Discussion with Panel of IBM Renaissance Consortium Members
Topics
The following topics are some that IBM is interested in hearing about.
- Key issues and challenges
- Key benefits, business value
- Future digital library plans
Panel
The following are members of the panel:
- Florida International University: Art Gloster, CIO and Vice-Provost
- Indiana University: David Fenske, Director, School of Music
- Library of Congress: Herb Becker, Director of I/T Services
- Case Western Reserve University: Jim Barker, Director, Digital Media Lab
- Virginia Commonwealth University: Phyllis Self, Executive Director,
Office of I/T
For more information:
The following links provide background information:
Outline of topics students are interested in:
The following is a set of notes from brainstorming discussion
to see what questions might emerge. They will be reorganized by
the time of the panel, which actually will run interactively, not
using canned questions. Thus, they should be viewed largely as
an indication of the type of interests the students have.
- Interface
- What client machines are targetted? Network connections?
- What are the desired capabilities for various types of users?
- What is the design target (types of users) for IBM Digital Libraries?
- How and how often do you redefine the interface (custom, WWW, Java, ...)?
- What happens when the design target changes?
- What happens when there are technology improvements?
- Query error handling?
- Novice users?
- Multilingual systems?
- What are the related goals of Digital Libraries?
- What is the goal of users: getting an individual fact or answer, or
retrieving a document or book (container) containing the answer?
- Can you support personal collections (subsets of full collection
pointing to actual objects)?
- Supportability
- How to support interoperability with different systems in future?
- What kind of burden will be placed on librarians?
- Learning:
How do we teach librarians to use Digital Libraries and teach others?
- Usability
- What kinds of studies are being done?
- Will people use the digital library vs. a book?
- Portability, use anywhere?
- Are the installation documentation and reference manual stored in the IBM
DL when it arrives?
- Schema, data description
- What limitations are there with IBM formats and approach?
- What about Hypertext, Hyperlinks?
- How do you make the data schema clear to the user?
- Library of Congress
- Are publishers required to submit electronic versions of works?
- How do you operate a depository of electronic materials?
- What is the role of Reserve Libraries?
- Formats supported?
- Storage systems, backup of information
- Government in general, Library of Congress in particular - how
do you ensure reliable service?
- Data compression:
What techniques do you use and how effective are they?
- Security rights management
- How to protect copyrighted information?
- Who uses watermarks?
- Can you track on use, bill on use?
- How does this fit into the broader picture of lectronic commerce?
- Social aspects
- What are the effects on children of digital libraries?
- How do they deal with a virtual vs. physical world?
- Does IBM Digital Libraries meet the expectations of the Nintendo
Generation?
- Interoperability
- Open architecture digital libraries - what is the plan?
- What other digital library systems exist besides IBM?
- Portability between systems: several from IBM? mixing with others?
- How do you deal with problems of scale? Searching? Indexing?
- What protocols are there for client server? How do the
several protocols work together?
What are the complexities in this?
- Are there any digital library specific protocols?
- Effective and efficient retrieval
- How does IBM technology rate?
- What features does it provide?
- Do you work to find facts or document containing facts?
- Economic models
- Who pays for hardware? Software?
- Who has the IBM digital library system?
- Who are IBM's competitors in the digital library field?
- How are you working to publicize, popularize digital libraries?
- Music information
- Are there any other ways to store music besides sound?
- Notes? Sheet music?
- Preservation
- What steps can you take to prevent hardware from becoming obsolete so
quickly?
- What about software formats?
- User profiles
- Is there support for Selective Dissemination of Information?
- Does your software support agents?
- Light APIs?