D-Lib Magazine
January 1997

ISSN 1082-9873

Clips and Pointers

Workshop Summary: UCLA-NSF Workshop on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries

This National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshop brought together 32 scholars, researchers, and practitioners from the emerging community concerned with social aspects of digital libraries, plus the 8 UCLA investigators (Marcia J. Bates, Christine L. Borgman, Michele V. Cloonan, Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland, Yasmin B. Kafai, Gregory H. Leazer, and Anthony B. Maddox). Our goals were to assess existing knowledge that might inform research in this area and to propose a research agenda that would pose new questions.

We organized the workshop content and selected the participants around two social aspects of digital libraries: information needs, and end-user searching and filtering. In their position papers and in on-site discussions, workshop participants quickly expanded the topical boundaries in several directions. Rather than focusing solely on the individual user who interacts with a digital library, we considered also the group, organization, and community activities and concerns which give rise to information-related behavior. We expanded our interest in information storage and retrieval to include preceding and succeeding phases, incorporating the processes of creating, using, and disposing of information.

Based on the wide-ranging discussions in the workshop, the final report proposes a definition of digital libraries that encompasses two complementary ideas, one emphasizing that they extend and enhance existing information storage and retrieval systems, incorporating digital data and metadata in any form; the other emphasizing that design, policy, and practice should reflect the social context in which they exist. We propose an information life cycle model to illustrate the flow of human activities in creating, searching, and using information and the stages through which information artifacts may pass: activity, inactivity, and disposal.

Research issues raised in the workshop were organized into three foci: human-centered, artifact-centered, and systems-centered. We recommend that research be conducted on these themes, that scholars from multiple disciplines be encouraged to develop joint projects, that scholars and practitioners work together, and that digital libraries be developed and evaluated in operational, as well as experimental, work environments. Only in this way can we build digital libraries to support diverse communities of users in their professional, educational, and recreational activities.

The UCLA-NSF Social Aspects of Digital Libraries Workshop web page includes the final report, the list of attendees, position papers, the UCLA background paper, and links to other sites and materials.

Point-to-Point

• The Library of Congress has released an experimental web interface to its on-line public access catalog (OPAC). The system accesses about one-fourth of the records contained in the Library's digitized catalog to its print and image collections. Some of the major collections within the Library are not included in this catalog (e.g., Manuscripts) and thus remain inaccessible via the web. Records are displayed in hypertext format with links to related resources and may be sorted by date, title, or call number (which provides shelf-list access to material and thus mimics browsing for related information by wandering through the stacks).

• The Library and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, have announced the California Heritage Digital Image demonstration database. This digital archive contains photographs, pictures, and manuscripts from the Bancroft Library and is the principal product of the California Heritage Digital Image Access Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Existing finding aids have been digitized and can be browsed and searched. Results include identification and description of the requisite collections, thumbnails, and medium- and high-resolution digitized images.

• Index Morganagus covers 37 on- line serials related to library and information science and technologies (including both D-Lib Magazine and Ariadne). It is based on Harvest and Glimpse indexing technologies. Users are encouraged to evaluate the system via an on-line form and to participate in an on-going discussion.

• The Internet Public Library Reading Room Public Online Texts Collection has recently launched a new search capability. Access is now offered to the more than 3,700 items in the collection by author, title, Dewey Subject Classification, or by interactive keyword searching.

• Research and Development in the Libraries sector of the Telematics Programme of the European Commission (DGIII) addresses issues that facilitate access to knowledge held in libraries throughout the European Union, including reducing disparities among national systems and practices. Topics covered by the program include networking, cataloguing, resource discovery, imaging, multimedia, remote learning, public libraries, music information, standards and intellectual property. This site provides access to general information, available reports and studies, calls for proposals, and related and external resources.

In Print

• The University Of California Digital Library: A Framework For Planning And Strategic Initiatives (October 1996) sets forth "a framework and set of potential strategies to deal with the human, technical, organizational and financial issues which are critical to the development" of a digital library program for the nine campuses comprising the University of California system. The study calls for an "organic", or incremental approach, and to that end has articulated a series of 12 broad recommendations designed to focus but not prescribe future planning. Two findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) organizational, policy, and financial issues are "more challenging" than technical ones; and (2) while a proposed University of California Digital Library (UCDL) may potentially reduce the rate at which information costs increase and may amortize the increase across a broader base, overall library costs are not likely to decrease in the near term and "substantial new capital investment" is required.

• International Infrastructure Standards Program (IISP) Identified Standards Needed to Implement the Global Information Infrastructure have been posted to obtain broad response from affected groups. Needed standards fall into two broad categories: Interface Standards Needs and Service (Industry) Areas. The report (November 4, 1996) summarizing responses to IISP identified standards needs is also included as are forms for submitting additional needs and comments on the proposals.

• A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, a draft report issued by seven executive agencies led by the Executive Office of the President, is available for public comment until January 23, 1997. The full text of the report, the executive summary, and public comments are accessible on-line. The draft document outlines basic strategies and policies of the Administration on key issues and identifies the roles of government agencies that will be involved.

Goings On

• Eighth International ACM Hypertext Conference, April 6-11, 1997, Southampton, UK. Proposals for short papers, posters, and demonstrations will continue to be accepted for this conference as late as January 17, 1997. The conference's web page contains updated information on submission requirements and program and registration information.

• The Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) will hold its next meeting and seminars on January 26-28, 1997 in Hong Kong. AGNG addresses concerns related primarily to networking in the Pacific and Asia. However, several events in the pre-meeting and general meeting pertain to issues that arise from multilinguality and transliteration. For more information on the program, organizers, and registration, see the conference's web page.

• The First International Conference on Autonomous Agents will be held at Marina del Rey, California, on February 5-8, 1997. The primary sponsor is the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM SIGART) with co-sponsorship from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics, British Telecommunications, Microsoft Corporation, Intel, MERL, European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence, and IEEE Computer Society. The conference program and information on registration and attendance is available at the conference's web page.

• The National Library of Australia, the Distributed Systems Technology Centre of Australia, and the OCLC Online Computer Library Center have announced the next Dublin Core Metadata Workshop to be held at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, March 3-5, 1997. Participation is by invitation; for further information, see the conference web page.

• The Third DELOS Workshop will be held in Zurich, Switzerland, March 4-7, 1997. Participation is limited to contributions from DELOS consortium members and invited guests. Submissions from eligible participants should be sent no later than January 24, 1997 with completion of the final program by January 31, 1997. Information on the DELOS Working Group is available at http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/ErcimDL/delos.html.

• DRH '97. The British Library, the Office for Humanities Communication, the Arts and Humanities Data Service, the Centre for Computing in the Humanities of Kings College London, the International Institute for Electronic Library Research of de Montfort University, the Library of University College London, and the Humanities Computing Unit of Oxford University are jointly sponsoring a three-day conference (September 14-17, 1997) on the application of digital techniques and resources in the humanities to be held at St. Annes College, Oxford. Proposals for academic papers, panel sessions, and reports of work in progress are due by April 7, 1997. For further information on submission requirements, the program, and registration, see the conference page at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~drh97.

• ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing '97 will take place at the University of Kent at Canterbury, April 14-16, 1997. The advance program, registration and related travel information have been posted to the conference's web site. Registrations after February 1, 1997 cannot be guaranteed on-campus accommodations.

• The Australian World Wide Web (WWW) Technical Conference will be held May 7-9, 1997 in Brisbane. The schedule is tight: proposals were due on February 14, 1997 and notification of acceptance will be made on April 14, 1997. Announcement of registration and other organizational details will be via the conference's web page.

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  Pointers in This Column:

  Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) Meeting and seminars Hong Kong January 26-28, 1997	http://www.polyu.edu.hk/apng/
  Australian World Wide Web (WWW) Technical Conference Brisbane May 7-9, 1997	http://www.dstc.edu.au/aw3tc/
  California Heritage Digital Image demonstration database	http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/CalHeritage/
  DELOS Working Group (ERCIM)	http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/ErcimDL/delos.html
  DRH '97 St. Annes College, Oxford September 14-17, 1997	http://users.ox.ac.uk/~drh97
  Eighth International ACM Hypertext Conference Southampton, UK April 6-11, 1997	http://www.pac.soton.ac.uk/ht97/
  First International Conference on Autonomous Agents Marina del Rey, California February 5-8, 1997	http://www.isi.edu/isd/AA97/info.html
  Fourth Dublin Core Metadata Workshop National Library of Australia, Canberra March 3-5, 1997	http://www.dstc.edu.au/DC4/
  A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce (draft)	http://www.iitf.nist.gov/electronic_commerce.htm
  ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing '97 University of Kent, Canterbury April 14-16, 1997	http://www.ukc.ac.uk/library/ICCC/index.htm
  Index Morganagus	http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~emorgan/morganagus/
  International Infrastructure Standards Program (IISP) Identified Standards Needed to Implement the Global Information Infrastructure	http://www.ansi.org/iisp/needcat.html
  International Infrastructure Standards Programs (IISP) Standards Needs Response Report (November 4, 1996)	http://www.ansi.org/iisp/resprept.html
  Internet Public Library Reading Room Public Online Texts Collection	http://www.ipl.org/reading/books
  Library of Congress experimental web interface	http://lcweb2.loc.gov/catalog/
  R&D in the Libraries sector of the Telematics Programme of the European Commission (DGIII)	http://www2.echo.lu/libraries/en/libraries.html
  UCLA-NSF Social Aspects of Digital Libraries Workshop web page	http://www-lis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL
  University of California Digital Library: A Framework For Planning And Strategic Initiatives (October 1996)	http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/UCDL

  

  
  

  

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