Conceptual Design of a Virtual Library for Personal Use

摘要

This paper proposes a concept of the Yawara personalized virtual library and its prototype design. The main purpose of the library is to provide a user with a personalized information set accessible through a user-friendly interface. In order to attain machine and operating system independence, the library is constructed by VRML and its WWW browsers and, as information sources, HTML data widely distributed on the Internet. The virtual librarian agent helps to find and acquire the data sets based on user behavior. The virtual librarian keeps the user's personal characteristics, obtained from his/her reading history, and book characteristics. As the user working space, personal bookshelves are provided to work with the stored books. The system will be a powerful tool for intelligent work fully utilizing the Internet.