Towards a new authoring methodology for large-scale hypermedia applications

As the amount of information technology increases, managing information resources, so that the correct people can find the information easily, becomes a critical issue. Hypermedia systems are considered one solution to this problem as they provide a means for representing higher level relationships between the underlying information. However, the amount of information available electronically is increasing at an accelerated rate. Using standard hypermedia authoring techniques, the effort required managing and maintaining large-scale hypermedia systems is enormous. Hypermedia authoring in the large requires new methodologies if it is going to be feasible. This paper presents a new model for building and structuring large-scale hypermedia applications. It describes a case study that explored the delivery of hypermedia information in an industrial environment on a small scale. Models and techniques developed for that case study were then refined and augmented so they could support the construction of large-scale hypermedia systems. In order to support such endeavors a new linking model is presented that allows the author to explicitly represent abstract concepts contained within the underlying information and interconnect them in some meaningful manner. A prototype system applying this linking technique is presented.