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D-Lib Magazine
January 2000

Volume 6 Number 1

ISSN 1082-9873

In Brief

Campus Computing, 1999: The Continuing Challenge of Instructional Integration

Contributed by:
Kenneth C. Green, Ph.D.
The Campus Computing Project
Encino, California, USA
cgreen@campuscomputing.net

Assisting faculty efforts "to integrate technology into instruction" remains the single most important information technology (IT) challenge confronting American colleges and universities over the next two to three years, according to new data from The Campus Computing Project. Fully two-fifths (39.0 percent) of the institutions participating in the Project's 1999 survey identify "instructional integration" as their single most significant IT challenge, up from 33.2 percent in 1998 and 29.6 percent in Fall 1997.

"Providing adequate user support" ranks second again this year: just over one-fourth (27.5 percent) of the survey respondents identified user support as the most significant challenge for their institutions, up from 26.5 percent in 1998 and 25.0 percent in 1997. Placing third was "financing the replacement of aging hardware and software," identified by one-seventh of the survey respondents (15.2 percent) as the single most important IT challenge for their college.

"The survey data document the growing campus awareness that the key IT challenges in higher education involve people, not products," says Kenneth C. Green, founder/director of The Campus Computing Project and a visiting scholar at The Center for Educational Studies of Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. "Two decades after the first desktop computers arrived on college campuses, we have come to recognize that the campus community's major technology challenges involve human factors - assisting students and faculty to make effective use of new technologies in ways that support teaching, learning, instruction and scholarship." Green adds that for many institutions "user support and instructional integration are the flip side of the same coin" - complementary components of the broad challenge that involves the effective use of new technologies in teaching, learning, and scholarship.

Not surprisingly, the 1999 survey data reveal that more college courses are using more technology resources. Over half (53.4 percent) of all college courses make use of electronic mail, up from 44.0 percent in 1998 and 20.1 percent in 1995. Similarly, the percentage of college courses using Web resources in the syllabus rose from 10.9 in 1995 and 33.1 percent in 1998 to 38.6 percent in 1999. More than one-fourth of all college courses (27.8 percent) have a Web page, compared to 22.5 percent in 1998 and 9.2 percent in 1996. Concurrently, the 1999 Campus Computing Survey data reveal that about one-fifth of college faculty (18.0 percent) maintain a personal Web page, one not linked to any specific class or course.

However, one Web-based service that appears late arriving in higher education is electronic commerce: only 8.4 percent of the institutions participating in the 1999 Campus Computing Survey report e-commerce capacity via their campus Web sites, up slightly from 5.1 percent in 1998. Concurrently, only 4.3 percent of colleges and universities report that they have a strategic plan for electronic commerce. "Growing numbers of students, faculty, and consumers now routinely purchase books, music, clothing, and other goods and services via the Internet. Yet the 1999 survey data confirm that compared to other sectors of the economy, colleges have been slow to develop a capacity for electronic commerce," states Green. "At the end of the day, e-commerce in higher education involves more than permitting prospective students to pay application fees or assisting alumni to order logo attire on the campus Web sites. Rather, e-commerce involves a wide range of content, product, and service issues that ultimately benefit all who participate as members of the higher education community."

The 1999 Campus Computing Survey data suggest that more campuses are coming to terms with strategic and financial challenges presented by information technology. Fully three-fifths of all institutions (61.0 percent have a strategic plan for information technology, an impressive gain from the 50 percent reporting such plans in 1998. Concurrently 44.9 percent of colleges and universities now report an "acquire and retire plan" for computers and other technology products, up from 37.3 percent in 1998 and just 15.9 percent in 1990. Green notes that "over the past decade many colleges have struggled with developing strategic and financial plans for IT. Certainly most institutions and departments are still very dependent on budget dust -- year end money -- for a significant portion of their IT spending. Nonetheless, things are getting better as both campus officials and others off-campus recognize the importance of developing viable strategic and financial plans for information technology."

Begun in 1990, the annual Campus Computing Project is the largest continuing study of information technology in American higher education. The 1999 survey data were provided by campus officials, typically the senior technology officer, at 530 two- and four-year public and private colleges and universities across the United States. Survey participants completed the questionnaire during the summer and fall of 1999. Additional information about the Campus Computing Project is available on the Web at: <http://www.campuscomputing.net>.

 

Openly Informatics Unveils Virtual Linking Service (Press release)

Contributed by:
Eric Hellman
President, Openly Informatics, Inc.
Montclair, New Jersey, USA
eric@openly.com

Monclair, New Jersey - January 14, 2000 - Openly Informatics, Inc. <http://www.openly.com/> today unveiled its virtual linking service, LinkBaton <http://linkbaton.com/>.

LinkBaton lets Internet publishers make virtual hyperlinks to sites selected by users. The first implementation offers hyperlinking to books based on their International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and to stocks using their ticker symbols.

When users click on a LinkBaton, they are presented with a list of information sources that offer services for their LinkBaton. Users can then make shortcuts to these services for subsequent LinkBatons. For example, a LinkBaton for a book could lead to a page at Amazon.com, or it could lead to a holdings page at the user's local library. The difference between a conventional hyperlink and a LinkBaton is that the LinkBaton incorporates the user's preferences. A site that uses LinkBatons is automatically customized for the user.

Openly expects to launch the library component of the LinkBaton service in the first quarter of 2000. Library patrons will be able to make shortcuts to libraries that register as service choices.

"LinkBaton is an enabling technology for Internet digital libraries and a variety of other information services," said Eric Hellman, President of Openly Informatics. "Books and stocks are just two examples of things that will be made more accessible by LinkBatons."

 

Applications Are Being Accepted for the MOST International Ph.D. Award (2000-2001)

Contributed by:
Carlos R. S. Milani
Division of Social Sciences, Research and Policy
Sector of Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO
Paris, France
C.Milani@unesco.org

The UNESCO Management of Social Transformation (MOST) Programme was established several years ago to 1) improve understanding by generating policy-relevant knowledge on multi-ethnic and multicultural societies; cities; and local and national strategies to cope with global phenomena; and 2) to improve the communication between social sciences researchers and decision-makers.

The MOST Ph.D. Award (2000-2001 edition) will be given to a citizen of a developing country or a country in transition who has successfully defended his/her doctorate on a subject that falls within the themes of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme. These are:

  • Social transformations connected with migration;

  • Interethnic relations, ethnic conflict and peace building;

  • New urban planning and management models;

  • Recent social processes related to urban development;

  • Technology, environment and local development;

  • Social and economic transformations related to the international drug problem;

  • Life styles and sustainable consumption patterns;

  • Global governance;

  • National development strategies in a globalizing economy.

A short-list of candidates will be invited to participate in a Training Seminar where specific issues related to development strategies and project design, assessment, monitoring and implementation will be discussed. Further details concerning this seminar will be given to the selected candidates.

The MOST Programme will cover all expenses related to travel and participation in this Seminar. The laureate, who will be chosen among the Seminar participants, will receive the sum of US$2,000, as well as having his/her costs paid by UNESCO for him/her to present the research findings to the Intergovernmental Council of the MOST Programme in Paris, at its session in Spring 2001. The laureate will also be invited to write an article based on his/her thesis, to be published by MOST.

For conditions and detailed information, please visit the website of the Programme or send an email to the coordinator of the Award: Carlos R. S. Milani, Division of Social Science, Research and Policy, The Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme, Fax number : 33 0145685724, 0145685728, Home page : <http://www.unesco.org/most>, Email: c.milani@unesco.org.

 

"One-Stop" Scholarly Searching Unveiled in New Release of the California Digital Library (Press Release)

Contributed by:
John Ober
Director, Education and Applied Research California Digital Library University of California Oakland, California, USA john.ober@ucop.edu

New features including a sophisticated online tool to simultaneously search many different scholarly information sources have just been added to the California Digital Library at the opening of its second year of service to the University of California and the public.

The experimental new tool dubbed "SearchLight" and many of the journal, reference, and library databases it searches are available to the public. For visitors to the California Digital Library and for the 315,000 scholars, students and staff of the University of California, SearchLight and other enhancements help integrate the traditionally separate tasks of discovery and use of information.

The California Digital Library (CDL) Web site and many of its resources, including digitized collections of photographs, manuscripts, and other archival materials from institutions around the state held in the Online Archive of California, are also available to the general public.

The CDL, which partners with the nine UC campuses in a continuing commitment to apply innovative technology to the management of scholarly information, opened to the public last January.

As a digital "co-library," complementing the physical libraries of the UC system, the CDL uses technology to efficiently share materials held by UC, to provide greater and easier access to digital content, and to join with researchers in developing new tools and innovations for scholarly communication.

The January release of new features represents another step forward in UC President Richard C. Atkinson’s vision of "a future when our libraries, at the press of a button, can come to us, wherever we are, whenever we wish."

SearchLight facilitates "one-stop shopping" for a known research topic or it can be used to explore the most promising resources when working in an unfamiliar subject area.

For instance, a patron may be interested in the theory of particle physics that treats elementary particles as "string-like" objects. Entering a single SearchLight search on “string theory,” the researcher will view a single results screen showing the availability of hundreds of relevant books in UC library collections, 350 abstracts from the National Science Foundation grants and awards database, and various other materials publicly available.

A University of California researcher will additionally discover more than 10,000 journal citations from licensed databases such as Inspec, Current Contents and ArticleFirst. Additionally, he or she will be able to view online more than 220 relevant journal articles related to string theory drawn from the nearly 5,000 electronic journals made available through the CDL to the UC community.

Several other enhancements and significant additions of digital content to the CDL will be a boon to researchers.

UC faculty, graduate students and staff can now place automatic requests for book and journal article delivery from throughout the nine-campus system with a single click on the "Request" button found in CDL-hosted databases.

The CDL has additional coverage in engineering through Ei Village database services, and in science and social science with more than 240 electronic journals from Wiley and 32 titles from the Institute of Physics.

New experimental and applied research resources draw upon innovative technologies and are the results of research partnerships. In addition to the SearchLight tool, the Alexandria Digital Library of maps, aerial photographs, a place-name gazetteer, and other geo-spatially referenced information debuts here.

UC Press Electronic Editions include the full content of approximately 60 UC Press books and are available via links in search results of the Melvyl© Union Catalog of all UC library collections.

The CDL-hosted Databases interface, which includes access to the Melvyl Catalog, now includes a drop-down menu for easy linking to other journal databases. Improvements to the CDL’s Directory of Collections, including more than 4,800 electronic journals, more than 50 journal article databases and 4000 inventories or "finding aids" to archival collections, has been streamlined with clear information about availability.

Many of the January enhancements of the California Digital Library are the result of suggestions from faculty and students, campus librarians, and members of the public. Soliciting these comments and working with advisory groups and the digital library and computer science research communities allow regular improvements to the look, feel and usefulness of the CDL for UC, for Californians and for the public.

More information can be found at <http://www.cdlib.org/>.

 

The JUBILEE Observatories

Contributed by:
Patricia Gannon-Leary
Senior Research Assistant, Project Officer - JUBILEE
School of Information Studies
University of Northumbria at Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
patricia.gannonleary@unn.ac.uk

The JUBILEE observatories are online communities in disciplines specific to the first cycle of the JUBILEE project. JUBILEE stands for JISC User Behaviour in Information seeking: Longitudinal Evaluation of EIS. This three-year project (1999-2002) is being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (http://www.jisc.ac.uk). JUBILEE will survey users and non-users of electronic information services (EIS) and seek to predict, monitor and characterise users' information seeking behaviour. The project findings will inform future strategic decision making and investment in EIS by the JISC in partnership with higher education institutions.

For 1999-2000 the three disciplines are

  • Business Studies
  • English
  • Health Sciences

The following electronic observatories, or discussion lists, have been established:

For those who wish to discuss electronic information services generally, Jubilee-all is an open list available to anyone with an interest in EIS in higher education. The other lists are aimed at those engaged in specific disciplines, whether as teacher, researcher, information specialist or student. Anyone interested or active in any of the three disciplines, irrespective of where they are based, is welcome to join the discipline-based observatories.

The observatories aim to facilitate and support discussion of EIS experiences and expertise in the HE community. JUBILEE's remit is to move beyond who is using what in relation to EIS towards ascertaining why and how they are using these facilities; the relative take-up of EIS in the different disciplines and in different size/type institutions; and awareness of, use of and satisfaction with specific EIS.

To stimulate debate, topics which reflect the needs and interests of the disciplines and the wider community will be proposed, and the Project Team invite suggestions from members about "hot topics" in their own institutions or specific discipline. The members of the Project Team are based at the Information Management Research Institute at the School of Information Studies, University of Northumbria at Newcastle upon Tyne, England (www.unn.ac.uk). The JUBILEE Project Officer is Pat Gannon-Leary Patricia.gannonleary@unn.ac.uk, and the Project Manager is Linda Banwell Linda.banwell@unn.ac.uk.

 

American Memory Fellows Program Applications Sought

Contributed by:
Judith K. Graves
Education Resources Specialist
National Digital Library Program
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C., USA.

American Memory Fellows Program

The American Memory Fellows Program is an exciting opportunity for outstanding teachers, librarians, and media specialists to work with the Library of Congress in better understanding how primary sources can enrich grades 4-12 curricula. This is a yearlong professional development opportunity, the cornerstone of which is the summer institute, held this year in Washington, DC, at the Library of Congress, in two sessions: July 16-21 or July 23-28, 2000.

The American Memory Fellows Institute

The American Memory Fellows Institute sponsors 24 two-person teams of exemplary grade 4-12 educators to come to Washington for a summer institute. Each six-day session will accommodate 12 teams of 24 Fellows. Teams will not attend both sessions; however, to be eligible to apply, teams must be available for both sessions. To apply, use the application found on-line at <http://learning.loc.gov/learn/amfp/intro.html>. Applications must be postmarked by February 28, 2000.

During the 6-day institute, Fellows will work with Library of Congress staff and consultants, examine both actual and virtual primary source artifacts -- photographs, maps, graphic arts, video, documents, and texts -- plus learn strategies for working with these electronic primary source materials, and develop sample teaching materials that draw upon the American Memory online materials.

The Fellowship Year

Following the Institute, Fellows will continue to develop, refine, and "road test" their teaching materials with other colleagues and students. These teacher-created materials are then edited for presentation on the Library of Congress Learning Page at <http://learning.loc.gov/learn/>. Throughout the school year, Fellows participate in on-line discussion groups as this process evolves. American Memory Fellows, as mentors to their professions, are also asked to share their knowledge with other colleagues throughout the nation at workshops and seminars, or in writing.

Selection Criteria. The Library is seeking applications from 2-member teams of humanities teachers, librarians, and media specialists who:

  • Have frequent access to and a high level of comfort using the World Wide Web, e-mail and other technologies;

  • Have experience using primary sources to motivate students, promote critical thinking, and help students connect history to their own lives;

  • Are active leaders in their fields, and/or have the ability to disseminate their expertise to teachers and/or librarians in their community and region;

  • Work with student populations that are diverse (e.g. by region, income, race and ethnicity, language, disability, etc.).

If you meet these criteria, please print out and complete the online application at <http://learning.loc.gov/learn/amfp/intro.html>. You may make copies of the application for interested colleagues.

Applications must be postmarked by February 28, 2000. (No email, fax or disk-based applications, please.) Notification letters to all applicants will be mailed the week of April 24, 2000.

Please send any inquiries to Stephanie Ruvinsky at sruv@loc.gov.

 

American Meteorological Society Joins the PubSCIENCE Partnership

Contributed by:
Wanda Parks, U. S. Department of Energy
Office of Science
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
Wanda_Parks@ccmail.osti.gov

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) announces significant additions to PubSCIENCE <http://www.osti.gov/pubsci>. This Web-based application provides the one-stop means to search and access hundreds of peer-reviewed journals at one time without searching through multiple Web sites, publications, and references.

OSTI has partnered with more than twenty publishers to provide this unique capability to search with a single query, free of charge, for information on the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the latest publisher to join this partnership.

Since PubSCIENCE was launched on October 1, 1999, it has become one of DOE's most popular Web sites and has been added as a hyperlink on the Web pages of over 300 organizations.

The AMS journals added to PubSCIENCE are:

  • Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
  • Journal of Applied Meteorology
  • Journal of Physical Oceanography
  • Monthly Weather Review
  • Monthly Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology
  • Weather and Forecasting Quarterly
  • Journal of Climate
  • Monthly Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
  • Earth Interactions

The AMS is a scientific and professional organization serving the atmospheric and related sciences. In addition to its various publications, the AMS sponsors and organizes over a dozen scientific conferences each year and administers two professional certification programs, and also offers an array of undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.

PubSCIENCE was developed and is maintained by OSTI, a component of the DOE Office of Science. For more information about PubSCIENCE, please contact Dr. Walter L. Warnick, OSTI Director, (301) 903-7996.

 

Announcement of the Library of Congress Meeting of Frontiers Web Site

Contributed by:
Michael Neubert
Reference Specialist, European Division
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C., USA
mneu@loc.gov

The parallel experiences of the United States and Russia in exploring, developing and settling their frontiers and the meeting of those frontiers in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest is the focus of a new Web site created by the Library of Congress under a special congressional appropriation. The site is now available at <http://frontiers.loc.gov/>.

"Meeting of Frontiers" includes more than 2,500 items, comprising some 70,000 images, from the Library's rare book, manuscript, map, film and sound recording collections that tell the stories of the explorers, fur traders, missionaries, exiles, gold miners and adventurers that peopled both frontiers and their interactions with the native peoples of Siberia and the American West.

The site is completely bilingual, in English and Russian, and is intended for use in U.S. and Russian schools and libraries and by the general public in both countries. Scholars, particularly those who do not have ready access to major research libraries, will benefit from the wealth of primary material included in Meeting of Frontiers, much of which has never been published or is extremely rare. Intended to appeal to students and for use in schools, the site features such colorful characters as John Ledyard, an acquaintance of Thomas Jefferson who attempted to walk across Siberia, and Perry McDonough Collins, a lawyer and businessman who became the American Commercial Agent to the Amur River in 1856 and who developed a plan, partially carried out, to build a telegraph link from America to Europe via the Bering Straits and Siberia.

Collections available in Meeting of Frontiers include the Frank G. Carpenter Collection of photographs from Alaska in the 1910s; the John C. Grabill Collection of photographs of 1880s frontier life in Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming; the Yudin Collection of papers from the Russian-American Company (1786-1830); and selections from the Alaska Russian Church Archives.

"Meeting of Frontiers" is a pilot project that was developed in 1999 at the Library of Congress by a team of Library staff and American and Russian consultants. The pilot will be expanded in the coming years through the addition of materials from the Library's own collections, from the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and from other U.S. institutions. It will also feature materials from partner institutions in Russia, including the Russian State Library in Moscow, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg and the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.

"Meeting of Frontiers" is funded by a special appropriation in the Library's FY 1999 budget, which is intended for the Library to obtain digital copies of unique and rare materials from Russia and to make those materials freely available through the Internet. Additional support for development of the project in Russia is being provided by the Open Society Institute of Russia.

"Meeting of Frontiers" is the Library's first major digital project involving international material and extensive cooperation with foreign institutions to obtain materials for the Library's collections in digital form. It is the first component of an international digital library that will build upon the Library's National Digital Library Program <http://www.loc.gov>. The National Digital Library Program aims to bring more than 5 million items of American history to citizens everywhere as a Gift to the Nation for the Library's Bicentennial on April 24, 2000.

 

Reports Now Available from the UK Electronic Libraries Programme

Contributed by:
Elizabeth Graham Development Co-ordinator: eLib Programme Office
University of Warwick
Coventry, England, UK
e.c.graham@warwick.ac.uk

The Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) is pleased to announce the availability of a series of reports which underpin the work of its development projects. The reports work towards defining notions of best practice within the electronic library and provide considerable insight into digital library developments in the future.

Since 1995 the UK Higher Education Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has funded more than 60 projects through the Electronic Libraries Programme . These projects aim to shape the development of the electronic library through a programme of action-based research and include a variety of approaches, culminating in the hybrid library and 'clumps' projects which began in January 1998 <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/projects/>.

More than twenty supporting studies have been funded as an integral part of eLib. These were commissioned in three thematic strands:

  • digital preservation studies, including examination of strategic and policy issues

  • evaluation and impact studies, including studies of electronic journals and on demand publishing services

  • general studies which include copyright guidelines and some project final reports.

A full list of titles and online copies of many of the reports are available at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/supporting/>.

Printed copies of eLib reports are available at a cost of £20 each (plus postage and packing) and can be obtained by contacting:

Lynda Agili
LITC
South Bank University
103 Borough Road
London SE1 0AA UK
Telephone +44 (0)171 815 7870
Fax +44 (0)171 815 7050
Email: agilila@sbu.ac.uk.

Copyright (c) 2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives

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DOI: 10.1045/january2000-inbrief