Activities and Plans of the Digital Library Federation
Donald Waters, Digital Library Federation
In this session, an overview of the current projects and plans of the Digital Library Federation will be provided. Special attention will be given to the current status of the Making of America project, which focuses on the means of linking Encoded Archival Descriptions (EAD) with digitized source material of Americana from the Gilded Age. Status reports will also be provided on DLF initiatives with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and Columbia’s Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA) to help advance the state of campus authorization systems and thereby contribute to the CNI program on Authentication, Authorization and Access Management.
The Arts and Humanities Data Services (AHDS)
Daniel Greenstein, Arts & Humanities Data Service
Neil Beagrie. Arts & Humanities Data Service
Robin Murray Fretwell, Downing Informatics
The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) collects, preserves, and encourages re-use of digital resources which result from or support research and teaching in the humanities. In the course of its work on extensively distributed mixed media and inter-disciplinary collections, the AHDS is forced to address issues of common concern to those interested in aspects of our digital cultural and scholarly heritage. Those issues, the AHDS has attempted to address through a mixture of research, broad consultation, and practical application. In all cases it adopts internationally agreed standards and best practices where they exist and uses its own research and development efforts to progress the identification of consensus where it is lacking. The session introduces the AHDS and focuses on three areas in which it is currently active, and into which it seeks input from and collaboration with the widest possible community:
- developing policy guidelines for those involved in the creation or preservation of digital resources
- integrating access to distributed mixed media and inter disciplinary collections using Dublin Core metadata for resource discovery and tools based upon the Z39.50 network application profile
- developing collections and services through formal consultation with user communities
Assessing the Academic Networked Environment
Christopher Peebles, Indiana University
Charles R. McClure, Syracuse University
Steve Hiller, University of Washington
Michael Martys, Gettysburg College
The institutions participating in CNI’s Assessing the Academic Networked Environment project used a variety of methodologies to explore assessment issues on their campuses. Project leaders will give an overview of the initiative, and two team leaders will report on their campus efforts. At the University of Washington, assessment activities focused on the impact of the UWired program, a teaching and learning initiative, networked information seeking and using behavior among faculty and students, and use of electronic library/information resources. At Gettysburg, the efforts resulted in the development of an automated data collection tool for electronic reserves that is incorporated into a campus information system. The session closes with recommendations and suggestions for implementing a regular program for assessing networked information services and resources.
handout
CIC Virtual Electronic Library Z39.50 Project
Barbara McFadden Allen, CIC Center for Library Initiatives
Charlene Mason, University of Minnesota
Mark Hinnebusch Florida Center for Library Automation
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is undertaking a broad-based study of the existing Z39.50 implementations in the member university libraries in order to improve the efficacy of the CIC Virtual Electronic Library — a project linking the 13 online library systems of the CIC member university libraries. The study will result in a report that will document the Z39.50 situation in each of the CIC research libraries, an articulation, analysis, and description of the most significant problems, a checklist that technical staff can use in defining local attribute sets, and will include a recommendation about how the CIC libraries can generally improve the existing Z39.50-based services to their users. The report and recommendations will be available after May, 1998, and will be extensible to any group of libraries undertaking a linked system project based on Z39.50. The briefing will provide information on the project; describe methodologies employed in the study; and offer some preliminary observations.
CIC News Release handout
CIC VEL Technical Issues handout
CNI Program on Authentication, Authorization, and Access Management
Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information
CNI, in partnership with member organizations from the Task Force, is undertaking a program to advance both infrastructure and policy formulation in the areas of authentication, authorization and access management with the goal of facilitating resource sharing and use of licensed networked information resources. The CNI program is cast within a framework of facilitating electronic commerce in content among organizations. The objective of the program is first to establish a common taxonomy of best practices and de facto standards that can be used to facilitate both the negotiation of contracts and the actual implementation of access arrangements, and then to move to proof of concept testbeds that actually validate the technical approaches in practice. As its first step, a white paper summarizing architectural models for inter-organizational access management, and outlining technical and standards issues involved in each model, as well as discussing privacy, accountability, and management issues implicit in each model and the extent to which they are addressed by technical or contractual provisions, has been developed. The white paper’s conclusions will be presented in this session and there will be a discussion of the second stage of the program in which we will seek to begin work on establishing one or more implementation testbeds.
Creating a Tri-lingual Archival Guide for the Central Historical Archive, Tbilisi, Georgia
Anthony Rhinelander, St. Thomas University & Friends of the Georgian National Archives
Kenneth Church St. Thomas University & Friends of the Georgian National Archives
Friends of the Georgian National Archives has designed a project with the Central Historical Archive (CHA) in Tbilisi, Georgia, to create a tri-lingual archival guide (Georgian, Russian, and English) for the archive. It is an IREX-sponsored pilot project that is scheduled to begin in July, 1998, and run for six months. This Project Briefing discusses the archive, the nature of our collaboration with the CHA, and factors about the current situation in Georgia that have affected the design of the project. It then examines the technological difficulties associated with creating a guide using three alphabets and the software we plan to use. We conclude with a discussion of the ramifications of this pilot project for linking other archives in Georgia and Trancaucasia at large, including Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Current Legislation and Implications for Institutional Liability
Prue Adler, Association of Research Libraries
Stuart Lynn University of California, Office of the President
A number of new and recurring institutional liability concerns are being raised by a range of legislation currently under discussion in Congress. Making institutions liable for the actions of their users in the networked environment has important policy and planning implications for all of us, and is a particularly troubling trend in a wide range of legislative initiatives. Whether or not the institution is an Internet service provider, the language of some of the proposed legislation could create grave conflicts between following the law and respecting the privacy of our constituents. After an overview of current legislation and issues, attendees will be asked to discuss their concerns from their institutional perspectives.
The Digital Object Identifier System (DOI)
Craig Van Dyck, John Wiley & Sons
Albert Simmonds, R.R. Bowker Company
Priscilla Caplan, The University of Chicago
Julia Blixrud, Association of Research Libraries
Sandra Paul, SKP Associates
The Digital Object Identifier System (DOI) went public in October 1997, as a system for the identification of digital content, as well as for the successful resolution of Internet hits on that content. This session will include an update on the nonprofit International DOI Foundation, which has been founded to oversee the system, an update on the role of the International ISBN Agencies and the DOI, a review of the role of NISO vis-a-vis the DOI, and an update on Book & Serial Identifier Standards and their relationship to the broader DOI initiative.
Digital Libraries
Michael Lesk, National Science Foundation
In this session, Michael Lesk will discuss digital library issues and related NSF Initiatives. Attendees will have an opportunity to discuss these issues in depth with our keynote speaker.
Digitizing Archival Records in The Five Colleges Archives Digital Access Project
Peter Nelson, Five Colleges
The presentation will discuss goals, methods and current progress of the Five Colleges Archives Digital Access Project, a three-year pilot project funded by the Mellon Foundation and now in its second year. The project is making accessible on the Web(URL: <http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/>)significant archival and manuscript collections relating to women’s history, particularly women’s education. The project expects to digitize about 25,000 items. The Five Colleges consortium of western Massachusetts (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst) features institutional diversity but also enjoys a tradition of close cooperation. The briefing will include a discussion of the way the project was cooperatively conceived and planned, criteria for selection of content, archival access issues, and methods for digitization and presentation.
handout
Dissemination of Images on University Campuses: Final Report from the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project
Howard Besser, University of California – Berkeley
Christie Stephenson New York University
This session will discuss the final report of a 7 university/7 museum cooperative project to explore the distribution of digital images and associated metadata. Panelists will discuss highlights from the final report including distribution issues, use, and impact. Major observations from instructors and technical staff will be covered, as will important lessons for future projects.
In addition, this session will provide preliminary reports from a Mellon-sponsored study examining the costs, infrastructure, and efforts needed to implement this project. This study identifies major cost centers and compares what it took to distribute these digital images to the efforts involved in the operation of traditional slide libraries.
Drafting Electronic Information Policies — Questions, Issues, Rights and Responsibilities
Gerald Lowell, University of California – San Diego
Prue Adler, Association of Research Libraries
In today’s emerging electronic information environment, it is important that every university and other institutions prepare and disseminatepolicies concerning the use, creation, and exchange of electronic information. Electronic information policies, though requiring uniqueelements, ought to be an extension of existing information policies.These policies should describe roles and responsibilities of users andproviders, and should address appropriate behaviors, not only on campus systems, but also on the WWW and the Internet generally. The session isdesigned as a guide for universities and other institutions that aredeveloping, reviewing, or revising electronic information policies.
ARL Newsletter article about the project
The Educom/NLII Instructional Management Systems Project (IMS)
Mark Resmer, Sonoma State University
Steve Griffin, Collegis
The IMS Project is developing and promoting open specifications for facilitating online activities such as locating and using educational content, tracking learner progress, reporting learner performance, and exchanging student records between administrative systems. The goal of the IMS project is the widespread adoption of specifications that will allow distributed learning environments and content from multiple authors to work together. To this end, the project is producing a technical specification and proof-of-concept prototype. The project is funded by a group of academic, commercial, and government organizations, sponsored by Educom.
The IMS project website can be seen @ http://www.imsproject.org/
Funding Models for Library and Information Technology Resources and Services
Shirley K. Baker, Washington University
Ken Klingenstein, University of Colorado, Boulder
This session will be a facilitated discussion on the topic of funding models that affect libraries and information technology units on campus. Some issues that will be discussed include innovative cost accounting and cost recovery, consistent cost accoun ting across services, student fees, charging for materials such as paper, and charging for services. Participants are encouraged to help lay out the issues, describe existing models, and make suggestions for CNI program initiatives in this area.
Guidelines for Electronic Recordings Management on State and Federal Websites
Charles R. McClure, Syracuse University
Records managers will need to devote resources immediately to ensuring thatstate and federal web-based electronic records are managed and preserved asare other official records of government. Findings from a one year studycompleted by Co-principal investigators Charles R. McClure and J. TimothySprehe, and funded by the National Historical Publications and RecordsCommission (NHPRC) include the following:
- Policy for electronic records management (ERM) of websites at the Federal and state level is confusing, ambiguous, and contradictory.
- The “state of the art” for ERM of state and Federal websites is rapidly changing and evolving; there are new practices and techniques being developed by selected Federal agencies are developing new practices.
- At the Federal level, until there are better guidelines and policy, individual agencies will have to develop their own policy and “best practices” for ERM of websites.
- For a number of states, issues related to ERM of websites are only now being recognized as to their importance and impact.
The Humanities & The DLI-2 Challenge: Raising the Bar For Humanities DigitalResearch & Projects
David L. Green, National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage
David Bearman, Archives & Museum Informatics
George Farr, National Endowment for the Humanities
Stephen Griffin, National Science Foundation
Michael Lesk, National Science Foundation
John Unsworth, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia
For the next round of the Digital Libraries Initiative, the sponsors of this award have expanded beyond NSF, DARPA and NASA to include the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. This recognizes that the humanities have a significant contribution to make to the development of the nation’s national digital infrastructure and provides a major opportunity for the humanities to present projects that demonstrate their unique challenges on a larger scale than before.
Speakers will address the growing awareness of the importance of including the humanities in such research and demonstration projects as well as approaches that are being taken and recommended.
Information Technology Literacy
Herb Lin, Computer Science & Telecommunications Board National Research Council
The session will be used to solicit views of participants on what constitutesinformation technology literacy. These views will be used to inform thedeliberations of the CSTB/NRC’s Committee on Information Technology Literacy.
Institution-Wide Information Strategies for Information Access
Marvin Pollard, California State University System
Gerald Bernbom, Indiana University
Gordon Smith, California State University System
Karin Steinbrenner, Villanova University
CNI’s Institution-Wide Information Strategies (IWIS) initiative has brought together nine teams of institutions from the US and UK who are engaged in institution-wide information planning in a diverse array of organizational settings and with a range of organizational goals. In this project briefing, two participants in the IWIS project will present case study reports of strategies for institution-wide information access.
California State University System handout
Villanova University handout
Institution-Wide Information Strategies for Information Technology Support
Joan Gargano, University of California – Davis
Brian Voss, Indiana University
Gerald Bernbom, Indiana University
CNI’s Institution-Wide Information Strategies (IWIS) initiative hasbrought together nine teams of institutions from the US and UK who areengaged in institution-wide information planning in a diverse array oforganizational settings and with a range of organizational goals. In thisproject briefing, two participants in the IWIS project will present casestudy reports of strategies for the use of network tools, networkedinformation resources, and networked organizations to provide informationtechnology support on an institution-wide basis.
International Interlibrary Loan Through Technology/Cost Reduction ThroughTechnology: NAILDD Project Activities
Shirley K. Baker, Washington University
Mary E. Jackson, Association of Research Libraries
This spring marks the five year anniversary of the NAILDD Project. NAILDDwas formed to seek the involvement of private sector vendors to promotetechnology developments in three areas identified by the librarycommunity. This update will summarize the current status of the implementation of the international standard for ILL communication – ISO10160/1 – and review progress made toward the project’s other goals:management software and improvements in billing/payment. While seekingtechnical improvements, the NAILDD Project has just completed a two-year study of the performance of ILL/DD operations in 119 North Americanresearch and college libraries. Highlights of the findings will beshared, especially those that relate to the Project’s technical priorities.
Internet2 Update
Ted Hanss, Internet2
This session provides an update on the most recent activities and future plans of the Internet2 Project, including organizational, engineering, and applications efforts. In addition, you will hear an overview of the application demonstrations taking place at Highway 1 (601 Pennsylvania Avenue) on 15 and 16 April, to which all CNI attendees are invited.
The LIBLICENSE Project
Ann Okerson, Yale University Library
The Yale University Library, funded by a grant from theCLIR (Council on Library & Information Resources), created in 1997the LIBLICENSE web site, a resource for librarians, educators, andinformation providers. The site, which is rich in definitions, samplecontracts, numerous links, and bibliography, is intended to informand educate those who create or use such licenses, generally novicesto this area. The LIBLICENSE project includes a discussion list,<liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>,which enriches the site through dialog between players. Phase II of the LIBLICENSE Project, also funded by CLIR, is being developedin 1998. It involves the creation of an unloadable “generic”educational site license for electronic content. Users of DOS/NT systems will be able to unload this software off the WWW andcreate their own licenses to present either to customers or tosuppliers. Currently, this software is in pre-beta mode and feedback will be welcomed.
The purpose of this briefing session is to describe Phases I & II of theLIBLICENSE project and to seek input about current offerings and futuredevelopments of interest to both the CLIR and libraries or publishers.
Moving Digital Libraries from Project to Production
Wendy Lougee, University of Michigan
John Price-Wilkin, University of Michigan
As a community, our investments in digital library initiatives reflect the centrality of those efforts and the extent to which we value the resources. Many current efforts sit on the margins, funded primarily by grants and other short-term funding, and focused primarily on projects rather than infrastructure activities.
The University of Michigan’s project activity–through its collaborative Digital Library Initiatives program (DLI)– has matured into an integral component of campus library and information technology services. DLI is a jointly supported program, focusing on building a coherent and coordinated campus networked information environment through projects, but also through development of campus infrastructure, services and capabilities. Recently, the DLI established the Digital Library Production Services (DLPS) with substantial commitments from the University Library, the University’s Information Technology Division, the School of Information, and the Media Union. With staffing from the partner organizations, the DLPS has moved the various project-oriented efforts to a general architecture for digital resources. The roughly 18FTE have a wide range of responsibilities including data loading, automated large-scale OCR operation, interface development and assessment, content specialization, and domain-based programming (e.g., building systems for delivery of continuous tone images).
The CNI briefing will focus on project examples enabled by this infrastructure, including:
- PEAK: A research project that builds on an established mechanism for delivering large quantities of page-image based journal literature
- Making of America: A vast collection of historical US publications that merges preservation and access models, making less significant the question of approaches (i.e., text encoding or page image?), and bringing more pressure to bear on ensuring the long-term viability of the material.
- Image Services: “Federating” the various disjoint efforts on campus in one image access system, Image Services has articulated a model of access that can accommodate approaches ranging from “exhibits” to intensive analysis with the same body of material, instantiated once and with a single program managing all methods.
The Museum Digital Licensing Collective (MDLC)
H. Thomas Hickerson, Cornell University
Bernie Hurley, University of California at Berkeley
Geoffrey Samuels, Museum Digital Licensing Collective
The Museum Digital Licensing Collective is a 501(c)3 corporation organized to help fund the digitizing of museum collections, and manage their storage, distribution, and licensing to educational institutions, commercial companies and the public. It will serve all types of museums and original materials collecting institutions. The MDLC has a close affiliation with the American Association of Museums, which has appointed a majority of the MDLC Board’s museum, university, and library association directors. Computer services will be performed under contract with major academic research libraries, and the initial providers are University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University. Sun Microsystems is a technology partner. A diverse group of twenty art, history, and general museums, as well as original materials collecting institutions, will participate in organizing the MDLC, with a planned organizing phase start in late Spring 1998. Further information about the MDLC can be found at <http://www.museumlicensing.org/>.
New Learning Communities: What We Learned
Philip Tompkins, Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis
Susan Perry, Mt. Holyoke College
Joan K. Lippincott ,Coalition for Networked Information
CNI’s New Learning Communities project, co-sponsored by ACRL, AAHE, and Educom and funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Education, focused on recognition for early innovators in the use of information technology and electronic information resources in higher education. In addition, the project sought to increase the ranks of those prepared to develop collaborative teaching and learning projects in higher education. In this session, the leaders of the initiative will describe some of the innovative projects developed by the participating institutions, how collaborative development of courses often led to collaborative learning, and the kinds of support and infrastructure that are needed for success.
Next Generation Organization Model at USC
Jerry Campbell, The University of Southern California
John Silvester, The University of Southern California
The University of Southern California libraries and information technology division have recently developed a new organizational model for converged services. In this session, the goals of the reorganization will be discussed, the plans for restructuring will be described, and there will be a discussion of the progress that is being made.
Research on the AMICO Library: Issues in Providing Access
David Bearman, Archives & Museum Informatics
Jennifer Trant, Archives & Museum Informatics
David Millman, Columbia University
Jerome Yavarkovsky, Boston College
Terry Noreault, OCLC
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) is building a library of multimedia documentation of works of art for educational licensing. In 1998/99, the Library will be available from the Research Libraries Group to a selected group of universities which have agreed to undertake research using its contents. In addition, this winter OCLC R&D Division has been conducting research with the AMICO Library to explore the full expression of Dublin Core metadata and relations in RDF. These research projects range from user needs and access issues, to image quality and systems architecture, but each addresses in some way the question of what characteristics of the Library constitute value to whom and under what circumstances.
This session will report on R&D plans at several universities and on the achievements of the first major R&D project devoted to the expression, in XML/RDF of a fully qualified Dublin Core compliant metadata record for the images and associated multimedia files in the library.
Download Jerome Yavarkovsky’s PPT File
The Art Museum Image Consortium website can be seen @ http://www.amn.org/AMICO/
Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition: Progress Report
Ken Frazier, University of Wisconsin Libraries
Mary Case, Association of Research Libraries
The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) continues its rapid development. Sixty-three ARL libraries have signed on as Founding Members; a Business Plan is under development; and recruitment for a full-time Enterprise Director is underway. SPARC continues to talk with potential partners and hopes to have at least one project underway by summer 1998.
Teaching Information Literacy
Jim Elmborg, Washington State University
Jane Scales, Washington State University
“Accessing Information for Research” is a one-hour credit class that originated in Washington State University’s distance education program. Taught primarily in the Internet using web modules and e-mail, the course content addresses database searching as well as such issues as understanding the publication cycle and disciplinary thinking. The course aims to teach students advanced methods of gathering materials for research by focusing on a single research project and pursuing it for the entire semester. “Accessing Information for Research” is positioned to become an extremely important part of the General Education curriculum at WSU. A workshop this summer will orient new faculty and librarians to the course, which is predicted to grow rapidly in the fall. Future development includes experimenting with streaming video over the web to develop a way to deliver more powerful content.
Unicode Support in Integrated Library Systems
Ari Palttala, VTLS Inc.
This presentation will cover an overview of the principles of Unicode support within a library automation system. The session will provide a review of the Unicode standard, without being overly technical. Discussion will focus on the viewing capabilities enabled with Unicode support within a library system and what customers can expect from vendors who support Unicode in their library systems.
Uniform Resource Names (URNs) — the Next Generation of Internet Identifiers
Leslie L. Daigle Bunyip, Information Systems Inc.
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), and in particular Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), have long been regarded as part of the fabric of the World Wide Web. This presentation looks at the larger scope of identifying resources in the whole picture of Internet information activities (general publishing mechanisms, services, etc). This includes a detailed presentation of Uniform Resource Names (URNs) and their role in developing commercial-grade information applications.
Update on Digital Theses and Dissertations
Ed Fox, Virginia Tech
Joan K. Lippincott, Coalition for Networked Information
Jeff Moyer, University Microfilms, Inc.
This presentation will provide information on two important networked information content initiatives. A report will be given on the current progress of UMI’s ProQuest Digital Dissertations, which now has over 65,000 full text dissertations for Web access. The report will present the most recent features of the program and some of the lessons learned through its implementation.
Progress on the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) project, which is working towards a sustainable, worldwide, collaborative, educational initiative of universities committed to encouraging students to prepare electronic documents and to use digital libraries, will be described.
Ed Fox’s handout (in PDF format)
Jeff Moyer’s handout
Using Metadata Real Time
Grace Agnew, Georgia Institute of Technology
Miriam Drake Georgia Institute of Technology
Metadata in real time will deal with creating and using EAD to index a multimedia database. Access will include links to multimedia objects and links to digital transcript databases for key word access to text, audio and video files.
Web Realm Authentication Protocol (WRAP)
John Ulmschneider, North Carolina State University
Charles Kneifel, North Carolina State University
Mona Couts, Triangle Research Libraries Network
Authenticating users as eligible recipients of services and resourcesdelivered via Web browsers has become a critical strategic necessityfor many enterprises. Colleges and universities face especially challengingtechnical problems that are not easily solved by available technical solutions. Universities in consortia environments, which may collaborativelyshare resources as diverse as faculty, students, library collections, andcomputing infrastructure, work under even greater technical constraints, sincethey possess different means of identifying and authenticating valid users internally.
The North Carolina Giganet Initiative (NCGNI), part of the Internet2 Project,working with the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) and North CarolinaState University, have developed the Web Realm Authentication Protocol (WRAP)specifically to address the needs of wide-area network partners in consortiaenvironments. WRAP provides for flexible authentication that utilizes existingauthentication mechanisms for on-campus users to authenticate users fromextra-campus IP domains. In consortia environments, users are authenticated bythe mechanism used by their home campus before permitted access to restrictedresources provided by consortia arrangements.
The WRAP authentication protocol has been implemented at North Carolina StateUniversity for access to the NCSU Libraries’ electronic reserves systems andits Web-accessible licensed digital resources. After assessment of itsperformance, the protocol will be extended to library resources providedby the libraries of TRLN, and eventually will be used for access to student records, grades, and other resources restricted by both IP and by user profile.
WorldLinQ: A World of Information
Gary Strong Queens Borough Public Library
Charles E. McMorran Queens Borough Public Library
Xuemao Wang Queens Borough Public Library
WorldLinQ is an innovative multilingual Web based Internet information system, developed by Queens Borough Public Library with the aid of a grant from AT&T. It is the goal of WorldLinQ to provide free of charge electronic multilingual information resources to the Library’s customers, as well as the Internet community at large. WorldLinQ will include a multilingual catalog of materials owned by the library in vernacular script.