Knowledge Innovations

Knowledge Innovations

Penny O' Connor

Introduction

"Knowledge Innovations:Celebrating our Heritage, Designing our Future" was the 63rd annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T),formerly the American Society for Information Science (ASIS). Held 13-16 November, 2000 in Chicago, Illinois, it was the first since the name change and it capped a successful year. The society posted a small increase in membership and a renewal of fiscal solvency due to administrative changes and a well-attended spring meeting on information architecture.

In keeping with a theme of knowledge innovations, some sessions focused on the environment of innovation and some on the latest technical initiatives.

The Environment, the Social Context

Plenary speakers Anthony Oettinger and John Seely Brown emphasized the social, human element in information systems. Oettinger chairs the Harvard University Program on Information Resources Policy (PIRP), while Brown is chief scientist at Xerox Corporation, directing the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The most dramatic progress, says Oettinger, is evident in IT processes that ignore substance, in systems that modify substance according to stable rules. John Seely Brown gave many examples of the power of information in context. The newspaper as a physical arrangement of articles informs better than a "pushed" electronic stream. He described a successful technical support system where Xerox technicians shared technical experience through stories, a model that was not portable to other parts of the company unless a certain level of trust prevailed between workers and managers. Clifford Lynch, of the Coalition for Networked Information, moderated a session on digital library use, which echoed some of the same themes.

Many speakers at the ASIS&T conference have posted their talks on the World Wide Web, and suggested information-rich URLs as well. Plenary speaker Anthony Oettinger posted his talk at the Harvard PIRP Web site at http://www.pirp.harvard.edu/pubs_pdf/oettinger/AGO_KnowledgeInnova_I004.html. John Seely Brown, both artist and scientist, has a Web site for his book, The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, March 2000 ISBN 0-87584-762-5), www.slofi.com

Developing countries

The session "International Digital Library Advances in Developing Countries" featured six papers resulting from a competition open to information scientists who are citizens of developing countries. Natalie Leroy of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Library moderated. Presenters outlined projects from Korea, China, India, Taiwan and Kenya. Kyiho Lee of the Korean Research and Development Information Center gave a practical approach to a full-text database of Korean electronic theses and dissertations. Aashish Sharma delivered his paper, coauthored by William Yurcik,detailing the emergence of rural digital libraries in India. The Gyandoot digital library, with a public/private economic model, delivers government information via kiosk to a linguistically diverse public in an area with 4 per cent telephone penetration and three computers per one thousand population. Kiosk operators are local educated youth, so the project also serves to provide employment and curb "brain drain." A second presenter from India, P.R. Goswani,spoke on Web and CD-ROM initiatives to make Indian government statistics more available. Ben-Ami Lipetz delivered a paper by three authors from Taiwan. The subject was a system for exchanging virtual museum objects. Criteria are user-centered and the system is based on Dublin Core with additional elements for Chinese language. Yan Quan Liu and Jin Zhang described digital library infrastructure for sharing information resources in China. Finally, Duncan Wambogo Omole's paper, read by Bahaa El-Hadiddy gave an overview of information science and technology in developing countries, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The information revolution arrives in developing countries via ingenious solutions to economic and social problems that exist atop the technical hurdles. Several of these papers are slated for publication in the ASIS&T Bulletin.

Information Policy

In his presentation,"Connecting the Disconnected," Michel Menou explored the information infrastructure issues facing the developing world. This thoughtful treatment was part of a final full-morning session of the conference, devoted to information policy and research issues. Other speakers at this session commented on developments in copyright, both United States and international. Another part of this session was an update on the European database directive, which imposes great restrictions on database use (see the CODATA Web site, http://www. codata.org/codata/data_access/linn.html for more on database protection). Presenters were John Rumble, President of CODATA, and Shelly Warwick, of Queens College, New York. Moderators were Charles Davis (sitting in for James Rush) and Gail Hodge, from Information International Associates, whose account of the session will appear in the ASIS&T Bulletin.

Michel Menou has worked in 80 countries, written two books, and authored more than 100 technical reports. On the subject of connecting the disconnected, the rhetoric is "Welcome to the new Garden of Eden. Get connected and get EVERYTHING," yet this is not the reality. Menou spoke of the more pressing issues facing the disconnected:dignity, food, self-reliance, and justice. He made a point of the lack of technical infrastructure and the growing gap between the world's rich and poor. Yet deficiency in the telecommunications infrastructure is only part of the disconnection. Projects can fail on social as well as on technical grounds. There are issues of control, issues of gender and ethnicity, of making content relevant to the target population, of seeing that the facility is perceived as open to all, and of ensuring continuity beyond the set-up phase. Examples of"telecentre" projects in South America and in India provide models of how the pieces can come together. A private network, operating in the welcoming space of community centers or temples, seems to be most viable.

NTIS

On the home front, Robert Willard, Executive Director, of the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) gave an update on the proposed closing of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). As federal agencies build Web sites, the distribution issues have changed. However, there is a public good in maintaining centralized access to US Government research. Willard pointed out that the discussion on NTIS is a very open process. To read in depth and take part as well, visit www.nclis.gov/govt/govt.html

Technical Initiative

In a more technical vein was the standing room only session: "Metadata Evaluation, the Road Toward Meeting our Objectives." The Moderator was Colleen Cuddy, of the New York University School of Medicine. Four experts undertook to describe the rapidly developing state of metadata, to follow its history, and to outline the specialized extensions of Dublin Core for education, government and libraries. Stuart Weibel, Senior Research Scientist at OCLC, showed how the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is a complex but fast-moving process allowing for core elements in 25 languages and now involving integration with an alphabet soup of past and present systems of metadata, including GILS (Government Information Locator Service), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), MARC(Machine Readable Cataloging), and MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group).

The panel "Web Searching Innovations, Challenges and Future Directions" explored research at AOL, NEC and a newer company, Mondosoft, on how search engines can be improved to direct users more effectively through the growing web of 800 million pages. Combining search engines is a good strategy, but still nets only 42 per cent of the public World Wide Web.

Scientific Publishing

In the rapidly changing arena of scientific publishing, speakers on electronic preprint initiatives showed how electronic preprints (e-prints) complement and support conventional journals in particle physics, while in other fields they are not accepted in the continuum from research to publication. Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information observed that in physics the e-print is a natural, logical progression in the way researchers share information. In other disciplines, this is a passionate issue that threatens long-standing power relationships.

Another panel posed the question, "Will Today's E-Journals be Accessible in the 23rd Century?" Panelists were Peter B. Boyce, Senior Consultant, American Astronomical Society (AAS),Gail Hodge of Information International Associates, Inc., Tim Ingoldsby of the American Institute of Physics. Boyce stressed the importance of permanent accessibility as opposed to archiving. A key issue is management of the information. As technology changes, the formats must be refreshed. Preserving the text portion of the electronic journal is simpler than preserving the electronic added value content, such as models, maps, links, simulations, or programs embedded in the articles. The American Astronomical Society publishes on the "electronic first" philosophy. Archival SGML is derived automatically into HTML, PDF, or postscript. SGML and XML electronic formats are archivally robust, whereas PDF and HTML are not. As it exists, the AAS system is not maintainable permanently, as standards are not stable.

Gail Hodge outlined the present and potential roles of different types of data centers and/or repositories as custodians of an archive of electronic journals. Since few libraries have the expertise or the funds to preserve electronic journals indefinitely, the responsibility falls to publishers or repositories. Repositories might include centralized or cooperative data centers, departments or branches of institutions, public service providers (such as OCLC or JSTOR),or legal depositories. These various types of repository, some public sector and others private sector, have their strengths and weaknesses, depending on culture or economics. No one model addresses all criteria, but the building blocks are there. The issues to be resolved include: long-term funding, intellectual property rights, and an integrated environment for the user.

Tim Ingoldsby of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) gave a view from the trenches. He sees responsibility for archiving online content as a publisher responsibility. He indicated that while AIP does not have all the answers, it does have the commitment. The following are some of AIP's rules about archiving electronic documents:

• 1.

  Once published, the document should never be changed, only annotated.

• 2.

  There must be multiple archive locations.

• 3.

  The archive is separate from the active source, not used for public delivery, as protection from accidents or hacker attack.

• 4.

  The archive must be refreshed, migrated to new formats, and maintained to current standards, as standards evolve. 5)

• 5.

  Subscriptions change from an ownership model to a license for access. Subscriber licenses govern use. Nonsubscribers may use document delivery.

Will today's e-journals be accessible in the twenty-third century? The panel outlined current efforts,and offered some optimism. In a concrete way, this session on preserving e-journals demonstrated the theme of the conference, "Knowledge Innovations:Celebrating our Heritage, Designing our Future." The final answer depends on some technical solutions, some economic solutions, some social solutions, and the will to repeatedly assess and refine over the long term.

Penny O'Connoris Assistant Head, Science and Technology Department, Cleveland Public Library,325 Superior Ave, Cleveland, OH 44114-1271, USA. Tel: (216) 623-2932. E-mail: penny.oconnor@computer.org