Accounting for Archiving: Who Will Pay?
Kevin Guthrie
President
JSTOR
Perpetual access to paper materials has been ensured through local decisions and investments. Hundreds, and in many cases, thousands of copies of journals and books are stored and maintained on the shelves of libraries around the country and around the world. Although the current system is often seen as an archival solution, these materials are stored locally not to ensure a safe archive, but rather to provide convenient access. In a technological world where local storage is not required to provide access, who will pay to insure that material, especially infrequently used material, remains accessible as technologies evolve? And how will they pay? From what budget? The speaker will address these and related questions from the perspective of JSTOR, an organization with a mission to serve as a trusted electronic archive of journal literature. The response of the academic community to the JSTOR archive provides early feedback on the capacity of institutions in the academic community to pay for “archiving.”
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Canadian National Site License Project
Deb deBruijn
Executive Director
Canadian National Site Licensing Project
A proposal to support national site licensing of electronic journals, abstracts, and indexes was funded in late 1999 by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. This federal agency funds infrastructure for research institutions in the broad areas of science and technology. The current project involves an unprecedented collaborative effort of 64 Canadian universities and builds on earlier work done in other countries. Federal grant funding provides 40% of the cost of the project through 2003. Progress to date and expected outcomes will be discussed.
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The Chemistry Preprint Server – An Experiment in Scientific Communication
Jan Kuras
Publisher Relations Manager
ChemWeb Inc.
The Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS) is a major new initiative for the chemistry community, hosted by ChemWeb.com. It is a freely available and permanent web archive and a distribution medium for research articles in the chemical field. The CPS was developed by closely following the Los Alamos archives, which cover physics and related disciplines. Submission to the CPS is free and open to all, and can include fully prepared articles or works in progress. This session will review this ChemWeb experiment in effective scientific communication, and focus on how the CPS was developed, how it can be utilised by scientists, the response from the chemical community and the scope for future development.
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Collaboration among Information Professionals: Directions for CNI
Joan K. Lippincott
Associate Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
Susan Perry
College Librarian, Director of Library Information and Technology Services
Mount Holyoke College
One aspect of CNI’s mission since its inception has been the promotion of collaboration and partnership among information professionals at the institutional level. The Task Force structure, with institutions designating senior library and IT officials as CNI representatives, has been one manifestation of the collaborative strategy to encourage linkages, communication, and joint projects at the institutional level. CNI has also promoted cross-sector collaboration in the way it structured many of its projects, such as University Presses in the Networked Environment and New Learning Communities. CNI has offered a workshop, Working Together, since 1994, that provides a structured environment for institutional teams to develop projects related to networking and networked information resources.
In this open discussion session, participants will be invited to discuss the state of cross-sector collaboration at their institutions and will be asked to guide CNIs program development in this area. Should CNI develop new initiatives to address collaboration? Is collaboration a problem solved at many institutions? What would be useful to the CNI membership?
Collaboration in Action: Joint Library/IT Service Points
Joan K. Lippincott
Associate Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
Malcolm B. Brown
Director of Academic Computing
Dartmouth College
Cynthia Pawlek
Director of User Services
Dartmouth College
Catherine Murray-Rust
Associate University Librarian
Oregon State University
This session will explore the topic of services and facilities jointly developed and staffed by library and computing staff. The presenters will discuss the rationale for the development of their facility and services, describe program objectives, and discuss day-to-day collaboration challenges.
Library and computing services have some common or complementary goals and serve the same user groups. Students and faculty need a range of services from identifying subject-oriented resources to using a statistical software package to trouble-shooting hardware or telecommunications problems. It can be confusing to users to know where to go for help and whom to approach for problems. At Dartmouth College, a renovation and addition to the library prompted a re-thinking of the location of library and academic computing services. The design for the new wing of the library, recently opened, includes many co-located library and computing services, such as the reference desk and academic computing consulting services. A joint library/IT planning process developed the concept and design.
At Oregon State University, the Information Commons, jointly staffed by library, IT personnel, and others, was designed to offer services and resources to keep pace with the changes in the way their students and faculty work and study. The facility offers users library reference assistance, computing consultation, a multi-media production facility, classrooms, and equipment loans.
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Contributor-Run Libraries: Learning from the Open Source Community
Paul Jones
Director of ibiblio.org
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
What if you could wave a wand, in this very Harry Potter decade, and make libraries – at least digital libraries – more open, more easy to manage, cheaper, and even more eclectic and democratic? What if content contributors could submit, catalog, index, manage, rate and rank materials in large collections themselves? I believe that, thanks to the innovations from the Open Source community and perhaps more importantly the Free Software community, that we can have a contributor-run library at this very moment.
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Digital Imaging and Metadata Display for Preservation and Access
Czeslaw (Chet) Jan Grycz
CEO and Publisher
Octavo
Octavo is the digital preservation company that partners with libraries and institutions to create and publish high quality, very high resolution digital images of rare books and precious manuscripts. Its purpose is to provide useful preservation surrogates; but the effect of its work is to provide access and digital publishing models that appear to establish the high-water mark for e-books. In addition, Octavo is implementing useful metadata management and display technologies that will be of interest to CNI attendees.
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Digital Pacific Rim Library
R. Bruce Miller
Associate University Librarian – User Support Services
University of California, San Diego
Phyllis S. Mirsky
Deputy University Librarian
University of California, San Diego
Reagan Moore
Associate Director
San Diego Supercomputer Center
The libraries of the University of California, San Diego have begun development of a digital Pacific Rim Library in support of education and research in international studies. In collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, we have resolved technical issues related to loading and archiving large quantities of very small files. We have enabled access to Chinese digital libraries that use proprietary file formats and client software. We have developed software that ensures compatibility among myriad Chinese character encoding schemes. The presentation will summarize technical issues and their resolution for digital libraries created in proprietary formats and for information resources encoded with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean character sets.
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A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress
Dale Flecker
Associate Director for Planning and Systems
Harvard University
James R. Blackaby
Director, Internet Strategies/Information Services
Mystic Seaport Museum
Nancy Frishberg
Executive Director
New Media Centers
The digital revolution–the proliferation of digital information, digital networks, and the World Wide Web–makes it possible to distribute information easily, in innovative ways, and for dramatically lower cost. This revolution is challenging policies and practices throughout our society, but those institutions whose primary charter is to provide access to information, such as libraries, archives, and publishers, are perhaps most affected. What does it mean to “collect” digital information if Web links cause the physical location of information to be irrelevant? How does our society ensure that digital information is preserved for future generations? How must the roles of libraries, publishers, and other institutions evolve? What do the answers to these questions imply for the management of libraries and other information-oriented institutions in the coming decade?
With an understanding of these profound changes underway, the Librarian of Congress asked the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Academy of Sciences to assist the Library of Congress, which includes the U.S. Copyright Office, Congressional Research Service, and Law Library of Congress, in developing the Library’s strategy with regard to information technology. Accordingly, CSTB empaneled its Committee on an Information Technology Strategy of the Library of Congress. The committee has completed its work and its final report, LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress, will be presented and discussed at this session by three members of the study committee.
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ECURE 2001: Electronic Records Advocacy
Rob Spindler
University Archivist
Arizona State University
Jeremy Rowe
Head, Media Development
Arizona State University
The speakers will review successes of ECURE 2000: Preservation and Access for Electronic College and University Records and engage participants in a discussion of processes, topics and potential speakers for proposed executive development seminars and the ECURE 2001 conference. ECURE programs are dedicated to advocacy and dissemination of research, models and best practices for management of electronic records produced by institutions of higher education.
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The E-Metrics Project: Developing Statistics and Performance Measures to Describe Electronic Information Services and Resources for ARL Libraries
Rush G. Miller
University Librarian and Director
University of Pittsburgh
Sherrie Schmidt
Dean of University Libraries
Arizona State University
Jeff Shim
Assistant Professor
Florida State University
Joseph Zucca
Executive Assistant to the Vice President & Director of Libraries
University of Pennsylvania
This presentation will update activities recently completed and currently underway to develop statistics and performance measures for electronic information services and resources in ARL libraries. The project is sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and has been funded by a consortia of 24 ARL libraries. Work is being completed by the Information Institute at Florida State University. A project abstract appears at: <http://www.ii.fsu.edu/Projects/ARL/ARL.abstract.html>
The presentation will include preliminary findings from Phase I of the study regarding (1) current ARL strategies in managing/using statistics for electronic services, (2) successful strategies for managing networked data, and (3) issues related to obtaining and using vendor-based statistics. Additional information about the project can be found at: <http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/e-metrics.html>
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From Static to Dynamic – Development of a Database Driven Gateway to Library Information and Resources
Phyllis S. Mirsky Deputy University Librarian
University of California, San Diego
R. Bruce Miller
Associate University Librarian – User Support Services
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego Libraries have developed a new web infrastructure in support of delivering library resources. This system enables non-programmers to easily create an almost infinite variety of web pages. The site provides users with a subset of available knowledge, carefully selected to support programmatic needs. Currently there are 8,000 distinct subject and type pages online.
Key to this initiative is an underlying relational database of selected resources. Subject specialists identify and select resources and services and enter them into the database known as Sage. Descriptive data elements are added to enhance the retrieval and display. These database records form the content for dynamically created web pages that are assembled “on the fly” when a user browses Sage.
Text from each Sage record is also copied into a Netscape Compass Server database and is indexed in that full text index. To further expand access, URLs from Sage records become the starting point for spidering by Compass to find other potentially relevant resources. The level of spidering is assigned by each record creator in order to control subsequent search results. Sage streamlines the creation and maintenance of web pages by reducing redundant work on the part of web authors and facilitates sharing of data among web authors for resources relevant to more than one subject area. Sage provides for efficient data entry, easy updating of web resources, and custom designed page building for both static and dynamic pages. Selected records from the OPAC are exported into the database to provide an integrated array of resources. Java, Servlets, and JDBC enabled SQL database access were used to establish a foundation for future migration to potential new technologies.
handout (in PDF format) 9K file size
Global Union Catalog of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
Vinod Chachra
President
VTLS, Inc.
Shalini Urs
Visting Scholar
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are a new genre of documents providing an enriched medium for graduate students to present their research. ETDs help improve graduate education, accelerate access to university research, promote sharing and collaboration, and enlarge readership. NDLTD is a federation of more than one hundred members-including institutional members such as CNI and UNESCO. It is an initiative that promotes and supports ETD activities worldwide. The growing number of ETD projects and initiatives around the world evidences increasing global interest in ETDs.
NDLTD has partnered with VTLS Inc., to develop a global union catalog of ETDs. VTLS is uniquely equipped for this activity due to the comprehensive support of Unicode in its Virtua ILS – Integrated Library System. Unicode encoding allows data to be entered into a single database in any language, including non-Roman languages like Arabic, Chinese, English, Greek, Hebrew, and Russian. This new service will help further globalization of ETDs in the future.
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How Much Information?
Kirsten Swearingen
Graduate Student Researcher, School of Information Management & Systems
University of California, Berkeley
This session presents the results of a study conducted by Hal Varian and Peter Lyman, from the School of Information Management & Systems at UC Berkeley. The cost of magnetic storage is dropping rapidly while disk capacities are increasing exponentially. Soon it will be technologically possible for an average person to access virtually all recorded information. The natural question then becomes: how much information is there to store? If we wanted to store “everything,” how much storage would it take? This study was undertaken to answer this question, looking at the most common forms of information media and estimating yearly production, accumulated stock, rates of growth, and other variables of interest.
handout (in PDF format) 57K file size
IMS E-Learning Specifications: Technical Update
Thomas D. Wason
Technical Liaison
IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.
IMS Working Groups gather functional requirements, technical capabilities, and deployment priorities from end users, vendors, purchasers, and managers. These requirements are consolidated into one or more specifications as the groups follow a proven, open process to develop a specification package consisting of a definition, XML binding and best practice guide. Working Group documents undergo detailed internal review by the IMS Technical Board before public drafts or releases are made available to the public via the IMS Web site <www.imsproject.org>. Feedback from test beds, product developers and adopters is incorporated through systematic revision cycles. Specifications for Content Packaging, Question and Test Interoperability, Enterprise Data Exchange, and Meta-data have been released. Specifications for Content Management and for Learner Information Packaging and Exchange are nearing completion. Working Groups which will gather requirements and develop specifications for Instructional Design and for Accessibility by Disabled Learners are being formed. This presentation will provide a technical overview of the specifications so far produced and discuss their potential use in mechanisms for locating, retrieving and (re)using networked learning objects.
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IMS Specifications for E-Learning: Snapshot of Activities
Ed Walker
CEO
IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.
IMS defines and delivers interoperable, XML-based specifications for exchanging learning content and information about learners among learning system components. IMS members are implementing and adopting these specifications to make learning easier and cheaper to deliver anywhere and anytime, as well as to create new mechanisms, new contexts, and new products for education and training. IMS Working Groups have set aggressive timetables for developing, testing, revising and releasing specifications. Specifications for Content Packaging, Question and Test Interoperability, Enterprise Data Exchange, and Meta-data have been released. Specifications for Content Management and for Learner Information Packaging are nearing completion. Working Groups which will gather requirements and develop specifications for Instructional Design and for Accessibility by Disabled Learners are being formed. The specifications already produced are becoming worldwide de facto standards for defining acquisition requirements and for delivering learning products and services. This presentation will be a real time snapshot of IMS’ current activities to develop and facilitate the use of specifications.
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Intellectual Needs Shaping Technical Solutions in the Humanities: Implications of the NINCH “Building Blocks” Workshop
David Green
Executive Director
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
Virginia Kerr
Digital Technology Librarian
Northwestern University
Mark Kornbluh
Associate Professor of History; Executive Director of H-Net; Director of MATRIX The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences
Michigan State University
Worthy Martin
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Virginia
A scholar, a librarian and a computer scientist will report on their experience and discuss the implications of the recent NINCH Workshop: “Building Blocks: Intellectual Needs Shaping Technical Solutions” http://www.ninch.org/bb/project/project.html. Building Blocks is one component of NINCH’s ongoing Computer Science & Humanities Initiative conducted with CNI and the National Academies. The September 20-24 workshop assembled 90 scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers, IT and computer scientists in five humanities fields. The goals of the workshop were to: review current scholarly and pedagogical practice (especially in using primary source materials); articulate by field and across disciplines the most pressing needs in the humanities that networked computing can address; and outline both short-term, practical projects and areas to include on a longer-term research agenda to be developed with computer scientists. More than 20 shorter-term project proposals are now being marshaled to funders as we begin to think through the program for the first of three annual Computer Science & Humanities conferences starting fall 2001.
Internet2 Progress Report: Middleware Experiments
Renee Woodten Frost
Internet2 Middleware Early Adopter Project
University of Michigan
This session will describe the significant progress in Internet2 middleware http://www.internet2.edu/middleware/ experiments and the activities underway to further development of PKI for higher education and research. These projects will provide benefits to inter-institutional and intra-institutional security and directory management. Come learn about EduPerson, the proposed higher education object class for directories, the Directory of Directories for higher education, and the Shibboleth effort to facilitate inter-institutional web access as well as recent PKI discoveries.
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JA-SIG uPortal – an Open-source Enterprise Portal
Tony Holderith
President
Interactive Business Solutions
Higher Education (IT) has long been at the mercy of vendors. Each vendor offers different applications with different user interfaces running on different platforms using different security models — all developed in a variety of technologies. The JA-SIG uPortal changes this, offering a solution that takes the institution’s perspective into account. Here the emphasis is on the vendor interoperating (1) with the campus directory services and (2) with the campus portal. This presentation explains the technology, goals and future of the JA-SIG uPortal effort.
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The Knowledge Conservancy
David Bearman
President
Archives & Museum Informatics
The Knowledge Conservancy is a non-profit organization being formed to make privately held intellectual property accessible online to the public for free and assure its long-term preservation. The Knowledge Conservancy will accept limited licenses to copyright properties and financial support to achieve its mission.
The Knowledge Conservancy offers authors and publishers a means to serve the public good while continuing to exploit the value of their intellectual property. Owners of intellectual property can select terms for their donations, specifying degrees of functionality associated with online access to their property, which do not compete with their own product offerings, and which may accentuate the values of those offerings and/or provide a convenient way for potential consumers to test the products before buying.
The Knowledge Conservancy offers a way to contribute to greater accessibility of intellectual properties and a way to ensure that future generations will also have access to intellectual properties even if the current owners of such properties are no longer interested in providing access.
This report will discuss the status of The Knowledge Conservancy and current thoughts on how it will operate.
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MyUB: University at Buffalo Intranet Portal
Hugh Jarvis
Cybrarian
University at Buffalo
The University at Buffalo is so vast in its offerings and the size of its community that it is actually larger than some small towns. MyUB keeps UB as big as you need, and as small as you want. MyUB is a web-based, personalized information portal that allows students to access their entire UB web resources inventory from one web address. MyUB is custom-tailored for the student individual interests and needs, and actually evolves with the student.
MyUB is developed as a coaching, mentoring system that complements our human advisors, bringing the wide resources of UB to the student’s fingertips from any location, at any time of the day or night. Based on our strong partnerships between units such as the libraries, student affairs, computing, and academic advising, MyUB can anticipate the questions all students have, such as how do I contact my advisor, what’s for dinner in the dining hall, or how do I fulfill my course needs?
Because the site is accessed through the student’s secure user ID, the MyUB can “know” things about each student, such as his or her division and major, and what courses they are taking, and push towards them the most relevant information, opportunities, and resources, such as registration windows, specific academic obligations, mentoring opportunities, online course reserve, and specific library resources and databases.
Far from being a generic set of passive and fixed links, MyUB provides the links that make sense at each point in time. MyUB functions as a personalized guide to the university and its wealth of resources. With our stakeholders, we have mined over 170,000 catalogued pages to expose the hidden gems and we have interfaced directly into the backend systems that serve the needs of our students. This way we can improve their quality of life and keep them on a successful academic track. It’s this time-based delivery mechanism that makes MyUB unique among other educational and commercial sites.
To preview, visit http://www.buffalo.edu/aboutmyub/
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Napster & MP3s Boom or Bust — In the Wake of Lawsuits,
How Do You Deal With Illegal MP3 Distribution Across Campus? — A University (Bandwidth) Perspective
Russell Kaurloto
Associate Executive Director
University of Southern California
In the current wake of Napsters legal proceedings, find out how the University of Southern California resolved a lawsuit filed by the heavy metal band Metalica, claiming that copyright violations allegedly committed by Napster users have been facilitated by the University and the MP3-sharing company.
In this open discussion session, participants will be invited to discuss Napster and MP3 distribution and how the University of Southern California took a different approach in finding a resolution and establishing a policy that banned usage but still maintained access. Discussions will include the future of proxy MP3 distributors and if current university policies will need to adapt.
NLII Project Update
Vicki Suter
National Learning Infrastructure Initiative
EDUCAUSE
This session will cover the three major projects the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative has been working on for 2000:
- Interesting Practices and Best Systems in Faculty Engagement and Support;
- the READI (READiness Inventory) project, to develop a web-based dynamic decision making tool for the executive leadership of campuses as they evaluate the capacity of their respective institutions to use technology to accomplish institutional goals;
- the Communities of Practice (CoP) project to pilot test support, tools and environments for on-line communities.
In addition, other NLII programs and services such as regional focus sessions, the fellowship program, and the Teaching & Learning Award will be discussed.
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The Open Archives Initiative (OAI)
Clifford A. Lynch
Executive Directory
Coalition for Networked Information
Daniel Greenstein
Director
Digital Library Foundation
The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is an effort to develop experimental standards to permit sites to expose metadata for objects that they house; this metadata is then harvested by applications services which can use it to provide functions like federated searching. The OAI has its roots in efforts to federate e-print archives, but has now moved to a much more general framework that can accomodate a wide range of repositories, descriptive metadata schemes, and applications. OAI is being supported by both CNI and the Digital Library Federation
This session will provide an high level view of the history, status and planned development of the OAI effort, as well as a look at some of the applications being built on it. It will not include a detailed technical discussion of the experimental standards.
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Open Names Services
Diane Vizine-Goetz
Senior Research Scientist, Office of Research
OCLC
We believe that Web services should be built around names and the communities that support them. It is interesting to note that most named items are not directly available on the Web. This does not diminish the importance of these names or the objects to which they refer. For instance, the library and publishing community has a large investment in ISBNs, which normally refer to books. ISBNs are already being used in many Web-based services like purchasing, cataloging, referencing, and lending, even though the books may not be directly available on the Web. We are researching how traditional names like ISBN can be used in more Web-based services and how these names can be used to link these services. While our initial focus has been on ISBNs, similar services will be built using a variety of names.
Pacbell/UCLA 21st Century Literacies Partnership
Howard Besser
Associate Professor
University of California, Los Angeles
Pacific Bell and UCLA are collaborating on an Initiative to promote 21st Century Literacies. This session reports on the kick-off Summit held in October, and initial plans for this $1 million project. Activities will focus on information literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, and cultural literacy. Sub-projects include building model curriculum for users, designing guidelines and best practices for information systems designers, and prototyping adaptive information systems (where the same back-end body of information is delivered to users in different ways, depending upon their profile). See http://www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/
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Planning Audio-Visual Preservation and Access for the Library of Congress
Carl Fleischhauer
Technical Coordinator, National Digital Library Program
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is planning a new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, scheduled to open in 2003. The Center will feature improved storage for the Library’s recorded sound and moving image collections, a new nitrate film laboratory, a collections processing and cataloging activity, and a multipurpose digital facility. The digital facility will support the preservation of sound and video recordings, conduct research to improve digital preservation, and provide remote access to audio-visual collections for researchers in the Library’s Capitol Hill reading rooms. Prototyping and design for the digital facility is taking place in 2000-2002, with implementation to continue as the Center opens and begins operation. There will be two key elements: digital production and a repository. The production facility at the Center will reformat existing collections and process newly acquired a-v materials in digital form. In planning for the repository, the Reference Model for Open Archive Information Systems (OAIS) has proved helpful. The a-v group will focus on the specialized functional elements of the model called ‘ingestion’ and ‘access.’ Meanwhile, the project will participate in Library-wide development of an enterprise-service repository that will provide the ‘archival storage,’ ‘administration,’ and ‘data management’ functions for all forms of digital content.
The Audio-Visual Prototyping Project is currently undertaking a number of feasibility tests and studies that underpin the broader planning effort: (1) identifying computer-file formats suitable for the preservation reformatting of recorded sound collections, including those with visual and textual elements, (2) experimental capture of curator-selected Web sites deemed suitable for addition to the Library’s a-v collections, (3) the definition of descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata to be captured in association with the production process, (4) development of a preliminary methodology for the capture of this metadata, and (5) applying an XML-based encoding scheme to a-v digital archival objects. The XML scheme being tested is the one developed for the Making of America 2 project by the University of California at Berkeley. The Audio-Visual Prototyping Project is being carried out by the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, supported by the National Digital Library Program and the Preservation Directorate of the Library of Congress.
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Questia: An Introduction
Troy L. Williams
Founder, President & CEO
Questia Media, Inc.
Charles Henry
Vice Provost & University Librarian
Rice University
Carol Hughes
Director, Collections Management
Questia Media, Inc.
Questia is a unique, online research service for undergraduate students. The company’s holistic environment helps students perform more thorough academic research and write better papers. The service consists of a collection of full-text books and journal articles, with an emphasis in the humanities and social sciences, combined with powerful research tools.
The presentation will provide a summary of Questia’s background and what the service has to offer students. It will examine ways in which the business model is unique and how the technology incorporated is revolutionary. The collection development and management process will specifically be explored, from the initial selection of titles to the technical integration of text into the service. The presentation will also review specific service components with a particular emphasis on research tools made available to users on the site. In closing, Questia will welcome a lively discussion with audience members concerning the service’s impact on teaching, learning, and libraries.
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Scientific Communities: Evolving Options Online
Thomas Hickerson
Associate University Librarian
Cornell University
Rick Johnson
Enterprise Director
SPARC
Project Euclid is an electronic publishing initiative led by the Cornell University Library and the Duke University Press to advance effective and affordable scholarly communication in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. The Euclid site will support the entire span of scholarly publishing from preprints to the distribution of published journals. It will also provide journal editors with a tool kit to streamline their editorial and peer review processes and publish in a timely and cost-effective manner. Editors will pick and choose different tools to meet their particular needs. They will be able to maintain a database of their reviewers, post papers to a reviewer’s password-protected pick-up and drop-off space, and alert reviewers via e-mail regarding review deadlines. Reviewers will submit their comments and/or the edited papers confidentially. Editors will also be able link the revised version of a paper to its preprint version, if applicable. After preparing articles with the Euclid editorial tools, editors will then upload the articles comprising a journal issue. Euclid’s goal is to contribute to the the creation of a vibrant online information community that is based on a healthy balance of commercial enterprises, scholarly societies, and independent publishers. The project is supported in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is a SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) partnership.
BioOne http://www.BioOne.org is a new Web-based aggregation of research in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences. In this presentation, SPARC Enterprise Director Rick Johnson provides a progress report on BioOne’s development in advance of its upcoming launch, scheduled for the first half of 2001.
A broad selection of the journals published by many of the American Institute of Biological Sciences’ (AIBS) over 70 member societies will form BioOne’s core offerings. BioOne’s development has been spearheaded by its collaborating organizations, including AIBS, SPARC, the University of Kansas, the Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium, and Allen Press. BioOne development has been funded by SPARC and Big 12 Plus member libraries, along with other institutions that are committed to playing a leading role in transforming scientific communications.
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The State University Of New York System Web Universal Accessibility Effort
Thomas R. Neiss
Assistant Provost for Network Technical Services
State University of New York System Administration
On September 30, 1999, the New York State (NYS) Office for Technology issued Technology Policy 99-3 http://www.oft.state.ny.us that mandated all official NYS web pages to provide universal accessibility to persons with disabilities. Websites would be required to satisfy level “A” priority one checkpoints of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The State University of New York (SUNY), New York States’ public higher education system, is comprised of 64 campuses and is required to comply with this policy. Discussion will include: what universal access is and how New York State and SUNY are taking the lead in providing an accessible web infrastructure; what efforts were undertaken at the SUNY System level; strategies that make sense; the advantages and problems with compliance; and, a look at federal efforts and recent rulings on accessibility.
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Strategies for University Self-Publishing: The Cal Tech Experience
Kimberly Douglas
Director, Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Manager, Technical Information Services
California Institute of Technology
Eric Van de Velde
Director of Library Information Technology
California Institute of Technology
The library plays a critical role in providing a viable electronic service with which to win faculty interest and motivation to actively engage in improving access to scholarly research. Caltech will present its strategy and successes over the last 18 months in recruiting and developing self-publishing repositories for inclusion in the Open Archives initiative. Topics include mechanisms for identifying opportunities, handling of copyright, and faculty response and behavior.
Test Database for Digital Visual Resources in Art History
Anne R. Kenney
Director of Programs
Council on Library and Information Resources
Clifford Lynch
Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
The Council on Library and Information Resources is supporting a planning phase to investigate the development of rich test database of digital visual resources in art history. The image database would have sufficient breadth, depth, and variety to constitute a ground-proofed collection for the field and will be promoted as a community resource to provide a common benchmark against which to measure and compare processes and approaches. It is envisioned that the database will be developed in such a way that it serves the broad humanities computing culture in general and the art history field in particular. Its availability could provide a powerful unifying force for comparative analysis that supports a range of disciplines, technological approaches, and longitudinal studies. Such test databases exist in other domains–full text, fingerprints, handwriting, photography, and face recognition and their availability has driven the development of new processes and products.
CLIR is supporting the work of a small planning group, chaired by Cliff Lynch, which will develop a formal proposal for the test database that can be submitted to funders in 2001.
handout (in PDF format) 8K file size
TILT: Texas Information Literacy Tutorial
Clara S. Fowler
Electronic Instruction Librarian
University of Texas at Austin
TILT is a highly interactive web-based tutorial designed to teach students basic research skills. Created for the University of Texas System, its use at the Austin campus refocused our approach to library instruction. Within one year of its official debut, TILT has seen exponential growth. The undergraduate-friendly environment and universally applicable content make it useful to educators internationally as a supplement to existing programs. It is a model for online pedagogy in this era of distributed learning. TILT was honored as the 1999 Best Educational Site of the Year by the SXSW Interactive Festival and received the 2000 ACRL Innovation in Instruction award.
handout (in PDF format) 18K file size
A Two Year Journey with E-Books: The University of Texas Experience
Dennis Dillon
Assistant Director for Collections and Information Resources
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas has access to over 20,000 e-books and participates in multiple overlapping e-book consortia. The e-books have received steady usage, they are included in the libraries’online catalog, and they have been well received by faculty and students. Nevertheless, it has been a challenge to incorporate e-books into existing routines, and librarians continue to believe that their format and functionality make e-books inherently a new breed of information species. These experiences have led to the formulation of a set of guiding principles for the acquisition of e-books. While early e-book experiences have been positive and benign, the gold rush mentality in the e-book marketplace raises questions of potential pitfalls which libraries and academics need to keep in mind.
handout (in PDF format) 6K file size
UCITA: A Proposed Legal Framework for Licensing of Digital Information
Rodney J. Petersen
Director, Policy and Planning, Office of Information Technology
University of Maryland
The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) is a new law being proposed to govern contracts for computer information. Computer information is defined broadly to include any “information in electronic form which is obtained from or through the use of a computer or which is in a form capable of being processed by a computer.” In other words, networked information of all kinds (computer software, library databases, electronic journals, e-books, etc.) will fall subject to this uniform state law that will among other things enable the enforceability of shrinkwrap and click-through license terms. The law has been criticized because its provisions tend to weigh in the favor of licensors: software companies and information distributors. Libraries and educational institutions are also concerned because it is likely to upset the balanced treatment afforded creators and users under federal copyright law. This briefing will focus on the controversial provisions of UCITA, implications for institutional licensing policy, and status of UCITA in the states.
handout (in PDF format) 36K file size
An Update on SFX
Herbert Van de Sompel
Visiting Assistant Professor
Cornell University
Oren Beit-Arie
Vice President of Operations
Ex Libris (USA), Inc.
Rick Luce
Library Director
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library
The session will provide a comprehensive update of the recent developments regarding the SFX framework and the SFX software.
The current status of the Ex Libris SFX software <www.sfxit.com> will be discussed. As part of this topic, a report on the experiences of the Los Alamos Research Library in beta-testing the SFX server will be given. The Los Alamos Research Library recenly moved SFX into production.
There will be an update on the ongoing process of standardizing the OpenURL <www.sfxit.com/OpenURL/> as the interoperability mechanism between information resources that allow open linking and service components such as the SFX server that deliver localized service links. An overview of current support of OpenURL in the information industry will be given.
The session will accord special attention to the collaboration between the SFX community and the DOI community. Part of this collaboration for which an elaborate experiment is underway is about the integration of the SFX framework and the DOI framework, as a means to enable localized resolution of DOI’s. Another part of the collaboration is related to the interest that was recently expressed by the DOI community to use OpenURL as the general purpose syntax to transport DOI’s on a URL.
Web Preservation Projects at Library of Congress
Cassy Ammen
Reference Specialist, Humanities and Social Sciences Division
Library of Congress
This session will provide a report on the Library of Congress Web harvesting activity with the non-profit Internet Archive. The project entails capturing over 150 U.S. Presidential Candidate/Election-related Web sites; developing selection criteria for open access Web sites; and creating protocols and prototypes for capturing, preserving, and accessing born digital Web sites.