Issues In Science and Technology Librarianship 001 (March 1992) URL = ftp://ftp.lib.ncsu.edu/pub/stacks/sts/sts-001 ------------->> ---------- ---- -- ##### ####### ##### - # # # - # # # S - ##### # ##### T ELECTRONIC - # # # S COMMUNICATIONS -- # # # ---- ##### # ##### --------- ----------------------->> ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LIBRARIANSHIP March 1992 Number 1 __________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS: FROM THE EDITOR: lines 49-112 FROM THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR--GUEST COLUMN--BARBARA VON WAHLDE, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, SUNY AT BUFFALO: lines 113-213 STS ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PRESS RELEASES: lines 214-609 STS PROGRAM PLANNING COMMITTEE STS OBERLY AWARD COMMITTEE FROM NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY FROM UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA FROM KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, NEW MEXICO FROM RESEARCH LIBRARIES GROUP DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND THE CHANGING ROLE OF LIBRARIES: lines 610-765 BY SUSAN M. STEARNS, FAXON RESEARCH SERVICES, INC. RLG AND THE SCIENCES: lines 766-954 BY CONNIE GOULD, PROGRAM OFFICER FOR PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT, RLG CATCHING UP IN LIBRARY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EAST-EUROPE: HUNGARY BY KAROLY KOKAS, UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF SZEGED, HUNGARY: lines 955-1051 A CONFERENCE FOR THE EXPLORATION OF A NATIONAL ENGINEERING INFORMATION SERVICE (NENGIS) PROVIDED BY THE COUNCIL ON LIBRARY RESOURCES: lines 1052-1492 CNI SPRING '92 REPORT BY JOHN SAYLOR, ENGINEERING LIBRARIAN, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: lines 1493-1854 __________________________________________________________________________ FROM THE EDITOR: You may notice the date on this issue is March 1992 because that is when I hoped to get it out. However we are still working out the mechanics of putting it together and distributing it. I hope you will find this issue informative and worth the delay. I want to thank all of you for your responses and suggestions. In future issues I will discuss in more detail how Issues In Science And Technology Librarianship is evolving but I need to be brief in this issue so as not to delay delivery anymore then it has been. Thanks to all the authors who sent in contributions for this issue. I hope Barbara von Wahlde's guest column, From The Director's Chair, will encourage other directors to offer their opinions about some of the issues Barbara raises and/or add to them. I would like to make this a regular column. Finally I want to welcome John Saylor of Cornell University to our editorial board. MAKING ISTL MORE INTERACTIVE I would like to encourage our readers to submit ideas and suggestions for articles and topics to be discussed in ISTL. We have divided up the responsibilities for submitting articles as follows: ACCESS SERVICES ISSUES: If you are interested in contributing an article in this area contact Gregg Sapp--ALIGS@MTSUNIX1.BITNET--Montana State University. We are interested in both operational and philosophical articles to include document delivery, circulation, reserves, systems, microforms etc. VIRTUAL LIBRARIANSHIP: John Saylor, Engineering Librarian, Cornell University will accept submissions in this area at--JOHN_SAYLOR@QMRELAY.MAIL.CORNELL.EDU. This would include navigating the network and computer mediated collaboration using the network. We also want to address collection development (building archival multimedia databases) and reference issues in the network environment. CONFERENCE AND WORKSHOP REPORTS: Have you attended or will you be attending a conference or workshop of interest to other science and technology librarians? Have you learned some new computerized searching techniques at a training session recently? If you would like to submit a report on a conference, workshop, or training session, send your submissions to Lynn Kaczor, Technical Library, Sandia National Laboratories--LKACZOR@HAL.UNM.EDU. PRESS RELEASES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS: I am interested in receiving press releases and announcements that are of particular interest to science and technology librarians. You may send them to Harry LLull--ACRLSTS@HAL.UNM.EDU. Other ideas or submissions that do not fit into any of the above categories may also be sent to me. If you are interested in submitting an article to ISTL in any of these areas, first send your name and suggestion to one of the members of the editorial board and we will get back to you. Articles may vary from one to three pages. We are looking for articles that can present issues in a concise, informative, and thorough way. At this point, we intend to send out ISTL five times a year: March, May, August, October and December. In June and January, we will be sending out the pre-ALA STS Update. Harry LLull University of New Mexico ACRLSTS@HAL.UNM.EDU _____________________________________________________________________________ {============} { } { } { } { } FROM THE { } -------------------------------------------- / D I R E C T O R ' S \ /----------------------------------------------\ || | { } | || || | { C H A I R } | || || | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | || || | ( ) | || || | ( ) | || || | ( ) | || || %%%%%%%% || || @ @ || BY: Barbara von Wahlde, Associate Vice President for University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo. It is with pleasure and some trepidation that I accepted the opportunity to fill the "hot seat" of the Director's Chair column as the first contributor. Collection development concerns, personnel and training issues, the evolvement of the electronic library, high journal costs, and changes in scholarly communication, and telecommunication needs, are just a few of the potential topics to be explored through this column. I would like to focus on one particular area that interests me and absorbs much of my energy since becoming a library director in 1986. A recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 22, 1992) had an article "Triple Somersaults by the Daring Dean on the Flying Trapeze", about an assistant dean, Jim Carter, at the University of Louisville. Mr. Carter, a gymnast, flies on a trapeze and has performed with a professional trapeze group. While there are moments when all administrators may believe they are flying through the air not knowing whether or not they will be able to grab the bar, I view my own experience over the last six years as that of being the library juggler. I don't have skills as a trapeze artist, but I've had a lot of experience in trying to deal with the juggling part of the library director position. By juggling, I mean balancing a number of diverse interests in the libraries and academic community. Different disciplines and schools have different needs and expectations of the library. It is achieving balance and equity in these diverse areas that creates tension for the library administrator. Provosts or chief academic officers and collection development heads are jugglers too. Humanities faculty are happiest with large, predominately monographic collections, including primary material and ephemera. Browsing is still a technique utilized by faculty members in the humanities and the social sciences even though libraries instruct in search techniques. Conversely, faculty in the sciences and the technology areas are less interested in large, historical collections and are more concerned about the timeliness and speed with which they can access the latest scientific results or monitor work in progress. In their terms, effective libraries are those with extensive current contents sources; indexing and abstracting services, and access to a wide variety of journal literature which may or may not be on site. Document delivery is a service feature of increasing interest to faculty and researchers who want information delivered to them in some form. The "invisible college" prevails as a working method in some scientific areas. A survey done for the Faxon Institute last spring indicates that many researchers continue to use colleagues for the information that they need before turning to the library. It is this dichotomy between the research behaviors and library needs of humanists, social scientists, and science, technology and health science faculty that exacerbate the juggling problem for the University Libraries. In addition to different ways of seeking information and using information, the services provided for different schools and disciplines often revolve around special needs. Meeting the needs of the university community becomes increasingly complex as resources tighten. The disciplines themselves are merging and integrating in new ways almost daily. Biological sciences can be found in many different departments and schools across a typical university campus. Issues related to fairness and equity of collection resources and services are compounded within the library system when law school libraries and health science libraries are part of the university library family. It is balancing these diverse needs, with spiraling costs and declining resources, that cause the library director to occasionally recognize that the juggling act is producing increased strain on the system. From the Director's Chair, the juggling requires skill fortitude, commitment, and an awareness that the system itself has needs and directions that have to be addressed as well as integrated with the wide variety of special interests on the campus. Communication with different centers, schools, and departments increasingly becomes a major part of the director's job as well as that of individual librarians. Setting the direction for the library system during the next decade also requires an understanding of the direction occurring in many distinct and different fields and within librarianship. Many perspectives need to be analyzed and integrated before making critical resource decisions. Perhaps it is no wonder that occasionally a ball is dropped. While needing to become more expert as a juggler, I have no desire to go further in the academic arena by becoming a trapeze artist too. ____________________________________________________________________ STS ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PRESS RELEASES FROM STS PROGRAM PLANNING COMMITTEE Pre-Conference Tour of the California Marine Mammal Center and the San Francisco Bay Model The STS San Francisco Program Planning Committee will be sponsoring a pre-conference tour of the Marine Mammal Center and the Army Corps of Engineers' San Francisco Bay Model, on Friday, June 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m; reservations for the tour must be made by May 22. The Marine Mammal Center, located on the Marin Headlands, is a rescue and rehabilitation location for wounded and stranded marine mammals from all over the state. Since it will be pupping season in California, many orphaned pups will be in residence. After a no-host lunch at one of the several low-cost and charming restaurants in Sausalito, the tour will move on to the Army Corps of Engineers' San Francisco Bay model, a working-scale model used for tidal and environmental research. The cost of the tour is $18 (lunch is not included), and the registration deadline is May 22, 1992. If you wish to go, send your check to Tae Ock Kim, Michael Orradre Library, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053. Make the check payable to Tae Ock. The tour bus will depart from Moscone Convention Center at 8:30 Friday morning. Don't miss this opportunity to visit two unique facilities of the San Francisco coastal area. FROM STS OBERLY AWARD COMMITTEE The Eunice Rockwood Oberly Memorial Award was established in 1923 to give national recognition to bibliographic scholarship in the field of agricultural or related sciences. The Oberly Award is given in odd-numbered years to authors of an outstanding English-language bibliography in the field of agriculture or one of the related sciences. The bibliographies are judged on accuracy, scope, format, arrangement, indexes and text. To be eligible for the 1993 award, a bibliography must have been published in 1991 or 1992. The award, which is administered by the Oberly Award Committee (Science and Technology Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, ALA) will be presented at the 1993 annual ALA meeting in New Orleans. The award for 1993 consists of a preservation framed certificate honoring each author and a modest cash prize. Eunice Rockwood Oberly, librarian from 1908 to 1921 of the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, is honored by this award which was made possible by a fund established by her colleagues. Recent contributors to the fund include the United States Agricultural Information Network, the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, and the Cargill Information Center. Nomination letters are due by December 1, 1992 to Oberly Jury Chair, Amy Paster, E205 Pattee Library, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802-1801. (phone: (814) 865-3713). A copy of the bibliography should accompany the nomination. FROM NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY The Southwest Center for Codes and Standards was recently established at the New Mexico State University Library. The feebased service center provides access to over one million national and international standards, including military specifications and standards, and state, county, and municipal technical codes. Services include computerized verification and data retrieval, providing standards documents on demand, standards reference services, and foreign language translation of technical material. Unique in its operation the Center expects to expand its services throughout the region, serving engineers, architects, lawyers, construction companies, government agencies, and companies doing business with the federal government or Mexico, as well as other users of standards information. New Mexico State University was designated as a repository for codes and standards in 1991 by Senate Bill 622 introduced and sponsored by State Senator Fernando Macias. According to Charles Townley, Dean of the University Library, "The Center is one of four library units that specializes in unique information: Archives, Special Collections, Government Documents and Codes and Standards. We plan to serve the standards needs of our clients by obtaining national and international documents on a value-added services basis. We will add to our standards collection as funding permits and collect technical codes for New Mexico counties and municipalities." The Library was designated as a depository for federal governments documents in 1907. Documents Librarian Jeanette Smith, who organized the codes and standards office, states that "much standards information is available in governments documents such as Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, and publications of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Coordinated by Ed Mayfield, who had an impressive technical background and years of experience as a consultant to business and industry, the Center will take orders in person, by mail, by telephone or by FAX. Located in Room 417 of the NMSU Branson Hall Library, the Center's hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For further information, please contact Ed at (505) 646-6834 or FAX (505) 646-4335, or write him at the Southwest Center for Codes and Standards, Room 417, New Mexico State University Library, Dept 4375, box 3006, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0006. FROM UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA The Chester Fritz Library of the University of North Dakota has been designated the 67th U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Library. As part of the April 14, 1992, dedication ceremony, staff of the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office held a seminar entitled Accessing Patent And Trademark Information. Topics covered included: What is a trademark, a copyright and a patent; the U.S. patent classification system, its structure and use; and the Patent and Trademark Depository Library services available. Nancy Mulhern is the Patent and Trademark Librarian the University of North Dakota. FROM KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, NEW MEXICO Five of the largest technical and educational libraries in New Mexico signed an agreement on January 27, 1992, pledging to share their resources. Meeting at Kirtland AFB to sign the agreement were the heads of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory. The signing took place a year after Phillips, Los Alamos and Sandia signed a Strategic Alliance--an agreement to collaborate on future technical efforts. A short-term goal of the alliance members is improving access to their joint holdings of scientific and technical journals--more than 6 million books, periodicals and reports. For the long-term, the libraries plan to implement collaborative programs aimed at sharing reference and information services, data bases, networks, document delivery, and collection development and management. The missions of the five organizations have overlapping interests regarding interdisciplinary research and the expansion of their scientific and engineering knowledge-base. Sharing library resources can be a significant factor in furthering research. Declining resources and an interest in leveraging capabilities for more effective and efficient operations were cited as other reasons for joining forces. Through resource-sharing, a large scientific information base is available. For example, the University of New Mexico has access to nearly 2 million books and journals; New Mexico State maintains about 850,000 volumes and 7,000 periodicals. Los Alamos has a collection of more than 250,000 books and journals and nearly 1.5 million reports in hard copy or microfiche. Sandia houses more than 50,000 books, nearly 26,000 volumes of periodicals, and more than 1 million reports in hard copy and microfiche. Phillips has more than 1.5 million books, periodicals and technical reports. FROM RESEARCH LIBRARIES GROUP UMI/DATA COURIER AND RLG ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT Will Offer Access to UMI/Data Courier Databases on RLIN with Article Delivery UMI/Data Courier and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) announce an agreement to offer fixed-cost access to several of UMI/Data Courier's most popular databases. By spring of 1992, searchers on RLIN will be able to access ABI/INFORM, Newspaper Abstracts, Periodical Abstracts, and Dissertation Abstracts for a fixed annual fee. As part of the agreement, RLG and UMI will offer users access to full-text article delivery of UMI's Article Clearinghouse collection of 12,500 titles. Delivery options include first-class mail, express courier, FAX, and Ariel, RLG's new proprietary document-delivery system that enables high-resolution image transmission over the Internet (a communications network connecting many higher-education and research institutions). For more information, contact the RLIN Information Center, e-mail bl.ric@rlg.bitnet or bl.ric@rlg.stanford.edu. RETRO LINK ASSOCIATES TO OFFER FULL-SERVICE RECON BASED ON RLIN DATA The Research Libraries Group (RLG) and Retro Link Associates (RLA) announce a cooperative agreement enabling RLA to use the RLIN database for retrospective conversion services for libraries. RLA now offers libraries records from RLIN in addition to its own 6.5-million-record database, the Princeton Theological Database, and a database of over 14 foreign languages. RLIN provides an online catalog of more than 50 million items held by over 100 of the world's leading research institutions, including books, serials, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, photographs, and computer files. RLIN cataloging in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic characters can also be used in recon projects. RLA customers can also have RLA create original entries, authority control, smart barcodes, and AACR2 upgrades as part of projects to turn their older cataloging into machine-readable form. For more information, contact Christine L. Kirby at RLA, e-mail rlai@byuvax.bitnet BRITISH LIBRARY JOINS RLG Research Libraries Group welcomes first overseas member, opens new chapter of international collaboration MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 3, 1992 -- The Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) is pleased to announce that the British Library has become an RLG general member. In announcing this news, J. Michael Smethurst, the British Library's director general of London Services, said: "We have worked closely with RLG for a number of years, and the time is now right for a closer relationship. We want to develop new ties with the major research libraries and the scholarly community in the United States; because RLG works with both the library-bibliographic world and the scholarly world, it is a good organization for us to be associated with." "The British Library's decision to join," said RLG president James Michalko, "gives us the wonderful opportunity to make real the rhetoric about the internationalization of scholarship. We look forward to working with the British Library staff, and perhaps with some of their European colleagues, to really make global connections among the various communities of scholars that will serve all our interests." Richard De Gennaro, librarian of Harvard University, which also recently became a general member of RLG, welcomed the BL announcement: "This is genuinely exciting news for the North American library community. It signals a new era of cooperation among the major libraries of the U.S. and Western Europe." Two areas of expected collaboration within the RLG framework are collection preservation and the enormous challenge of online access to the world's historic collections, of which those at the British Library and Harvard University are two prime examples. Smethurst commented, "We hope to contribute to the development of improved access to collections, to bibliographic work, and to networking in general. Very often American concepts and technology are on the frontiers of such efforts, and we would like to join RLG there in a shared exploration of new ways of tackling problems." With the British Library an active RLG member, London will become RLG's European hub for telecommunications with its information system, RLIN. This will reduce costs to European institutions that enter data into RLIN. RLG will welcome the chief executive of the British Library, Dr. Brian Lang, to RLG's annual meeting in California on June 25, where he will give the keynote address. For further information, contact Jennifer Hartzell, RLG Director of Corporate Communications, BL.JLH@RLG.BITNET or BL.JLH@RLG.STANFORD.EDU. NEW RLG SERVICE DEBUTS AT RUTGERS AND BYU April 6, 1992 -- CitaDel, the new citation and document-delivery service from the Research Libraries Group (RLG), is being previewed this spring at Rutgers and Brigham Young universities. >From April 6 through May 22, the two RLG-member institutions will provide their campus communities with unlimited online access to five CitaDel files: ABI/INFORM, Periodical Abstracts, Newspaper Abstracts, Ei Page One, and Current Bibliography in the History of Technology. ACCESS TO COMMERCIAL AND SCHOLARLY CITATION DATABASES RLG's CitaDel service provides libraries and campus information networks with online access to some of the most popular commercial and most interesting scholarly citation databases available today. Institutions need only a connection to RLIN (RLG's information network) to be able to subscribe to CitaDel. All loading, maintaining, and updating of CitaDel files is done centrally at RLG, which has optimized the service for multiuser access and quick response. One easy-to-learn, easy-to-use interface is used for searching all CitaDel files. CITADEL PREMIUM FILES CitaDel has two types of files: Premium and Special. CitaDel Premium files are commercial citation databases that, for a fixed annual fee, can be searched without limit. Premium files being previewed are ABI/INFORM, Periodical Abstracts, Newspaper Abstracts (all from UMI/Data Courier), and Ei Page One (from Engineering Information Inc.). Full-text copies of most articles cited in these Premium files can be ordered online by CitaDel users. Delivery options include first-class mail, express courier, FAX, and Ariel, RLG's new proprietary document-delivery system that enables high-resolution image transmission over the Internet. Depending on the policy of the subscribing institution, article-delivery fees will be charged to the institution or directly to individual users through their VISA or MasterCard. In fall 1992, two other CitaDel Premium files will be available: Dissertation Abstracts (from UMI/Data Courier) and PAIS '80+ (from Public Affairs Information Service, Inc.). CITADEL SPECIAL FILES CitaDel Special files are scholarly citation databases, which are currently charged by the search. One Special file is being previewed -- Current Bibliography in the History of Technology. Coming in fall 1992 are Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, and Hispanic-American Periodicals Index. RUTGERS: MAKING AVAILABLE ON INFO NETWORK Rutgers will make CitaDel available to students, faculty, and staff through INFO, its campuswide information network. CitaDel's debut will be celebrated with a reception on Thursday, April 16, at 10 a.m., in the Library of Science and Medicine, where CitaDel and document delivery using RLG's Ariel system will be demonstrated. BYU: PREVIEWING FOR STATE LIBRARY CONSORTIUM BYU -- as part of the Utah College Library Council, an 11-member consortium of Utah private and public college and university libraries -- will be previewing CitaDel with an eye towards eventual use by the entire consortium. During the preview, CitaDel will be available, through BYU's local information network, at all BYU campus libraries and academic departments. University of Utah and Utah State University, through the state's library network, will also have access to CitaDel during the preview. An event to celebrate the CitaDel preview is planned for 9 a.m., April 13, in the training room at the Lee Library. FOR MORE INFORMATION For information about the CitaDel service and pricing, please contact the RLIN Information Center, E-mail BL.RIC@RLG.BITNET or BL.RIC@RLG.STANFORD.EDU, phone 800/537-RLIN (US/Canada), FAX 415/964-0943. For information about the Rutgers and BYU previews, please contact Jennifer Porro, Corporate Communications, RLG, E-mail BL.JMP@RLG.BITNET or BL.JMP@RLG.STANFORD.EDU, phone 415/691-2204, FAX 415/964-0943. RLG AND ARL TO STUDY INTERLIBRARY LOAN COSTS ILL traffic and costs are up; research libraries to take hard look at ILL economics in time of change April 9, 1992 -- The Research Libraries Group (RLG) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have jointly launched a project to examine the costs to research libraries of interlibrary loan services. Funded in part by a $10,000 grant from the Council on Library Resources (CLR), the study will gather and analyze data from 65 North American research libraries on typical costs of ILL transactions. With this information, libraries will be better able to assess the economics of their own borrowing and lending practices, to evaluate alternative methods of providing these services, and to study the impact of local serials cancellations. ENORMOUS INCREASE IN ILL ACTIVITIES The ARL-RLG study will document the cost to libraries of the enormous increase in ILL activities that has occurred over the past few years. ARL libraries report a 47% increase in interlibrary borrowing and a 45% rise in interlibrary lending over the past five years. Recently published ARL statistics document that over 5.2 million items were loaned and borrowed by ARL libraries in 1990-91 alone. RLG reports that RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) interlibrary loan traffic has grown approximately 5% per year for the past several years. ARL statistics offer evidence that research libraries are moving to a demand or access model for providing information to users. According to ARL statistics from the years 1985-86 to 1990-91, the number of traditional users has increased while the information resources available on campuses have decreased. One consequence of this trend has been increased ILL activity. STUDY RESULTS AVAILABLE SUMMER 1992 The results of the joint study will be published this summer and will be available from ARL and RLG. (Data collected in the survey will be reported in the aggregate only and will not be made available for comparison on a library-by-library basis.) FOR FURTHER INFORMATION At RLG, please contact Marilyn Roche, phone 415/691-2284, FAX 415/964-0943, email BL.MXR@RLG.BITNET or BL.MXR@RLG.STANFORD.EDU. At ARL, please contact Jaia Barrett, phone 202/232-2466, FAX 202/462-7849, email JBARRETT@UMDC.BITNET. _________________________________________________________________________ DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND THE CHANGING ROLE OF LIBRARIES by: Susan M. Stearns, Faxon Research Services, Inc. Interest in document delivery and document delivery systems has grown significantly in the last few years. This growth is due primarily to three factors: economic considerations, technology diffusion and changes within the library itself. New services and products serving both the library community and individual users have and are being developed as a response. These services increase access to documents and facilitate putting them in the hands of readers quickly and cost-effectively. The economic factors contributing to the growth of document delivery services are well known. Both the number of journal titles and their prices skyrocketed in the 1980's. According to a recent ARL study, libraries spent 70% MORE on serial titles in 1991 than in 1986 yet received 2% FEWER titles. From 1977 to 1990 the average price of a U.S. periodical increased 400%. These economic pressures on libraries and their serials budgets are occurring at a time of steady-state and declining budgets. According to the same ARL study, some 60% of its member libraries expect budget cuts of some kind this year. This economic situation is accompanied by a significant diffusion of technology in libraries. First came the online public access catalogs providing access to book cataloging information. Gradually non-monographic cataloging is added to these OPAC's. Concurrently, libraries are beginning to purchase CD-ROM titles, primarily indexing and abstracting products, thus making more and more journal information accessible to users. Today both libraries and their automation vendors are creating gateways, both to other, remote databases and to databases loaded on local systems which can be accessed as easily as the library's OPAC. Many of these databases make increasing numbers of journal titles and individual articles available to users. Improved user interfaces and retrieval design are making it easier for users to access journal literature online. The ubiquitous fax machine also makes delivery of materials directly to individual users a simple and straightforward process. This diffusion of technology within libraries is unleashing significant demand for journal articles, many of which are no longer available in the local collections. Inter-library loan is an increasingly necessary tool to satisfy user demand. Many progressive libraries are developing efficient and cost-effective inter-library loan services. Some are themselves putting in place document delivery services and other fee-based options for users to access and take delivery of documents. The result has been the beginning of a changing paradigm within libraries: a change from being able to collect materials just in case they are needed to being required to find and deliver materials just in time. The response at Faxon Research Services (FRS) has been the creation of two services: the first, Faxon Finder, is a table of contents database to serials information; the second, Faxon Xpress, is a document delivery service for the articles themselves. Faxon Finder is a database to some 11,000+serials titles. The subject coverage of the database is extensive including titles in the sciences and engineering, in health and social sciences, in fine arts and humanities and in business and related fields. Titles included in Faxon Finder are selected based on the coverage of major indexing and abstracting services. While Faxon Finder is not a replacement for traditional abstracting and indexing sources, since it includes information only from the tables of contents themselves, the database does include more of the actual contents of a journal issue than a typical A&I tool would. Not only does the database have traditional scholarly and news articles, it includes book reviews, conference proceedings, special columns, editorials, letters to the editor, cover stories, case studies and review articles. FRS also includes any descriptive information which is provided on the table of contents such as special issue notes and abstracts or annotations. The result is a database which is ideal as a current awareness service. In order to make Faxon Finder available to the largest possible audience of users, FRS has an agreement with OCLC to make the Finder database available on both the EPIC and FirstSearch services. The database will also be made available through the Faxon Company's new Faxon Manager system in the fall. We are actively developing a site licensing program which will allow libraries to load the database or some portion of it on a local system and search it using their standard OPAC software. The Faxon Finder database is complemented by FRS's document delivery service, Faxon Xpress. With Xpress, a user can search the Finder database, locate an article of interest and place an order online for the document. Documents can be shipped to a fax machine or fax board in a p.c. While FRS encourages fax delivery, we also provide delivery by standard first class U.S. mail and overnight courier. Documents can be paid for by an individual credit card, a deposit account or an institutional account. The price includes a fixed fee for the document, usually $10.00, plus the applicable copyright fee, which varies from publisher to publisher. In order to insure our ability to supply documents, FRS has agreements with document suppliers, primarily large libraries with significant serials collections and centralized document processing. To better guarantee the quality of the transmission of documents FRS provides each supplier with a document scanning and transmission workstation, which scans at the rate of 3 seconds per page. Special ordering and accounting software developed by FRS and based on EDI and X.12, accommodates receiving document orders, forwarding them to the correct supplier and transmitting the document to the user as well as dealing with accounting and billing. As with Faxon Finder, Faxon Xpress will first be made available on OCLC FirstSearch and EPIC. Faxon Xpress will also be accessible as a stand-alone ordering system, over the Internet. This will allow users who have already located a citation to order the document without incurring database search costs. Document ordering via Faxon Xpress will be provided on the Faxon Manager system, both on a subscription basis and through a stand-alone, networked system. And, FRS will work closely with individual libraries and local system vendors to interface document ordering with local site licensing of the Faxon Finder database. In closing, it is important to at least mention some of the issues which document delivery services introduce or re-inforce in the library environment. The first of these is inter-library loan. Will document delivery systems replace traditional ILL in libraries? There is no single answer to this question, as there is no single type of ILL for journal articles. In fact, many ILL and access services librarians are already using document delivery to complement or support their services. These librarians know how much it actually costs to provide documents via ILL and know that when speed of delivery is important, commercial document delivery services can almost always meet a user's needs better than most ILL services. That said, the relationship between the two types of services is likely to become more blurred before it becomes clearer. A related issue revolves around copyright payments. As the delivery of documents through tele-facsimile systems grows, a stronger argument can be made that such copying is systematic. This, combined with a growing concern on the part of publishers that document delivery services (whether developed internally by libraries or commercial) will impact the sale of journal subscriptions, makes it clear that principles need to be established. Only by coming together more will publishers and libraries resolve these issues to our mutual satisfaction. Finally, document delivery services contribute to re-inforcing the changing role of many libraries which the economic and technological trends described at the beginning of this paper began: libraries will move more and more from collecting materials towards making those materials accessible to their users. At Faxon Research Services, we are convinced that document delivery is an important ingredient in this change. ______________________________________________________________________ RLG AND THE SCIENCES by: Connie Gould, Program Officer for Program Development Research Libraries Group The Research Libraries Group is an international consortium of more than one hundred universities, independent research libraries, archives, museums, and learned societies. Its mission has not changed since its founding: RLG exists to improve access to information that supports research and learning in all fields. The mechanisms applied in pursuit of this goal take many shapes but have one thing in common-- cooperative action. RLG is known for its activities in the humanities-- particularly its cooperative programs in art and architecture; East Asian studies; Jewish and Middle East Studies; and archives, museums and special collections--but has been less involved in the science and technology areas. However, to redress the balance RLG in recent years has undertaken a number of activities that benefit the science disciplines. One of the first of these was the establishment of the Program for Research Information Management (PRIMA), initiated in response to the changing information environment at research institutions. PRIMA's mission was to identify the types of information researchers need better access to and to foster activities that encourage the development of new data resources. Identification of information needs was accomplished primarily through three reports assessing information needs in the humanities, social sciences and sciences. For "Information Needs in the Sciences: an Assessment," published in March 1991, Karla Pearce and I interviewed 80 faculty at RLG member institutions and more than 50 academic and corporate librarians. RLG science librarians (including Harry Llull) were instrumental in shaping and reviewing chapters on physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, and computer science. Since the assessment itself is already in a fairly condensed form, I won't attempt to summarize its findings or conclusions, except to reproduce the final paragraph: "More than ever, it is clear that the free and unrestricted flow of information on which research depends is far beyond the capabilities of institutions or organizations working alone. In the future, communication in the sciences will be contingent on greater interdependence among all concerned-- research libraries, the science disciplines, government agencies, commercial information providers, and scientists themselves. Cooperative approaches to the challenges presented by science information are possible--indeed, they are essential if scientists are to have access to the information vital to their research." As noted in the first paragraph, RLG focuses on cooperative approaches. What types of cooperative activities is RLG developing to respond specifically to the needs of the science disciplines? The first of these is the Serial Access Initiative, a service designed to increase access to the journal literature while enabling institutions to control costs. In four science disciplines--mathematics, chemistry, geology and physics--a group of science bibliographers defined a list of serials titles vital to advanced research collections. The chemistry group, led by Chuck Huber of UC Santa Barbara, identified 538 titles; the mathematics group, led by Rebecca Lasher of Stanford, listed 893 titles; the geology group, headed by Louise Zipp of the University of Iowa, identified 679 titles; and a group led by Jack Weigel of Michigan is nearing completion of a list of approximately 500 titles. The completed lists are available on diskette at a price of $99 from RLG at the address given below. The members of the Initiative are committed to updating these lists. More important, institutional commitments to maintain subscriptions have been secured for more than 95% of the titles identified, representing a value of more than $2,000,000. For the coming year, other subject areas are under consideration, including biomedical and technical subject areas. RLG also plans a survey of participants to determine their level of satisfaction with the project. Science and technology librarians interested in participating are welcome to contact Jim Coleman at RLG (BL.JWC@RLG.Stanford.Edu). The companion piece to the identification of titles and securing of collection commitments is the development of a set of rapid delivery mechanisms for consortium members. This is being addressed by an RLG Task Force on Interdependent Collections, which plans to create a service model, to begin operation in the fall. A second project of importance to the science community-- despite its name--is RLG's Archives and Museum Information System. Four science collections, all at UC Berkeley, are involved in the development of AMIS: the University and Jepson Herbaria, the Lowie Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Paleontology, and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. A micro-computer based information management system being developed to meet the special needs of archives and museums, AMIS will combine the functionality and flexibility of a local system with the power and scope of a shared database and international network, enabling institutions to organize and exchange information about unique research resources in an unprecedented way. AMIS will support, integrate, and manage a broad spectrum of data, including * descriptions of museum objects (from plant and animal specimens to paintings) and archival holdings, bibliographic citations, donor files, conservation records, appraisal and insurance data; * digitized images of documents, photographs, historical artifacts, museum objects, and architectural drawings; * and digitized versions of films, sound and video recordings. AMIS will also automatically export research information selected by the institution to the RLIN database; incorporate and build on current and developing standards for the exchange of archival and museum data; and allow repositories, large and small alike, to scale and tailor the system to meet their requirements. What this means for the sciences, particularly for those who work in subfields related to natural history and the environment, is that new and more comprehensive information about collections of plant and animal specimens--which can number in the millions and usually focus on specific geographical regions or on categories of flora and fauna-- will be available. A centralized database of specimen information will allow researchers (among other things) to identify geographical areas that are sparsely represented, determine the distribution of rare and endangered species, and study correlations between distribution and habitat. factors. RLG is pleased that the scope of this project encompasses science museum collections, and to be involved in the development of standards for the description of their data. A third project of relevance to the sciences is CitaDel, RLG's new citation and document delivery service. This project, too, had a cooperative impetus, from our community of public services librarians who urged RLG to make citations databases available centrally and thus save each of their institutions the need to do it individually. CitaDel is aimed at campuses that plan to make citation information available to a large population through a library or campus network. Because pricing is on a subscription basis, CitaDel files can eliminate the need for libraries to load tapes locally or to network CD-ROMs. Two science files are already available: Ei Page One from Engineering Information, Inc., and the History of Technology, produced by the Society for the History of Technology. The history of science bibliography that appears annually in the journal Isis will be added in the near future, and RLG is also talking with a number of other vendors of large science indexes. Ei Page One, ABI/INFORM, Newspaper Abstracts, Periodical Abstracts, and History of Technology will all preview at Rutgers and BYU in April and May. Documents from the first four files can be ordered through the use of a new "doc" command and delivered via mail, Ariel, fax, or courier. If any of the readers of this newsletter have comments, questions, or suggestions about the initiatives described, please feel free to contact me at BL.CCG@RLG.Stanford.edu. I welcome the opportunity to participate in this forum, and look forward to learning more about the community of science and technology librarians through it. You may also obtain additional information as follows: Single copies of the information needs assessments are available free of charge. Serial Access Initiative diskettes cost $99 each. These can be ordered from RLG's Distribution Services Center, 1200 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041. For further information about CitaDel, call the RLIN Information Center at 1-800-537-RLIN Monday through Friday. ______________________________________________________________________ CATCHING UP IN LIBRARY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN EAST-EUROPE: HUNGARY By: Karoly Kokas, University Library of Szeged, Hungary Only weeks separate us from the moment that we have long been waiting for: Hungary, first from the former socialist bloc, was removed from the COCOM-list (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Strategic Export Controls). One may think that this restriction has entirely deprived us from the possibility of joining the information circulation of the world. It almost happened but, thank heaven, in the end it did not. Let us see what happened during the last years and that was decisive in avoiding irreversible backwardness. The more open political situation and the relative economic strength of the country within the region made it possible that Hungary, in the field of information technology, could keep itself at least on such a level that when the time came it was able to "communicate" with Western technologies. It was an important step in the sphere of computer culture that from the beginning of the 80s, following other businesses, companies with a share in the production and dissemination of information made the use of personal computers an everyday routine. Naturally, there had been previous experiments with computers in libraries. One result of these was e.g. that from 1977 the Szeged University Library kept its new books on an R-40 then an R-55 computer (has anyone heard about them at all?), and what is more, in a standard MARC-record format. However, in wider areas the experiments began with the appearance of IBM compatible PCs and with the use of Micro- ISIS, a text retrieval database system developed by the UNESCO. Parallel with that, the development of some national and public databases commenced on the bigger brother of this software on the IBM mainframe computer of the Computing Science Institute (SZTAKI) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the PC-category there were some successful developments, e.g. the TEXTAR program which covers almost the entire library working process. Hungarian programmers, whose excellence is widely known, came forward with such programs and program expansions in the field of microcomputer application that went beyond the type of the machine itself. By the end of the 80s the IBM 43xx serial machines and the DEC megaminies appeared in more and more institutions. Their characteristic operation system is the VM and the VMS. On a small scale, things developed in accordance with the slogan of the BITNET network (Because It is There NETwork). Since there were the machines they had to be linked. Of course, the international information services were not completely unknown. From the very beginning of the 80s some big services (DIALOG, DataStar etc.) were available in some centers, on a very low speed, with the help of Radio Austria and the NEDIX line. In 1986, on the initiative of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the National Information Infrastructure Development Program (its Hungarian acronym is IIF) was started. As a result of that the local networks of more than 150 academic and research institutions could be connected. The above mentioned machines are available in an interactive mode according to the X.25 standard recommended by the CCITT. This served as basis for electronic mail which began to work, first in the region, in 1989 and which at the beginning was represented by an IIF developed program, ELLA. This is a public e-mail network based on a high-performance machine and personal computer link, with a single national center where the information is transferred by rented lines and phone- connection. The international connection was realized with the help of the UUCP gateway. The ELF, a prototype of a national information BBS, and the PETRA, performing the role of a fileserver program, follow a similar architecture. It is worth mentioning that today already dozens of public BBS-s work with telephone modem. One should not be surprised that the "bible" of networkers (Quarterman: The Matrix) does not know about Hungary in 1989 because it was in only 1990 that Hungary officially joined the EARN (and by that, the BITNET) through the national node (HUEARN). This soon was followed by other BITNET hosts put into operation. In a short time e-mail gave room to the known listservers, e-journals (e.g. PACS-L, ASTRA etc.), moreover, in 1991 an independent Hungarian listserver was created to help to accelerate the communication of Hungarian information experts in the libraries (KATALIST@HUEARN). The X.25 connection used all over in Europe made possible the access to the international networks and the use of the bigger automated library OPACs (e.g. the catalogs of the JANET). Shortly, a demand developed for on- line access on INTERNET too. At the start, this could be realized only through foreign nodes, but nowadays, though provisionally, in an experimental period, one can access INTERNET directly from Hungarian computers (e.g. sztaki2.sztaki.hu) as well. The present situation can be characterized by the combination of old and new technology. More and more libraries buy the most up-to-date CD-ROM databases (Wilson, SilverPlatter etc.), even Hungarian CD-ROMs have been developed. With the aid of IMF, TEMPUS, PHARE or private foundations libraries have begun to purchase integrated library systems and at the same time the vendors started to establish their agencies in Hungary (ALEPH, CARLYLE, DOBIS/LIBIS, TECHLIB, TINLIB, VTLS etc.). Currently several partially or entirely integrated library systems are in operation in the country. In the field of the national database service two softwares seem to spread and take the place of the old ISIS: BASIS and BRS/SEARCH. The national and international meetings and conferences organized during the last years to discuss this subject matter and the comparison of our knowledge with the foreign literature show that Hungary possesses the necessary professional grounding to be able to have the modern software and hardware devices in good hands. Perhaps we could say that the more fortunate western part of the world can add so much to this capital accumulated not without difficulties that by 2000 the motherland of Janos Neumann (or as he became world-famous: John von Neumann) need not feel ashamed. ________________________________________________________________________ A CONFERENCE FOR THE EXPLORATION OF A NATIONAL ENGINEERING INFORMATION SERVICE (NENGIS) A Primer For The Conference Provided by the Council On Library Resources March 1992 Dear Colleague: The Council on Library Resources and the Engineering Foundation have joined forces to explore steps to improve U.S. engineers' access to the variety of information resources and services now available. We are convinced that improved access will significantly enhance the productivity of this nation. We believe the conference described in the attached announcement is the first step in a process vital to the engineering profession and to the information services that support that profession. The enclosed preliminary program describes the general nature and content of the conference. The combination of speeches and attendee participation is intended to help us arrive at meaningful recommendations and a plan for further action. We hope you will join us in Palm Coast, Florida, June 14-19, 1992, where we will develop a plan of action to create a National Engineering Information Service. Sincerely, W. David Penniman, Ph.D., P.E. President and Conference Chair David M. Liston, Jr., P.E. Conference Co-Chair Introduction The basic rationale for organizing a conference such as this is our belief that there is no integrated infrastructure for handling engineering information and data such as one finds in other major disciplines. Consider these: Education has the Educational Research Information Center (ERIC), Health has the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Agriculture has the National Agricultural Library (NAL). In contrast, the engineering discipline finds its information and data being tended by a diverse conglomeration of profit-making and non-profit organizations. Examples include the numerous engineering societies, university libraries and databases, the Engineering Societies Library (ESL), Engineering Information Inc., the Library of Congress (LC), the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), and various units of the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), National Air and Space Agency (NASA), and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Please take note that this is far from a complete list. Our basic theme is that a means for integrated access to this fragmented store of information and data is sorely needed by engineering researchers, educators, and practitioners to facilitate efficient exploitation of our engineering knowledge. The concept of the possible management of engineering information and data on a national scale has been with us for a long time. The potential for a consolidated means of access to these diverse sources of engineering information and data has been studied and considered before numerous times but, so far, to no avail. The time is ripe to reopen these considerations. Recent developments in communication and information-handling technologies can make the concept of a NENGIS much more feasible and may throw a whole new light on the possible forms a NENGIS might take. The recent threats to our national capability to remain competitive in (and preferably at the cutting edge of) the international technological arena demonstrate dramatically the need for action to improve our exploitation of engineering information and data. The Engineering Societies Library is thinking about it. The Library of Congress is thinking about it. And, now, the Engineering Foundation is thinking about it very seriously. This leads us to the topic of this document--a conference sponsored by the Engineering Foundation to bring into concert the current considerations of various organizations and individuals on the subject of improved utilization of engineering information and data. The Engineering Foundation The Engineering Foundation (EF) was established in 1914 as a department of the United Engineering Trustees to administer the Ambrose E. Swasey endowment "for the furtherance of research in science and engineering and for the advancement of the profession of engineering and the good of mankind." The EF operates as a nonprofit organization engaged in supporting specific projects that promise broad engineering impact and in conducting week-long engineering and interdisciplinary conferences on topics of national and international importance. The EF Conferences Committee is responsible for the planning, management, operation, and evaluation of EF Conferences, which have been conducted since 1962. The conferences are expected to be self supporting, but this goal is secondary to the objectives expressed above, and conferences frequently need to be subsidized. Purpose of the Proposed Conference There are two purposes of this proposed conference. The first purpose is to analyze the potential characteristics of a National Engineering Information Service (NENGIS), including the benefits of such an entity and the barriers to its creation. The second purpose is to formulate recommendations to the parent organizations of the conference attendees regarding the nature of further actions to be taken. The Structure of the Conference The typical Engineering Foundation conference is scheduled for four and one-half days, Monday morning through Friday noon. This proposed conference conforms to that standard format, as can be seen in Attachment A, the program under development. The format is much like that of a Gordon Conference, with technical sessions in the morning and evening, leaving the afternoons available for ad hoc sessions. We intend to utilize the afternoons to foster such things as informal discussions of the conference issues between individuals and groups, and to have some exhibits and/or demonstrations of relevant systems or technologies. A unique approach will be to make this a participatory program. The participants, after hearing presentations concerning the history, current status, and major issues involved in a National Engineering Information Service, will be asked to join working groups to debate the issues and develop recommendations as to further actions to be taken. Professional facilitators will enhance the conduct of these sessions and the quality of results. We have structured the conference to bear a direct and fully recognizable relationship to the chain of events that lie between the present time and the possible eventual realization of a NENGIS. Conference Fees Conference fees include registration, accommodations, and meals from Sunday dinner through Friday lunch. Full information will be provided in the conference registration packet. Participant (sharing room) $880 Participant (single or sharing with guest) $990 Meals and lodging fee for guest sharing room with participant $380 Conference Registration If you are interested in attending the conference, contact the following people for more information. Attendance will be limited to 100 participants. David Liston, 301-831-3008 (Conference Co-Chair) or David Penniman Council on Library Resources 1785 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., #313 Washington, D.C. 20036 202-483-7474 A CONFERENCE FOR EXPLORATION OF A NATIONAL ENGINEERING INFORMATION SERVICE Program Under Development Updated April 17, 1992 Date: The Week of 15 June 1992 Place: Palm Coast, Florida SCHEDULE SECT. PROGRAM TOPIC (COMMENTARY) SPEAKERS ______________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION--SUNDAY, 14 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 3:00 PM REGISTRATION AND CHECK-IN 6:00 PM DINNER 9:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR DAY ONE--MONDAY, 15 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 7:30 AM BREAKFAST 9:00 AM 1.0 PURPOSES OF THE CONFERENCE (10 minutes) Dave Penniman 1.1 Purpose No. 1 (To define the President, characteristics of a National Council on Librar y Engineering Information Service, Resources including the benefits of such an entity and the barriers to its creation.) 1.2 Purpose No. 2 (To formulate recommendations to the parent organizations regarding the nature of actions to be taken.) 9:10 AM 2.0 KEYNOTE ADDRESS (50 minutes) Peter Likins, 2.1 (Why should we be concerning President, ourselves about the potential Lehigh University for a national engineering information service?) 2.2 (What are the potential benefits?) 2.3 (What are the potential costs?) 2.4 (Is this only wishful thinking?) 10:00 AM 3.0 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (10 minutes) Pross Gifford Scholarly Programs, L C Moderator 10:10 AM 3.1 Development of the National Library Martin Cummings of Medicine, an example of an Director Emeritus integrated national information National Library o f service. (40 minutes) Medicine 10:50 AM 3.2 Previous Study of a United Dave Liston, P.E. Engineering Information Service Consultant (40 minutes) 11:30 AM 3.3 Lessons Learned (30 minutes) Gifford, Cummings, and Liston 12:00 Noon LUNCH 2:00 PM AD HOC SESSION 5:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR 6:00 PM DINNER 7:00 PM 4.0 THE STATE OF EXISTING SYSTEMS Davida Scharf , AND RESOURCES (10 minutes) Director, Engineering Societies Library, Moderator 7:10 PM 4.1 Major Federal Information Services Mary Berghause (35 minutes) Levering 4.1.1 National Agricultural Library Executive Director 4.1.2 Library of Congress Federal Library and 4.1.3 National Tech. Information Serv. Information 4.1.4 Department of Defense Center Committee, 4.1.5 Department of Energy Library of Congress 4.1.6 National Air and Space Agency 4.1.7 National Institute of Standards and Technology 7:45 PM 4.2 Non (or Not For) Profit Information Services 7:45 PM 4.2.1 Engineering Societies Activities Don Crawley, (20 minutes)(With special emphasis Assoc. Gen. Mgr., IEEE on the five founder societies) 8:05 PM 4.2.2 Engineering Societies Library Davida Scharf , (20 minutes) Director, ESL 8:25 PM 4.2.3 Engineering Information, Inc. John Regazzi (20 minutes) President, EI 8:45 PM 4.3 For-Profit Information Services Joe Fitzsimmons (20 minutes) President University Microfilms 9:05 PM 4.4 General Types of Information Services Pat Berger, (35 minutes) Director of 4.4.1 Library Services Information Services, 4.4.2 Specialized Information Services NIST 4.4.3 Data Services 4.4.4 Analytic Services 9:40 PM 4.5 Information Publishing (20 minutes) David Lide, Editor, CRC Handbook 10:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR DAY TWO--TUESDAY, 16 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 7:30 AM BREAKFAST 9:00 AM Reopening Words (5 Minutes) Davida Scharf 9:05 AM 4.6 Engineering School Information William Arms, Services (35 minutes) VP, Academic Resources, Carnegie Mellon 9:40 AM 4.7 The International Picture (35 minutes) Margaret Graham Consultant 10:15 AM 4.8 Networking Technology/Services Cliff Lynch (35 minutes) Director, Library Automation, Univ. of California 10:50 AM 4.9 Existing Cost/Benefit Picture Jose'-Marie Griffiths (35 minutes) Prof. and Collaborating Scientist, Univ. of Tennessee 11:25 AM 4.10 Sociopolitical Aspects/Vested Mel Day Interests (35 minutes) 12:00 Noon LUNCH 2:00 PM AD HOC SESSION 5:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR 6:00 PM DINNER 7:00 PM 5.0 THE MAJOR ISSUES (5 minutes) Dave Penniman Moderator 7:05 5.1 User Issues (20 minutes) Jean Mayhew,Manager, Library and Information Services, United Technologies 7:25 PM 5.2 Technical Issues (45 minutes) Daniel Atkins 5.2.1 Sources of Information and Data Prof., Dept. 5.2.2 System Architecture of Elec. Eng. and CS, 5.2.3 System Functions/Operations Univeristy of Mich. 5.2.4 System Products 8:10 PM 5.3 Financial Issues (45 minutes) Paul Kantor 5.3.1 Estimated Costs Prof., School of Comm., Lib. 5.3.2 Estimated Benefits & Info. Sci. Rutgers Univ. 5.3.3 Funding/Financing Alternatives 8:55 PM 5.4 Sociopolitical Issues (45 minutes) Tony Oettinger, 5.4.1 Scope of the System (e.g., Chairman, Program on Engineering vs. Scientific, Information Resource s Education vs. Practice, Research Harvard Universit y vs. Application, etc.) 5.4.2 Mission of the System 5.4.3 Organizational Structure 5.4.4 Government vs. Private Support 9:40 PM 5.5 Selection of Issues for Workshops Dave Liston with a (20 minutes) Professional Facilitator 10:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR DAY THREE--WEDNESDAY, 17 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 7:30 AM BREAKFAST 9:00 AM 6.0 ISSUE WORKSHOPS 9:00 AM 6.1 (Introduction and instruction Professional concerning procedural aspects of Facilitator conducting each of the workshops.) (15 minutes) 9:15 AM 6.2 (Conduct of the workshops, each under Professional the guidance of a professional Facilitators facilitator.) (2 3/4 hours) 12:00 Noon LUNCH 2:00 PM AD HOC SESSION 5:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR 6:00 PM DINNER 7:00 PM 6.3 (Presentation of the results of To Be Selected from each workshop by a speaker selected Attendees by the group.) (3 hours) 10:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR DAY FOUR--THURSDAY, 18 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 7:30 AM BREAKFAST 9:00 AM 7.0 SUMMARIZATION 9:00 AM 7.1 (Summary of the conference proceed- Dave Penniman ings by a person selected to listen And closely to all the discussion and to Dave Liston present his/her analysis of the results.) (This session must occur on a new day to provide the summarizer an afternoon and evening to prepare.) (1 hour) 10:00 AM 7.2 (Rebuttals from the open floor and Professional the negotiation of improvements and/ Facilitator or compromises to make the summary generally acceptable to conference participants.) (2 hours) 12:00 Noon LUNCH 2:00 PM AD HOC SESSION 5:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR 6:00 PM DINNER 7:00 PM 8.0 RECOMMENDATIONS 7:00 PM 8.1 (Reconvening the workshop groups to Professional formulate recommendations to be taken Facilitators back by the participants for presentation to their parent organizations.) (2 hours) 9:00 PM 8.2 (Presentation of the recommendations Speakers to b e of each working group by a speaker Selected from the selected by the group.) (1 hour) Attendees 10:00 PM SOCIAL HOUR DAY FIVE--FRIDAY, 19 JUNE 1992 .............................................................................. 7:30 AM BREAKFAST 9:00 AM 8.3 (Integration of Recommendations) Dave Penniman (45 minutes) And Dave Liston 9:45 AM 8.4 (Ratification of the recommendations) Professional by the participants. (45 minutes) Facilitator 10:30 AM 8.5 (Development of a Follow-up Plan) Professional (45 minutes) Facilitator 11:15 AM 8.6 (Agreement on the preparation of Professional summary documentation and its Facilitators distribution to the participants and, thence, to their parent organizations.) (45 minutes) 12:00 Noon LUNCH CLOSING REMARKS ___________________________________________________________________________ CNI SPRING '92 REPORT By: John Saylor, Engineering Librarian, Cornell University "I have a spelling checker, It came with my PC; It plainly marks four my revue Mistakes I cannot sea. I've run this poem threw it, I'm sure your please too no, Its letter perfect in it's weigh, My checker tolled me sew." - author unknown I attended the Spring 1992 Meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information in Washington, D.C., March 24-25, 1992. The theme of this conference was Network Navigating and Navigators. The major stated purposes of the meeting were: 1) focus on the efforts of CNI and others to frame and develop mechanisms and services to assist users in navigating networks and using networked information; and 2) turn attention to public information as that for which the promise of the network information infrastructure is very great. In this regard the meeting sessions featured presentations of state of the art tools and architecture's for navigating and facilitating use of networks such as Knowbots, Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), other search and retrieval tools such as ARCHIE and GOPHER, X.500 implementation efforts of the IETF and others. This semi-annual meeting continues to grow rapidly as there were 355 in attendance (up 50% from a year ago). The plenary panel was moderated by Paul Peters, Director of CNI and consisted of Vinton Cerf, Vice-President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives,; Brewster Kahle, Project Leader from Thinking Machines Corporation; Joyce Reynolds, Information Sciences Institute, USC; and George Strawn, Program Officer at NSF. Dr. Cerf, who is considered to be one of the key architects of the internet and now President of the Internet Society talked about Digital Library Systems and the role of knowledge robots, which he calls knowbots. (For in depth reading about this project, " The Digital Library Project; Volume 1: The world of Knowbots (draft)" authored by Cerf and Robert E. Kahn). Cerf said they are viewing the internet as a connection to a collection of raw resources in which we are seeing a rich exploration phase of how to find and use information available on the network. The range of documentation available consists of fixed items such as text which require less computer power to access and use to knowledge structures which include executable programs, large data sets, and compound (multimedia) items that require tremendous computing power. Knowbots are described as dynamic programs that have a plan for doing a search for information on distributed databases throughout the network. In the current world of the internet, most of the information available is free. As this changes there will be concern over charging and protecting information. As such his experiments are concerned with incorporating these capabilities into the design of the knowbots. He discussed two current projects involving the use of knowbots. One is the White pages project which uses knowbots to search distributed databases of electronic mail addresses. The other is a called ABIDE (Access to Biomedical Information in a Distributed Environment). This is a project CNRI is doing in cooperation with the NLM whose goal is to prototype a NLM Digital Library System. The objectives of this project are to provide parallel access to multiple systems and to extend the "grateful-med" style interface. The current architecture of this system separates the user functions such as the user interface, query forms, direct database machine access, etc from the gateway functions such as communications to the information provides and translation protocol issues. Two problems they have encountered are first they don't have a control mechanism to keep track of knowbot clones (he emphasized you have to have the ability to 'kill' these things when you want to), and second the cost of a session - there needs to be some way of predetermining how much resources a session will consume. The two way authentication problem of determining who the person is asking for the information and also whether the agent being asked is the proper source is crucial to the success of this electronic publishing environment. This is especially a problem in the international community. Cerf's presentation style is entertaining (he defined a term called a "bogon" as a fundamental particle that carries bogus information and asked for participants - especially librarians - to serve as bogon detectors for his remarks) and his technical knowledge of computers and standards issues is legendary. It was interesting to note that in the learning process that he is going through in designing the knowbots that he in effect is learning the ways of a highly skilled reference librarian. He is realizing the active listening skills and query techniques that reference librarians have to have as part of their everyday repertoire in order to decipher what a person is actually looking for. He gives the impression of being more and more impressed with these skills as he gets deeper into this. He does not believe that knowbots will replace reference librarians. He sees these as tools that reference librarians will help design and use themselves. In the design of the user interface for this project he feels that if they have to use the MeSH knowledge tree to navigate the medical literature then his system interface will have failed. Brewster Kahle, is a computer scientist and the architect of the Thinking Machines Corporation's Connection Machine 2, a massively parallel computer system for handling very large databases. He also is responsible for developing WAIS--"an electronic publishing software set which allows you to search out and retrieve multimedia information from databases anywhere in the world." This information can be drawn from data stored on your own machine or from another connected via the network. It uses a single computer-to-computer protocol (Z39.50) for search and retrieval. He said the goals of WAIS are: 1) personal information should be easily accessible (thus you index your hard disk using WAIS and then search your database with the WAIS client);2) published information should find individuals (WAIS facilitates the process of Selective Dissemination of Information by looking for information you want automatically); 3) it should be usable anywhere (or we won't get around paper -he said); and 4) so Others can share information( this is the electronic publishing component). He defined electronic publishing as publishing over wires. WAIS is a navigation technique that is based on English language and natural language relevance feedback. For this he credited the work of Professor Gerry Salton of Cornell. One purpose of his system is to help end-users in electronic publishing navigation. He then outlined the navigation technique advantages that WAIS has over paper and other computer systems. He claims WAIS to be similar to newspaper navigation in that it can clump interesting things together using dynamic hypertext techniques. He handed out a paper that provides much more information about this very interesting tool and idea. WAIS clients exist for the PC, UNIX and MacIntosh platforms and are freely distributed over the network. Kahle was obviously there to sell Thinking Machines hardware and software. He stated in his conclusion that his company wants to be the "Engine of the Information Industry." Again I found it interesting that he got really excited about being able to monitor the success people have in using WAIS as a tool for information search and retrieval exactly along the lines of the reward that a reference librarian feels when helping a person with a question. Currently there are over 200 WAIS servers (databases) available for searching over the internet. He claims the Library of Congress has plans to make their catalog available via the protocol. A portion of the Columbia Law School Card Catalog is already available as a WAIS server. Thinking Machines has recently become a sponsor/participant in the CORE Chemistry Journal project centered at Mann Library, Cornell University. Joyce Reynolds, Director of User Services of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) explained her organization's role in user services planning for th e Internet. She explained that the IETF reports to the Internet Activities Board which is affiliated with the Internet Society. The Internet Society's goals are: multiprotocol evolution; encouraging internet growth; educate the public; and to stimulate provision of services and facilitate collaboration on the network. There was a handout explaining her groups activities in more depth. An interesting service her group is providing is a documentation series called the FYI RFC Series (Internet Documentation for USERS - not Wizards!.) The full text of these documents are available via the internet. Some titles include: "Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure", " FYI on the X Window System", "FYI on ... Answers to Commonly asked New Internet User Questions." George Strawn, program officer for NSFNET then detailed the recently issued NSF Project Solicitation titled, " Network Information Service Manager(s) for NSFNET and the NREN." The solicitation invites proposals for one or more Network Information Service Manager organizations to: extend and coordinate directory and database services and information services for NSFNET; and provide registration services for nonmilitary internet networks. Funding is expected to be about $2,000,000/year. Other project briefings that were going on at the same time as the WAIS and Knowbot briefings included talks on: 1- the X.500 Protocol and User Services Planning in the Internet; 2- the Internet Gopher- this is a client/server system that gives clients seamless access to Gopher servers distributed over the internet 3- Resource Discovery on the - the ARCHIE Approach - this project involves information indexing and location service to internet users. The current implementation tracks over 1000 archives containing over 1.5 million files. 4- Bibliographic Description and Control for the Internet: Two presentations including 1)Accessing Information on the Internet Toward providing Library Services for Computer Mediated Communication (by Martin Dillon, Director of OCLC Office of Research); and 2) Enhancement of MARC Formats for Network Resources and Services (by Sally McCallum of MARC LC). 5-Two Phase Discovery: Netfind by Michael Schwartz of the UC Boulder Computer Science Department. Another approach to network navigation. 6-USC info 7- Toward a Copyright Management System for Digital Libraries by John Garrett (CNRI)and Joseph Alen (Copyright Clearance Center)-This session focused on the recent CCC/CNRI Report. 8-Scholarly Communications by Brian Kahin, Director of the Information Infrastructure Project, Hard University and general counsel of the Interactive Multimedia Association. 9- Why go it Alone? Partnerships for Navigating the NREN: Public Libraries, State Libraries, School Libraries and Colleges and Universities by Laura Isenstein of the Baltimore County Public Library and Charles McClure , Professor School of Information Studies, Syracuse University. 10- The Gift Economy and the Market Economy on the Network: Two Examples by George Brett, Program Manager for Networked Information, University of North Carolina and Steven Cisler, Senior Scientist, Apple Computer Library. 11- CUPID Architecture Report by Stephen Hall, Director of Information Technology, Harvard and M. Stuart Lynn, V-P for Information Technology, Cornell. 12- Regional Accreditation Standards in a Networked Environment: What Role for the Coalition? by John Haak, University Library at University of Hawaii, Manoa The vision presentation after dinner was given by Pat Moholt, former Associate Director of Library, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and now Director of the Columbia Medical School Library (I think). She emphasized to the group to keep in mind that we are designing tools for people not robots for machines. We must pay attention to the human element as well as the systems side of what we are designing. She feels there is a lack of balance and foresight between what is emphasized for people (a make do with what you have) and technology (strive for excellence). As such we are falling behind in human resources research and development. Computing and networking are reshaping roles of everyone involved. We need to focus on the people side of the system, as such we need maintenance contracts for people as well as our typewriters and computers. I thought her talk was a very poignant and compelling challenge to the assembled group of network enthusiasts she called the "digiterati". This term was recently defined by William Safire in the New York Times as describing "wealthy or scholarly technonerds." The next morning plenary session centered on perspectives and issues concerning network implementation and development strategy in light of the passage of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 with its NREN provisions. Speakers were Michael Roberts, VP Networking, EDUCOM; John Clement, Director, K-12 Networking, EDUCOM; Susan Brynteson, representing ARL; Laura Isenstein, representing the Public Library Association; Noreen Alldredge, representing ACRL; and Howard McGinn, representing the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies. This was a very provocative session in which the librarians stressed the need for equitable and reasonable access to the network resources for all the citizens, not just the "Digiterati." Susan Brynteson gave an especially strong plea about how we need to individually articulate local needs. The internet brings new opportunities and new tensions such as: confidentiality issues; copyright should not be applied to US Government information; and government information should be available at low cost or free. She urged the development of standards that promote ease of access. Howard McGinn talked about the role of public libraries in providing information for the average citizen and how their information needs can be very complicated. He emphasized the discrepancy in his state among counties in terms of resources and characterized some counties as third world as opposed to the information rich first world counties. The network can provide, if it is designed properly, a way to level these inequities. I then attended a "small group discussion" on Transformation of Scholarly Communication and Architecture's and Standards led by Peter Lyman, University Librarian and Dean, USC and Clifford Lynch, Director, Library Automation, University of California. This was one of seven concurrent CNI Working Group Small Group discussions. The others included: Modernization of Scholarly Publishing led by Karen Hunter, VP Elsevier and Dorothy Gregor, Librarian , UC Berkeley; Directories and Resource Information Services led by George Brett and Peggy Seiden, Head Librarian, Penn State University at Kensington; Legislation, Codes, Policies, and Practices led by Richard Akeroyd, Jr, Connecticut State Librarian and Peter Graham, VP for Information Services, Rutgers; Access to Public Information led by John Hankins of CICNet, Inc and Barbara van Wahlde, VP for University Libraries, SUNY Buffalo; Teaching and Learning led by James Luckett, NYSERNET and others; and Management and Professional User Education led by Sheila Creth, University of Iowa Librarian and Lee Alley, VP for Information Management, Arizona State. Paul Peters began the session I attended by announcing the theme of the next CNI meeting (Fall 1992) would be "Innovative Networked Communication and Publication." CNI would like to pursue two axis of innovation that the networked environment provides opportunity. First is the format axis. CNI wants to be responsive to the innovative and transformation aspects that networked based multimedia and compound information objects projects promise. The second axis is types of authorship. The immediacy of the networked environment has the potential to drive quality up to a new level because of the interactive and in-time nature of collaboration it offers. Members of CNI are aware that experimental multimedia projects don't seem to get embedded in the real world. They are funded by igniters and created by pioneers but then lose steam and disappear. CNI wants to know why the transformation from experimentation to embedding isn't happening and what it can do help make it happen. At the next meeting CNI would like to identify and address barriers and enablers to these types of projects by: 1) articulating implicit scholarly requirements to platform developers (people who develop multimedia environments are not listening to scholars); 2) cultivate great understanding in CNI as to what makes good vs. bad project management agenda; and 3) use the project to increase the mix of scholar-developers. The strategy CNI will employ is: 1) support Brian Kahin's project offering guidance for iterative collaboratory publications in this innovative scholarly environment and 2) CNI has received a grant from DEC to help produce an architectural statement of requirements of advanced compound information applications that include (a) images ,video, sound, algorithms, and datasets as well as text, and (b) result from collaborative, iterative, and derivative as well as individual/one-time authorship. The statement will be organized in three main sections: 1) an introduction that explores the meaning of architecture in this context and establishes the need for architectural thinking at this time; 2) a set of highly individual statements of trials and tribulations, successes and failures of carefully selected (teams of) resource and service developers of the sorts of advanced compound information applications that are exemplars of the future that the project seeks to catalyze; and 3) a conclusion that reflects upon 2 using the framework of 1 that calls attention to the architectural elements that are solidly in place, those in place but not solidified , and those architectural elements that are missing altogether. This statement will be released at the Fall 1992 Coalition Task Force Meeting schedule fro November 19 and 20. The statement will be used by CNI to set priorities. CNI's domain of interest was explained by listing several examples :1) the Online Journal of Clinical Trials - an example of scholarly works that use the net to preserve timeliness;2) Steven Harnad's "Pyscholoquy"- this publication takes advantage of the collaborative or interactive nature of the network that does not exist in print medium; 3) publishing date - in the social sciences data is general not made publicly available but the analyzed results are. It is also important to be able to re-analyze the data at different times; 4) the use of interactive graphics instead of just two-dimensional print; and 5) managing slide libraries - integrating images into scholarly publishing. CNI wants to be able to articulate the limits of hardware and software in terms of technical problems, quality, standards ,and all of the steps in which scholars create information - not just dissemination - that are limiting innovation in these areas. Libraries and publishers are most comfortable with information as a commodity form. CNI wants to develop models for thinking about information as a utility rather than a commodity. Is there a way to use the network to assemble instructional materials of the quality that exists in stand alone systems? What is going on internationally? How do the needs of the subject disciplines cluster? Clifford Lynch said in terms of architectural issues that multimedia projects represent the greatest tragedy of information technology so far. Its potential is enormous but at present there is no continuity in that projects are tied to obsolescent technologies. Most applications aren't portable or networkable and you can't build upon them. Most projects are funded by one shot deals that eventually vanish. Information technology needs to provide ongoing care for these projects in terms of migration across generations of technology. We need to analyze why we can't do this across networks today and what the planning and preparatory issues are to get there. We need to ask: what do we need?; what is an appropriate networked platform for the multimedia environment? We need to understand what scales and what doesn't. The most important long term issue is intellectual and data content. He mentioned there is an audio-visual transport protocols group in the IETF. This group may not have an adequate definition of what problems they're trying to solve. He feels the achievable goals of this initiative are: 1) gather functional requirements;2) analyze projects that work and those that don't: and 3) from this provide information for architectural planning. Brian Kahin , who wears many hats, is also the general counsel of the Interactive Multimedia Agency. IMA has a Compatibility Project concerned with software protocols for multimedia across networks. They are trying to make connections with the archival community (there is an upcoming meeting" Archives in the year 2000".) He reiterated the call for highly individual statements from authors of multimedia to CNI about: why the project was done, what was done, and what was learned in terms of success and failure. What were the barriers to successfully completing a networked multimedia or collaborative project? The CNI is looking for people who have done interesting work, are willing to share it, and are willing to be at the Fall' 92 meeting. Clifford Lynch then gave an overview of the Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed Project. The concluding afternoon session consisted of a talk by Wayne Kelley, the newly appointed Assistant Public Printer and Superintendent of Documents. He talked about GPO's vision of the future to explore and exploit technological ways and means for improving access to and delivery of public information. When he was appointed he realized the government publishing program is in a disarray. The three principles he will apply to the future will be; 1) the public has paid for and owns government information; 2) public deserves some way of accessing this information; and 3) the cost should be just that of supplying the information. As such they are " pursuing the practical policy of the possible." They face several tough challenges one of which is provision of access to online data. He estimated that the Library of Congress contains 20 Terabytes of information. In 10 years NASA will be acquiring the equivalent data of 10 Library of Congress's per year. The federal government currently spends $3.6 billion dollars per year creating and disseminating information. GPO has issued an strategic planning report entitled "GPO/2001: Vision for a New Millennium." The session also consisted of a summary and update of Coalitions activities by Richard West, Associate VP of the University of California and Chair of the Coalition Steering Committee. To access the CNI Server you should ftp to ftp.cni.org or 192.100.21.1. At the name (login) prompt type anonymous. Send your e-mail address as a password. Type at the prompt ftp> dir. This will give a directory of the ftp archives. To move among the directories use the FTP chang e directory command ftp> cd. You will need to set the transfer type to ASCII or Binary and then retrieve the file by ftp> get file.name. Good luck! Someday this will be easier. ***************************************************************** Issues In Science and Technology Librarianship is a publication of the Science and Technology Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. The Editor: Harry LLull. Editorial Board: Lynn Kaczor, Gregg Sapp, and John Saylor. This publication is produced at the Centennial Science and Engineering Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and sent out in electronic form only over the internet. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Section or Division. Articles and requests for subscriptions may be sent to the editor at ACRLSTS@HAL.UNM.EDU. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** END