From D-Lib Forum
September 1995

William Y. Arms
Chair, D-Lib Forum

This month, the major news item is:

Additions to the Technology Playpen this month include:

Additions to the information base include:

One of the most important events in digital library research this year was a workshop sponsored by the U.S. Government's Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA) Working Group. The workshop brought together a number of leading researchers to create the agenda for digital library research. The workshop was chaired by Hector Garcia-Molina of Stanford University and Clifford Lynch of the Univeristy of California.

Everybody with serious interests in digital library research should read the report of the workshop. It is a long and thoughtful report, full of careful analysis and recommendations.

If you would like to contribute to any of the D-Lib Forum information base, please contact us at dlib@cnri.reston.va.us.

The Technology Playpen

The Technology Playpen is a collection of new technology of interest to digital library researchers. Typically this is work that is not yet ready for wide spread deployment. It runs on a limited number of computer types and you may need to download specific software before you can use it.

This month the Technology Playpen has added a demonstrations of the ComMentor system from Stanford University, which was described in the August issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Click here to go to the Technology Playpen.

Working Groups in Digital Library Research

One of principal activities of the D-Lib Forum is to stimulate the formation of working groups to address specific topics of Digital Library research. Several of these groups are continuation of work from the federally funded Computer Science Technical Reports project and the Digital Library Initiative. The following working groups in Digital Library research are currently associated with D-Lib. Other groups are being formed and will be reported in future issues of D-Lib Magazine.

National Computer Science Technical Reports Library (NCSTRL)

Purpose:

The NCSTRL Working Group is building an operational, state-of-the-art, distributed library of technical reports in computing and related disciplines. It provides a test bed for early deployment of digital library research, and for exploring the organizational issues of a large scale distributed library. NCSTRL builds on Dienst, which was part of the Computer Science Technical Reports project, and the Waters project.

Chair:

Dean Krafft, Cornell University.
dean@cs.cornell.edu

Further information:

National Computer Science Technical Reports Library

Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information

Purpose:

Prepare and distribute a report which frames the key problems to be resolved in order to ensure continuing access to electronic digital records and other information indefinitely into the future. The Task Force's initial draft Report has just been issued.

Chairs:

John R. Garrett, Corporation for National Research Initiatives
jgarrett@cnri.reston.va.us
Donald Waters, Yale University
donald.waters@yale.edu

Sponsors:

The Commission on Preservation and Access
The Research Libraries Group

Handle User Group

Purpose:

A handle is a unique identifier for a digital object. The Handle User Group is to assist early users of the system and to provide feedback for the development team.

Chair:

William Arms, CNRI.
warms@cnri.reston.va.us

Further information:

Handles and the Handle System.

Here are pointers to some of the major cooperative projects and associated activities in digital library research.

Federally funded cooperative projects

The NSF/ARPA/NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI). Six federal funded projects in digital library research, with partnerships led by universities. The individual projects are listed below.

University of California, Berkeley: An Electronic Environmental Library Project. (A DLI project.)

University of California, Santa Barbara: The Alexandria Project: Towards a Distributed Digital Library with Comprehensive Services for Images and Spatially Referenced Information. (A DLI project.)

Carnegie Mellon University: Informedia: Integrated Speech, Image and Language Understanding for Creation and Exploration of Digital Video Libraries. (A DLI project.)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Building the Interspace: Digital Library Infrastructure for a University Engineering Community. (A DLI project.)

University of Michigan: The University of Michigan Digital Library Project. (A DLI project.)

Stanford University: Stanford University Digital Libraries Project. (A DLI project.)

The Computer Science Technical Reports Project (CSTR). A collaboration involving CNRI, five universities, and the Library of Congress.

D-Lib. A forum for researchers and developers of advanced digital libraries.

Coordinating and funding bodies

NASA's Digital Library Technology Project. A project that supports the development of new technologies to facilitate public access to NASA data via computer networks.

The Coalition for Networked Information. A joint project of the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM to promote information resources in networked environments.

The Internet Engineering Task Force. The protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet.

The World Wide Web Consortium. The W3 Consortium exists to develop common standards for the evolution of the World Wide Web.

Please send questions and comments about D-Lib to: dlib@cnri.reston.va.us.

William Y. Arms
Chair, D-Lib Forum

hdl://cnri.dlib/september95-news
wya
September, 1995