Building Bibliographies. Tim is finishing up his dissertation, and now needs to put together a bibliography of works cited from the ETD library. He has to cite five dissertations, all from the Virginia Tech collection. What steps does Tim have to take to have the system generate a bibliography for him of those five papers?

Comparing & Contrasting. Joan is conducting research on mockingbird migration patterns, and she has found two dissertations that pertain and are of similar structure. In order to quicken her research, it would be beneficial to be able to view both papers at the same time in a manner that lends itself to comparisons. How does the system present the papers? What features enhance the capabilities beyond that of two windows?

Jargon Search. John is an undergrad conducting research for an English paper on modern coffee shop design. However, she encounters a fair amount of architectural jargon that she is unfamiliar with. It would be of great help if the system could find other references to these words, and present them in some context that can help convey their meaning. How do you envision this system working?

Find Open Problems. The first step in starting a dissertation is finding the topic, and Moe is having trouble finding a good open problem to solve. There is an extensive collection of ETDs on his area of interest, and he would like to system to identify open problems based on what is stated in the texts. What steps would he take to have the system identify potential problems for his research?

Find Influential Articles. While reading over some theses, Katie notices that several of them make reference to the same papers or authors. Since there are over two dozen papers on her topic, it would take to long to correlate all the references. It would be nice if the system could determine which papers and/or authors are cited most, and present the content in which they are cited from each paper. What would best enable Katie to do this?

Find Common Approaches. Liz, a chemistry masters student, is putting together some experiments and would like to research approaches taken before. There is ample material available on this type of experiment before in the ETD library, so she turns to that source for information. How could the system easily present her with paragraphs talking about the approaches taken in a range of papers?

Assemble Syllabi by Concepts. Sam is planning a new course that combines multi-variable calculus and differential equations. He has a set of concepts that he would like to cover, but isn't sure as to what order to present them in and which methods to present due to time constraints. What would the system be like that could help find the best order and methods to present this new class in?

Find Different Ways to Present a Concept. A student in Cal's Physics class is having a lot of difficulty understanding Newton's Laws. Cal has explained the principles several ways, but has run out of ideas. Thus he comes to the courseware library looking for alternate methods to explain this concept. How would this system work to find different methods of presenting Newton's Laws?