This paper describes a peer-to-peer architecture for representing and disseminating linguistic corpora, linguistic annotation, and resources such as lexical databases and gazetteers. The architecture is based upon a “Universal Database” technology in which all information is represented in globally identified, extensible bundles of attribute-value pairs. These objects are replicated at will between peers in the network, and the business rules that implement replication involve checking digital signatures and proper attribution of data, to avoid information being tampered with or abuse of copyright. Universal identifiers enable comprehensive standoff annotation and commentary. A carefully constructed publication mechanism is described that enables different users to subscribe to material provided by trusted publishers on recognized topics or themes. Access to content and related annotation is provided by distributed indexes, represented using the same underlying data objects as the rest of the database.

Advances in location aware computing and the convergence of geographic and textual information systems will require a comprehensive, extensible, information rich framework called the Information Commons Gazetteer that can be freely disseminated to small devices in a modular fashion. This paper describes the infrastructure and datasets used to create such a resource. The Gazetteer makes use of MAYA Design's Universal Database Architecture; a peer-to-peer system based upon bundles of attribute-value pairs with universally unique identity, and sophisticated indexing and data fusion tools. The Gazetteer primarily constitutes publicly available geographic information from various agencies that is organized into a well-defined scalable hierarchy of worldwide administrative divisions and populated places. The data from various sources are imported into the commons incrementally and are fused with existing data in an iterative process allowing for rich information to evolve over time. Such a flexible and distributed public resource of the geographic places and place names allows for both researchers and practitioners to realize location aware computing in an efficient and useful way in the near future by eliminating redundant time consuming fusion of disparate sources.