D-Lib Magazine
June 1999

Volume 5 Number 6

ISSN 1082-9873

Clips & Pointers

New Agenda for the Council on Library and Information Resources

Contributed by:
Deanna B. Marcum
President, Council on Library and Information Resources

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an independent, catalytic organization that concerns itself with the well being of libraries and archives. One of its greatest assets is its flexibility to respond as circumstances change and new issues arise. The CLIR Board designated six themes for the agenda for the coming year: preservation awareness, digital libraries, leadership, economics of information, resources for scholarship, and international developments.

Preservation Awareness

CLIR has an ongoing commitment to the preservation efforts of libraries and archives throughout the United States and abroad. Presently, the need for national leadership in preservation is increasing as research libraries and archives deal with a greater number of items added to collections every year and recorded on increasingly unstable media. Through the preservation awareness area of interest, CLIR will advance its preservation agenda by supporting the preservation profession and library and archives managers responsible for preservation of collections. We shall continue to work collaboratively with library consortia and national institutions to advocate the use of tried-and-true preservation measures. Preservation and training will remain important components of the international agenda.

Digital Libraries

CLIR is committed to fostering the development of digital libraries as a resource for research and learning today and into the future. We are particularly interested in helping policy makers, funders, and academic leaders understand the nature of the social and institutional investments in digital libraries that are necessary to organize, maintain, and provide access to the growing body of digital materials for scholarly purposes. However, the development of digital libraries is proving to be a complex process, requiring much intensive and detailed work. At present, we seek to help accomplish this work and advance our interest in digital libraries primarily by serving as administrative home for the Digital Library Federation (DLF).

Resources for Scholarship

Concern with access to resources for scholarship grows naturally from CLIR’s preservation and access agenda. By defining access to research collections as an independent focus of activities, we address the critical functions of acquisition, description, and preservation in an integrated way that is a service to scholarship. It signifies our greater engagement with scholars in developing strategies for the growth and management of information resources.

Economics of Information

There are potential economic dimensions to all of CLIR’s projects and programs. Specific projects are still under development, but they will focus on the need for more analysis in the following areas:

• how to measure the productivity of information resources
• how to assess the value of library and archival collections as heritage assets
• how to help provosts and other university administrators measure the costs of information
• how to develop business models for new services that grow out of CLIR’s activities

Leadership

CLIR continues to give high priority to the development of leadership for cultural and educational institutions. Library directors, provosts, and presidents have identified leadership as one of the most urgent needs.

In collaboration with Emory University, EDUCAUSE, and other library organizations, CLIR is developing a leadership institute that will bring together in a summer program potential leaders from libraries, computing centers, university presses, and faculty ranks -- those who will manage the information resources of the campus in the future.

International Developments

The need for international partnerships and alliances is apparent in all of CLIR’s areas of interest. Preservation and access international projects have been well developed over the past ten years, but it is now time to broaden the international agenda to include digital libraries and resources for scholarship as obvious areas for international cooperation.

Copyright Ownership Issues and Higher Education Policies

Contributed by:
Rodney J. Petersen
Director, Policy and Planning
Office of Information Technology
University of Maryland

One of the most complex tasks in establishing a digital library is working through the quagmire of legal and policy issues associated with copyright. The legal issues associated with acceptable use of scholarly materials (which include determinations of whether or not an item is in the "public domain", ability to secure permission or license use, or decisions to exercise a statutory exception such as "fair use") are complicated enough by themselves. However, the recipe can become indigestible to some once you add into the mix questions and controversies over who is the legal owner to the copyright.

According to copyright law, the set of exclusive rights (right to copy or reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, public performance or display) are the property of the "author." The "author" is typically an individual, although it may include multiple individuals in the case of a joint work; however, the "author" can also be an employer if the copyrighted materials are developed "within the scope of employment" or the result of a "commissioned work." The controversy over ownership of copyright is alive and well within the higher education community where tradition has led to a presumption (often reinforced through institutional policies) that scholarly materials developed by academics are owned by the individual scholar and not the employing institution.

There are several factors that fuel the current debate and efforts to establish new policies that give research universities greater control over the intellectual property developed by their faculty. First, the digital revolution heightened by movements towards "distance education" is raising afresh questions of who owns the courses that are increasingly being delivered online. Second, the interests of university administrations in maximizing the commercialization potential of university intellectual property -- a well-established process for patents developed by university faculty -- is extending its reach to copyrighted materials as well, especially computer software. Finally, the practice of faculty relinquishing their copyrights to publishers in exchange for the credentials afforded by professional publication (necessary for tenure and promotion) is an emerging argument for reform, especially when the employing institution’s library must "buy back" the faculty member’s scholarly communication through increasingly expensive purchases or subscriptions.

There are many efforts afoot to provide resources and assistance to anyone who seeks to understand the issues and corresponding policy alternatives for establishing copyright ownership. One such effort is a research project that is being conducted on behalf of the University of Maryland and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The ongoing results of this research, including links to a number of university policies and associated resources, are available on a Web site called copyown^sm : A Resource on Copyright Ownership for the Higher Education Community, located at < http://www.umd.edu/copyown >. It is hoped that the information and discussions that result from this project, combined with on-campus dialogue and debate, will illuminate the issues and shed light on the solutions that are best suited to ensuring policies and practices that are thoughtful, flexible, and fair.

Preservation management: keeping what we have

Contributed by:
Yola de Lusenet, Executive Secretary
European Commission on Preservation and Access
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

The aim of the conference "Preservation Management: between policy and practice" was to bring together librarians and archivists responsible for preservation in their institutions or involved in preservation projects. The conference took place in The Hague (The Netherlands) from 19 to 21 April, and attracted 140 participants from 25 countries from as far as Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The conference was hosted by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, national library of the Netherlands, and was organized together with the IFLA Core Programme on Preservation and Conservation (IFLA-PAC) and the European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA).

In his keynote address Bendik Rugaas, national librarian of Norway, urged librarians and archivists to join forces and to engage in the political debate by presenting the case for preservation loud and clear. He stressed this implies a willingness to set priorities: if professionals shirk away from painful decisions, they will only lose credibility with politicians.

Public relations, lobbying and the promotion of the cause for preservation were recurring themes. There was a shared feeling that if the outside world is not very receptive to the story preservation experts have to tell, other ways must be found to state the case more convincingly.

This was illustrative for the general atmosphere at the conference: constructive in the face of many uncertainties. In spite of a general lack of explicit national policies, of wide public support and of adequate funding, an impressive range of activities is being undertaken. Particularly striking was the current interest in mass deacidification as a viable option for selected materials. Susan Herion of the Swiss National Library, which is building a mass-deacidification plant together with the Swiss Federal Archives, spoke about managerial and organizational aspects (for background see: http://www.snl.ch/f/aktuell/index.htm or http://www.snl.ch/d/aktuell/index.htm). Ken Harris presented a paper on the Library of Congress experience; and mass deacidification companies dominated the small exhibition during the conference.

Most of the papers dealt with "conventional" materials and focused on managerial aspects: planning and organization, staff management, costs, etc. At the heart of this conference was this fairly mundane reality of thousands of books to be bound, of maps to be stored, of newspapers to be microfilmed, in short: of everything that is already there and needs to be taken care of.

There was surprisingly little talk about reformatting paper materials through digitization or about preservation of digitally born materials. One of the reasons may be that retrodigitization is as yet only an option for a select few: the usual candidates are materials in high demand, or attractive materials of great intrinsic value (e.g., illuminated manuscripts), which add up to only a fraction of the total holdings. No one seriously proposes the retrodigitization of all the books and documents in archives and libraries, many of which are consulted infrequently. Yet this constitutes the bulk of the materials preservation managers are dealing with on a daily basis.

The last afternoon, however, the digital future was central in a panel discussion on the "convergence of archives, libraries and museums", a concept promoted on the European as well as the national level. In this view, all "heritage institutions" are seen as sources of content to be brought together in digital repositories on the internet (see the EU site on digital heritage at http://www.echo.lu/digicult/en/backgr/brainsto.html). In his opening address Rugaas had stated that in looking for support and funding, preservation managers should make creative use of every opening offered, even though the angle may seem unorthodox. In the current climate that means, paradoxically, going digital if your main concern is preservation of paper materials. The European Union (DG XII) will issue a Call for projects next September on digital preservation of cultural heritage -- a digitization call, but the 250-word preliminary text emphasizes "special attention given to surrogates of fragile physical objects" and also explicitly mentions "long-term accessibility" i.e., both preservation aspects of digitization. The challenge for preservation managers is to explore how such programmes can be turned to their advantage.

Similarly, one must address issues like "convergence" and "cross-sectoral cooperation" in the digital age in order to qualify as a serious partner. During the panel discussion, there was quite some agreement on shared aspects in library, archive, and museum work. Some elements are more important in one sector than in the others (e.g., number of visitors), and work in a specific area is not always on the same level in the three sectors (e.g., cataloguing/description). However, institutions within the same sector also differ considerably. The panel agreed that, in spite of real differences in culture, there are enough examples of successful cross-sectoral projects to inspire confidence for the future. The issue is not so much to which sectors the institutions concerned belong, but rather whether they can define common goals and shared interests.

The papers of the conference will be published by the ECPA in the course of this year; abstracts can be found at the ECPA website < http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa >.

Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials

Courtesy of:
David Green
Executive Director
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage

Request for Proposals

The National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) is undertaking a project to review and evaluate current practice in the digital networking of cultural heritage resources in order to publish a Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials. The Guide will be published in print and electronic form.

A NINCH Working Group on Best Practices has outlined the scope and purpose of the Guide. It will divide into two sections: one on the capture and creation of digital cultural heritage resources; the other on the management and maintenance of that digital data. The Guide will encompass all genres. To encourage broadest use of digital resources, the Guide will focus on object-types (e.g., manuscripts, paintings, performance documentations, etc.,) going beyond the limited perspectives of institution types or disciplines (e.g., museums or history). The primary audience will be institutions or researchers preparing to create and manage digital cultural heritage resources with little extensive knowledge of current technical and information standards, metadata and best practices. Funders will be an important secondary audience, for whom the Guide could provide a set of key criteria for assessing the fundability of digital projects.

The Working Group will proceed by commissioning a survey of the field to discover and define exemplary practice. The survey will include interviews with practitioners and reviews of published guidelines and projects that demonstrate good practice; it should also reveal areas for which good practice still needs to be developed and documented. The Working Group will announce a call for nominations of practitioners and projects to be considered by the survey.

As a starting point, the Working Group has created an initial definition of good practice consisting of six principles each of which has a set of evaluative criteria, by which to judge current practice. The Working Group has built into the process a stage in which it may refine and extend these criteria as a result of the survey. The survey is not intended to be a comprehensive review of current practice; its purpose is to gather material, experiences and opinions for the writing of the Guide.

The Working Group proposes to hire a consultant or consultants to conduct the Survey and write the Guide in close consultation with the Working Group. Those responding may address one or both parts of the project: the Survey (Phase 1) and the Guide (Phase 2).

The deadline for receipt of proposals is 5 pm (EST) Monday June 21, 1999. Please see the full Request for Proposals at < http://www.ninch.org/PROJECTS/practice/rfprfp.html > for more details including the instructions for submission.

 

Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS)

Contributed by
Richard Hill
American Society for Information Science
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
rhill@asis.org

VOLUME 50, NUMBER 9

To see the Tables of Contents, click here.

The ASIS home page <http://www.asis.org> contains the Table of Contents and brief abstracts from January 1993 (Volume 44) to date.

The John Wiley Interscience site http://www.interscience.wiley.com includes issues from 1986 (Volume 37) to date. Guests have access only to tables of contents and abstracts. Registered users of the Interscience site have access to the full text of these issues and to preprints. We are still working on restoring access for ASIS members as "registered users."

American Society for Information Science
8720 Georgia Avenue, Suite 501
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 495-0900 FAX (301) 495-0810
http://www.asis.org/

In Print

• Exploit Interactive, Issue 1, April 1999, co-edited by Bernadette Daly and Philip Hunter, a quarterly web magazine from the Exploit Project, and a UKOLN/DBI/British Council production.

  The stated mission of Exploit Interactive is as follows: "Exploit is an accompanying measure designed to promote the results of EU library projects (both FP3 and FP4) and to facilitate their take-up by the market of library and information systems."

  The first issue included:

  • Features: A look at some of the Telematics for Libraries Projects and articles from the broader community.
    • CHILIAS: The European Virtual Children's Library on the Internet - a New Service to foster Children's Computer Literacy
    • Information Engineering and the IESERV Project
    • LISTED: Library Integrated System for Telematics-based Education
    • Distance Education in Rural Areas via Libraries
    • The LIBERATOR Project: Overview and Key Areas/Challenges
    • Projecto LIBERATOR: Visao geral e areas/desafios chave
    • Oiling the Works: The PRIDE Project Develops an Information Brokerage Service
    • International Cooperation - Real Opportunities?
    • Extranet-based Document Delivery System
    • Funds for cultural heritage: an introduction
    • A Closer Look at the Telematics for Libraries Web Site
    • Look in the Mirror for Bandwidth Savings
    • Books for Everyone...Cash for You
    • An Interview with Thorsten Engler and Martin Wright
  • Regular Columns: "Behind the Web Site," "The Citizen's Gateways," "Web Technologies," "At the Event"
  • News & Events: From around Europe
  • Et cetera: the Java Crossword Puzzle, Job Postings

  Issue 1, of Exploit Interactive may be found at < http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue1/ >.

• Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, Spring 1999 issue, published by the Science and Technology Section, Association of College and Research Libraries.

  The theme of the Spring issue is electronic journals in science and technology libraries. Articles are available in full text, and there are links to back issues at the journal web site located at < http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/ >.

  The articles for the Spring issue include:

  • Electronic Journals as a Component of the Digital Library
    by Laurie E. Stackpole and Richard James King, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.
  • SPARC: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
    by Alison Buckholtz, Association of Research Libraries
  • You Can't Get There from Here: Issues in Remote Access to Electronic Journals for a Health Sciences Library
    by Dennis Krieb, Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center Library
  • Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Journals: A Bibliographic Essay of Current Issues
    by the STS Subject and Bibliographic Access Committee
  • Consortia Building and Electronic Licensing as Vehicles for Re-Engineering Academic Library Services: The Case of the Technical Knowledge Center and Library of Denmark (DTV)
    by Lars Bjoernshauge, Technical Knowledge Center and Library of Denmark

• Information Processing & Management, Volume 35, Issue 3, Special Issue on Digital Libraries.

  Information Processing & Management is a publication of Elsevier Science Ltd., and so the articles will not be full-text accessible to non-subscribers over the Web free of charge. However, because the theme of this special issue is Digital Libraries, the table of contents is being provided to readers of D-Lib Magazine.

  • Progress toward digital libraries: augmentation through integration
    G. Marchionini, E.A. Fox
  • What are digital libraries? Competing visions
    C.L. Borgman
  • Delphi study of digital libraries
    T.R. Kocktanek, H.K. Hein
  • Document structure and digital libraries: how researchers mobilize information in journal articles
    A. Peterson Bishop
  • Digital library support for scholarly research
    R.R. Downs, E.A. Friedman
  • Material mastery: situating digital library use in university research practices
    L.M. Covi
  • Content locality in distributed digital libraries
    C.L. Viles, J.C. French
  • Discriminating meta-search: a framework for evaluation
    M.H. Chignell, J. Gwizdka, C. Bodner
  • Support for interactive document selection in cross-language information retrieval
    D.W. Oard, P. Resnik
  • Real time video scene detection and classification
    J.M. Gauch, S. Gauch, S. Bouix, X. Zhu
  • Visualising semantic spaces and author co-citation networks in digital libraries
    C. Chen

• The Publishing of Electronic Scholarly Monographs and Textbooks, a report by Ray Lonsdale and C.J. Armstrong, April 1998, commissioned by the Electronic Libraries Programme.

  The report The Publishing of Electronic Scholarly Monographs and Textbooks is available full text in HTML format at < http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/studies/elec-pub/elec-pub.htm >, in Word format at < http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/studies/elec-pub/elec-pub.doc >, and is available in print form through South Bank University's Library Information and Technology Center (LITC) at < http://agent.sbu.ac.uk/publications/sframe.html >.

The following is from the abstract: "This eLib Supporting Study was conceived to investigate the incidence and nature of the publishing of electronic scholarly monographs and textbooks in the United Kingdom. Given the international nature of academic publishing, and the fact that the professional literature suggested a higher incidence of activity within North America, the study was extended to encompass publishing beyond the UK. This afforded a comparative context by which to view UK initiatives. The project focused on publications used in tertiary education or for research, and electronic publishing was taken to mean texts made available in any computer-mediated format: diskette, CD-ROM or via the Internet."

Please see the eLib site for the electronic versions of the report and the LITC site for ordering instructions for the print version.

• Report on Copyright and Digital Distance Education, U.S. Copyright Office, May 1999, A Report of the Register of Copyrights.

  The following is an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the Report on Copyright and Digital Distance Education and describes the contents of the report.

  Over the past five years, the application of copyright law to distance education using digital technologies has become the subject of public debate and attention in the United States. In the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), Congress charged the Copyright Office with responsibility to study the issue and report back with recommendations within six months. After an intensive process of identifying stakeholders, holding public hearings, soliciting comments, conducting research, and consulting with experts in various fields, the Office has issued this Report.

  Part I of the Report gives an overview of the nature of distance education today. Part II describes current licensing practices in digital distance education, including problems and future trends. Part III describes the status of technologies relating to the delivery and protection of distance education materials. Part IV analyzes the application of current copyright law to digital distance education activities. Part V discusses prior initiatives addressing copyright and digital distance education. Part VI examines the question of whether the law should be changed, first summarizing the views of interested parties and then providing the Copyright Office's analysis and recommendations.

• Strategies for Digital Data, Findings and recommendations from Digital Data in Archaeology: A Survey of User Needs, by Frances Condron, Julian Richards, Damian Robinson and Alicia Wise, published in 1999 by the Archaeology Data Service, University of York, King's Manor York.

  The following quoted material is composed of excepts from the Executive Summary of Strategies for Digital Data, Findings and recommendations from Digital Data in Archaeology: A Survey of User Needs. Please see the entire Executive Summary and the Table of Contents for a more complete description of the project at the report web site < http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/strategies/index.html >.

  "In the spring and summer of 1998 the Archaeology Data Service carried out a survey of the creation, archiving, use and re-use of digital data in archaeology. Frances Condron undertook the survey, analyses and initial draft of Strategies for Digital Data. Julian Richards, Damian Robinson and Alicia Wise edited the work and brought it to publication. Three thousand questionnaires were mailed to archaeologists in Britain and Ireland. This was followed by a lesser number of structured telephone interviews conducted in July 1998. The results of this survey are presented in this report.

  "Significant findings of the survey and issues that may be central to any national policy in digital data are:

  • The HEI sector has the most privileged access to computers and the Internet. Areas with limited provision are independent/amateur archaeologists, contracting field units, museums and consultants.
  • Archaeologists in all areas are using computers in their work, and digital datasets hold important information. There is a growing body of information being created solely in digital format.
  • Many types of organisations hold digital datasets for the long term (not just museums). Most datasets are not secure, due to limited or poor archiving strategies.

  • Secure, long-term archives are needed for digital datasets.
  • In general, archaeologists want access to information irrespective of the medium in which it is contained. There is strong support for obtaining information on paper and digitally (tabulated datasets are particularly wanted digitally), though very little support for the use of microfiche.
  • Accessible, computerised, on-line linked indices of project archives are needed for archaeology to facilitate research, education, planning and policy.
  • Strategies are needed to identify which datasets should receive the highest priority for preservation. This needs to be determined by the information needs of archaeologists, and also in response to those projects that are in most danger of being lost.
  • Poor cataloguing/indices are a major barrier to increased use of archives. There is support for an up-to-date index of what information resources are available.
  • Standards and guidelines are needed for the creation, archiving and dissemination of digital datasets.
  • A wide range of training is needed to help bring about effective creation, preservation and re-use of digital data."

  As the authors of the report point out, "Archaeology is not alone in facing these issues."

• Higher Education Digitisation Service (HEDS) makes available two feasibility studies.

  JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI) is digitising image content from 16 collections which have been selected for their significant scholarly importance. The main aim of JIDI is to create a substantial body of digitised content which, together with other JISC funded digital image libraries, will form the first step towards building a coherent digital image resource for Higher Education, contributing to JISC's Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER).

  A Feasibility Study for the JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI) details the background, method, technical baselines, findings and results, proposed production processes, procedures and potential costs of the project.

  The Report has relevance as a guidance document for anyone planning an image digitisation project. In particular, the attention paid to the preparation of material for digitisation and the workflow charts may be of help in project planning.

  The JIDI report is available for download in PDF format at < http://heds.herts.ac.uk/Guidance/JIDI_fs.pdf >.

  HEDS has also been commissioned to produce a Feasibility Study Report on the best method for converting various paper media into electronic versions for the Refugee Studies Programme(RSP) Documentation Centre grey literature collection -- the largest dedicated to the subject in the world.

  The project has involved sampling at 600dpi and 400dpi in colour, greyscale and black and white, OCR testing and assistance in specifying the procedures and production processes for a significant pilot. This project is unique due to the high level of metrics gained by surveying over 800 documents (28,000 pages) and recording the details in a spreadsheet for statistical analysis. This has enabled very accurate estimation of costs; volume of pages to be digitised (potentially more than 700,000 pages) and suitable techniques.

  A description of the resulting feasibility study, A Feasibility Study for the Refugee Studies Programme Digital Library may be found at < http://heds.herts.ac.uk/Guidance/RSP_fs.html >. The full text of the report in PDF format may be downloaded at < http://heds.herts.ac.uk/Guidance/RSP_fs.pdf >.

• Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents, by Sean Townsend, Cressida Chappell and Oscar Struijve, commissioned by the History Data Service as part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service(AHDS) publication Series Guides to Good Practice in the Creation and Use of Digital Resources.

  In the Executive Summary of this guide the authors state, "This guide to creating, documenting and preserving digital resources derived from historical documents, is intended as a reference work for individuals and organisations involved with, or planning, the computerisation of historical source documents. It aims to recommend good practice and standards that are generic and relevant to a range of data creation situations, from student projects through to large-scale research projects. The guide focuses on the creation of tabular data which can be used in databases, spreadsheets or statistics packages. Many of the guidelines are, however, applicable to other more textual methodologies."

  Chapters include:

  • Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Chapter 2: Managing Digital Resource Creation Projects
  • Chapter 3: From Source to Database
  • Chapter 4: Further Data and Preservation Issues
  • Chapter 5: Documenting a Data Creation Project
  • Chapter 6: Archiving and Preserving Data
  • Chapter 7: Glossary and Bibliography

  A printed version of the guide will be published by Oxbow Books. Please note copyright statements when viewing the guide at the AHDS site.

Point to Point

• Early Canadiana Online.

  Canada’s Printed Heritage Via Internet

  Contributed by:
  Lisa Culp
  University of Toronto Library

  TORONTO, May 1999 -- Early Canadiana Online (ECO) is up and running. This innovative project is moving Canada’s printed heritage on to the Internet at < http://www.canadiana.org >.

  Now, viewers in Canada and around the world can experience online some of the most significant people and events that have shaped the nation.

  To date, the full text of some 2600 books and pamphlets originally published between the 16th and early 20th centuries have been scanned and are now available on the Internet. Subject areas include Canadian literature, women’s history, travel and exploration, the history of French Canada and native studies. By August, the ECO database will comprise some 3200 titles, one third of which will be in French.

  Early Canadiana Online is a collaborative project of the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM), the National Library of Canada, Laval University Library, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, and the University of Toronto Library.

  Funding for the project has been provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Canada Millennium Partnership Program, the Royal Bank Financial Group, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Chawkers Foundation, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Hudson’s Bay History Foundation, Canadian Heritage, Imasco Ltd., the Crabtree Family Foundation, the Birks Family Foundation, and the Jackman Foundation.

  For further information, contact: Pam Bjornson (613) 235-2628, Project Steering Committee, or Karen Turko (416) 978-7119, Project Manager

• Resource for Urban Design Information, provided by Oxford Brookes University.

  RUDI is a multimedia Internet resource for teaching, research and professional activity in urban design and its related disciplines. The service gathers and re-publishes multimedia material contributed by professional bodies, practitioners, academics and students. RUDI researches and creates new resources and also provides web site hosting for organisations within the urban design community. There are approximately 2200 Web pages, including 6000 images, plus sound and animation sequences in RUDI (as of March 1999), and more are added every month.

  The project was originally part of the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) funded by the JISC Information Services Sub-committee (ISSC) on behalf of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils with additional support from the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (RIC).

  Details about the project including the workplan and the various project reports available on the project deliverables page at < http://rudi.herts.ac.uk/deliverables/delivs.html >.

• The Internet Library, a collection of court decisions.

  The Internet Law Library, authored by Martin Samson, Esq. at Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim & Ballon LLP, New York City, NY, "features summaries of court decisions shaping the law of the web; providing facts, analysis and pertinent quotes from cases of interest to those involved in New Media addressing copyright, trademark, dilution and other intellectual property issues, jurisdiction, linking, framing, meta tags, clip-art, defamation, domain name, e-mail, encryption, gambling, click-wrap agreements, shrink-wrap licenses, spamming and other subjects..." The Internet Law Library is located at < http://www.phillipsnizer.com/internetlib.htm >.

  The site is subject indexed as well as full text searchable. Provided are synopses of court decisions with links to more thorough analyses. In some cases, the full text of decisions are available. Visitors to the site may fill out a form to receive email announcements containing synopses of new court decisions posted at the Internet Library.

  Although Mr. Samson specializes in Internet-related transactional and litigation representations information, one should read the disclaimer at < http://www.phillipsnizer.com/internetlib.htm > which emphasizes that the information provided at the web site "may or may not reflect the most current legal developments." Additionally, the disclaimer states: "This information is not intended to constitute, and should not be considered, legal advice. It is not intended to substitute for obtaining legal advice from competent, independent, legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction."

• LITA Top Technology Trends.

  The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, has launched a new web site to identify trends to watch in library technology.

  In January 1999, a discussion group was assembled by LITA which included Karen Coyle, Walt Crawford, Pat Earnest, Clifford Lynch, Roy Tennant, Carol Tenopir, Joan Frye Williams, Tom Wilson, and Milton Wolf. These experts stay informed about top trends by reading technology related publications, attending computer seminars/workshops, and networking with others in library and computer related fields. To date, they have come up with a list of seven important trends to watch, and these are listed along with short descriptions. In addition, further links to information about each of those identified trends are provided.

  The LITA Top Technology Trends web site is located at < http://www.lita.org/committe/toptech/trendsmw99.htm >.

• Preservation of electronic information: A bibliography, by Michael Day, the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN).

  The author of this extensive bibliography on the preservation of digital information has been interested in the subject since 1989 when he wrote a dissertation about it. With this bibliography, Michael Day hopes to provide relevant resources to those interested in the subject, and he has annotated some of the listings as well as provided links to sources when possible. The bibliography is updated periodically (the last update as of this date was May 9, 1999. The bibliography web site is located at < http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lismd/preservation.html >.

• Version 25, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., 1 June 1999.

  Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Assistant Dean for Systems, University Libraries, University of Houston, has announced the availability of Version 25 of his periodical bibliography, which is selective and is focussed on scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet and other networks. In the bibliography, he provides links to sources listed, where available. The bibliography is located at < http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html >.

• Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information, and the accompanying Electronic Sources of Information: A Bibliography by Marian Dworaczek, University of Saskatchewan Libraries, 1 June 1999.

  This web site deals with all aspects of electronic publishing and includes references to both print and non-print sources. There are links to many of the external web sites, and both the Index and the Bibliography are continuously updated. Over 900 titles were identified and indexed for the June 1999 edition with thousands of URLs provided. There are instructions for using the site along with sample searches. The web site is at < http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/SUBJIN_A.HTM >.

Deadline Reminders

• 16th Annual Symposium & Open House, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland Institute of Advanced Computer Studies, 17 - 18 June 1999, College Park, Maryland, USA. Please see the symposium web site at < http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/ > for details and registration instructions.

• ACM SIGIR'99 Post-Conference Workshop on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval, 15 - 19 August 1999. Call for participation. Deadline for paper or statement of interest is 18 June 1999. See below for details.
• ACM SIGIR '99 Workshop on Evaluation of Web Document Retrieval, 19 August 1999. Call for papers. The deadline has been postponed to 18 June 1999. See the web site at < http://www.dei.unipd.it/~ims/sigir99/ > for details.
• Working Together A Workshop for Archivists, Records Managers and Information Technologists, 21 - 22 June 1999. Registration is limited.. See the workshop web site at < http://www.cni.org/projects/working.together/ > for registration details.
• ACM SIGIR '99 Workshop on Customised Information Delivery, 19 August 1999, Call for papers. The deadline for submission is 22 June 1999. For more details see the workshop web site at < http://www.ted.cmis.csiro.au/sigir99/ >.
• INET'99: The Internet Global Summit, The Internet Society's 9th Annual Internetworking Conference 22 - 25 June 1999. See the INET web site at < http://www.isoc.org/inet99/ > for further information.
• Making Sense of Digital Identifiers for Internet and Other Applications - 1999 LITA Preconference, 25 June 1999. Please see the LITA web site at < http://www.lita.org/ac99/precon99.htm > for full information.
• Celebrating the Freedom to Read! Learn! Connect! - 1999 ALA Annual Conference, 25 - 30 June 1999. Please see the conference web site at < http://www.ala.org/events/ac99/index.html > for additional information.
• Special Issue: Imaging Visualization and Humanities Research, Call for papers for a special issue of Archives and Museum Informatics. Full papers will be accepted for peer review and possible inclusion in this issue until 30 June 1999. For details, see the web site < http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/armu.guide.html >.
• The Exploratory Workshop on Music Information Retrieval, An ACM SIGIR'99 Workshop, 19 August 1999. Call for participation. Deadline 1 July 1999. See below for details.
• The EDUCAUSE Institute Management Program, 10 - 22 July 1999. For more information, please see the EDUCAUSE web site at < http://www.educause.edu/inst/m992/m992.html >.
• International Conference on Information Visualisation, 14 - 16 July 1999. Please see the conference web site at < http://www.it-link.demon.co.uk/IV99/ > for registration details.

Goings On

• VINE: Call for papers., Deadline for submissions is 16 July 1999.

  VINE, published quarterly by LITC, at South Bank University London, covers all IT applications in libraries and information services. VINE's aim is to publish informative, well-researched writing that will be of immediate practical use to its busy, influential readership. Each issue is an overview of a particular topic.

  A special issue on "Library Services on the Web" is planned, and articles are sought on:

  • views on site promotion
  • systematic evaluations of relevant software such as Web editing software, site management tools etc.
  • 'how tos' on site indexing tools etc.
  • descriptions of XML applications
  • web enabling databases other than OPACs
  • web editing in libraries as a career/job
  • innovative web services

  Contributions from outside the UK are very welcome. For more information please contact Andrew Cox at LITC, coxam@sbu.ac.uk, Phone: +44 (0)171 815 7843 / 7508.

  Background information about LITC and VINE may be found at URL: < http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/ >.

• Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries (DL '99), 11 - 14 August 1999, University of California, Berkeley, California.

  The ACM Digital Library conference is sponsored by ACM SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) and SIGWEB (Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia and Web), and may be described as the major international forum on digital libraries.

  This year, there will be six half-day tutorials on Wednesday, August 11, from which participants may choose.

  1. "Practical Digital Libraries Overview (Part 1)"
     Ian Witten (University of Waikato)
  2. "Multilingual Information Access"
     Judith Klavans (Columbia University)
     and Peter Schauble (Eurospider Information Technology AG)
  3. "XML, RDF, and Metadata for the Web"
     Neel Sundaresan (IBM Almaden Research Center San Jose)
  4. "Practical Digital Libraries Overview (Part 2)"
     Edward Fox (Virginia Tech)
  5. "Thesauri for Knowledge-Based Assistance in Searching Digital Libraries"
     Dagobert Soergel (University of Maryland)
  6. "Searching from Multiple Text Sources in the Internet"
     Clement Yu (University of Illinois at Chicago)
     and Weiyi Meng (State University of New York at Binghamton)

  Twenty-three papers will be presented on August 12th and 13th combined. Please see the conference advance program for a full listing.

  There will also be two panels, one on August 12th and the other on August 13th. They are:

  1. "Visions for a Digital Library for Science, Mathematics, Engineering Technology Education(SMETE)"
     Chair: Alice Agogino (University of California, Berkeley); Panelists: William Y. Arms, Edward A. Fox, Frank Wattenberg, and Flora McMartin
  2. "Digital Library Futures"; Chair: Barry Leiner (CNRI)

  On Saturday, August 14th, there will be five full-day workshops from which to choose. They are:

  1. "Networked Knowledge Organization Systems", Linda L. Hill (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Gail Hodge (Information Intl. Assoc.)

  2. "Organizing Web Space", Robert Wilensky (University of California, Berkeley), Katsumi Tanaka (Kobe University), and Yoshinori Hara (NEC USA)

  3. "Multilingual Information Discovery and Access", Douglas W. Oard (University of Maryland) and Carol Peters (IEI-CNR, Pisa)

  4. "D-Lib Forum Working Group on Metrics for Digital Libraries", Barry Leiner (CNRI)

  5. "Second Summit on International Cooperation in Digital Libraries", Robert Akscyn (KSI, Inc.) and Ian Witten (University of Waikato)

  Please see the conference web site for full details and for registration information and instructions. The web site is located at < http://fox.cs.vt.edu/DL99/ >.

• ACM SIGIR'99 Post-Conference Workshop on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval, 15 - 19 August 1999, Berkeley, California, USA. Call for participation. Deadline for paper or statement of interest is 18 June 1999.

  Last year's workshop on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval was very successful, and since the field is advancing so rapidly, it was felt that an annual workshop would be worthwhile.

  The focus this year is on the required functionality, techniques, and evaluation criteria for multimedia information retrieval systems. The goal of multimedia IR systems is to handle general queries such as "find outdoor pictures or video of Clinton and Gore discussing environmental issues". Answering such queries requires intelligent exploitation of both text/speech and visual content. Multimedia IR is a very broad area covering both infrastructure issues (e.g., efficient storage criteria, networking, client-server models) and intelligent content analysis and retrieval. For this one-day workshop, there will be three focus areas in the intelligent analysis and retrieval area.

  • Focus 1 of the workshop is on integrating information from various media sources in order to handle multimodal queries on large, diverse databases.
  • Focus 2 deals with examples of research using content and organization of multimedia information into semantic classes.
  • Focus 3 of the workshop is on evaluation techniques for multimedia retrieval.

  Additionally, there will be one session discussing MPEG-7 standards and content. By the time of the workshop, the selection committee would have made their choices for standards.

  The workshop will focus on the following specific topics:

  • Content analysis and retrieval from various media (text, images, video, audio).
  • Interaction of modalities (e.g., text, images) in indexing, retrieval.
  • Effective user interfaces (permitting query refinement etc.)
  • Evaluation methodologies for multimedia information. We have found that researchers pay insufficient attention to it.
  • Techniques for relevance ranking.
  • Multimodal query formation/decomposition.
  • Logic formalisms for multimodal queries.
  • Indexing and retrieval from scanned documents - e.g., extracting text from images, word spotting - as a retrieval technique for both handwritten and printed documents.
  • Testbeds for evaluating multimodal retrieval: it would be nice to have some resource sharing here since annotating these, and coming up with a good query set are difficult.

  Two types of participation are expected:

  1. Those interested in making a presentation at this workshop should submit their full papers either in online postscript version or in hardcopy by regular mail to the address given below.
  2. Those interested in participating, but not presenting papers, should submit a statement of interest.

  Both types of submissions are due on Friday, June 18th. All the submissions should be sent to:

  Dr. Rohini K. Srihari
  CEDAR/SUNY at Buffalo
  UB Commons
  520 Lee Entrance, Suite 202
  Amherst, NY 14228 - 2583
  Email: rohini@cedar.buffalo.edu
  Phone: (716) 645-6164 ext. 102 Fax: (716) 645-6176.

  Please see complete information about the workshop, as well as details about submission, at the workshop web site < http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/sigir99/ >.

• Third Summer Institute at the University of New Brunswick: Creating Electronic Texts and Images - a practical "hands-on" exploration of the research, preservation and pedagogical uses of electronic texts and images in the humanities, 15 - 20 August 1999, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Limited enrollment. Early registration recommended.

  The Third Summer Institute is sponsored by the University of New Brunswick Library's Electronic Text Centre and the Department of Archives and Special Collections. The course is designed primarily for librarians and archivists who are planning to develop electronic text and imaging projects; for scholars who are creating electronic texts as part of their teaching and research; and for publishers who are looking to move publications to the Web. Participants should have some experience with the Web and an elementary understanding of HTML

  The course will centre around the creation of a set of electronic texts and digital images. Topics to be covered include:

  • SGML tagging and conversion
  • Using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines
  • The basics of archival imaging
  • The form and implications of XML
  • Publishing SGML on the World Wide Web
  • EAD - Encoded Archival Descriptions

  The Instructor is David Seaman, founding director of the nationally-known Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia. He lectures and writes frequently on SGML, the Internet, and the creation and use of electronic texts. There will be also be one or two guest lecturers.

  Please see the Institute web site for more information as well as registration instructions. The web site is at < http://www.hil.unb.ca/Texts/SGML_course/Aug99/announce3.html >.

• The Exploratory Workshop on Music Information Retrieval, An ACM SIGIR'99 Workshop, 19 August 1999, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA. Call for participation. Deadline 1 July 1999.

  This workshop is intended to bring together Music Information Retrieval (MIR) researchers; Information Retrieval (IR) researchers; computer scientists; musicologists; music bibiliographers; music, digital, and general librarians; and, music providers and music industry members; in the first-ever forum exclusively devoted to issues pertaining to MIR.

  Call for Participation (All interested parties are invited to participate at one or more levels):

  • General Participant
  • Presenter
  • Panelist

  Presentations and/or demonstrations are solicited that cover such topics as:

  • Interface methods (e.g., singing, notation, keyboard, etc.)
  • Representational issues (e.g., Music Representation Languages, sound files, graphic scores, etc.)
  • User-needs assessment (e.g., consumer use, researcher use, etc.)
  • User/system interaction (e.g., query failures, feedback models, etc.)
  • Informetics (e.g., database properties, query analyses, etc.
  • Evaluation (e.g., MIR specific metrics, application of traditional metrics, etc.)
  • System integration (e.g., development of large-scale systems, identification of real-world MIR situations, etc.)
  • Retrieval approaches (e.g., Boolean, vector space, approximate string matching, etc.)
  • ..and so on...

  Formal papers are not required. However, extended abstracts of approximately 1000 words and appropriate presentation materials (copies of slides, charts, etc.) for inclusion in the workshop information package are sought.

  Send all expressions of interest, proposals, and questions, to the Workshop Chair whether you want to participate as a General Participant, Presenter and/or Panelist. The Workshop Chair is J. Stephen Downie, and he should be contacted via email jdownie@uiuc.edu as soon as possible. See the workshop web site at < http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~jdownie/cfp99.html > for more information about the workshop as well as complete submission instructions.

• 65th IFLA Conference, On the Threshold of the 21st Century: Gateways to an Inlightened World, 20 - 28 August 1999, Bangkok, Thailand.

  "The 65th IFLA Conference in Thailand proposes that the international library community commit itself to meet the challenges of building a more enlightened world by focusing on the quality of its collection, contents and services, reaching out to all levels and strengthening its position in the dynamic global information market place." A listing of the sub-topics of the conference include:

  1. Strengthening the Gateway
     1.1   Legal aspects of information access
     1.2   Library staff education and training
     1.3   Affordable and efficient communication links
     1.4   Education at all levels as a component of the lifelong learning process
  2. Assuring the Quality and Quantity of Information
     2.1   Development of quality information sources
     2.2   Development of 'search engines' and other means to access information sources
     2.3   The changing roles of Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC) and Universal Availability of Publications (UAP)
     2.4   Publishing in all media for an enlightened world
     2.5   Conservation of documentary heritage and provision of wider access
  3. Networking for "Quality of Life"
     3.1   Libraries for peace and conflict resolution
     3.2   Libraries for cultural development and aesthetic appreciation
     3.3   Libraries for healthy bodies and wholesome minds
     3.4   Environment and culture information networks
     3.5   Networking services for the disadvantaged and abused

  The conference programme and proceedings may be found at < http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/65cp.htm >, and there one may links to some of the papers that will be presented at the conference. The conference programme page is being continuously updated.

  Please see the conference web site at < http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/65the.htm > for links to registration and other information.

• 1999 Annual Conference of the Association for History and Computing, 14 - 16 September 1999, King's College London, England, UK. Early registration is recommended.

  This conference aims to provide a forum for the discussion of any aspects of the use of Information and Computer Technology in History, such as the World Wide Web. In particular, it will focus on the creation and use of digital representations of historical resources and the effects of computer-based technologies on historical scholarship and on teaching history.

  Conference themes include:

  Creation and use of digital representations of historical sources:

  • the roles of scholars, archives and funding bodies
  • the World Wide Web: publication, ownership and accessibility
  • preservation of both original sources and their digital representations
  • digital source material and the impact on historical methodologies
  • design and modelling

  Effects of computer-based technologies on historical scholarship and teaching:

  • case studies, e.g.:
  • exploring the impact of computer based historical research on specific historical themes
  • design and modelling issues for certain types of source materials
  • the roles of the researcher, publisher and funding bodies
  • evaluating the impact of ICT on historical scholarship
  • pedagogical approaches to teaching history using ICT

  The conference will take place over three days (14 - 16 September 1999) and will offer:

  • a conference programme containing plenary sessions with invited keynote speakers, panel discussions and parallel sessions with academic, reviewed papers.
  • an exhibition and demonstration area, which will include poster-sessions presenting work in progress, software demonstrations, and stands for national services and publishers.
  • Annual General Meeting of the UK Branch of the Association for History and Computing, to which all members are invited. 
  • following the conference (afternoon of 16 September 99) a half day workshop "Designing flexible digital representations of historical source materials" is being offered by the History Data Service. You can register for this workshop using the conference registration.

  The conference will overlap with the annual international conference "Digital Resources in the Humanities" which is to take place at King's College London 12 - 15 September 1999. A summary timetable at < http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/drhahc/regis/drhahctt.htm > showing the schedule for both conferences is available.

• Digital Resources for the Humanities, DRH'99, 12 - 15 September 1999, King's College London, UK.

  The Digital Resources for the Humanities conferences are a major forum all those affected by the digitization of common cultural heritage including: scholars, teachers publishers librarians, curators, archivists, and computer or information science specialists. The conference will take place over three intensive days and will include academic papers, panel discussions, technical reports, and software demonstrations. Attendees may choose from five subject tracks. A full listing of papers to be presented, along with abstracts for the papers may be found at the conference web site. A random sample of papers is below, but one should visit the web site to see the entire listing of approximately 60 papers and 16 panels, too many to list here:

  • (Royal Holloway University of London): "Digital Theatre with the two dimensional screen"
  • Nigel Williamson(University of Sheffield): "The Digitisation of Oriental Language"
  • John Page (El Colegio de Mexico): "Computer Generated Analytical Indices for the Zuozhuan"
  • Graham Every (Database Publishing Systems Ltd): "Extending the TEI Lite DTD to support Electronic Delivery"
  • Christopher Bailey (University of Northumbria): "Compare and Contrast: the impact of digital image technology on art history"
  • Nanna Floor Clausen (The Danish Data Archives): "Theory and practice in electronic delivering of data materials"
  • David R. Chesnutt (University of South Carolina): "How Much is Enough? Intellectual Access in the Digital Age"
  • Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp (U.I.A.)): "Hypertext and the Encyclopaedic Novel: Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Mann's Doktor Faustus"
  • Michael Fischer (University of Kent): "Dynamic document mark-up: adaptive coding for wide-ranging research"
  • Jean Anderson et al. (University of Glasgow): "Research questions and opportunity costs: the digitisation of Middle English manuscripts and the Middle English Grammar Project"
  • Joanne Lomax Smith and Simon Tanner (Higher Education Digitisation Service): "Digitisation: how much does it really cost"
  • Gavin Burnage (University of Cambridge) "Authentic Speech, Scripted Speech, and Language Learning Software: Some lessons from the Cambridge German Video Project"
  • José Carlos Ramalho (University of Minho): "Recovering old paper historical documents through SGML/XML modelling"
  • Kevin Ashley (ULCC/NDAD): "Preserving the history of Government computing: social and technological change"
  • Peter Tilley: "Experiences of Importing and Adapting Outside Data Sources and Assessing their Reliability and Usefulness"
  • Gwendal Auffret (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA)): "Digitizing TV and Radio Archives: supporting scholarship by providing new means of access to audiovisual documents"
  • Frank Crompton: "Developing, Implementing and Evaluating Distance Learning in History Teaching: A report on the CHIC Project at University College Worcester"
  • Sally Jo Cunningham (University of Waikato): "A distributed digital library for Indigenous Peoples information"
  • Gregory Crane (Tufts University): "The Electronic Bolles Archive on the History and Topography of London: Phase I"
  • Elisabeth Burr (Gerhard-Mercator Universität GH Duisburg): "Corpora in the teaching of linguistics"

  Registration for DRH '99 Conference is now open, and early registration is advised, as the number of places is limited. Online registration is available at the conference web site < http://www.kcl.ac.uk >.

• Rethinking Cultural Publications: Digital, Multimedia, and other 21st Century Strategies, 15 - 17 September 1999, Washington, D.C., USA.

  Rethinking Cultural Publications: Digital, Multimedia, and other 21st Century Strategies

  Contributed by:
  Gay Tracy
  Northeast Document Conservation Center

  This conference will take place at the Carmichael Auditorium, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution on 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. It is presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center and sponsored by the National Park Service Museum Management Program with support from NPS Cultural Resources Training Initiative. Cosponsors are the National Museum of American History and the Office of the Counselor to the Secretary for Electronic Communications and Special Projects, Smithsonian Institution.

  What will be taught?

  The conference provides attendees with the basics of how to prepare digital, multi-media and paper publications on cultural collections for museums, archives, libraries, centers, and other historic preservation resources. Rethinking Cultural Publications presents ways in which institutions can share rich cultural heritage collections and information with diverse communities. The agenda gives participants the tools to create publications that feature collections, research, and knowledge for the general public, scholars, educators, students, and professional colleagues.

  Topics include:

  • How are Democracy and Culture Linked?
  • How to Develop an Appropriate Topic
  • What are the Elements of a Publication Project?
  • How to Reach Diverse Communities
  • How to Manage Publication Projects
  • How to Produce a Web Site
  • How to Bring Visitors to Your Site
  • What are the Legal Issues of Publications?
  • How to Select Media and Formats
  • How to Use Durable Media
  • How to Select an Editor, Designer and Publisher
  • How to Fund Publications

  Who should attend?

  Participants from across the United States and internationally will attend this conference. Cultural resources managers, librarians, curators, registrars, media and information management specialists, publications and public relations staff, collections care personnel, archivists, educators, students, historians, interpreters, records managers, fund raisers and others will find this innovative conference of significant value.

  Who are the faculty?

  Orlando Bagwell, WGBH Public Broadcasting of Boston; David Beacom, National Geographic Society; Spencer Crew, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History; Steve Dalton, Northeast Document Conservation Center; W. Ralph Eubanks, Library of Congress; Anne Gilliland-Swetland, University of California, Los Angeles; Mark Holmes, National Geographic Interactive; Henry Kelly, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Carla Mattix, US Department of the Interior; Brett Miller, Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius, L.L.P.; Judy Metro, Yale University Press; Barbara Moore, National Gallery of Art; Hugh O'Connor, American Association of Retired Persons; Mark Oviatt, National Park Service; Marc Pachter, Smithsonian Institution; Patricia Pasqual, The Foundation Center; Steve Puglia, National Archives and Records Administration; Anthony Seeger, Smithsonian Institution; Beverly Sheppard, Institute of Museum and Library Services; Andrea Stevens, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service; Kate Stevenson, National Park Service; and Roy Tennant, University of California, Berkeley.

  Who organized the conference?

  The conference was organized by the National Park Service's Museum Management Program, and produced with support from NPS Cultural Resources Training Initiative. The conference is co-sponsored by the National Museum of American History and the Office of the Counselor to the Secretary for Electronic Communications and Special Projects, Smithsonian Institution. Other cosponsors include the American Association of Museums, Library of Congress, the National Digital Library, and the Getty Information Institute. It is being managed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center.

  What does it cost?

  The cost of the conference is $240 for early bird registration, post marked on or before August 4, 1999 and $300 for late registration, postmarked on or before August 25, 1999. A reduced registration fee of $135 is available to a limited number of National Park Service and Smithsonian Institution staff on a first-come-first-served basis who register, on or before July 23, 1999.

  Where can I find additional information?

  The full agenda and registration information is posted on NEDCC's web site at < http://www.nedcc.org >.

  For information on registration and to request a flier contact Gay Tracy at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, 100 Brickstone Square, Andover, MA 01810; 978 470-1010; email tracy@nedcc.org.

• Electronic Book '99 Conference: Second Annual Workshop, "The Next Chapter", 21 - 22 September 1999, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.

  The workshop will feature topics to include: handheld, paperless electronic books, web-based electronic books, new technologies, progress on the Open Electronic Book Standards Committee, electronic rights management issues, and the latest new advances. Speakers will include publishers, display manufacturers, storage developers, authors, end-users, software tool developers, and educators. There will be an evening reception and numerous exhibits.

  Scheduled speakers include:

  • Johann Berquist
    Senior Technology Analyst, Asian Technology Information Program
  • Richard Curtis
    President, E-Rights
  • Tatsuo Kobayashi
    President, E-Book Consortium, Japan
  • Rocky Laroia
    Manager of Strategy and Planning, IBM Mobile Storage
  • Minor (Patrick) Ohara
    Smart Media, Toshiba Corporation

  Please see the workshop web site at < http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook99/ > for full information.

• Preservation Options in a Digital World: To Film or to Scan, 21 - 23 September 1999, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

  This workshop is funded in part by the National Endowment for Humanities and is hosted by the Nebraska State Historical Society.

  Digital technologies will have a profound impact on the way institutions provide access to information. But will digitization also become a tool of the preservation community? NEDCC's reformatting workshop will address this question.

  The workshop will explore two reformatting technologies: preservation microfilming and digital imaging. The similarities and marked differences of the technologies will be compared and evaluated. The faculty will discuss lessons learned from preservation microfilming projects that can be applied to digital imaging projects.

  The workshop is designed to train project administrators in institutions to plan, implement, and manage reformatting projects. Instruction will focus on decision making skills. Compliance with national standards and RLG guidelines for preservation microfilming will be emphasized and the "best practice" for digital projects will be discussed. It is not a technician training program. The program teaches skills for:

  • planning reformatting projects
  • selecting and preparing materials
  • microfilm technology
  • introductory digital imaging technology
  • inspection and quality control
  • evaluating digital imaging for preservation

  Registration Information: The cost of the workshop is $250. Attendance is limited to 18 participants accepted on a first-come-first-served basis. The number of applicants from one institution will be limited. The registration fee of $250 includes a copy of Introduction to Imaging, by Howard Besser & Jennifer Trant. A flier with the complete agenda and registration form is on NEDCC’s web site at < http://www.nedcc.org >. Click on conferences and workshops. For other information, contact Sona Naroian at sona@nedcc.org.

• Digitisation of European Cultural Heritage: Products - Principles - Techniques, 21 - 23 October 1999, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

  Digitisation of European Cultural Heritage

  Contributed by:
  Anne Muller
  Assistant Executive Secretary ECPA

  This Symposium is being organised by the Institute for Information Science (formerly Computer and Humanities) of Utrecht University and the Utrecht University Library.

  During the last decade, successful digitisation projects from various European countries have provided access to a wealth of historical and cultural sources in electronic form. These projects show a number of different approaches, some of which represent well-known standard solutions, while others may be innovative or obscure. To explore this variety is one aim of this symposium. Nevertheless, the assumption is that these projects have a number of underlying principles in common, which together define a "European" approach to digitisation that differs from the "Anglo-Saxon" approach practised in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.

  Methodological themes are investigated in a series of plenary papers to be read by Jörgen van den Berg, Andrea Bozzi, Pedro Gonzalez, Anne R. Kenney, Frank Klaproth, Adolf Knoll, Dominique Maillet, Michael Pidd, Bas Savenije, and Abby Smith. A number of projects will be discussed separately in small-group sessions with opportunities for discussion and hands-on experience. Among these projects are the ESAC Folksong Corpus, Thesaurus Musicarum Italicarum, World of Peter Stuyvesant, Illuminated Manuscripts of the Dutch Royal Library, and the Norwegian Digital Radio Archive. Many other projects will be informally demonstrated.

  The symposium will be held at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The participation fee is DFL 750 or 340 Euro; coffee, tea, three lunches, reception and the Conference Dinner are included in the fee. Accommodation can be reserved through the Congress Bureau of Utrecht University.

  The programme, registration form and further information can be found at < http://candl.let.uu.nl > under the heading "events". The symposium's web pages will be regularly updated. For further information about the contents please contact Hans Mulder (h.mulder@library.uu.nl) or Frans Wiering (f.wiering@let.uu.nl). Practical questions should be directed to Muriël van Campen of the Congress Bureau at (mca@fbu.uu.nl).

Pointers in this Column

16th Annual Symposium & Open House, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland Institute of Advanced Computer Studies, 17 - 18 June 1999, College Park, Maryland, USA.	http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/
1999 Annual Conference of the Association for History and Computing, 14 - 16 September 1999, King's College London, England, UK.	http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/ahcuk99/index.htm
65th IFLA Conference, On the Threshold of the 21st Century: Gateways to an Inlightened World, 20 - 28 August 1999, Bangkok, Thailand.	http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla65/65the.htm
A Feasibility Study for the JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI)	http://heds.herts.ac.uk/Guidance/JIDI_fs.html
A Feasibility Study for the Refugee Studies Programme Digital Library	http://heds.herts.ac.uk/Guidance/RSP_fs.html
ACM SIGIR '99 Workshop on Customised Information Delivery, 19 August 1999, Call for papers. The deadline for submission is 22 June 1999.	http://www.ted.cmis.csiro.au/sigir99/
ACM SIGIR '99 Workshop on Evaluation of Web Document Retrieval, 19 August 1999. Call for papers. The deadline has been postponed to 18 June 1999.	http://www.dei.unipd.it/~ims/sigir99/
ACM SIGIR'99 Post-Conference Workshop on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval, 15 - 19 August 1999. Call for participation. Deadline for paper or statement of interest is 18 June 1999.	http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/sigir99/
ACM SIGIR'99 Post-Conference Workshop on Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval, 15 - 19 August 1999, Berkeley, California, USA.	http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/sigir99/
American Society for Information Science	http://www.asis.org
Celebrating the Freedom to Read! Learn! Connect! - 1999 ALA Annual Conference	http://www.ala.org/events/ac99/index.html
Copyown	http://www.umd.edu/copyown
Council on Library and Information Resources	http://www.clir.org/
Digital Resources for the Humanities, DRH'99, 12 - 15 September 1999, King's College London, UK.	http://www.drh.org.uk/
Digitisation of European Cultural Heritage: Products - Principles - Techniques, 21 - 23 October 1999, Utrecht, The Netherlands.	http://candl.let.uu.nl/events/dech/dech-main.htm
Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents, by Sean Townsend, Cressida Chappell and Oscar Struijve, commissioned by the History Data Service	http://hds.essex.ac.uk/g2gp/digitising_history/index.html
Early Canadiana Online	http://www.canadiana.org
Electronic Book '99 Conference: Second Annual Workshop, "The Next Chapter", 21 - 22 September 1999, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.	http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook99/
European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)	http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa
Exploit Interactive	http://www.exploit-lib.org/
Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries (DL '99), 11 - 14 August 1999, University of California, Berkeley, California.	http://fox.cs.vt.edu/DL99/
Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage, Request for Proposals	http://www.ninch.org/PROJECTS/practice/rfprfp.html
Higher Education Digitisation Service (HEDS)	http://heds.herts.ac.uk/
INET'99: The Internet Global Summit, The Internet Society's 9th Annual Internetworking Conference 22 - 25 June 1999.	http://www.isoc.org/inet99/
Information Processing & Management	http://www.elsevier.nl:80/inca/publications/store/2/4/4
International Conference on Information Visualisation, 14 - 16 July 1999.	http://www.it-link.demon.co.uk/IV99/
Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship	http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/
John Wiley Interscience	http://www.interscience.wiley.com
LITA Top Technology Trends	http://www.lita.org/committe/toptech/trendsmw99.htm
Making Sense of Digital Identifiers for Internet and Other Applications - 1999 LITA Preconference, 25 June 1999.	http://www.lita.org/ac99/precon99.htm
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage	http://www.ninch.org/
NINCH Working Group on Best Practices	http://www.ninch.org/PROJECTS/practice/group2.html
Oxbow Books	http://www.oxbowbooks.com/
Preservation of electronic information: A bibliography, by Michael Day, the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN).	http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lismd/preservation.html
Preservation Options in a Digital World: To Film or to Scan, 21 - 23 September 1999, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.	http://www.nedcc.org
Report on Copyright and Digital Distance Education, U.S. Copyright Office, May 1999, A Report of the Register of Copyrights.	http://www.loc.gov/copyright/cpypub/de_rprt.pdf
Resource for Urban Design Information, provided by Oxford Brookes University.	http://rudi.herts.ac.uk/ http://rudi.herts.ac.uk/deliverables/delivs.html
Rethinking Cultural Publications: Digital, Multimedia, and other 21st Century Strategies, 15 - 17 September 1999, Washington, D.C., USA.	http://www.nedcc.org
Special Issue: Imaging Visualization and Humanities Research, Call for papers for a special issue of Archives and Museum Informatics. Full papers will be accepted for peer review and possible inclusion in this issue until 30 June 1999.	http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/armu.guide.html
Strategies for Digital Data, Findings and recommendations from Digital Data in Archaeology: A Survey of User Needs, by Frances Condron, Julian Richards, Damian Robinson and Alicia Wise, published in 1999 by the Archaeology Data Service, University of York, King's Manor York.	http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/strategies/index.html
Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information, by Marian Dworaczek, University of Saskatchewan Libraries, 1 June 1999.	http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/SUBJIN_A.HTM
The EDUCAUSE Institute Management Program, 10 - 22 July 1999.	http://www.educause.edu/inst/m992/m992.html
The Exploratory Workshop on Music Information Retrieval, An ACM SIGIR'99 Workshop, 19 August 1999, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA. Call for participation. Deadline 1 July 1999.	http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~jdownie/cfp99.html
The Internet Library, a collection of court decisions	http://www.phillipsnizer.com/internetlib.htm
The Publishing of Electronic Scholarly Monographs and Textbooks, by Ray Lonsdale and C.J. Armstrong, April 1998, commissioned by the Electronic Libraries Programme.	http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/studies/elec-pub/elec-pub.htm
Third Summer Institute at the University of New Brunswick: Creating Electronic Texts and Images - a practical "hands-on" exploration of the research, preservation and pedagogical uses of electronic texts and images in the humanities, 15 - 20 August 1999, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.	http://www.hil.unb.ca/Texts/SGML_course/Aug99/announce3.html
Version 25, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., 1 June 1999.	http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
VINE: Call for papers. Deadline for submissions is 16, July 1999.	http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/
Working Together A Workshop for Archivists, Records Managers and Information Technologists, 21 - 22 June 1999.	http://www.cni.org/projects/working.together/

Copyright (c) 1999 Corporation for National Research Initiatives

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DOI: 10.1045/june99-clips