On July 20-21, 1992, the National Science Foundation sponsored a workshop on digital libraries, prompted by an earlier proposal prepared by Lesk, Fox, and McGill, that called for a National Electronic Library for Science, Engineering, and Technology. NSF will fund a good deal of R&Din this area in the 1990s, helping bring to fruition the dreams of such visionaries as Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider.
At the workshop, David Hartzband of DEC recounted experiences of a major multinational corporation involved in office and factory automation. They found that technology alone is not enough, that social and anthropological knowledge is also needed to effect change. Thus, in this unit, which introduces the course and our theme of digital libraries, there will be readings and discussion about the legal issues and essential characteristics of digital media and digital libraries.
To give concreteness to the idea of digital libraries, you will use computer networks to access netlib, an electronic archive for numerical and mathematical software and related information. This will also illustrate how semi-interactive querying can be carried out using electronic mail (or xnetlib).
Since during this course we will be making use of the rapidly expanding digital library that is being developed in Project Envision, it is important to understand the background to that effort. The article on ACM Press Database and Electronic Products describes earlier work toward an ACM digital library, relates it to products and services for ACM members and other users, and discusses some of the financial and pragmatic aspects of such an archive.
This unit paves the way for discussions of technology, methodology, theory, commercial and research systems for IS&R. It sets the stage for detailed discussions, and introduces the key theme of digital libraries, that was part of legislation introduced by Senator Gore in 1992, and re-introduced in Congress in 1993.