, people, and organization/society. The conceptual framework can have a number of uses. Besides providing a unified view of these related fields, it can be used to examine old case studies, recent research projects, educational programs and curricula concerns, as well as to illustrate the commonalities and differences with the information related fields.

This paper describes the role annotations played in evolving and growing the value of a research database in the framework of an historical geographer’s information seeking process. The database was designed as a “note-taking ” tool for gathering historical evidence from primary source documents. The individual facts collected at first provided little utility to the researcher, indicative of Buckland’s (1991) information-as-thing. As the process of collecting data began to amass a large body of material the geographer’s information needs grew as new connections were made between the accumulating annotations.

this document describes work in this area. Conklin also cites the ability to explore several paths of enquiry through material and to be able to trace back through the path using history mechanisms