Web Information Organization

UNC School of Information and Library Science, INLS 490-186, Spring 2013

January 10
Introduction & Overview

We meet one another, and I tell you what this class is going to be about.

January 15
History of the Web

It now seems hard to imagine a time before the Web, but it is less than a quarter-century old. Understanding why and how it was developed is key to understanding its current evolution.

To read before this meeting:

  1. History of the Web. Oxford Brookes University, 2002. PDF.
    Reading tips

    A concise yet thorough history of the origins and development of the Web. Pay particular attention to Appendices C and D, in which Tim Berners-Lee outlines his proposal for the project that would become the Web.

  2. Berners-Lee, Tim. “Enquire Within upon Everything; Tangles, Links, and Webs; info.cern.ch.” In Weaving the Web. San Francisco: Harper, 1999. PDF.
    Reading tips

    This optional but short excerpt from Tim Berners-Lee’s book explains in his own words how the Web got started.

January 17
Internet Architecture

The Web is built upon the Internet, so some basic knowledge of the Internet’s architecture is a prerequisite for understanding Web architecture.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Yanowitz, Jason. “Under the hood of the Internet: an overview of the TCP/IP protocol suite.” Crossroads 1, no. 1 (September 1994): 8–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/197177.197182.
    Reading tips

    A brief and accessible introduction to TCP/IP, the protocols used on the Internet.

  2. Kessler, Gary C. “An Overview of TCP/IP Protocols and the Internet”, 2010. http://www.garykessler.net/library/tcpip.html.
    Reading tips

    This memo provides a broad overview of the Internet and TCP/IP, with an emphasis on history, terms, and concepts. It is meant as a brief guide and starting point, referring to many other sources for more detailed information.

  3. Leiner, Barry M, Vinton G Cerf, David D Clark, Robert E Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G Roberts, and Stephen Wolf. “A Brief History of the Internet.” arXiv:cs/9901011 (January 22, 1999). http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9901011.
    Reading tips

    Several founders of the Internet share their views of its origins and history. This history revolves around four distinct aspects: technological evolution, operations and management, social coordination, and commercialization.

January 22
Web Architecture

Web Archaeology due

We can describe the basic architecture of the Web in terms of a set of components, connections between those components, and data transferred via these connections.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Berners-Lee, Tim. “Protocols.” In Weaving the Web. San Francisco: Harper, 1999. PDF.
  2. Taylor, Richard N., Nenad Medvidovic, and Eric M. Dashofy. “The Architecture of the Web.” In Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2010. PDF.
  3. Wikipedia contributors. “Proxy server.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, January 5, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proxy_server&oldid=469688674.
  4. Wikipedia contributors. “Web cache.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, September 10, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_cache&oldid=449430080.

January 24
Web Architecture, continued

January 29
Resources & Representations

To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Sam Ruby. “Resources, URIs, Addressability, Representations.” In RESTful Web Services, 81-94. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2007. PDF.
  2. W3C Technical Architecture Group. “Identification.” In Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One. W3C, 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#identification.
  3. W3C Technical Architecture Group. “Interaction.” In Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One. W3C, 2004. http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#interaction.

January 31
HTTP

To read before this meeting:

  1. Wikipedia contributors. “Hypertext Transfer Protocol.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, January 24, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol&oldid=473032175.

February 5
The Uniform Interface

URIs, Resources & Representations due

To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Sam Ruby. “The Uniform Interface.” In RESTful Web Services, 97-104. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2007. PDF.

February 7
The Uniform Interface in Action

In addition to the reading below, take a look at the documentation for the Twitter API, the YouTube API, and the Github API.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Snell, James. “Getting to Know the Atom Publishing Protocol, Part 1: Create and Edit Web Resources with the Atom Publishing Protocol.” IBM developerWorks, October 17, 2006. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atompp1/index.html.

February 12
Hypermedia I

To read before this meeting:

  1. Richardson, Leonard, and Sam Ruby. “Statelessness, Links and Connectedness.” In RESTful Web Services, 86-91, 94-96. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2007. PDF.
  2. Amundsen, Mike. “Understanding Hypermedia.” In Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 & Node, 1-34. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2011. PDF.

February 14
Hypermedia II

Designing with the Uniform Interface due

To read before this meeting:

  1. Amundsen, Mike. “Designing the Microblog Media Type.” In Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 & Node, 95-110. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2011. PDF.

February 19
Version Control with Git

To read before this meeting:

  1. Chacon, Scott. “Getting Started.” In Pro Git, n.d. http://git-scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started.

February 21
Architectural Properties & Styles

To read before this meeting:

  1. Taylor, Richard N., Nenad Medvidovic, and Eric M. Dashofy. “Architectural Style.” In Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, 72-73. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2010. PDF.
  2. Fielding, Roy. “Network-based Application Architectures & Network-based Architectural Styles.” In Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, 24-60. Irvine, CA: University of California, Irvine, 2000. PDF.

February 26
Designing a Hypermedia Type due

February 28
REpresentational State Transfer

To read before this meeting:

  1. Taylor, Richard N., Nenad Medvidovic, and Eric M. Dashofy. “The REpresentational State Transfer Style.” In Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice, 416-422. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2010. PDF.
  2. Fielding, Roy. “Designing the Web Architecture & Representational State Transfer.” In Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, 66-103. Irvine, CA: University of California, Irvine, 2000. PDF.

March 5
Midterm Review

The exam will be available for download starting at noon today.

March 7
Code on Demand: Javascript

There are no assigned readings for today, but you may want to skim one of the following JavaScript books:

March 8
Midterm due

Midterm Exam due

The midterm is due at 5PM today.

March 12
Spring Break

March 14
Spring Break

March 19
Javascript on the Server: Node

To read before this meeting:

  1. O’Reilly Media. Tom Hughes-Croucher Interviewed at Web 2.0 Expo. San Francisco, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUCHr2H-7_g.
  2. Topnik, Troy. “The Secrets of Node’s Success.” O’Reilly Radar, June 8, 2011. http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/node-javascript-success.html.

March 21
A Webby Database: CouchDB

To read before this meeting:

  1. Apache Software Foundation. “CouchDB: Introduction,” n.d. http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Introduction.
  2. Anderson, J. Chris, Jan Lehnardt, and Noah Slater. “JSON Primer.” In CouchDB: The Definitive Guide. Draft. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, n.d. http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/json.html.
  3. Anderson, J. Chris, Jan Lehnardt, and Noah Slater. “Getting Started.” In CouchDB: The Definitive Guide. Draft. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, n.d. http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/tour.html.

March 26
RDFa & Linked Data

In addition to the readings below, you may also want to take a look at rda.info for more RDFa-related resources.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Birbeck, Mark. “Introduction to RDFa.” A List Apart, June 23, 2009. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/introduction-to-rdfa/.
  2. Adida, Ben, and Mark Birbeck. RDFa Primer. W3C Working Group Note. W3C, n.d. http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/.
  3. Facebook. The Open Graph Protocol, n.d. http://ogp.me/.
  4. Facebook. Core Concepts > Open Graph, n.d. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/.

March 28
Microdata

To read before this meeting:

  1. Ronallo, Jason. “HTML5 Microdata and Schema.org.” Code4Lib Journal, no. 16 (2012). http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/6400.
  3. “Getting Started with Schema.org.” Schema.org, n.d. http://schema.org/docs/gs.html.

April 2
HTML Data Shootout

To read before this meeting:

  1. Tennison, Jeni. HTML Data Guide. W3C Interest Group Note. W3C, n.d. http://www.w3.org/TR/html-data-guide/.
  2. Sporny, Manu. “An Uber-comparison of RDFa, Microdata and Microformats.” The Beautiful, Tormented Machine, June 25, 2011. http://manu.sporny.org/2011/uber-comparison-rdfa-md-uf/.
  3. Narayanasamy, Selena. “A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets.” The Daily SEO Blog, March 13, 2012. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets.

April 4
Ryan out of town

April 9
The Linked Data Platform

The Linked Data Platform is an attempt to harmonize Linked Data practice with the REST architectural style.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Battle, Steve, and Speicher, Steve. Linked Data Platform Use Cases and Requirements. W3C, n.d. http://www.w3.org/TR/ldp-ucr/.

April 11
Atom & OData

To read before this meeting:

  1. Snell, James. “An Overview of the Atom 1.0 Syndication Format.” IBM developerWorks, August 2, 2005. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atom10/.
  2. Snell, James. “Getting to Know the Atom Publishing Protocol, Part 1: Create and Edit Web Resources with the Atom Publishing Protocol.” IBM developerWorks, October 17, 2006. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atompp1/index.html.
  3. Chappell, David. Introducing OData: Data Access for the Web, the Cloud, Mobile Devices, and More. Microsoft, May 2011. http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/5/A/E5A59052-EE48-4D64-897B-5F7C608165B8/IntroducingOData.pdf.

April 16
HTML(5) I

In addition to the readings below, if you are interested in learning more about HTML5 I recommend Head First HTML5 and HTML5 for Web Designers.

To read before this meeting:

  1. Pilgrim, Mark, and The Community. Dive into HTML5, n.d. http://diveintohtml5.info/.
  2. Wilde, Erik. “HTML5 Landscape Overview.” Dretblog, n.d. http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/html5-api-overview.html.
  3. WHAT Working Group. HTML5: A Technical Specification for Web Developers. WHATWG, n.d. http://developers.whatwg.org/.
    Reading tips

    Read “A quick introduction to HTML”, “Semantics”, and “kinds of content”.

April 18
Project Progress Reports

April 23
HTML(5) II

To read before this meeting:

  1. Neuberg, Brad. Introduction to HTML 5, 2009. https://vimeo.com/6691519.

April 25
Project Work Day

May 7
Final Projects Due

Final Project due