Designing digital libraries for post-literate patrons

This paper examines two fields that contribute to research on digital libraries--information systems and orality-literary studies--and applies them to a particular digital library domain, botanical taxonomic work. Topics discussed include: (1) an introduction to HOSS (i.e., a computationally-oriented hypermedia system) architecture, including the hyperbase layer, structure processing layer, metadata manager layer, application layer, and other tools; (2) an introduction to orality, literacy, and hyperliteracy; (3) botanical taxonomic scholarship; (4) information systems technology applications, including single/multiple taxonomies, ownership of taxonomies, and definition of taxonomies; and (5) hyperliterate work practices, including single/multiple taxonomies, ownership of taxonomies, and definition of taxonomies. A table presents examples of differences between orality and literacy. Contains 19 references.