Workshop on Reuse of Web-based Information

A Workshop Held in Conjunction with
The Seventh International World Wide Web Conference

Workshop Theme:

This workshop will focus on the reuse of information that is currently delivered over the Web. By reuse, we mean the assembling of information from Web-based sources, and the restructuring of that information to either build a new Web application or to import it into a non-Web-based application, such as a database. The target research areas include (but are not limited to):

• mining, exploring and visualizing the Web,
• the structural extraction of relevant information, e.g., the Web as a large database,
• the semantic extraction of relevant information, e.g., the role of natural language processing and intelligent agents,
• the a posteriori restructuring or remodelling of Web pages and sites,
• the extraction of objects from the Web and their integration with legacy applications, or with other sources of information.
• the seamless integration of Web-based information, e.g., the design of information `brokers'
• the development of descriptive models for Web information, and
• the role of XML in Web information reuse applications.

As the Web has grown the reuse of Web-based information has become increasingly important. Much of the existing research has focused on related issues such as 1) improving information search and retrieval capabilities, 2) enhancing the display of information in browsers, and 3) designing Web interfaces for legacy applications.

Advances in these areas have enabled a massive amount of information to be made available on the Web. The point is that people do not search for information just for the sake of it; they search for information because they need it and want to make use of it. The real challenge is to make the best use of that information since desired information is often distributed piecemeal among a number of sites, servers, and pages, each with its own disparate structure. The goal of reusing Web-based information is to extract and assemble existing information that a user is interested in and to deliver that information in a form that is directly usable by users or applications. Full automated access to Web servers makes for some fairly compelling applications, e.g. integration of corporate purchasing systems with e-commerce Web sites.

This workshop aims to draw together a number of research groups taking different approaches to the reuse of Web-based information, in order to promote the cross-fertilisation of ideas and highlight the prospects for future collaboration. The workshop will be a inter-disciplinary exploration into the reuse of Web-based information in controlled environment such as Intranets, as well as any part of the whole Web. Reuse of Web information in various contexts contributes to reducing the duplication of the information, while keeping it adapted to the real needs of the users.

Accepted Papers

Program Committee:

• Thomas Baker, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
• Stephen Green, Microsoft Research Institute, Language Technology Group, Sydney, Australia.
• Curtis Dyreson, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
• Craig Lindley, CSIRO-Mathematics and Information Science, Sydney, Australia.
• Udi Manber, University of Arizona, USA
• Giansalvatore Mecca, Universita' della Basilicata and Universita' di Roma TRE, Italia
• Philipp Merrick, webMethods, Fairfax, VA, USA
• Pr. Alberto O. Mendelzon, University of Toronto, Computer System Research Institute, Canada
• Maria Milosavljevic (co-chair ), CSIRO-Mathematics and Information Science, Sydney, Australia.
• David Levy, Xerox PARC, Pao Alto, USA.
• Pr. Leon Sterling, University of Melbourne, Intelligent Agent Laboratory, Australia
• Ross Wilkinson (co-chair), RMIT and CSIRO-Mathematics and Information Science, Melbourne, Australia.
• Anne-Marie Vercoustre (chair), INRIA-Rocquencourt, France, (and CSIRO-Mathematics and Information Science, Australia)

Position Papers:

We invite position papers describing demonstrated techniques that contribute to the reuse of Web information. We are particularly interested in papers which present innovative solutions to identifying, querying and building information objects from existing Web servers, or which describe architectures and tools for adapting or reusing information. We are also interested in receiving papers of a more speculative nature which focus on the impact of metadata on the reuse of Web-based information, or general issues such as copyrights. Those aspects of the paper which are important for discussion in the workshop should be clearly outlined in the paper.

deadline for submission : 27 February.
Papers should be 5-6 pages long (single-space,10pt minimum, about 3000words).

Electronic submission are required. Please send an e-mail with the URL of your paper, or containing your submission in HTML format, to:
Anne-Marie.Vercoustre@inria.fr or
Ross Wilkinson@cmis.csiro.au

Before the workshop, all attendees will be able to access the position papers from the Web. We strongly encourage attendees to read these before the workshop.