Coalition of Networked Information Task Force Meeting

Citation

Rader, H.B. (2002), "Coalition of Networked Information Task Force Meeting", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919bac.006

Coalition of Networked Information Task Force Meeting

Hannelore B. Rader

The Coalition of Networked Information (CNI) held their annual Fall Task Force Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, November 29-30, 2001. Appropriately, San Antonio offered a wonderful holiday setting for the more than 240 participants, representing approximately 216 member institutions and several vendors.

CNI was founded in 1990 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), CAUSE and EDUCOM, the latter two groups having merged to create EDUCAUSE.

The Coalition is guided by the following mission:

CNI is an organization to advance the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.

The organizations represented within CNI are concerned with the use of digital information in higher education, networked information content and applications using the Internet for scholarship research and educational partnerships. CNI is supported by a taskforce of more than 200 dues-paying member institutions. The task force meets twice a year to address three central themes:

1. 1.

   Developing and managing networked information content.

2. 2.

   Transforming organizations, professions and individuals.

3. 3.

   Building technology, standards and infrastructure.

In addition, CNI engages in advocacy and consultative activities.

CNI Executive Director, Clifford Lynch, presided over the opening plenary session, and addressed key developments in networked information, discussed progress within the CNI agenda and summarized CNI's program plan for 2001-2002, available at http://www.cni.org

Lynch spoke about broadband development problems and what is really needed in this roller-coaster environment. He underscored the importance of universities in peer-to-peer computing, determining which files to share. He described trust issues, network problems and Internet 2 issues. He outlined various scenarios related to digital libraries and their involvement in teaching and research, particularly, in the distance education environment. Lynch also presented issues related to intellectual property rights in terms of faculty and students, course-management systems, privacy concerns within the digital world and scholarly communication.

Highlights from the 2001-2002 program activities for CNI include:

• •

  Continue work with the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH), a broad coalition of arts, humanities and social science groups.

• •

  Address the development and management of networked information content.

• •

  Work with national and international institutions, particularly in the UK, Germany and Sweden on digitizing theses and dissertations and other initiatives.

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  Continue metadata initiatives with OCLC, access to multimedia through Internet 2, and digital preservation.

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  Foster dialog and collaboration among information professionals to preserve electronic records and archives, to assess networking and networked information resources, services and research.

• •

  Explore distance education and instructional technologies in higher education.

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  Work with other nations to shape strategies for creating large-scale digital content resources.

• •

  Continue involvement with key areas of standards and infrastructure development.

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  Explore architectural contexts for new academic platforms.

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  Work on authentication, authorization and access management related to electronic information.

• •

  Create an image retrieval image database.

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  Foster dialog and collaboration among information professionals from all disciplines.

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  Support new initiatives on collaborations for joint service points and teaching and learning centers including assessment activities.

• •

  Address electronic records management issues.

More information regarding CNI programs can be found at http://www.cni.org

William Arms, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, gave the closing plenary address. He spoke about "the National SMETE Digital Library."

A total of 35 project briefings provided an excellent snapshot of current digital activities related to higher education and national library activities. Below are highlights of the briefings:

• •

  Mellon digital archives project. Don Waters, Mellon Foundation, Dale Flecker, Harvard University, Anne Kenney and Nancy McGovern, Cornell University reported on their initiative to create digital archives of electronically published journals and the overall progress of these efforts. They emphasized the technical architecture of e-journal archives, collaborative agreements with publishers, economic issues and other conditions.

• •

  Digital libraries and the classroom. Stephen Griffin, National Science Foundation, Alice Colban, Norman Wiseman and Rachel Bruce, UK Joint Information Systems Committee, described their joint program in the UK and the USA to reform education for undergraduates using new information technologies and Internet resources.

• •

  A public repository of storage and distribution of biomedical images. Paul Bain and Rick Rogers, Harvard University described the development of a publicly accessible repository and retrieval system of original digital micrographs, the Biomedical Image Library, to support basic biological research. A central, comprehensive catalog will help access this digital repository's holdings.

• •

  Experiments in digital publishing at Dartmouth College. John James from Dartmouth College described two collaborative projects in digital publishing, an online journal in linguistics including audio and video content and an online facsimile of a fifteenth century manuscript in astronomy.

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  Big questions in academic libraries. Mary Reichel, Appalachian University, Mary Ellen Davis, Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) led a discussion on major issues facing academic libraries at the beginning of the twenty-first century in a digital and changing higher education environment. Many issues related to academic librarians were identified and these will be analyzed and prioritized in future forums within ACRL.

• •

  UT' s digital media service and the studio: partnership approaches to digital media creation. Barbara Dewey, University of Tennessee, described the production of models for digital image deployment related to teaching, learning, and the creation of multimedia scholarship. http://digitalmedia.utk.edu; http://www.lib.utk.edu/mediacenter/

• •

  Integrating enterprise software with the library. Charles McMorran, Queens Borough Public Library, described the library's use of an enterprise software solution for finance and human resources management in a large and complex public library system.

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  Museum/library collaboration: Making digital objects accessible. Nancy Allen, University of Denver, discussed collaborative projects among 48 museums and libraries in Colorado to create digital objects from their special collections. http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/gateway.html

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  Academic integrity: Is it attitude or the Internet? Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE, looked at new ways to stop plagiarism on college campuses by reviewing current concerns about cheating and which tools to use to detect plagiarism.

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  Attributes of a trusted digital repository: Meeting the needs of research resources. Robin Dale, Research Libraries Group and Meg Bellinger, OCLC discussed a recent report related to attributes of a digital archive built on the emerging international standard of the Open Archival Information System reference model.

• •

  Access strategies for digital video and digital rights management. Grace Agnew, Georgia Tech and Mairead Martin, University of Tennessee provided an overview of the current status and future directions of the Video Development Initiative using Dublin Core and MPEG7 for improved asset management of intellectual property and privacy.

• •

  Authentication and authorization from library public workstations. Suzanne Thorin, Phyllis Davidson and Mark Bruhn from Indiana University described how Indiana University libraries require authentication for public workstations in 20 campus libraries. They reported that they have few complaints and no security breaches. http://www.itpo.iu.edu/IT07.html

• •

  Beyond LibQUAL+: Assessing service quality in the information technology and digital library environments. Fred Heath, Texas A&M University, Duane Webster and Julia Blixrud, Association of Research Libraries, reported on the first-year experimentation with LibQUAL+ to measure libraries' service quality. This grant-funded initiative is of much interest to libraries and 43 libraries are participating in the first year. http://www.arl.org/libqual/

• •

  Open linking and the open URL standard. Eric Van de Velde, California Institute of Technology and Harry Samuels, Endeavor Information Systems, described Open Links, high-quality links that take user requestors from a citation to a destination. They introduced open linking, open URL and the work of NISO Committee AX. http://www.sfxit.com/OpenURL

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  Open borders: Northwestern's joint library/IT effort in faculty support. Bob Taylor and Diane Perushek from Northwestern University discussed a renovated floor in the library that unites collection management, academic technologies and digital media services into one space.

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  Delivering online library and museum exhibits: Overview of the smartweb project. Gabrielle Michalek, Carnegie Mellon University, presented an overview of prototypes for a new form of collaboration between libraries, museums and other collection holders to have more effective educational outreach to the public.

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  Computer and network security on campus: New visibility for an old problem. Daniel Updegrove, University of Texas, Austin and Steve Worona, EDUCAUSE, described a System Security Task Force to help colleges and universities focus on their computer security problems by identifying a variety of approaches for cost-effective improvement. Provide problems and promising solutions.

• •

  Building and integrated agent-oriented catalog. Kristin Antelman and Nathan Denny of the University of Arizona described a project at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library to create a virtually integrated catalog implemented as a multi-agent system. This model provides an open framework to create a single virtual catalog from distributed data sources.

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  Integrity of "Publications" on the Web and demands for post-publication revision. Clifford Lynch, CNI, described the continued stream of challenges faced by placing archival material on the Web, indexed by search engines. He discussed experiences related to the current situation involving industry, scanning the Web for sites which hold text containing phrases and trade marks and then sending threatening letters demanding removal of the text or payment of license fees.

• •

  21st Century Literacies. Howard Besser and Sheila Afnan-Manns from UCLA provided an update on the current activities of the UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies. They described workshops and curricula for education and information specialists, narrowing the digital divides and building adaptive systems to deliver content to different user groups.

The CNI Fall 2001 Task Force Meeting was highly educational as well as challenging. The sessions were informative, technologically advanced and most appropriate and useful for managers of academic libraries, computing centers and digital initiatives.

Hannelore Rader­ (h.rader@louisville.edu) is the Director of Libraries, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.