Design of web 2.0 based personalized research library : an application for collaborative environment

Abstract

Huge amount of useful information is getting added to the academic digital world everyday. This digitalized information is heterogeneous and remained limited to a local domain only. How to integrate and share this scattered knowledge with simplicity remained a big challenge. We primarily concentrate on academic digital library used for research purpose. In this paper, we propose a design of web application called Research Library for accomplishing above issue of integration using Web 2.0 features. We used the Kano model to determine which Web 2.0 features should be incorporated in the Research Library. Kano model allows categorizing Web 2.0 features as per users`` requirements which should be reflected in the application. Collaborative effort is the other side of coin for research activity. To address this issue of sharing, we used personalization theory to extend Research Library to be a collaborative environment. This application enables users to customize their own resources to form their own virtual digital library. Further users can utilize personalized information of other users working in similar research domain to form true collaborative environment. The mathematical model for personalization and design framework for the new look of Research Library is presented.