Design for Literature Information

We are developing a free, open source web application that will serve as a reference implementation for an Integrated Study Environment (ISE) called GLU. This will allow scholars, students, self-learners, and casual readers to work on their projects and to grow and improve high-quality knowledge through shared and secure communication. Users will be able to carry out projects in an integrated browser-based environment. This environment will support the discovery, acquisition, viewing, note-taking, and extensive annotation of text and other media. Users will also be able to search, compare, and combine the content of books/articles/media, notes, and annotations in the context of projects. This will allow them to write articles, study topics, translate texts, review books, and create private memories. They will also be able to add value by sharing their work with colleagues, publishers, libraries, authors, book clubs, friends, and special-interest groups. This workbench has the potential to transform the way knowledge is created, shared, and used. It will allow people to collaborate more effectively, to access high quality resources, and to create and share knowledge more easily. This tool does not exist at scale already due to enormous barriers. Business models and diverse software-based intellectual property protection mechanisms have presented a seemingly insurmountable hurdle. This open source reference implementation will demonstrate clearly that the complexity is in fact partly surmountable today.