Collaborative Management of Global Directories in P2P Systems

To date, much of the research in P2P information sharing has concentrated on methods for key-based or content- based location of shared information. In this paper, we argue that in addition to these techniques, the provision of a global browsable structure is also a critical component since users do not always know the appropriate key or set of keywords to lo- cate needed information. To give substance to our argument, we propose a framework that will provide P2P communities with global browsable directories. Our proposal focuses specifically on how to support the communal organization and management of such a shared global directory in order to provide a coher- ent structure for users in a community to locate information via browsing.