Guided paths through Web‐based collections: Design, experiences, and adaptations

Digital libraries need to facilitate the use of digital information in a variety of settings. One approach to making information useful is to enable its application to situations unanticipated by the original author. Walden's Paths is designed to enable authors to collect, organize, and annotate information from on‐line collections for presentation to their readers. Experiences with the use of Walden's Paths in high‐school classrooms have identified four needs/issues: (1) better support for the gradual authoring of paths by teachers, (2) support for student authoring of paths including the ability for students to collaborate on paths, (3) more obvious distinction between content of the original source materials and that added by the path author, and (4) support for maintaining paths over an evolving set of source documents. These observed needs have driven the development of new versions of Walden's Paths. Additionally, the experiences with path authoring have led to a conceptualization of metadocuments, documents whose components include complete documents, as a general domain where issues of collaboration, intellectual property, and maintenance are decidedly different from traditional document publication.