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?

Tim already cited several related papers. The system generates a list of references and identifies the repository (DL) for each reference that is available in electronic form. The system also lists the papers that are not available in electronic form. The system then automatically puts links from the references in the dissertation to the sources in the DL.

The system can then look at the sources that were cited in Tom's dissertation and generate a list of papers that those sources cite. Tom then reviews the list and adds some to his bibliography.

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?

First Joan reads the abstracts from both dissertations. Then she puts both dissertations in two windows and she begins to browse through them in parallel. A new window in the lower part of the screen allows Joan to make notes about the two papers.

Joan decides that one of the figures is useful and she wants to reference it to her dissertation. She then drags the figure and drops it to her dissertation, the system asks her if she wants to copy the figure or just reference it. She decides to put a reference, so the system automatically puts the link to it.

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?

When John encounters an architectural jargon, she loads an architecture dictionary that is annotated with links to actual documents that make use of that word. John first reads the description and then if she needs more information she clicks on one of the links to see the word being used.

The system generates for each document a list of jargon words. Then it compiles the list into a dictionary and puts a link back to the document. An expert puts a description for each phrase in the description (for example, double buffering). As the dictionary gets bigger it covers all the jargon for the field. The system then automatically puts links into new documents that use the jargon.

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?

Moe writes a draft of what he wants to do for his dissertation. The system then generates a list of papers that are associated with Moe description. Moes looks at the papers and learns more about the topic. Moe then revises his draft and repeats the process. Eventually, Moe learns what is done and what remains to be done in that field.

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?

Katie retrieves a list of influential articles that are related to her theses. The system then sorts them based on how many times each article is references from the set of all articles. Katie then clicks and sees the first paper. Katies then decides to look at articles published in the last year from authors who were referenced most in the previous years.

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?