Multimedia information systems are quite different from traditional information systems, especially in data types, modeling, delivery, and user interface. The large size of multimedia data and the high bandwidth requirement of multime­ dia streams require new storage, buffering, delivery, and networking schemes. The presentational nature of multimedia applications requires a proper syn­ chronization between multimedia streams, and the composition of multimedia documents in the distributed environment should overcome the heterogeneity of underlying systems. This book is edited for undergraduate and graduate students studying mul­ timedia information and applications, researchers and developers of various multimedia software and hardware systems, multimedia tool developers, user interface designers, and network protocol designers by including 17 chapters focused on the following major issues: • Disk scheduling and storage hierarchy. • Configuration of multimedia servers and buffer management. • Delivery scheduling for multimedia streams. • Supporting user interactions. Document modeling and temporal modeling of multimedia data. • • Integrated multimedia information system.