MODELING THE HUMAN-FACTORS OF SCHOLARLY COMMUNITIES SUPPORTED THROUGHTHE INTERNET AND WORLD-WIDE-WEB

The Internet (the net) and World Wide Web (the web) have grown rapidly in the past decade and have come to play a major role in supporting d iscourse and publication in scholarly communities. The development and application of new services has been very rapid with little central p lanning, and despite the widespread use, there is little information a s yet on the human factors of the use of the net and web. In particula r, models of the human factors of individuals interacting with worksta tions have to be extended to take into account the essential social as pects of computer-mediated discourse and publication. This article pro vides a framework for analyzing the utility, usability, and likeabilit y of net and web services, and illustrates its application to signific ant aspects of supporting scholarly communities. The utility of the ne t and web are measured in terms of the growth of usage, and the differ ent services involved are distinguished in terms of their specific uti lities. A layered protocol model is used to model discourse through th e net, and is extended to encompass interaction in communities. An ope rational criterion for distinguishing different communities is defined in terms of the types of awareness that resource providers and users have of one another. A temporal model of discourse processes is develo ped that enables the spectrum of services ranging from real-time disco urse to long-term publication to be analyzed in a unified framework. T he dimensions of awareness and time are used to characterize and compa re the full range of net services, and model their unification through the next generation of web browsers.