The Academic Web: Converting Random Acts of Progress into Institutional Progress
Dr. William H. Graves
President
COLLEGIS Research Institute
Vicki Suter
NLII Projects Coordinator
EDUCAUSE
Colleges and universities should be developing the institutional capacity to evolve a coherent and manageable academic presence on the world wide web – a presence that strategically employs the web as a medium to amplify learning and learning communities among institutional constituencies. Instead, many institutions are pressing forward without regard for overall institutional coherence and related issues such as scalability, manageability, and long-term affordability. Random acts of progress are often the result. This session will discuss the issues involved and demonstrate capacity-building uses of flexible, easy-to-use online resources and collaboration tools designed to enhance academic community and effectiveness, both within on-campus communities and within extended learning communities beyond traditional campus boundaries.
The Ad*Access Project: Cautionary Tales of Copyright Clearance
Paul Mangiafico
Director, The Digital Scriptorium
Duke University
Stephen Miller
Project Manager, William Gedney Project
Duke University
Lynn Pritcher
Project Manager, Ad*Access
Duke University
The Digital Scriptorium at Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library is completing an online database of images of historic advertisements from 1915 through 1955. Assuming that items after 1920 were most likely not in the public domain, we were faced with the task of copyright clearance in order to include them in our Internet database. This presentation will address some of the issues and problems we encountered and how we resolved them.
Advances in Digital Initiatives at the University of Iowa Libraries
Sheila Creth
University Librarian & Chief Information Officer
University of Iowa
This briefing will highlight two projects: The Scholarly Digital Resources Center and Visual Imagery for the Health Sciences. The University of Iowa Libraries has established the Scholarly Digital Resources Center (SDRC) to foster creation and use of multi-media digitized collections and resources of interest to the University of Iowa community in partnership with faculty. The SDRC serves as a dynamic virtual center of expertise for building digital collections, electronic publishing, and creation of unique research and teaching materials.
Since 1996 the University of Iowa Libraries has been a national leader using QTVR ( QuickTime Virtual Reality) for research and development. The Information Commons, located in the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, is the only library-based facility in the country producing virtual reality anatomical objects with this technology. The presentation will include how QTVR has been used by demonstrating several applications of this technology.
An Architectural Prototype for Certificate-based Authentication and Authorization
David Millman
Manager, Academic Information Systems
Columbia University
Joan Gargano
Technologies Director
University of California
Rebecca Graham
Research Associate
Digital Library Federation
An increasing number of institutions today are facing the challenge of managing access to electronic resources. As an outgrowth of earlier work on access management, the Digital Library Federation (DLF) has defined a project to explore the viability of using digital certificates in an orderly way to provide access. Through the collaboration of Columbia University, the California Digital Library, JSTOR and OCLC, a digital certificate (X.509) protocol has been defined. Joan Gargano of the University of California and David Millman of Columbia University will present the protocol architecture and a report on progress-to-date and will lead a discussion on the implications of the prototype and next steps. This session provides a forum for feedback on the use of digital certificates as well as an opportunity to identify additional participants for further development.
Assessing Federal Websites: Using Multi-Method Approaches and User-Based Performance Measures
Charles R. McClure
Distinguished Professor
Syracuse University
This session will report on two funded projects that have extended assessment techniques of websites in general, and Federal websites in particular. The first study used a multimethod approach which was tested on an assessment of the U.S. Department of Education websites and based on the following approaches:
-
- technical/log analysis
- user based assessment and usability testing
- management and organizational assessment
- policy analysis.
The integration of these four approaches provided a very useful overall perspective on the performance and impact of the website.
The second study, funded in part by the U.S. General Services Administration is developing a range of performance measures to assess the degree to which Federal websites promote public access and use.
The various methods and performance measures that are being tested and refined as a result of these two studies have a wide degree of applicability to other website evaluation efforts in other contexts. Strengths and limitations of the various methods and performance measures will be discussed with recommendations for “next steps” in website assessment.
Building and Testing an “Off-the-Shelf” Digital Library: The Penn-Oxford University Press Digital Books Project
Roy Heinz
Director, Information Systems
University of Pennsylvania
The project will build an on-line collection of newly published Oxford University Press monographs in all fields of history. Over a period of 5 years, we plan to provide Web access to 1500-2000 titles with full-text and graphics using the PDF format. The project seeks to combine and modify existing tools to achieve an economic, timely and scaleable digital library. It will include a formal study, with the assistance of an external consultant, of the impact of electronic versions on learning, teaching and research, on the sale of paper books and on the economics of publishing. The full collection will be restricted to the Penn community but there will be a demonstration site available to the Internet audience.
Capitalizing On Partnerships – What Did We Gain and What Did We Learn
Paul Smith
Business and Contractual Services
University of South Carolina
Patrick Calhoun
Academic Technologies and Grants
University of South Carolina
What do partners gain from collaboration? How does a relationship originate? What did parties expect from a partnership? What else results from a partnership? Questions such as these will be taken up in this session, which sketches the course of half – a – dozen partner relationships involving USC colleges, researchers, and campus information support units with entities beyond the University.
The current status of the partner alliances will be described, but the session will focus on the history of the relationships and the lessons to be learned from them. The types of arrangements featured will vary to include a) vendor gifts/deep discounts, b) co-developments, c) early deployments for promotional benefits, and d) multi-agency projects. Targeted areas of cooperation will include development of digital assets, technological tools for learning, administrative process innovations, and high-speed Internet connections ( intra-university and statewide).
Attention will be paid to the value each party gains in the relationship and the imapct of the relationship on the University. Improvements in the generation, formalization, monitoring and execution of a collaborative effort, will be discussed in order to answer how we could capitalize on collaboration better the next time.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Universal Library Project
Gloriana St. Clair
University Librarian
Carnegie Mellon University
John Ockerbloom
Post Doctoral Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University’s Universal Library Project, steered by faculty from the School of Computer Science and the University Libraries, will be briefly described. Dr. St. Clair will discuss one initiative–the creation of an Automated Reference Assistant–to serve students who are seeking information from outside of library facilities. Dr. Ockerbloom will describe his research in migrating files from one platform to another. This work has implications for libraries interested in making a commitment to the long term maintenance of digital resources.
Download John Mark Ockerbloom’s PPT File
Colorado Digitization Project: A Profile Of a Museum/Library Collaboration To Create a Virtual Collection of Digital Resources
Liz Bishoff
Project Director
Colorado Digitization Project
Nancy Allen
Dean of Libraries
University of Denver
Colorado, like many states, has made significant strides in building the digital library. Through a variety of collaborative initiatives, the people of Colorado have access to library OPACS, online indexing services, electronic journals, and full text document delivery. To complete the picture of the digital library, access to the unique resources and special collections, held by a variety of library and non-library organizations, was needed. To provide the people of Colorado with the fullest possible access to these resources, a collaborative initiative involving libraries, museums, archives and historical societies was developed this fall using LSTA funding.
The project has focused on building the collaborative, establishing standards and guidelines for digitization, establishing a website to collocate the digital resources, and identifying next steps. Working with representatives of these organizations, we have found that such a diverse collaborative raises new issues, calls attention to new user communities and requires new ways to provide access to digitized resources.
Columbia International Affairs Online: A Progress Report
David Millman
Manager, Academic Information Systems
Columbia University
Kate Wittenberg
Editor in Chief
Columbia University Press
Columbia International Affairs Online is in its second year of publication, and is working its way towards becoming self-sufficient through subscription sales. Along the way we have encountered a number of issues relating to editorial development, technology changes, end user and library reactions, and coordination of work flow between the Press and the Academic Computing Center. At this session we will discuss our experience in these areas as the project has evolved, and our expectations for the future of the project as it moves into its next phase.
Copyright Ownership Issues and Policies
Rodney J. Petersen
Director, Policy and Planning
Office of Information Technology
University of Maryland
Mary M. Case
Director, Office of Scholarly Communication
Association of Research Libraries
One of the most controversial and timely topics facing research universities today is the ownership and control of the scholarly materials created by faculty – particularly those created in connection with Web-based courses. Many campuses across the country have either recently revised their policies or are in the process of studying this issue. This project briefing will introduce preliminary results from a project conducted on behalf of the Association of Research Libraries and the University of Maryland. An interactive format will be used to identify issues that are influencing policy development, summarize a variety of policy models, and provide resources for further study. More information is available from the project’s Web site <http://www.umd.edu/copyown/>.
Database Protection Legislation
Prue Adler
Assistant Executive Director
Association of Research Libraries
Jonathan Band
Morrison & Forester
For the last several years, Congress has considered legislation that would provide additional protections to collections of information or databases. Early in the 106th session, four bills were introduced or placed in the Congressional Record for debate and consideration. This indicates a high interest in moving forward on database legislation this year. Which of the four approaches Congress ultimately follows will have a major impact on the research and education community, the database industry, and the economy at large, given its heavy reliance on information. This session will review the different approaches and the implications for the research and education community as well as highlight key concerns of the commercial sectors including the networking and telecommunications communities.
Database Coalition Position Statement
Developing Leaders for Twenty-first-Century Information Management
Susan Rosenblatt
Consultant
Council on Library and Information Resources
Jack McCredie
Associate Vice Chancellor
Information Systems & Technology
University of California, Berkeley
Paul Kobulknicky
Vice-Chancellor for Information Services and University Librarian
University of Connecticut
How can institutions of higher education best exploit the potential for networked information to transform and improve processes of teaching, learning, and research? Over the past decade, libraries and information technology services on many campuses have been restructured and reorganized as a result of both fierce economic pressures and opportunities for change offered by networked digital information. Yet, this incremental, often ad-hoc, blurring of traditional roles and functions through reorganization and realignment — while preserving much that has been successful in the traditional organization — may not provide a sufficiently firm foundation for the future. As the network rapidly renders certain functions and services of libraries and computer centers indistinguishable from one another, and as the means of research, scholarly communication and instruction are transformed, how can institutions ensure that wise investments are made and resources wisely managed?
This panel explores the question of leadership for twenty-first century information resources and services. What are the issues that the next decade’s leaders must address? What are the qualities of mind and core competencies that will lead to success? Are there contemporary case studies that can elucidate the future, or are we facing a discontinuous future? How can we ensure that we have the leaders we need to guide us are available when we need them? The Council on Library and Information Resources is sponsoring the Frye Leadership Institute beginning in the summer of 2000. The curriculum of the Institute is being developed through broad consultation among academic leaders, librarians, and Information Technologists. This presentation provides perspectives on the issues of leadership from the perspective of library and information technology leaders and describes the planning process for the Frye Leadership Institute. It is hoped that this CNI briefing can solicit ideas about the shape of the Frye Institute curriculum from the attendees.
A Digital Library for Education: What Is a Good One?
Joyce Ray
Institute of Museum and Library Services
LeeAnn Potter
Education Specialist
Office of Public Programs
National Archives & Records Administration
Elizabeth Sywetz
IMLS Deputy Director for Library Services
Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is developing ideas for a new funding program for libraries under the auspices of the White House Digital Library for Education initiative. Funds will be used to digitize library materials including print collections of books and newspapers. However, more than basic access will be required to create a successful Digital Library for Education. Participants are invited to share their ideas for developing learning experiences using digital materials – particularly books and newspaper – for students at all grade levels.
Distributed Computing Environments and Required Coordination: The Utah Experience
Clifford J. Drew
Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
University of Utah
Sarah C. Michalak
Director of the Marriott Library
University of Utah
Julio Facelli
Director, Center for High Performance Computing
University of Utah
This presentation will explore a common set of circumstances in higher education information technology (IT), namely the distributed computing environment often found in research universities. A recent IT site visit team to campus corrected our claim that the university of Utah “…was the most distributed computing environment in the country.” Members of this team noted that every campus makes this claim, particularly large research universities.
This presentation will examine the source of the distributed computing environment and why a certain level of change is needed if forward progress is to be achieved. We will also discuss mechanisms for changing the IT environment in a setting with very limited funding and policy resources. Particular attention will be given to the experiences at the University of Utah including what elements are effective and why, what is not working and why, and the challenges being faced as the institution moves forward.
Download Sarah C. Michalak’s PPT File
DLI-2: So Many Proposals, So Little Money
Michael Lesk
Division Director of Information and Intelligent Systems
National Science Foundation
This panel will review the results of the DLI-2 competition and discuss what kinds of proposals were seen and, more important, what kinds were not seen enough. We will talk about what additional areas of research are most important for carrying this work forward. Other new solicitations include efforts on multilingual information management and international digital libraries. The audience is encouraged to make suggestions about new information-technology initiatives that NSF might start in the next fiscal year.
The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) in Practice
Norman Paskin
Director
International DOI Foundation
Craig Van Dyck
Vice President, Journal Production and Manufacturing
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ed Pentz
Electronic Business Development Manager
Academic Press Inc.
Two major publishers of primary STM material will report on the status of implementing DOI and applications at their firms. Topics will include: decisions a publisher must make about how to implement DOI; valuable applications enabled by DOI; processes to support DOI-enabled applications; questions that remain; future applications; syntax; metadata; the International DOI Foundation; the DOI System.
In addition, the director of the International DOI Foundation will review the past months activities on the DOI and work done on providing an enabling infrastructure for applications such as reference linking between electronic documents.
EDUCAUSE National Learning Infrastructure Initiative/IMS Project Briefing
Vicki Suter
NLII Projects Coordinator
EDUCAUSE
The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) is an EDUCAUSE project to create new collegiate learning environments that harness the power of information technology to improve the quality of teaching and learning, contain or reduce rising costs, and provide greater access to higher education. The Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Project is an NLII project, with joint investment membership of commercial, government, and academic organizations, which is developing an open architecture and a set of specficiations for facilitating the growth and viability of the distributed learning market. This CNI project briefing will cover the 1999 and 2000 program plans for the NLII, a related program, the Teaching and Learning Initiative, and the IMS Project.
Electronic Book Standards Progress Report
Len Kawell
President
Glassbook, Inc.
For at least the last twenty-five years, futurists have been predicting the advent of the “e-book.” Finally, the right technologies and consumer acceptance of the Internet have converged to make e-books a reality. To ensure interoperability and wide availability of e-book titles, it is critical that the nascent e-book industry be based upon open standards. This session describes the status of some of the efforts to create standards for e-book publishers, booksellers, libraries, and consumer reading software and devices.
Fluency With Information Technology
Herb Lin
Senior Scientist
National Research Council
The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council has completed a study on what people need to know about information technology in order to be able to use it effectively now and in the future. Based in part on a wide range of input from the community at large (including CNI), the report concludes that basic skills (e.g., the use of word processors, e-mail, and Web browsers) is necessary but not sufficient for what the authoring committee calls “fluency with information technology.” Equally necessary for the effective use of technology are an understanding of certain fundamental concepts about information technology and a facility with certain intellectual capabilities.
Higher Education Resources on Demand (HERON)
Peter Kemp
Chairman, HERON Project Board
Director of Information Services
University of Stirling
Chris Rusbridge
eLib Programme
Joint Information Systems
Suzanne Wilson-Higgins
Marketing Director, Blackwell’s Information Services
& HERON Project Board Member
The Higher Education Funding Council in the UK has funded a project through the Joint Information Systems Committee called HERON (Higher Education Resources on Demand) in order to simplify copyright permission and facilitate access to teaching materials on electronic reserve in academic libraries, copyright cleared printed course packs in campus bookshops and eventually electronic course packs for use by students.
The service is formally launched in May 1999 and the presenters will be able to give an account from various perspectives as to how the project has progressed (it started 1 August 1998) and where it might go internationally.
Download Peter Kemp’s PPT File
InfoBases – Statistical Usage Management
Charles Dye
Information Systems Manager
Indiana University – Purdue University at Indianapolis
Due to the vast array of access systems (CD-ROM, ERL servers, Web access, and LAN servers), and hardware and software platforms deployed in today’s information environments, a unified system to measure and assess usage of infobases and applications is very problematic. Accurate usage information has become critical for the decision-makers in information centers, libraries, and academic environments. Rising subscription, technology, and manpower costs, and appropriate evaluation of patron/student/user needs, requirements, and usage patterns all require a dynamic, powerful system to evaluate application usage at increasingly advanced levels. This briefing is intended to generate a discussion of the problems, issues, concerns, manpower requirements, costs, and deployment issues encountered by the IUPUI University Library during the design, research, and prototype phases of this project. Use of a wide variety of today’s web based technologies and a MS SQL 7.0 database server will be utilized for this project. One of the core objectives of the project is to reengineer the current manual statistical gathering process, in favor of one that is software driven, dynamic, machine generated, and thus always up-to-date.
Infrastructure for Digital Repositories
Richard Marisa
Manager, Electronic Printing and Publishing Initiatives
Cornell University
Two complementary technologies, Dienst and CUPID, facilitate serving, navigating, searching and printing digital documents. Dienst is the protocol underlying NCSTRL <http://www.ncstrl.org/>. A new version (5.1) of the Dienst protocol extends the ability to manage metadata and to navigate “structured” documents (for example, the ability to request “chapter 2” of a book, or retrieving a page by its “native” page number). A lightweight implementation of the Dienst 5.1 protocol was built in Perl under Windows NT and uses XML to represent metadata, document structure information, and to communicate with client applications. An application built on Dienst 5.1 features full text searching of historical law journals based on OCR data.
To facilitate production of printed reproductions of digital documents, Dienst 5.1 cooperates with CUPID, a printing architecture specified by the CNI CUPID “Consortium for University Printing and Information Distribution” <https://www.cni.org/docs/ima.ip-workshop/CUPID.html>. We are using CUPID printshop clients to direct documents to local printers, the Cornell Digital Print Shop, Kinko’s and a local offset printer. A “Dienst Printshop Client” planned for CUPID will allow users to virtually “print” an electronic document to a Dienst archive for viewing and subsequent printing by remote users.
Instructional Support Material on the Web: Collaborative Efforts
Howard Besser
Adjunct Associate Professor
University of California, Berkeley
The UC Berkeley Website Design Project <http://webdesign.sims.berkeley.edu/> is a collaborative effort to create websites of instructional support material that are well-designed, consistent, and will have some degree of portability and longevity. The project also aims to identify important issues in creating and managing course websites, provide public guidelines for good website design, and post reviews of various tools and products. The project involves a collaboration between students and a faculty member from UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management & Systems (SIMS), the campuswide Information Systems & Technology’s Instructional Technology Program, and faculty from various campus departments. Thirty course websites are currently being supported with an average of 100 students in each course.
handout (in PDF format) 173K file size
Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure Project Update
Micah Beck
Research Associate Professor
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Bert Dempsey
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Terry Moore
Academic Project Coordinator
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
The goal of the Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure (I2-DSI) is to provide academic end-users with high performance access to advanced applications. The I2-DSI architecture uses large storage servers deployed throughout the world’s research networks to replicate content and services. Each end-user then achieves high performance by accessing a local replica. At a workshop held in early March at UNC Chapel Hill, application groups described how their projects can make use of distributed storage. This update will describe the current state of I2-DSI development and deployment, emerging international collaborations, and will review the applications presented at the recent workshop.
Download Micah Beck’s PPT File
Internet2 Update
Ted Hanss
Applications Lead
Internet2 Project
This presentation provides an update on overall Internet2 efforts with a focus on progress since the last CNI meeting in the I2-Digital Video Working Group, I2-Distributed Storage Infrastructure, the Middleware Initiative, the Quality of Service Working Group, and the Abilene network. For example, the Digital Video Working Group is trying to very aggressively put in place a video conferencing infrastructure that is available on demand to a large number of higher education users. Likewise, the Middleware Initiative is looking to scale up campus or regional efforts in such areas as authentication, authorization, and directory services. I will also cover any announcements being made about new initiatives and will provide an overview of the applications demonstrations underway at the Highway 1 facility.
Internet2 Mission
Who is Internet2?
The Isaac Network: The Current Content Providers, the Technical Status, and a Demo as We Move into Alpha Testing
Susan Calcari
Project Director Internet Scout Project
Rachael Bower
Managing Editor, The Scout Report Internet Scout Project
Last Fall the Internet Scout Project released a call for collaborators for a new research initiative, the Isaac Network, which is co-sponsored by CNI. The Call resulted in a show of interest from over two dozen libraries and information providers, some of which now have become Content Providers within the Isaac Network. In this session the progress made on both the technical and content sides of the project will be detailed, and the cross searching of the distributed collections will be demonstrated. The Isaac Network links together human- mediated, highly authoritative collections of Internet resources from content providers who have developed metadata for the resources. Using the latest directory protocols and the Dublin Core metadata set, the Isaac Network provides a search interface to the distributed collections of metadata. The overall goal is to allow users to submit a single query to search geographically distributed and independently maintained metadata collections and to return the combined results to the user. Also during the session the Issac architecture will be briefly described, the Content Provider criteria will be discussed, and the software and content support provided to Content Providers by the Internet Scout Project will be detailed, and time will be allowed for questions. Therefore all providers of high-quality content are encouraged to join the discussion as potential collaborators in the network’s development. See the full call for collaborators and Isaac Network papers and documentation at the address provided. <http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/research/>
Isaac Collaborators’ Guidelines
NLANR: A Little Known Resource
George H. Brett II
Senior Project Coordinator
NLANR/DAST
The National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) is a cooperative agreement funded by NSF. NLANR’s primary goal is to provide technical, engineering, and traffic analysis support of NSF High-Performance Connections sites, and the broad vBNS user community. Its activities focus on three major areas: Applications & Users Services; Network Engineering; and Measurement & Analysis.
Ohioview: A Model Access System for Digital Satellite Data
Judith Sessions
Dean and University Librarian
Miami University of Ohio
John Millard
Geographic Information Systems Librarian
Miami University of Ohio
Miami University is leading a consortium of state universites, the USGS EROS Data Center, the NASA Glenn Research Center, OhioLINK, and NREN whose mission is to promote the low-cost access and distribution of US Government civilian satellite data for public use. Our goals are:
-
-
- Create a prototype of a national public access system for geospatial data from the US Government.
- Promote the use of satellite and geospatial data in education.
- Facilitate the use of satellite data to monitor a wide variety of environmental issues, such as flood risk, crop health, urban sprawl, and loss of wetlands.
- Facilitate cooperation between education, and state and local governments in remote sensing and digital mapping through cost sharing.
- Facilitate research and development in the applications of satellite data.
- Establish “virtual” centers for satellite and geospatial data synthesis and dissemination.
- Establish a high-speed network to provide satellite data to the public, educators, scientists, and community leaders in Ohio and the nation.
- Leverage existing state and federal resources.
-
We will report on activities and accomplishments to date and share our preparations in anticipation of the launch of the LandSat-7 satellite.
Planning – Mechanisms, Perspectives and Outcomes: The University of South Carolina Information Organization Since 1993
Nancy Chesnutt
Advanced Instructional Media
University of South Carolina
Patrick Calhoun
Academic Technologies & Grants
University of South Carolina
A unified organization for information services, systems and resources serves the learning community at the University of South Carolina – Columbia. The session will address two successive planning efforts in this organizational unit against the backdrop of campus projects and service improvements over the past six years (for example, an exploding demand for connection to the Internet, development of digital resources, media instruction for faculty, and more convenient student processes.)
The presenters have served as chairs for the division’s two internal planning efforts. Middle managers and line personnel have led both planning efforts according to a collaborative model. Reorganization has taken place in an ongoing fashion.
The session will focus on contrasts and points of commonality in the two planning efforts and will feature offshoots to the planning process, the fate of recommendations, and changes in attitudes over time. A key theme will be the amount of progress gained in division unity as reflected by the perspectives of directors, line managers, division staff and client groups. There will be discussion of planning outcomes including the responses and responsiveness of various elements of the unit to newly understood client requirements, to budgetary pressures and to the necessity for change.
PEAK: An Update on a Pricing Experiment
Karen Hunter
Senior Vice President
Elsevier Science
Wendy Lougee
Associate Director for Digital Library Initiatives
University of Michigan
PEAK (Pricing Electronic Access to Knowledge) is a pricing experiment designed and run by the University of Michigan in cooperation with Elsevier Science. PEAK is an 18-month research and service effort which will end in August 1999. Michigan is serving as the host to provide access to 1200 Elsevier journals to 12 institutions in a controlled field experiment on pricing and product models. The experiment will evaluate the effects of the various pricing alternatives and the implications for longer-term pricing strategies. This session will provide an update on PEAK from service and research perspectives.
Preservation of Electronic Publications
Titia van der Werf
Library Research
National Library of the Netherlands
As increasingly more information is published in digital form (only) there is a growing need to preserve this information over time, for future access. Project NEDLIB – Networked European Deposit Library – was launched on January 1st, 1998 with funding from the European Commission’s Telematics Application Programme, to address this need. During this session on NEDLIB, the functional design of a digital deposit system within the digital library, as envisioned by the project, will be presented. Different issues will be raised such as preservation strategies (migration, emulation), metadata for preservation, and long-term identification.
Recent Findings from Multi-Institution Digital Image Distribution Projects
Howard Besser
Associate Professor
UCLA School of Education & Information
Jeff Huestis
Head of Library Systems
Washington University, St. Louis
Max Marmor
Art Librarian
Yale University
This session will report on three recent multi-institution digital image distribution projects: a study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project, one university’s experience in participating in the AMICO testbed, and a planned Digital Library Federation project to build a shared repository for public domain images.
Howard Besser will present findings from the Mellon-funded study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project–The Cost Of Digital Image Distribution: The Social and Economic Implications of the Production, Distribution and Usage of Image Data <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/>. He will discuss the findings of a series of focus groups the Mellon project staff held with art historians and studio teachers on their perspectives on teaching with digital images.
Jeff Huestis will discuss his university’s experience as a participant in the Art Museum Image Consortium testbed. Washington University’s participation in the testbed has centered around the use of AMICO images in several undergraduate courses. To evaluate the project’s impact, a variety of data gathering techniques were used, including questionnaires, class evaluations, and focus groups. Bringing the AMICO resource into the classroom required faculty and student training in digital imaging, web design and such computer basics as file transfer and e-mail attachments. Orientation was also provided to intellectual property considerations related to campus computing policies, copyright, and the terms of the AMICO contract.
Max Marmor will report on the “Image Exchange,” an initiative undertaken by a diverse group of librarians, visual resources curators, and faculty members to build a shared repository for public domain images illustrating works from major art and architectural history textbooks. The Digital Library Federation will support this project by creating and supporting the repository architecture. DLF is also interested in seeking partners to develop tools for the use of images in teaching and learning.
Report on Digital Distribution of Images in Universities Now Available
handout
Theses and Dissertations in the Digital Library
Edward A. Fox
Professor
Virginia Tech
Gail McMillan
Director
Virginia Tech
Universities are expanding their academic agendas in many ways. By allowing graduate students to submit their theses and dissertations in digital formats, universities, particularly their libraries and the graduate schools, develop policies and procedures leading to the extension of the university into the virtual academy. Virginia Tech has led the way by requiring ETDs and by helping found the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). With nearly 2000 theses and dissertations online and the collaboration of over 50 other universities, it has compiled a wealth of information to share. This presentation will reveal the university policies that worked well and the ones that needed modifying, the reactions of ETD authors (both before and after) to this two-year old requirement, and the many resulting benefits for students and universities.
Virginia Tech’s ETD’s from the Scholarly Communications Project
Translating Innovative Projects into Sustainable Services: Perspectives on a Millennial Challenge
Mary Auckland
Director, Library and Learning Resources
London Institute Daniel Greenstein
Director, Arts and Humanities Data Service
King’s College London
Stephen Griffin
National Science Foundation
Patricia Manson
European Commission
Malcolm Read
Secretary
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Donald Waters
Director
Digital Library Federation
Norman Wiseman
Head of Programmes
Joint Information Systems Committee
Moving into the new millennium, educational, library, and other cultural organizations confront a significant challenge transitioning innovative IT applications and projects into sustainable information services. The session aims to facilitate dialogue and encourage shared experience amongst those who have a stake in this transition. To do so, it describes three different perspectives on the problem and the possible solutions that apply in each case. Each perspective is derived from a distinctive approach to IT innovation.
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK’s Higher Education Funding Councils represents a predominantly top-down approach to service innovation. Benefiting from a top-slice or tax on the nation’s c.185 higher education institutions, the JISC devotes itself to the development of innovative information services and projects which promise to benefit the community generally in its exploitation of IT.
A second “bottom up” perspective is presented by the US-based Digital Libraries Federation which acts as a facilitating organization stimulating and focusing the efforts of, but ultimately relying upon, members’ voluntary contributions.
A third perspective is presented by the National Science Foundation and the European Union. Although mobilizing substantial central funding, both bodies invest in research and development work on enabling technologies whose existence may lever information service developments on local, regional, national, and even international levels.
In order to facilitate comparability and discussion, presentations will address common themes. In particular, the initiatives that are represented will describe their aims and how their organizational and funding models help to fulfill them. They will also identify the organizational, financial, and other challenges they perceive when considering how to ensure that research, development, project, and other investment contributes to the evolution and growth of sustainable information services, and some of the steps they are taking to confront these challenges.
Use of Wireless Communications at the University of Kentucky
Douglas E. Hurley
Associate Vice President, Information Systems
University of Kentucky
Doyle N. Friskney
Director of Communications & Network Systems
University of Kentucky
Is wireless communication technology the wave of the future, or is it already here today? The answer is — probably both. While it’s true that many colleges and universities are experimenting with wireless communications today, the reality is that while there is considerable hype and promise, there are also practical realities to recognize. The University of Kentucky (UK) has actively tracked and experimented with wireless technologies to serve various constituency needs for at least 5 years. In the last 2 years, we have successfully deployed wireless to support “production level services” in several different environments. This session will review the deployment of wireless at UK in the newly opened W. T. Young Library and in the curriculum within the College of Engineering. The session will include a review of the state of the technology today, an overview of the use of wireless at UK, and a practical review of what we have learned.
Using Proxy Servers to Provide Authenticated Access to Web Resources
Jonathan Esterhazy
Web Developer
University of Manitoba
Libraries are subscribing to an increasing number of web-based information resources. Most of these resources limit access based on lists of authorized IP addresses. This article explains how the University of Manitoba Libraries system uses a proxy server to provide eligible library patrons with location- independent access to such resources.
Jonathan Esterhazy’s Presentation via the University of Manitoba Libraries web site
Web Accessibility and the W3C
Judy Brewer
Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) International Program Office
World Wide Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), through its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), is working to ensure that the Web is accessible to people with disabilities, and at the same time increase usability for non-disabled users. With the Web’s emergence as a key resource for education, employment, commerce, and government, it is vital that this medium is accessible.
Ms. Brewer will describe how a partnership of industry, disability organizations, access research centers, and government is working together to address Web accessibility. She will focus on improvements in Web technologies to facilitate accessibility; guidelines for Web content developers and Web- based applications manufacturers; and initiatives to raise awareness and provide training on accessibility solutions.
Web Accessibility Initiative Home Page
Working Together: Archivists, Records Managers, and Information Technologists
Gerry Bernbom
Special Assistant for Digital Libraries and Distance Education
Indiana University
Fynnette Eaton
Director, Technical Services Division
Smithsonian Institution
Peter Hirtle
Assistant Director, Cornell Institute for Digital Collections
Cornell University
Joan Lippincott
Associate Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
Institutions are grappling with questions concerning long-term access to electronic records, the policies that need to be put into place to specify responsibilities for retention of electronic materials, and the institutional mandate to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests that necessitate searching electronic records that may not be structured for easy analysis and may include confidential information. Records managers, archivists, and information technologists each bring a knowledge base to the analysis of these issues and the development of institutional policies and solutions.
CNI developed a specialized version of its Working Together program on developing collaboration skills, aimed at bringing records managers, archivists, and information technologists together to work on common institutional issues. With funding from the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission, institutional teams met in an intensive, two-day workshop to develop a plan to work on an institutional project. This session will provide background on the issues discussed and will highlight one institution’s project plans.