Opening Plenary
The opening plenary will be by Gregory Crane of Tufts University, Professor of Classics and Editor in Chief of the Perseus Project; his talk is titled “Will Two Plus Two Make Five or Three? Utopias and Dystopias of a Networked Environment”. This should be a stimulating, insightful and authoritative talk. There has been a great deal of discussion over the past few years about new genres of scholarly communication and their implications for scholars and authors, as well as for teaching and research. Greg Crane has been living these issues, and his work is one of the most exciting examples of what advanced information technology can bring to scholarly information and communication in the humanities. Perseus has already developed and deployed an extensive and sophisticated digital library of Greco-Roman culture, and is now, as an NSF Phase 2 Digital Library project, expanding its reach into new areas such as 19th century London. You can find more background on Greg’s work at <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/>.
Professor Crane has also agreed to follow his plenary address with a breakout session that will allow a more detailed and interactive follow-up discussion of the issues that he will raise.
Closing Plenary
The closing plenary address will be by Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, who is widely recognized as the key person responsible for the conceptualization and development of the Web. Over the past decade, Tim has been evolving and implementing a vision of the future of the Web and has also thought deeply about the broader social implications of these developments; he will share this thinking with us. Tim will also be the first recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Award, which was established in memory of the vision and achievements of CNI founding director Paul Peters following his untimely death in 1996. This award, which was established with an endowment from Educause, the Association of Research Libraries, Xerox, and Microsoft, will be presented to Tim prior to his address.