Patent ID: 7155677
Filing Date: 2006-12-26
Classification: G06F,G09B

Abstract:
1. A method for supplying hierarchical supplementary information related to printed books in a portal comprising the steps of: establishing a portal of supplementary information related to printed books, said supplementary information stored in hypermedia documents retrievable through said portal; distributing to a user base a plurality of different printed books arrayed at a common location accessible to each user of the user base, each printed book being a non-electronic paper-based book and having inserted therein at least one bookmark; associating each different printed book with a common uniform address, each said common address referencing a corresponding first hypermedia document in said portal and included on the at least one bookmark inserted in the printed book associated with the common address, said first hypermedia document comprising links to secondary hypermedia documents, said links corresponding to different ones of user classes; providing a kiosk at said common location for interacting with said portal; receiving from a user in said user base through said kiosk (a) a user-specified common address obtained from the at least one bookmark corresponding to one of said printed books; and (b) a user identifier identifying said user as belonging to at least one of the different user classes, wherein, if the user identifier has not previously been supplied to the user, the user identifier is obtained from an attendant at said common location based upon information presented to said attendant by said user; responsive to receiving said user-specified common address, displaying trough said kiosk in said portal a first hypermedia document corresponding to said user-specified common address; searching a stored list of user identifiers cross referencing a plurality of user classes to determine which of the different user classes said user belongs to; and, responsive to identifying said associated user class, displaying through said kiosk one of said secondary hypermedia documents, said secondary hypermedia documents having supplementary information pertaining to said books associated with said user-specified common address, said supplementary information being consonant with said associated user class.