CNI Fall 1994 Task Force Meeting Summary Report

Introduction

Nearly 350 individuals attended the Coalition for Network Information’s Fall Task Force Meeting in Orlando, Florida on November 29 – 30, 1994. The Meeting theme was “Managing the Networked Organization.” This was the second time that the Coalition Task Force met outside of Washington, DC, and the first time that it met according to the new Fall Task Force Meeting strategy of co-scheduling with the CAUSE and Educom annual conferences on alternate years.

   Mary Jane Brooks, Office Manager
   at the Association of Research 
   Libraries, greated attendees of the
   Coalition's Fall 1994 Task Force 
   Meeting as they arrived at the 
   registration desk.  Prior to the 
   opening plenary, she chats with 
   Duane Webster, Executive Director
   of the Association of Research 
   Libraries.

Managing the Networked Organization

Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director of the Coalition, introduced the first panel, which addressed the meeting theme. He noted that one of the most important functions of the Coalition for Networked Information is assisting managers of networked enterprises in the research and education community in their efforts to face two critical challenges: recognizing the full potential of the networked environment in a coherent, actionable manner; and, choosing the best means to generate, develop, and preserve value in this environment.

He commented that more and more, it seems that successful managers of networked enterprises are meeting those two challenges by, among other things, reformulating the three most significant variables in the value equation: the “content” variable, which covers the specific products and services they offer; the “context” variable, which covers the ways in which customers access those products or services, often together with other, related products and services; and, the “infrastructure” variable, which covers the mechanisms by which enterprises actually deliver their products or services. The reformulation of these three key value variables is but one of a number of a still growing list of important issues affecting the management of networked enterprises.

Four senior information resource and technology managers from Coalition member institutions spoke about this set of issues from their professional and institutional perspectives.

Jerry Campbell, University Librarian, Duke University, and President, Association of Research Libraries (ARL), opened his presentation with a joke that there is a new country song about the network entitled, “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?” On a more serious note, he then addressed what he sees as the key challenges of managing in the networked environment. He identified seven key organizational characteristics that are particularly affected: the management system, organizational structure, information flow, work environment, work process, response to stimuli, and funding model.

In the networked environment, changing the organization is a complex and long-term task. Campbell focused on three areas of change drawn from the experience of libraries:

Managing finances

Campbell characterized this issue as “old money and a new piece of pie.” While carrying out existing tasks, institutions must build a new networked infrastructure. Given the magnitude of networking costs, a “roll forward” approach to budgeting is not workable. He suggests a zero-based type of process. Another major economic issue is the control of intellectual property in the networked environment and our inability to superimpose the economics of print on the network environment.

Managing risk

As a concept, risk management is relatively new to libraries. The network environment poses risks, including the robustness of the network itself. There is a risk to libraries that they will lose access to information since an institution is often licensed only for access, not archiving of information. Libraries have a particular concern with information integrity over time, which is one of the motivations of the American Association of Universities (AAU) in its recent report to call for the management of intellectual property of the academy within the academy.

Managing transition

The establishment of the network environment is one tangible sign that our organizations are already changing. Librarians must be more deliberate managers and should redesign their entire organization. As the demand for information increases, the major constraints are legal, not technical. Concluding on a high note, Campbell said that in the networked environment, the possibilities for increased cost-effectiveness of our organizations and our ability to deliver information are extraordinary.

Jack McCredie, Vice Provost for Information Systems and Technology, University of California, Berkeley began with a brief overview of management philosophies since the 1960s and noted that the current paradigm is “if it works, it’s obsolete.” McCredie said that he worries about three issues: first, what are we doing as an organization and how should we do it; second, what do we need and can we pay for it; and, third, how do we support the goals of the organization through information technology? He covered a wide range of issues, including how to use information technology in the learning process, the bandwidth challenge as connections move from focusing on e-mail to full text and images, student use of the institutional name and resources in the client-server environment, and the economics of information.

McCredie urged the audience to approach campus administrators in the context of using information technology to help address the overall priorities of the institution. He also wants information technologists to participate in an active way in campus discussions to facilitate the development of economic and practical solutions.

He remarked that the major focus at Berkeley when he arrived was extending the campus network infrastructure. Berkeley went from 2,000 to 20,000 connections in two years. At Berkeley, as in other large institutions, the focus has switched to home access. Campus constituencies have become accustomed to a high level of network service on campus and this has resulted in a demand for a similar level of service where the individuals live so that they can continue their work at home. It is difficult to provide this level of service to the home. McCredie would like to see an urban network develop with the university as an anchor tenant on that network and hopes to work on shaping that reality. McCredie closed with the comment that he is frequently asked, “When will the network be finished?” His answer is, “Never – it evolves and creates new demands.”

Carla Stoffle, Dean of Libraries, University of Arizona, described the continuous quality improvement environment of her campus and the ways in which the library is evolving to meet the challenges of the networked environment. She commented that her university is not looking for incremental change and that they have done some major re-engineering in the library. She shared her experience in managing issues of electronic capabilities in a dynamic environment. Key issues have been the need to flatten the organization and the need to change more rapidly.

Stoffle related that as she flattened the library organization, there were increasing needs for better communication, which the network facilitates. However, she also found that by removing the filtering previously performed by middle managers, there were new demands on staff to translate information into their own context. She found that some staff were overwhelmed by the increased volume of information that they receive and felt more out of control than in the past. The electronic environment creates high customer expectations, and the library doesn’t manage customer expectations very well, particularly customer demand for immediate response.

Stoffle concluded with comments on whether libraries may or may not play a role in the policy issues of the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Libraries should not limit their role to only that of safety nets for the information technology have-nots. Rather, they should seek to increase the participation of the communities they serve in NII discussions and in the NII itself.

Ann Stunden, Director, Academic Computing and Network Services, Northwestern University, used the context of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to provide a perspective of a week in the life of an academic computing director. She described the challenges she faces as:

• redefining campus community values;
• putting policy and policy education in place;
• developing campus processes for resolving problems;
• ensuring communications and collaborations;
• obtaining funding for resources to meet growing demands;
• defining a campus-wide information architecture; and,
• ensuring network security and privacy.

On a day-to-day basis, Stunden deals with such issues as how to handle flaming by students in Internet newsgroups, violation of copyright by a student who uploaded a game to a campus server, pornography placed on campus servers by students, and sensitive e-mail sent to an incorrect address. She described her concern that existing campus policies may or may not cover some of the problems encountered in the network environment, and with the rapid pace of change and unanticipated developments, it is a challenge to prepare for anything that could happen.

Other challenges Stunden raised included the great increase in network use on campus. As at Berkeley, use has accelerated dramatically in recent years. In 1993, 4000 individuals had Northwestern accounts, and in 1994, 10,000 individuals had accounts. The Computing Center operates seventy LISTSERVs, including 10 used by faculty for teaching. Four classes use electronic conferencing involving 700 students.

Stunden concluded with some challenges encountered in managing information: collaboration and communication between the library and computing, and the challenge of the WorldWideWeb (WWW), particularly learning how to navigate it and understanding how to organize it.

All four panelists gave a genuine flavor of what it means to manage in a networked information resource environment where change is rapid, user expectations are high, and demand is exponential. The challenges of managing personnel, services, and resources are great in this environment, and the panelists provided insight into how to focus efforts and make progress.

   Anders Gillner, Institute of Numerical
   Analysis at the Royal Institute of 
   Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden 
   takes time out on Tuesday to demonstrate 
   WWW technologies he is cooperatively 
   developing with Swedish museums.

Network and Networked Information Policy Developments

Toni Carbo Bearman, Dean and Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, provided an overview of recent National Information Infrastructure (NII) developments. An appointee to the Clinton Administration’s Advisory Council to the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), she is the sole individual representing library and information science and higher education in that group. Bearman described the various committees and working groups that have been set up by the administration and the reports that they have generated.

The Advisory Council has set up Mega-Projects in three areas: 1) vision and goals driven by specific applications; 2) universal access and service; and, 3) privacy, security, and intellectual property. Bearman is working on Mega-Project #1, which is focusing this year on education, including training, life-long learning, and libraries. They will issue a report and a set of principles for the applications they have chosen, addressing a set of questions: 1) what is the vision; 2) what technologies and services exist and how will they be impacted by the NII; 3) what is the national interest being served by the development and implementation of the information superhighway; 4) what are the private interests; 5) what are the public interests; 6) where do the public and private interests intersect; 7) what are the national implications of the application; and, 8) what should the government’s role be?

Bearman encouraged the Meeting attendees to give her ideas of applications to highlight in their report and to express their opinions on the issues. She urged the attendees to become involved in the NII process by attending meetings which are being held around the country and to develop outreach programs to educate their colleagues, friends, and neighbors about what the NII actually is and how it applies to them. She closed with a statement of what she sees as her personal challenges: to help protect fair use, to protect privacy, and to support educational principles in the NII, especially in the context of lifelong learning.

Jim Williams, Executive Director, Federation of American Research Networks (FARNET), described the emerging National Science Foundation (NSF) three level architecture of the U.S. portion of the Internet. He noted that some liken this change in the national research and education networking structure to changing the tires on a car at 60 miles pr hour. For a number of years, the U. S. network architecture included the NSF backbone, the mid-level networks connected to it, and campus or other networks connected to the mid-levels. In the new architecture, there will not be a single backbone but multiple backbones provided by a number of providers. Network access points or NAPs will connect networks to each other. Williams commented that the new architecture is working quite well, but there are some problems with scaling and with the new economic infrastructure.

He concluded by noting some concomitant events, such as the emergence of many start-up network service providers, including one RBOC (Ameritech); the growth of online service providers (content providers) on the network; continued growth of network usage; and, some increased orientation towards the commercial sector by the mid-level networks.

Derek Law, Librarian, King’s College, London, described current projects in the United Kingdom which, together, are becoming a distributed national electronic information collection which is centrally defined but meets user needs in all disciplines. He described the work of the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils as an effort to devise national structures for end-user access to information resources. This effort is being funded as part of the ongoing higher education budget and also through new funds from the Follett program. Law described the overall goal to provide a core of essential resources which will be the first resort of network users and that will be used as a magnet for other high quality locally created resources which can be linked through metadata.

At present, an impressive range of services and information resource collections are already available to the U.K. higher education community via the network: BUBL produces an internationally used set of metadata; MAILBASE organizes LISTSERV activity in the U.K.; the UK Office for Library Networking acts as a strategic think tank; HENSA is a shareware archive; NISS provides current information ranging from yellow pages to newspapers and provides a gateway to other services and resources, such as OCLC’s FirstSearch; MIDAS services large data sets, including the U.K. census and satellite mapping data; BIDS provides all of U.K. higher education with access to commercial services, such as ISI datasets; and, ESRC Data Archive contains many governmental and social science datasets. There are plans to add an arts and humanities data service, an image center, and there are discussions about adding a national higher education OPAC, services to the disabled, and a digitization program for a variety of resources.

JISC has also taken positions on a number of policy issues: information must be free at the point of use; subscription or licensing models, not transaction-based models, must be implemented; the higher education community must be involved in the resource selection process; common interfaces for types of data are preferred; and, information must be delivered to all levels of equipment, including the most basic.

Internet Security and Privacy

In his introduction of the security and privacy issues panel, Paul Evan Peters commented that strategies for addressing security and privacy threats in networked environments frequently address three mechanical components (the clients, servers, and networks) and two non-mechanical components (the users and providers) in a particular environment. These strategies are formulated and pursued in the awareness that most threats in cyberspace today are decidedly low-tech and that the organizational problems of building and managing secure and private systems are so difficult that they frustrate any purely technical solution. Four very experienced and well-positioned technical and policy experts explored aspects of security and privacy issues.

Bill Ruh, Associate Technical Director and Director, Workstation Systems Engineering Center, Mitre Corporation, spoke about the Internet and security from his perspective at Mitre, a non-profit think tank that works on projects for the federal government. His talk, “We’re not in Kansas a Anymore!” used the analogies of small town and urban America to describe attitudes and security concerns in the Internet. Ruh stated that the early Internet culture was similar to that found in small town America where everybody knew everybody else and people left their doors unlocked. This tendency was operationalized in the Internet by means of guest accounts and anonymous FTP. However, the Internet has become suburbia where there are lots of new people and even a few “bad influences” and isolated incidents. In the Internet, we have now locked our doors by giving people access but controlling that access. We have a neighborhood watch program for security that includes an Internet firewalls mailing list, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and a Computer Incident Advisory Committee (CIAC).

We are emerging into a “Bright Lights, Big City” scenario where there will be millions of inhabitants, rising crime rates with no police force (and a federal government ignoring its role in this area), and a resulting move towards electronic security and private communities. The Internet population is changing and there will be more and more computer crime. As commerce comes online, this will become a more serious issue.

Providing security measures requires a balancing act, preserving the positive features of the network such as open lines of communication and collaboration while ensuring the safety of our information assets. Ruh feels that we are moving into an era where we can balance these factors, primarily through the use of firewalls: a computer or a set of computers that control(s) the flow of network traffic in and out of the local community. Typical firewall capabilities are: access control, network service restrictions, user authentication, and transaction logging. Today there are over thirty different firewall products, a tripling of a year ago.

Benefits of firewalls include:

• creation of a barrier (or network “fence”) that prevents unauthorized intrusion;
• user access to Internet resources in controlled manner; and,
• reduction of the “zone of risk” to firewall components.

Drawbacks of firewalls include:

• lack of complete commercial firewall solutions;
• firewall techniques for some protocols are not available;
• need for security management responsibilities, e.g. authentication management, log reviews; and,
• Negative impact on performance and user needs, e.g. popular network applications may not immediately be allowed by the firewall.

Rue concluded with a recommendation that institutions implement firewalls and noted that they are critical in situations where there are personnel records and copyrighted information.

Raman Khanna, Director, Distributed Computing and Communication Systems, Stanford University described the work of the Common Solutions Group’s (CSG) Authentication Project. The CSG, which has both representatives of individual universities and other organizations such as EDUCOM, NTTF, CREN, and CNI is working on inter-institutional authentication. The group has been formed to collaborate on the definition, development, and deployment of a higher education information infrastructure and development of middleware for higher education. The authentication project will architect an inter-institutional security infrastructure which will: provide the capability for secure, unambiguous universal identification of an actor for “store and forward” interactions, e.g. e-mail, for which we need public key technology; support privacy, integrity, and digital signatures; and, evaluate existing approaches, e.g. PEM (privacy enhanced mail) and PGP (pretty good privacy). The group has recommended the PGP approach for store and forward transactions and they are using MIT’s Kerberos-mediated PGP key-signing service. CSG wants to use its leverage to influence vendors on directions in this arena.

Peter Graham, Associate University Librarian for Technical and Networked Information Services, Rutgers University, discussed information authentication, or what he described as intellectual preservation. Graham noted that one of the library’s missions is to ensure that information is preserved in the form it was intended to be in. Librarians work to preserve the intellectual content of materials well beyond the timeframe of their own lives. Graham divided the work of preservation into three categories. In “medium preservation,” the problem is the decay of the artifact itself, e.g. paper, magnetic tape, and the solution is to “refresh” the information. In “technology preservation,” the problem is obsolescence, e.g. new media and data structures, and the solution is to migrate the information. In “intellectual preservation,” the problem is the malleability of information, e.g. accidental updates, version control, and fraud, and the solution Graham proposed is digital time-stamping.

Graham stated that two solutions commonly proposed for intellectual preservation are encryption, which can require a private key and thereby restricts access to information resources, and digital signatures, which require secrecy and encrypted records. Digital time-stamping is an authentication solution that combines two techniques: “hashing” digital content and engaging in a “widely-witnessed event.” Digital time-stamping, a generic name for a process developed at BellCore, can be used for public or private documents and there is no need for trust between the producer and user.

   Coalition Executive Director
   Paul Evan Peters looks on as David
   Peyton, Vice President, Processing 
   and Networking Services Division,
   Information Technology Association 
   of America delivers his message 
   during the plenary session on 
   Internet security and privacy issues.

David Peyton, Vice President, Processing and Networking Services Division, Information Technology Association of America (an association that represents computer software and service companies), presented a round-up of the status of security and privacy issues in the Federal arena.

He discussed three specific security issues:

• Digital telephony (“FBI Wiretapping”) – A middle-of-the-road bill (PL103-414) was passed this year to retrofit the existing public network and to engineer for the future.
• Message protection (“Clipper Chip”) – The Administration feels that the current data encryption standard need to be updated, and it has promoted the Clipper Chip, which Peyton said “flunks every user acceptance test,” in this light. The Administration seems to be pulling back from its preference for the Clipper Chip, but it is not clear where things actually stand.
• Digital signature protection – In the absence of a Federal standard, most firms in the computer industry have licensed implementations of a commercial standard in this area. Unfortunately, NIST proposed something totally different.

The three privacy issues he discussed were:

• Application areas – In the health care reform discussions, there was a general consensus that privacy issues should be addressed. In the new Congress, in which health care reform is not thought to be a priority, we will need a new bill to frame privacy concerns in this area. Transportation provides a second excellent example of how privacy issues surface in application area. Intelligent vehicle systems (IVHS) will generate huge databases of very personal information about an individual’s movements, which can be used for both good and bad purposes.
• Workplace issues – Monitoring of electronic mail by employers is becoming an issue on the minds of more and more Americans, but bills protecting employees were died a quiet death in the last Congress.
• Direct marketing – Indiscriminate solicitation of business on the Internet is an issue that may soon come under Congress scrutiny, as tele-marketing has before it.

An Anthropologist’s View of the Library and Computer Center Cultures

A joint plenary session with the CAUSE ’94 conference featured Jennifer James, an urban cultural anthropologist. In a humorous presentation with serious themes, she discussed her interest in belief systems and mythological barriers. She noted that when creating partnerships, we need to understand the culture of the groups involved. She described librarians as having ancient credentials, their own rules, and a bias for precision. “Techies,” on the other hand, she described as having no credentials and no culture worthy of the term. She feels that our mythological systems hold us back from forming new partnerships.

James described the current period as the start of a long-term “brains, technologies, services” era, but said that society has not yet accepted the notion of computer nerds as the leaders of the new era. She described the members of the audience as the new entrepreneurs, and said that the new era will rely on entrepreneurial individuals working in teams with minimal management structure. She urged the audience to use the myths and symbols of the past and to integrate them in creative ways into new technologies. She challenged the audience to crack the model that currently operates in academe. She closed by stating that she feels optimistic about our moving to a higher level of society, and asked members of the audience to think of themselves as society’s guides on this journey.

                         Kevin Gamiel, a programmer at 
                         the Clearinghouse for Networked 
                         Information Discovery and Retrieval
                         (CNIDR) relaxes between project 
                         briefing sessions.

Update on Coalition Initiatives and Projects

Paul Evan Peters opened the final session with the three core beliefs guiding the Coalition and its program:

• Networks like the Internet and digital libraries like the resources and services already found on the Internet will be important features of all 21st Century research and education communities.
• Networks and digital libraries must therefore also be important features of all enterprises that serve those 21st Century research and education communities.
• Networks and digital libraries will ultimately transform research and education, and the enterprises that serve research and education, by changing not only how, and when, and with what resources programs are designed and pursued, but by changing as well the types of programs pursued and the identities of the folks who plan and participate in them.

In short, he said, the Coalition and its program are dedicated to the proposition that networks and digital libraries will mean at least as much to the “life of the mind” in “knowledge communities” as roads and energy sources have meant to the “life of the body” in agricultural and industrial communities. Libraries, computer centers, disciplinary societies, and publishing houses typify the enterprises and professions that serve the life of the mind by supporting scholarly and scientific creation, communication, and publication. So it is quite natural, even necessary, to try to imbed the question of the impacts of networks and digital libraries on these enterprises and professions in the question of the impacts of networks and digital libraries on the life of the mind. Helping Coalition members to accomplish this imbedding is the central program planning challenge of the Coalition.

A number of project leaders then reported on Coalition initiatives:

• Robert Ubell, President, Robert Ubell Associates, gave an update on the Rights for Electronic Access to and Delivery of Information (READI) project. In its initial stage, The goal of the READI project was to generate a universally acceptable contract for electronic, networked information, which did not prove possible. Instead, this year, the Project turned in a new direction to develop a handbook on how to develop contracts and site licenses for networked information. At present, a draft of the handbook is under review by a group including librarians, faculty, attorneys, information service providers, publishers, and information technologists. The draft document is available on the CNI server.
• Gerry Bernbom, Assistant Director for Data Administration, Indiana University, reported on “Working Together: A Planning Retreat for Library and Information Professionals.” The retreat offered an intensive, participant-oriented environment, using case studies and a variety of participative techniques to help foster collaborative projects. Attendance was open only to paired teams. Participants met in advance to assess their current situation and plans. At the retreat, participants divided their time between skill development and work on institutional planning. The first retreat, held in October, 1994, was targeted at large research institutions. CNI plans to offer the program this spring to small institutions.
• Susan Perry, Director, Departmental Systems Group, Stanford University, reported on the “New Learning Communities” workshop, a conference held in Phoenix in the summer of 1994 which brought together cross-functional teams developing courses and curriculum involving networked information. Participants discussed their projects and provided peer consultation. A report on the project is available on the Coalition server and a video of the retreat will be available soon. The Teaching and Learning Working Group sponsored the conference along with EDUCOM, ACRL, and AAHE. In addition, the Working Group sponsored its third program at the EDUCOM Annual Meeting featuring innovative uses of networked information in teaching and learning. A database of projects submitted to this program is available through the CNI server; it is an excellent resource for information on teaching and learning projects.
• Judith Turner, Director of Electronic Services, Chronicle of Higher Education, briefed the audience on the “Purple Paper on Advertising in the Networked Environment.” The paper is completed and is on the CNI server. The paper describes and categorizes advertising practices on the network and emphasizes that junk electronic mail techniques should be avoided.
• Chuck Henry, Director, Vassar College Libraries, reported on the joint initiative that CNI has with ACLS and Getty, the “National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage” (NINCH), and related activities. NINCH is the next step in the “Humanities and Arts on the Information Superhighway” initiative. A summary of last year’s efforts is on the CNI server. NINCH is being developed to create an environment in which the importance of the cultural heritage is recognized as a priority in NII planning. It is also a strategy to bring people in the humanities community together to work for mutual benefit. The initiative will be seeking sponsors and will be seeking to establish a Washington office. The initiative will also expand globally by linking to similar initiatives in other countries.
• Clifford Lynch, Director, Library Automation, University of California, reported on a new Coalition initiative, the “Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (NIDR) White Paper.” A Call for Input has been issued, and everyone is encouraged to send comments to the team developing the paper: Lynch, Avra Michelson, Mitre Corporation, Craig Summerhill, CNI, and Cecilia Preston. The genesis of the paper is the concern that while much work is being done on network resource discovery and identification, an overall framework or architectural picture for that work is lacking. The team is also focusing on the issue of metadata, information about network resources that systems use as an information base that can be mined for specific resources. Many communities, e.g. the museum community, are defining classes of data, but there is no cross-fertilization of these classifications or common taxonomies. Lynch expressed hope that this white paper will serve as a useful point of departure for standards developers, network architects, and others.
• Joan Lippincott, Assistant Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, reported on the two CAUSE/CNI Regional Conferences that were held in the summer in Philadelphia, PA, and in the fall in Fullerton, CA. The conferences enable individuals beyond the Task Force representatives and those in non-Task Force member institutions to benefit from programs that highlight CAUSE and CNI issues and projects. The programs are also intended to serve a region, and to thereby keep the travel costs of participants to a minimum.

Project Briefings and Synergy Sessions

Attendees had the opportunity to select from twenty-four project briefings and synergy sessions on a wide variety of topics.

Two sessions followed up on plenary panels at the Meeting:

• “Key Issues Affecting the Management of the Networked Organization.”
• “Key Developments Affecting the Evolution of Networks and Networked Information.”

Nine sessions were devoted to ongoing Coalition-sponsored projects:

• “Group Electronic Site Licenses: Hopes, Fears, and Issues as Seen From Many Sides of the Table.”
• “Cost Centers and Measures in the Networked Information Value-Chain.”
• “Arts, Culture, and Humanities Priorities and Activities.”
• “Creating New Learning Communities via the Network.”
• “Networked Access to and Delivery of Dissertations and Theses.”
• “CUPID Update and Demo.”
• “Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (NIDR) White Paper.”
• “Working Together: A Planning Retreat for Library and Information Technology Professionals.
• “Architectures and Standards: Priorities and Activities.”

Three sessions focussed on topics in which the Coalition has a general interest, and is currently formulating a strategy by which to play a useful and appropriate role:

• “Forging a National Image Alliance.”
• “Describing Image Files: The Need for a Technical Standard.”
• “Fair Use of Networked Information.”

And the remainder of the sessions covered other ideas and initiatives of interest to Meeting attendees:

• “A Center for Collaborative Learning: A Model for Supporting the Library Without Walls.”
• “Government Information Locator Services (GILS).”
• “The Berkeley Finding Aids Project: Providing Access to Images Through SGML Encoded Text.”
• “Building the Digital Library from the Ground Up: A Collaborative Effort.”
• “INforum: A Library/Information Technology collaboration in Professional Development.”
• “The Columbia Action Agenda: A Strategic Project Proposal to Advance Electronic Scholarly Communications in Universities.”
• “Scholarly Publishing Using the WorldWideWeb.”
• “Educom’s National Learning Infrastructure Initiative.”
• “The Princeton University Electronic Card Catalog.”
• “CIC Virtual Electronic Library Status Report.”

Spring 1995 Meeting

The Spring 1995 Task Force Meeting will be on Monday April 10th and Tuesday April 11th, in Washington, DC immediately following the National NET ’95 conference. The theme of the Spring 1995 Meeting is “Digital Library Research and Development.”

Fall 1995 Meeting

The Fall 1995 Task Force Meeting will be on Monday October 30th and Tuesday October 31st, in Portland, Oregon immediately preceding the Educom ’95 conference.

Additional Information

Many documents (including the final, detailed agenda) from the Fall 1994 Task Force Meting are available on the Coalition’s Internet server.

If you access the Coalition’s server by gopher, point your gopher client to gopher.cni.org 70 and follow this series of menus:

   Coalition FTP Archives (ftp.cni.org)
   Coalition Task Force Meetings (/CNI/tf.meetings)
   Fall, 1994 Meeting of the Coalition Task Force

If you choose to access the materials via NCSA Mosaic (or some other browser) and WWW, you can use this URL to access a HTML formatted document:

   URL: https://www.cni.org/events/membership-meetings/past-meetings/fall-1994/

If you choose to access the materials via FTP, browse the following directory on host ftp.cni.org:

   /CNI/tf.meetings/1994b.fall

If you need additional information, contact:

Joan K. Lippincott Assistant Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information 21 Dupont Circle Washington, DC 20036 Voice: 202-296-5098 Fax: 202-872-0884 Internet: joan@cni.org

Note on Redistribution

You are encouraged to use this Summary Report to provide information to interested individuals in your organization or institution by, in part or in full, posting it to institutional and organizational electronic distribution lists or incorporating it into relevant newsletters, reports, and the like. Publishers of periodicals and other materials that cover networks and networked information are also encouraged to use this Summary Report in similar ways.