Assessing Repository Technology: Where Do We Go From Here?

Three sample information retrieval systems, archie, autoLib, and WAIS, are compared as to their expressiveness and usefulness --- first, in the general context of information retrieval, and then as prospective software reuse repositories. While the representational capabilities of these systems are limited, they provide a useful foundation for future repository efforts, particularly from the perspective of repository distribution and coherent user interface design. 3 1 -- Introduction As information becomes an increasingly important sector of the global economy, the way in which we access that information -- and thereby the way in which we access and structure knowledge -- becomes a critical concern. The engineering of knowledge is quickly becoming an area of research in its own right, independent of its parent disciplines of artificial intelligence, database systems, and information retrieval; consider the title of the journal that you now hold in your hands. Wegner recognized the..