The Stanford University Digital Libraries project is part of the 4‐year, $24 million Digital Library Initiative (DLI), started in 1994. There are 5 other university partners, including the University of California (at Berkeley and Santa Barbara), the University of Illinois, Carnegie‐Mellon University, and the University of Michigan.
Support has been provided by the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. An overall description of the Digital Library Initiative is given at the DLI homepage <http://dli.grainger.uiuc.edu/national.htm>.
The goal of the Stanford project is to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and “universal” digital library, composed of large numbers of emerging, individual, heterogeneous “repositories”. In this case, a constituent “repository” could be anything from personal information collections to the collections in conventional libraries or large data collections shared by scientists. The collections would then be usable as a unified entity, in a scalable and economically feasible fashion.
An experimental testbed facility for demonstrating and evaluating the technologies developed is also an integral part of the project. A second area of focus for the Stanford University Digital Libraries Project is the legal and economic issues of a networked environment.
In addition to the above funding support, the project also has a large number of industrial partners. Examples of some of the more prominent members are: Association for Computing Machinery, Hewlett‐Packard Labs, MIT Press, OReilly and Associates, and Xerox PARC.
The major sections of the homepage are:
- 1.
Projects — gives a list of the subsidiary projects, with a brief overview of each one and links to web pages for associated staff.
- 2.
Documents — primarily a collection of background documents on the project, including quarterly and annual reports as well as a list of project‐related conferences and journal articles and working papers.
- 3.
Information resources — a small but wide‐ranging collection of links to digital library‐related resources, dealing with topics such as interoperability, electronic payment schemes, and copyright.
- 4.
Seminars — a set of schedules for the weekly Digital Library seminar series going back to the winter of 1995, including overviews of the seminars. The speakers were drawn from industry and the university community.
- 5.
Software — a small collection of software developed for and used by the Stanford University Digital Libraries project, including the project’s testbed.
- 6.
People — a list of the Stanford faculty,staff, and student participants and industrial partners.
This site is very focused and practical in its emphasis. Technical content seems much more important than polished page layouts and graphic design or up‐to‐the‐minute site maintenance. There is not a strong, thorough‐going design motif. Navigation is straightforward because the site is laid out in a very hierarchical fashion. It would benefit from the implementation of a site search engine.
For those interested in the specific aspects of Stanford’s Digital Libraries Project this site is very helpful. Ready‐access is given to a great deal of technical information, especially in the form of project reports as well as conference and journal articles. Background information is also given about the various project participants.
