Opening Session:
Clifford Lynch has reserved the opening plenary session to address key developments in networked information, discuss progress on the Coalition’s agenda, and to highlight initiatives from the 2000-2001 Program Plan, which will be distributed at the meeting (and will also be available on the Coalition’s web site, www.cni.org following the meeting). This will include time for questions and discussion from Task Force member representatives. In this opening plenary, he will be joined by Don Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who will give a short presentation on some of the initiatives that the Foundation is funding to advance networked information and scholarly communications. Mr. Lynch thinks that you will agree with him that the Mellon Foundation has become a central force in supporting progress in many of the most critical areas for scholarship in the digital world, and Don’s presentation will provide an important perspective on the scope and goals of this work.
Closing Session:
The closing plenary address will be by Dr. Herbert van de Sompel, currently a visiting professor in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. Herbert is well known to the CNI community for his work on the Open Archives Initiative and SFX; one of the attendees at his breakout session on this work at the Spring 2000 CNI meeting described his presentation as “transformative”. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to serve on his Ph.D. committee at the University of Ghent, and was greatly impressed with both the breadth and depth of his work. In this keynote, Herbert will share his thinking about central issues in scholarly communications and networked information architecture. This is an opportunity to hear from one of the leading thinkers and implementers from the new generation of networked information applications. Herbert will also lead a breakout session more narrowly focused on progress in the SFX initiative.