CAUL Council of Australian University Librarians.

Dear cni-announce subscribers:

I am pleased to attach the summary report from the very successful regional conference that CNI held last weekend in London, UK, with the help of CAUSE, one of our three sponsors, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the three UK Higher Education Funding Councils and the British Library, both members of the CNI Task Force,and the UK Office of Library Networking, one of our most valued international partners.

Best,

Paul

SUMMARY REPORT: Networked Information in an International Context, London / February 9-10, 1996

Librarians, information technologists, and academics from the United Kingdom and the United States agreed that in today's global information society, there are many opportunities for multi-national collaborations on networked information projects. This conclusion was reached at the "Networked Information in an International Context" conference in London on February 9-10, 1996. The conference, sponsored by the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) in association with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), CAUSE, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the three UK Higher Education Funding Councils, and the British Library (BL), was the first joint effort of these groups. The conference facilitated communication about networked information priorities, strategies, and issues among senior managers of information resources. In addition, the conference showcased initiatives in networked information in the US and in the far-reaching and well-organized UK initiative known as the eLib Programme.

In her welcome to over one hundred fifty attendees, Lynne Brindley, chair of the UK Library Programme of JISC, noted that "all of the boundaries are disappearing," as exemplified by the speakers from both sides of the Atlantic and the many sectors of academe represented on the program: faculty, librarians, information technologists, academic administrators, and others. She commented that JISC has pushed a program featuring information and its management as well as strategies for service delivery. She noted that through membership in CNI's Task Force and contact over the past few years, JISC had been influenced by CNI in the development of its program. Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, also welcomed the attendees and called for those present to ensure the building of an infrastructure that serves the needs of global science and scholarship.

In the keynote address, Sir Brian Follett reported on the achievements, plans, and problems of the University Libraries Review Group of the Joint Information Systems Committee. The primary vehicle for addressing the recommendations of the 1993 Follett Report (http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/follett/follett_report.html) was the establishment of the eLib Programme, chaired by Lynne Brindley at the London School of Economics and led by Chris Rusbridge at the University of Warwick (http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/elib/). This ambitious initiative has a budget of about 15 million pounds over three years. Its objectives are to use IT to improve delivery of information through increased use of electronic library services, to allow academic libraries to cope better with growth, to explore different models of intellectual property management, and to encourage new methods of scholarly publishing. Currently, the eLib initiative is funding fifty projects in the following areas:

oo Document delivery

oo Electronic journals

oo Digitization

oo On-demand publishing

oo Training and awareness

oo Access to network resources

oo Supporting studies

oo Images

New initiatives will be in the areas of preprints and grey literature, quality assurance (refereeing), and electronic reserves. Sir Brian closed his remarks on the eLib initiative by noting that the time is approaching when the developers must take the projects from experimental stage to the mass implementation stage, and it will be important to integrate the eLib projects with each other as well as with similar projects outside of the UK. In this way, we will build the infrastructure for the digital library.

The second plenary session included presentations by Terry Cannon and John Mahoney of the British Library. Cannon described the long history of research on electronic library projects by the BL and noted that partnerships and joint funding will be a large part of BL's future. He described the success of the UKOLN effort that has resulted in a powerful facility for awareness, advice, research, and standards. He also described the increased interest by the BL in networking projects in all types of libraries. Mahoney stated that the BL's goal is to be a major center for storage of and access to digital texts required for research by the year 2000. They are supporting pilots and demonstrations to exploit networking and information technology to develop new services. In their vision of the digital library, there will be:

oo Integrated access to the BL and other collections

oo Organized and indexed digital collections

oo Digital collections integrated with traditional library collections

oo Increased access

oo Assurance of continued availability of information resources

oo Staff who have needed competencies to manage and service digital libraries

oo Digitization processes for conservation and access

oo Balance between intellectual property rights and "fair dealings"

oo Substantial investment in digital libraries by the BL and partners

In the closing plenary session, Richard West, Vice Chancellor, California State University and Chair of the CNI Steering Committee, presented his view of the changing costs of information in the networked environment. He described a framework, developed through an Association of American Universities (AAU)/ Association of Research Libraries (ARL) process which examined the potential effect of digital information resources on universities' costs for acquiring, storing and delivering information. West noted that currently our strategies for the electronic market are based on our practices in the print environment. We expect savings through resource sharing and savings in the acquisitions budget. However, in the networked information environment, savings may be in other areas, e.g. storage, access, and circulation. In addition, improving technology enables conceptual changes in our view of the scholarly communications process. For example, we can eliminate the presumption that the end result of the scholarly communication process is a print publication. In conclusion, West stated that mixed models of scholarly communication are inevitable in this transition period. He urged the attendees to focus on increasing support for fair use in the electronically empowered network environment, to explore cooperative content agreements with information providers that maximize economies of scale, to keep public information in the public domain, to invest in local campus networks, and to encourage a competitive market in scholarly information content.

In addition to the plenary sessions, project briefings were conducted in five topical areas:

oo Electronic journals

• The CLIC Electronic Journal Project by Henry Rzepa, Imperial College, UK
• Internet Archaeology: Overcoming the Obstacles and Using the Opportunities by Seamus Ross, The British Academy, UK
• From Ephemeral to Integral: Collaborative Management of Electronic Journals by Barbara Allen, CIC Center for Library Initiatives, US

oo Teaching and learning

• New Learning Communities in the Networked Environment by Jana Bradley, Indiana University at IUPUI, US
• Technology Enhanced Language Learning: A Consortium Approach by Graham Chesters, The TELL Consortium, University of Hull, UK
• IT POINT: Networking in the Community by Gulshan Kayam and Sue Turner, IT POINT Project Solihull, UK

oo Management and service issues

• Information Services: Threat or Opportunity by Richard Field, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Empowering the Millenium Citizen: Public Library Networking Initiatives, The Library Association Millenium Project and Project EARL by Philippa Dobson, LA/EARL/UKOLN Joint Public Libraries Networking Initiative, UK
• Collaboration: Partnerships between Librarians and Information Technologists by Joan Lippincott, Coalition for Networked Information, US

oo Networked information discovery and retrieval

• A Summary of the Findings of CNI's NIDR Research Initiative by Clifford Lynch, University of California, Office of the President, US
• The Subject Approach to Network Navigation by Nicky Ferguson, University of Bristol, UK
• Resource Organization and Discovery by Lorcan Dempsey, UKOLN, UK

oo Technical issues

• Electronic Support for Scholarly Communication: Developing an Electronic Community by Dov Gabbay, Imperial College, UK and Hans Jurgen Ohlback, Max Planck Institute, Germany
• Administrative Computing Meets the Web: Discover the Possibilities by David Koehler, Princeton University, US

At the close of the meeting, Paul Evan Peters called for more learning by doing, specifically supporting some cooperative and collaborative initiatives between US and UK projects. He suggested joint projects, replication of projects, exchanges of personnel, and workshops as possible follow-ups to this meeting. He also encouraged the sponsors to consider addressing such cross-cutting perspectives and issues as economic models, strategis standards, assessment and performance measures, access by the disabled, preservation, new learning communities, and collaboration. Finally, he called for the next steps of the sponsors to be carried out in a broader international context.

Following the main meeting, invited delegates of the US and UK met to evaluate the completed meeting and to discuss next steps. These leaders expressed commitment to the expansion of partners to involve additional countries, voiced a strong desire for joint projects and exchanges of personnel, and expressed enthusiasm for building on the success of this conference.

The UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN), funded by JISC and the British Library, provides research, coordination and information services to the UK library and information communities.

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), a joint project of the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and Educom, promotes the creation and use of networked information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity.

CAUSE is the association for managing and using information resources in higher education.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and exists to serve scholarship, research and innovation.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) was founded by the three Higher Education Funding Councils to stimulate and enable the cost effective exploitation of information systems and to provide a high quality national infrastructure for the UK higher education and research councils' communities.