Subject: EUROPEAN TELEMATICS: ADVANCING THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, BARCELONA
From: Emanuella Giavarra (ecup.secr@dial.pipex.com)
Date: pe 06 maalis 1998 - 17:53:19 EET
(posted to lis.uknfp)
The European Commission Libraries sector at DG XIII has released the
following report on its activities at the Telematics conference,
"Advancing the Information Society", Barcelona, 4-6 February 1998.
EUROPEAN TELEMATICS: ADVANCING THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, BARCELONA
The Libraries sector organised and chaired two of the parallel
sessions on the first and third days of the TAP Conference in
Barcelona, as well as contributing two success stories (CHILIAS and
LIBERATION) to the proceedings on Day 2. These plus three other
projects (DECOMATE, TESTLAB and UNIVERSE) were invited to take part in
the exhibition which was organised in thematic villages. Libraries
projects featured in the Knowledge village.
The full proceedings of the Conference are to be made available on the
WEB. However, the following is a brief overview of the issues and
topics to emerge from the sessions involving libraries, museums and
archives.
Day 1: Knowledge production and acquisition session.
Chair Ariane Iljon
The overall aim of the session was to discuss the change in the nature
of the knowledge distribution chain being brought about by electronic
publishing and its impact on the various constituencies concerned, by
bringing together different players involved. Ongoing projects were
used to illustrate how participants in Europe are tackling the
problems through developing technical demonstrators and frameworks for
supporting new models and methods of working.
In the print environment, there are well-organised and recognised
roles for producers, storers (ie libraries) and users of information.
For example, a supporting infrastructure has developed, with national
bibliographies, Universal Bibliographic Control, ISBN and ISSN
agencies etc, which allows physical items to be identified
consistently from publication stage onwards. This infrastructure is
fostered through tried and tested alliances between publishers and
libraries.
With the growth of electronic publishing and of network publishing
come major changes. Publications are dynamic, often volatile and new
definitions are needed as to what constitutes the information item.
Problems arise concerning, amongst others:
• the reliability of information;
• the sustainability of services and access;
• economic models and conditions of acquisition and use;
• and long-term access.
A technical and organisational infrastructure needs to be developed that
will provide in the electronic/digital environment services that permit
items to be easily and authentically located, retrieved and purchased,
and that ensures that they will continue to be available after their
present economic and technical sell-by dates.
The speakers in the session represented different actors and interests
in
the knowledge chain, whose ongoing projects and work illustrate some of
the key problems and challenges and how these are beginning to be
investigated and resolved.
Ms Titia van der Werf, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands, talked
about Identification, version control and future availability of
electronic publications, illustrating this with references to the
BIBLINK work on identifiers and on the need for version authentication.
She also introduced the critical long-term access and preservation
issues to be investigated during NEDLIB.
Ms Barbara Schleihagen (European Bureau of Library Information and
Documentation Associations - EBLIDA) dealt with Copyright and licensing
issues. The focus was on the work on user rights and licensing issues
carried out under ECUP+ and to be tested under the new economic models
and frameworks for access and use developed within TECUP.
Mr Steve Sidaway, (Chadwyck-Healey Ltd) talked about Electronic
publishing:
paradigm shifts. This discussed the changes in the publishing process
brought about by Web publishing in particular, together with new
opportunities for alliances and adding-value, taking as examples private
sector initiatives in Web publishing form Chadwyck-Healey.
The presentations all raised very timely issues which will affect the
development of an infrastructure and of services based on content,
namely:
- the problem of identifiers - the schemes, the agencies/registries
responsible, what constitutes the identified object (article, paragraph,
reference, image etc). A stable infrastructure is needed.
- authenticity, provenance, validity of the item and related security
issues;
- issues governing the rights to use and the impact of new economic
models for publication and distribution, including the effect on
electronic commerce;
- new models of publishing for the distributed object environment
with Web publishing currently offering functionality and advantages not
present in other electronic publishing formats;
- maintaining location and identification and supporting access to
objects and electronic documents in the longer term;
- effecting change not only in business processes but also in
organisational processes and structures;
- the legal frameworks which because they are slow to change are key
inhibitors.
Day 3: Libraries, museums and archives
Day 3 looked towards the Fifth Framework Programme for RTD and more
specifically the proposed Information Society Technologies Programme.
Within that there is a Key action dedicated to multimedia content and
tools. This action has identified digital heritage and cultural content
as one of its themes.
Libraries, museums and archives represent an important constituency for
the information and knowledge that makes up the intellectual and
cultural
record. They are important contributors to actions targetted at digital
heritage, culture and knowledge. The aim of the session was to discuss
both the organisational and the technological issues to be faced and
tackled by this constituency in integrating new multi-media products,
resources and tools. The overall context was to encourage collabaration
in facing common challenges and in developing sustainable services that
appear integrated to the end-user, in a multi-media environment.
The speakers represented different interests in this area and each
approached the issues, problems and potential for achievement from a
different perspective. Dr Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of CNI,
covered the critical issues for the global information infrastructure.
The opportunities and barriers to cross-domain cooperation in the field
of culture were discussed by Mrs Larsen from Cultural Network Denmark
which was used as background example. A key point is that of alliances
with the private sector and this was taken up by Mr Beitia, Managing
Director of Baratz SA. The final presentation by Professor Royan looked
at the museums world and at the potential and strategies for creating
multi-media resources from museums collections based on the experiences
of SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) and illustrated by
a multi-media presentation, including images, 3-D manipulation, sound,
video, and virtual reality.
Source: report received from EC DG XIII Electronic Publishing and
Libraries
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Rosalind Johnson
UK National Focal Point (Telematics for Libraries)
Library and Information Commission
2 Sheraton Street
LONDON
W1V 4BH
tel: 0171 411 0059 fax: 0171 411 0057
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