D-Lib Magazine
February 1996

ISSN 1082-9873

Clips and Pointers

D-Lib's Networking Issues group has posted notes from the November Digital Library Initiative (DLI) meeting in Santa Barbara at http://www.isi.edu/~touch/dli95/. This page includes a new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on networking and digital library issues as well as descriptions of related research projects at University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (ISI).

The Open Journal Project in the UK has recently issued the results of a new survey that examines in detail the publishing features of over 80 on-line journals in science, technology, and medicine for the period 1990-1995 (http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/survey/survey.html). The study includes over 100 links to all journals covered and to referenced works. Some of the major topics and questions are:

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, has posted the World Telecommunication Development Report in print and searchable, hypertext versions (http://http://www.itu.ch/wtdr95/index.html). The study " is written from the perspective of the public telecommunication sector" and "deals with the fast, high- capacity communication facilities--information infrastructures--which are being built to handle the ever increasing tide of multimedia (voice, data, image, text and video) traffic" (from "Overview," http://www.itu.ch/wtdr95/ov.htm). Of particular interest is Chapter 5, which contains a succinct overview of the information technology infrastructure: network architecture, optical communications, and terminal equipment (http://www.itu.ch/wtdr95/c5.htm). Other topics covered are pricing models, corporate strategies, and regulation, including privacy, security, and intellectual property.

InterNIC has introduced the Scout Toolkit (http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/), a service designed to help new users find and choose the network tools most appropriate for their needs. Each item selected for inclusion in the Toolkit is previewed with a brief description. Users can use searchable indexes, subject catalogs, and these annotations to decide whether or not to investigate the tool itself, which is linked to the description. A section entitled "Staying Current" offers users ways to stay informed of new Internet resources, while the Specialized Tools section offers more advanced users a view of current and near future graphical, 3D, audio, and video services.

The National Archives and the University of Nebraska Press have mounted a demonstration project (http://www.unl.edu/UP/gof/home.htm) based on their joint effort, Gallery of the Open Frontier, a digital library of images from the collections of the National Archives (NARA), which concern the American West. In the first phase, the project proposes to digitize over 7,000 photographic images. In a subsequent phase, researchers to enlarge the collection to more than 12,000 digitized images, based on inputs from scholars and specialists. More detailed captions will also be provided which might include commentary on the content of the images, enriched identificational and provenance information, and links to relevant resources. The Gallery of the Open Frontier will eventually have two access modes: the public domain system, which will include searchable NARA identifiers and image titles , and an enriched system, which will be offered on a cost-recovery basis to allow for continued development. However for the next year or more, the project expects to provide the enriched resource free of charge to all interested parties.

The 19th Century Women Writers Web (19CWWW) has mounted an innovative, on-line exhibit of 19th century American art from the Carnegie Museum's permanent collection (http://www.clever.net/19cwww/exhibit.html). This is the first time the Carnegie has allowed items from its collection to be displayed on line, and to protect the originals from unauthorized reproductions, the museum has required the exhibit designers to present the full views of the works in greyscale. Innovative features of the exhibit include: real-time audio descriptions of the works of art and their history; links to relevant web sites; and, through a special arrangement with Britannica Online, links to related encyclopedia articles.

Project Bartleby at Columbia University is an electronic publishing project, based around authoritative editions of classic texts in the English language (http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/index.h tml). At present, the items in the collection are dominated by works of poetry but editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and Fowler's The King's English are also included. The project seeks to maintain complete, 100 percent accuracy in the rendering of text, combining proofreading with scanning; free public access to materials in the public domain or for which Columbia has either copyright or license; selection based on educational or community relevance, high literary merit, and representative balance, among other selection criteria; and high standards in use of the electronic format.

The University Library of the University of Abertay Dundee and the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) have instituted Ariadne (http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/ariadne/), a newsletter directed toward librarians in academic libraries. The newsletter reports on developments within the Electronic Libraries Programme of FIGIT and ISSC information services and evaluates Internet-accessible sources and services.

The EduPort Consortium will hold a workshop as part of the Values Track at the Computer Services Management Symposium '96 (CSMS'96), Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (ACM/SIGUCCS), in St. Louis, March 13 - 15, 1996. The workshop will cover the project to date and address future plans. For further information, see the EduPort Home Page (http://ianrwww.unl.edu/eduport.html and http://www.research.ibm.com/eduport). To subscribe to the EduPort Newsletter, send a note to "[email protected]". The first line of the note should read: "subscribe EduPort Your Name (first & last)". Past issues of the newsletter will be available at the EduPort Home Pages.

Ticer Ltd and Tilburg University, in cooperation with Elsevier Science, have announced the First International Summer School on the Digital Library to be held in Tilburg, the Netherlands, August 4-16, 1996. Ticer was founded by Tilburg University in 1995 to make the university's expertise on digital libraries and information technology infrastructure available to third parties. The summer school is focused on mid-level and experienced librarians and at faculty of library schools. For additional information, see the home page of Ticer B.V.: http:/www.kub.nl:2080/ticer/, or via e-mail: [email protected].

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