A System Architecture for Supporting Event Based Interaction and Information Access

The University of Leeds Virtual Science Park © (VSP) is an example of a virtual working system for supporting the provision of a number of services, including virtual consultancy, workbased learning, consortium building and access to information. This paper presents a new architecture based on event mechanisms. The extensions fall into 3 areas: provision of timely, up-to-date information based on users' interests; integration with existing information sources; and chance interaction. The main problems addressed are facilities for keeping the VSP information up to date and keeping users notified of relevant changes to the data. Integration with existing data sources is also key to the provision of an information space capable of supporting VSP services. We describe an event mechanism to support information location, information monitoring, chance interaction and integration with existing information sources. The system will be used in a VSP Workbased learning project for supplying multimedia information and collaboration facilities to remote students to support distance learning. A World Wide Web gateway has also been developed to provide wide scale access to the VSP.