| Keywords | Abstract | |
|---|---|---|
| "ADDRESSING PUBLISHING ISSUES WITH HYPERMEDIA DISTRIBUTED ON THE WEB." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The content and structure of an electronically published document can be authored and processed in ways that allow for flexibility in presentation on different environments for different users. This enables authors to craft documents that are more widely presentable. Electronic publishing issues that arise from this separation of document storage from presentation include (1) respecting the intent and restrictions of the author and publisher in the document’s presentation, and (2) applying costs to individual document components and allowing the user to choose among alternatives to control the price of the document’s presentation. These costs apply not only to the individual media components displayed but also to the structure created by document authors to bring these media components together as multimedia. A collection of ISO standards, primarily SGML, HyTime and DSSSL, facilitate the representation of presentation-independent documents and the creation of environments that process them for presentation. SMIL is a W3C format under development for hypermedia documents distributed on the World Wide Web. Since SMIL is SGML-compliant, it can easily be incorporated into SGML/HyTime and DSSSL environments. This paper discusses how to address these issues in the context of presentation-independent hypermedia storage. It introduces the Berlage environment, which uses SGML, HyTime, DSSSL and SMIL to store, process, and present hypermedia data. This paper also describes how the Berlage environment can be used to enforce publisher restrictions on media content and to allow users to control the pricing of document presentations. Also explored is the ability of both SMIL and HyTime to address these issues in general, enabling SMIL and HyTime systems to consistently process documents of different document models authored in different environments. | |
| "ByLine: A Global Online Journalism Bank on trial within the IMPRIMATUR project." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Individual journalists have historically had little control over the republishing and syndication of their work. Open networks like the Internet, however, with their potential for many-to-many transmission, have offered technological opportunities for creators to band together and offer in collaboration what they could not offer alone. Taking up this baton on behalf of its writer members, the UK Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society has applied its twenty years' experience in tandem with technology from the European Commission-sponsored IMPRIMATUR project for the development of electronic copyright management systems, and launched the ByLine project: a global syndication and licensing service for journalists on the Internet. ALCS and IMPRIMATUR are partners in the first six-month trial, which was launched in January 1998 at http://www.universalbyline.com | |
| "CULTURAL IMPACTS ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING: EXPERIENCE IN SERBIA." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The paper discusses the linguistic influences on an Electronic Publishing infrastructure in an environment with a low-level of linguistic standardization. Essentially, in Serbia in the last half of the century (at least) publishing has been based on the following facts: 1. Two alphabetic systems are regularly in use with the possibility to mix both alphabets in the same document; 2. The various dialects are accepted as a part of a linguistic norm; 3. Orthography is unstable—presently, several linguistic attitudes that have different views of the orthographic norm are under discussion; 4. In Serbia, many minority languages are in use, which makes it difficult to provide efficient contact between different communities through electronic publishing. In this context, a systematic solution that responds to this complex situation has not been developed in the frame of traditional Serbian linguistics and lexicography in a way that enables the adequate incorporation of the new publishing technologies. Due to these constraints, the direct application of Electronic Publishing tools frequently causes the degradation of the linguistic message. In such an environment, the promotion of Electronic Publishing therefore needs specific solutions. In this paper we discuss a general frame based on a specifically encoded system of electronic dictionaries that makes the electronic texts independent from some of the mentioned constraints. The objective of such a frame is: (1) to enable the linguistic normalization of texts on the level of their internal representation, and (2) to establish bridges for the communication with other language societies. We underline some aspects of electronic text representation that ensures its correct interpretation in different graphical systems and in different dialects. This also allows text indexing and retrieval using the same techniques that are available for languages not burdened with these problems. | |
| "Designing MEDIASPACE through the WWW, Satellite and Print." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper discusses the experiences of designing and producing an ongoing series of experimental interactive satellite transmissions, incorporating live studio broadcasts, ISDN based video conferencing, and asynchronous email/ISDN tutorials. A WWW site acts as a focus for these asynchronous activities, operating as a central hub, providing information and key references (papers, images, case studies, hyperlinks, etc). The convergence of these technologies generates a distributed digital 'space' (satellite footprint covering western Europe, studio space, screen space, WWW space, location/reception space). This space is further developed and extended by the quarterly publication of a paper-based interpretation of content inspired by, or translated from, the digital activity. The digital and paper-based versions of MEDIASP ACE explore a variety of 'spaces'; the WWW space, the computer screen, the studio space, the TV screen, and the printed page. There is also a novel and dynamic set of relationships established between the presenters (studio based), the participant/audience (located across Europe), and the reader. As an electronic publishing experiment in real time ('live' media) delivery, combined with a backbone of pre-packaged information ('dead' media content), the MEDIASP ACE transmissions provide a provocative model for the convergence of 'publishing', 'networked', and 'broadcast' forms and technologies. Whilst the focus for some of the MEDIASP ACE productions has been to provide a 'learning' environment for the audience/participants, this paper concentrates on the efforts to forge a coherent media 'form' through the convergence of the technologies used. A variety of visual and spatial metaphors were employed to help establish a common reference for locating the dispersed community. However, a variety of information design and 'packaging' techniques used to delivery facts, processes, ideas, and concepts through such a system are discussed. | |
| "Developing Real and Virtual Cultural Touring with Digital Images." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The thirty-six volume record of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, commissioned by the great man himself, created a sensation as it began to appear in 1809.1 The drawings of Pharaonic monuments and the Sphinx in Description de l'Egypte by Vivan Denon and his collaborators conveyed a sense of the exotic, and their publication tempted those who could afford to go there and visit for themselves. Egypt joined the ranks of many enticements for armchair and actual tourists who had the means to visit cultural sites. The Grand Tour of continental classical cultural sites by ""Grand Tourists"" originated in Britain in the seventeenth century. Travelers on these journeys gathered and brought home cultural artifacts, by legal means and otherwise, leading to the establishment of museums and libraries in Europe in the 18th century.2 Originally the property of royalty or the very wealthy, many collections evolved into state-supported cultural institutions with help from philanthropists and fund- raising associations. | |
| "Distributed Multimedia WorkstationFor Medieval Manuscripts." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper presents the Web version of the philological workstation BAMBI (Better Access to Manuscript and Browsing of Images) and its design. The BAMBI Web workstation allows historians, and more particularly philologists, to work on manuscripts (transcription, annotations, indexing, etc.) alongside the Internet network. Our approach for the Web implementation of the philological workstation is based on the reuse of the local BAMBI software. We have used the formalism of UML (Unified Modelling Language) for the distributed software design, and especially the concepts based on the diagrams of collaboration. The implementation is based on the ActiveX approach. | |
| "Electronic brokers as intermediariesfor electronic publishing." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Publishing is one of the sectors where with the advance of information technologies there are new possibilities of carrying out traditional processes in a more efficient way. The features provided by the new possibilities are exploited in Electronic Publishing. However, electronic handling does not replace totally the traditional processes (there is still a lot of non-electronic publishing and this will continue existing), but it offers new and interesting possibilities that produce diversification (more than replacement). There are some opinions that, with the increasing connectivity, the intermediaries will disappear and every process (in the electronic world) will be carried out directly from the originator (creator or producer) to the consumer (user or buyer). But there is still a need for intermediary systems to facilitate access to the right information and services. This need increases as the information available and accessible also increases. This paper presents the design and implementation of a specific intermediary system, an electronic broker, that facilitates electronic commerce in the electronic publishing market. An electronic broker for electronic commerce can provide users with products and services that are produced by several suppliers. When the goods being handled consist of electronic information, the broker can also be used to deliver the results. This paper presents the concepts of electronic brokerage in general, but emphasises those aspects more related to electronic publishing, such as the selection of products (images, magazines, videos, etc.) and services (document translation, professional layout, multimedia courses, off-line video production, etc.). | |
| "Electronic Publishing in Geophysics." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper describes a joint initiative of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Geophysical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GCRAS) in creation of an online database, which contains currently over 1500 full text papers covering translations into English of five Russian geophysical journals over a two-year period. The use of 100 percent computer-based technology for the preparation of camera-ready copy of translated journal papers provided a starting point for the conversion to electronic by-products such as electronic online versions of journals, with minimal extra production cost. These electronic versions of journals retain all the features of traditional printed-on-paper (POP) publications, while also providing additional features not available in a print format, such as the possibility of producing online abstracts and tables of contents in HTML; of viewing PostScript (PS) versions of each paper using a PS viewer such as Gsview; and of searching papers of interest using the Excite search engine incorporated into the system. Users can copy the paper text in PS or HPGL format. The database of translated electronic journals resides on the experimental server for electronic publishing at GCRAS, Moscow (http://eos.wdcb.rssi.ru), and a mirror site installed at AGU headquarters, Washington, DC (http://www.agu.org). The most recent initiative between AGU and GCRAS is the publishing of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy International (GMAJ), a new AGU journal, in electronic format. The print version of the journal will be a by-product of the electronic version. In publishing this new journal, a more comprehensive technology is used, making it possible to present on screen such elements of scientific papers as heavy maths, interactive graphics, and some other components which can not be presented in ordinary POP journal. The AGU, as a copyright owner, provides to all subscribers access to both the online and POP versions of GMAI. AGU also gives free access to users from Russia, CIS, and Central and Eastern European countries. Statistics on the usage of this World Wide Web site are presented in this article. | |
| "EVOLVING ECOLOGICAL NICHES: TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LIBRARIES ROLE IN PUBLISHING." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Print has been the most significant scholarly communication technology for the last three hundred years (at least). Kaufer and Carley's Ecology of Communicative Transactions analyses print communication in ecological terms. This paper applies this perspective to the changes now occurring in scholarly communication. The theory of punctuated equilibrium proposes that evolution of new species occurs both in bursts and in response to changes in environments. Rapid changes in the scholarly communication environment have occurred over the last fifty years, and most particularly since the rise of the Internet. Viewing the Internet as a new ecological niche, this paper looks at five university libraries that are redefining their roles in the scholarly communication ecology. They are acting as facilitators for electronic scholarly publishing rather than just as access points for content created by others. The five projects (Highwire Press, Internet Library of Early Journals, Project EDUCATE, Project Muse and the Scholarly Communications Project) all demonstrate different organizational models, funding sources and types of content. In interviewing project team personnel, two clusters of issues emerged related to libraries and their changing roles. With respect to the nature of publishing, most respondents emphasized access and the need for an ongoing commitment to content. With respect to the libraries role, all saw their activities as consistent with their responsibilities to their user communities; they saw no barrier to libraries moving into electronic publishing. The past of our planet can give us pointers to how changing systems might respond now. Past episodes have been characterized by rapid diversification followed by a locking in of a few choices. We are currently seeing a rapid development of new species of scholarly publishing artifacts, with some being selected against and disappearing. Will the next decade see a return to stasis? | |
| "Experience on Electronic Editorial Activities at the Institute for Information Recordingof the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | We describe the Institute for Information Recording of the National Academy of the of Ukraine's experience on the establishment and distribution of scientific/technical information, educational programs, reference information, rare musical compositions reproduced from phonograph cylinders, and databases. Two methods of distribution of electronic editions were analysed: manufacturing of CDs, and application of telecommunication channels. It is expedient to distribute on CDs any information intended for use for a long period of time. On-line use of television computer broadcasts has been used for the Everything for Everybody Electron Computer Newspaper. The newspaper was established and registered in Ukraine in 1991 as a new mass medium. The electronic computer newspaper is broadcast five times a week on the first channel of the National TV of Ukraine, and it distributes up to 60 Mbytes of computer information per session under more than 80 Headings. The use of a television channel for computer data transfer has some advantages compared to other transfer systems: high data transfer rate (up to 1.2 Mbit/s); large data transfer quantities (up to 60 Mbytes per session); simultaneous data transfer to all the users; unlimited quantity of subscribers. Here we also give a brief description of the work on establishment and CD mastering and distribution of data on ethnographic expeditions, including unique phonorecords deciphered from Edison phonograph cylinders. | |
| "Intelligent retrieval in virtual libraries for education and training." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | We are interested in managing documents in virtual libraries specialised in the engineering science field (ESF). Our goal is to design an intelligent tutoring system for personalised information retrieval depending on the user's interests. The proposed system is specially designed for people having sight deficiency. These specific persons use slow devices in order to access textual information, so they have a critical need for systems able to retrieve relevant information quickly. For these reasons, we need intelligent systems to delegate tasks and to make decisions. Our goal is to define a multiagent system for retrieving and filtering documents in these specific virtual libraries. We aim at improving answer quality by personalising the retrieval and by performing user's profile management. The multiagent solution proposed in this work is based on co-operative and adaptive information filtering and retrieval. | |
| "ISSUES IN ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING ON THE MEDIEVAL SLAVIC AND BYZANTINE WORLD." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper presents the experience gained in work on two current Bulgarian projects aiming at the development of electronic resources for South-East European Studies, Slavic studies, Old Church Slavic, and to some extent, Byzantine studies. The first project was launched within the framework of the Research Support Scheme of Open Society Institute/Higher Education Support Programme (HESP) of the Open Society Institute and started in July 1997. Its aim is to provide a multimedia CD-ROM entitled ‘Cyril and Methodius and the Early Medieval Slavic World: Byzantium and the Slavs in the 9 th century AD’. The second project aims at construction and maintenance of a specialised website “SCRIBE – Digitising Medieval Slavic Manuscripts in Bulgaria”. The Institute of Mathematics and Informatics and Open Society Fund in Sofia supported this endeavour in its initial steps in November 1997. During our real-life experience in the development of the projects our team encountered a large number of problems which could be of interest for our colleagues both in the field of Electronic Publishing and the above-mentioned historical and linguistic fields: •Subject area difficulties – these relate to the following issues: standardisation in the field of computer representation of non-Latin alphabets; lack of formal models of knowledge in the humanities; substantial variety in the scientific views of scholars on their object of study. •Organisational difficulties – these relate to lack of experience in organising projects in electronic publishing for the humanities in Bulgaria; legislative problems; economic problems in finding appropriate funding. Presentation of these difficulties and possible solutions will help colleagues, especially in the countries where electronic publishing is making its first steps in an economic situation similar to the Bulgarian one, to plan their work better and to make their movement to the information-rich society more efficient. | |
| "JSTOR: Providing New Access to Old Research." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Much has transpired in a short period of time. The JSTOR database now includes well over two million pages from 47 core journals in 11 academic disciplines. Additional journal content is being digitized at a rate of approximately 100,000 pages per month. More than 250 libraries in the United States and Canada have become participating institutions, providing support for the creation, maintenance and growth of this database. Outside of North America, we have recently announced the establishment of a mirror site in the United Kingdom. Through a novel collaborative relationship with the Joint Information Systems Committee, the JSTOR database will be made available to higher education institutions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from a mirror site at the University of Manchester. As each day passes, new opportunities are presented to us to extend the reach of this enterprise. It is an exciting and challenging time. Since many of the participants at this conference are from outside of the United States and will not be familiar with JSTOR, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the project as well as an update on where things stand today. | |
| "Problems and Solutions in EP Technologies." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The paper contains a brief comparative analysis of different tools for electronic publishing including publishing of an electronic clone of a POP journal and an electronic journal with a POP version. The analysis is based on the experience gained by the Electronic Publishing Group of Geophysical Center, RAS which was involved in the creation of these types of journals (seven titles with nearly 2000 papers) under a grant agreement with the American Geophysical Union. | |
| "Publishing Encyclopaedia with Acrobat using TeX." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | An experience from the process of adding logical markup to visually tagged scanned data is presented. Method of gradual markup enhancement is outlined. Methods of navigation in a large hypertext document based on typesetting from logical markup are suggested -- physical, logical and semantic user views. Their application to a 29,000 page digitization project to create an electronic encyclopaedia is described. Problems faced in applying Adobe's Acrobat technology for encyclopaedia publishing are discussed. | |
| "Radio B92 and its Internet Project: From Local to Global Media." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This is close look to the Internet action of Belgrade radio B92. The tactical usage of Internet has given B92 a tool to defend itself against any ban, and moreover to broaden the scope of listeners. | |
| "RESEARCH INFORMATION TAKE AWAY OR HOW TO SERVE RESEARCH INFORMATION FAST AND FRIENDLY ON THE WEB." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | In 1997 the library department at the University of Karlskrona/Ronneby was asked to develop a database which could be used to collate and present all the research material and ongoing research projects at the University in electronic form. If possible, full text versions of all the material should be made available. In this paper we will discuss the experiences and problems we have gathered during 6 months of developing an electronic research archive. Using Lotus Notes software we have, with some assistance from consultants, developed a database into which the researchers themselves feed data using web-forms. Since the project commenced in the summer of 1997 we have created: •An electronic archive or research documents which uses pdf-files for full text presentation. •Procedures for cataloguing. In addition to being stored electronically, paper copies of each document are stored. •Material which is generally available via WWW. They are searchable by subject, type of document, name of institution, or text search within the database, and one can print out references or full text versions of them. The material is also accessible from search engines such as Alta Vista. •A database which complies with the guidelines stipulated by the Swedish government, the Education Department and the Swedish University Board. | |
| "Rising to the challenge and making the connection: electronic serials in public libraries." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper reports the findings to date of, the Electronic Serials in Public Libraries project- a British Library-funded research project which is assessing the impact of electronic serials in terms of the challenges and the opportunities they present. In public libraries, serials are frequently both an under-funded and an under-used resource, making them a prime target for cancellation when library budgets come under pressure. The project has examined the ways in which electronic serials might help to combat these factors. | |
| "Statistical Information Databases on Society and Economicson the Internet." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The National Committee on Information and Computer Communications Infrastructures has selected a research proposal to conduct a sample project to make the databases of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) available to the public via the information superhighway. The CBS databases contain a great deal of statistical information gathered over decades about the population, migration, tourism, the economy and economic branches, prices, labour and wages, health, and other topics. This project should assist the CBS in fulfilling its obligations as the agency responsible for publishing official statistics, while meeting world standards set by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. From the beginning, the CBS management has understood the importance of the project, which will cause a leap upward in quality and a vast improvement in the timing of publication of CBS data. For this purpose, a steeling team was appointed that includes a management representative, a representative of the Database Division, and a representative of the Information Services Division. These appointments made it clear that information and technology alone are not enough for creating an up-to-date, reliable site; only integration of all components, with backing and support from management, will make it possible for the project to succeed. The team studied the issue by visiting the Web sites of statistical bureau around the world and reading large quantities of professional literature. As a result, several issues were raised that had to be resolved before the site could be established. | |
| "The Connected World - Opening Electronic Doors at the National Library of Canada." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | For hundreds of years, libraries have been the custodians of the accumulated knowledge of human civilization - collecting it, preserving it, and making it available and accessible to those who need it or want to use it. This tradition, supported by a variety of legislation, is continuing. With the advent of technology, libraries have changed how they do their work but not why they do it. As we move into the 21st century, the National Library of Canada's basic mandate to collect, preserve and provide access to Canada's published heritage remains unchanged. What has changed over the years is the nature of the published heritage. It now includes electronic publications. Technological progress has expanded (and made more ambitious) our information needs, having placed at our disposal a greater access to national and international information resources. Consequently, the National Library of Canada has broadened its mandate. It not only provides access to the country's published heritage. It also endeavours to facilitate access for all Canadians to world-wide networks of information resources. There are many complex challenges related to providing or facilitating an equitable and universal access to these networks. Creating and managing an electronic collection, preservation or archiving of this electronic collection, and investing in a technical infrastructure required to support a large national heritage collection are the three challenges that will be highlighted. The world becomes connected at an economic expense. Some of the costs are related to the lack of standards, others to the continued inoperability of systems. With digitization costs ranging from $2 to $6 per page and given the ever decreasing support for cultural agencies, other financial solutions have been sought. The National Library has become engaged in various (government and private industry) partnerships for its multiple digitization activities that include digitizing unique manuscript collections, creating electronic versions of its current and past exhibits, and making available in electronic format some unique bibliographic tools. These activities will be briefly reviewed. World Wide Web, the final destination for the National Library's digital information, is gradually becoming the backbone of the National Library's services and operations and many resources are dedicated to making this happen. The Library's publishing program is now driven by technology and more than one format may be used when publishing electronically. Based on user requirements, some publications are retained in print or at least are available on a print-on-demand basis. Some of the web-related issues that will be reviewed are: equitable access, including accessibility for persons with disabilities and bilingualism (English and French). | |
| "The Electronic Proceedings Project." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | This paper presents interim results from a project to create an electronic proceedings of the A VCC Symposium on Australian Electronic Publishing, held in Sydney, Australia, in May 1996. The paper describes the architecture developed to support the electronic proceedings_ and the steps taken to produce the actual product, including end-user requirements, the data conversion processes, representation, interface and advanced retrieval issues. | |
| "The Financial Aspects of Internet Electronic Publishing in Macedonia." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The following article does not intend to present a comprehensive analysis of the financial aspects of Web publishing in Macedonia, as the author does not possess the resources to achieve such a task, nor is it his professional occupation. The goal of this work, rather, is to give a general overview of the financial aspects of Web publishing in Macedonia, by examining the commercial firms which offer Web hosting, futernet access and HTML design. Through the example of Mi-An Publishing's home page (http://www.unet.com.mk/mian), the article also assesses the financial aspects of the entire process of HTML code creation and Web page design. Furthermore, the issues of Web advertising, copyright and software use are covered. The data presented in this paper corresponds to the conditions in February 1998, and, considering the fast development of companies which offer Web hosting and dial-up access, this situation is likely to change soon. | |
| "THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING ON THE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION CHAIN." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. |
Abstract of first Keynote Paper |
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| "THE LIBRARY IN THE CARD: RESULTS FROM DECOMATE PROJECT AND CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS AT UAB." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The Library in the card is the slogan which would summarize the aims of the Univeritat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) Library Service in its involvement in several EC Libraries Programme projects. It refers to the possibility of a member of the UAB community to accessing whatever document he/she needs from his/her desktop on time. The identity card should be the key which opens his/her library without hours and place constraints. This paper explains the results from the DECOMATE project one year after its completion, looks into UAB usage studies and further conclusions and makes the audience aware of planned work in the follow up project DECOMATE II. In a summary UAB Library Service is currently offering the UAB community (35,000 students, 2,500 academic staff and 1,500 administrative staff) access to 267 scientific journals at their wish. Articles are provided by three publishers (Elsevier Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers and our own UAB Publications Service) directly in electronic form, including bibliographic data. DECOMATE is the modular and generic system which allows the management of authorization/identification of users, encryption of transactions, searches in the bibliographical database using the Z39.50 standard, retrieval of articles’ PDF files, and extraction of statistical usage data for postprocessing purposes. This service became operational on October 1996 with a small set of titles and, after the pilot phase and optimal results, it was enlarged with many more titles in order to cover far more scientific areas. The partners in DECOMATE project, namely Tilburg University, London School of Economics and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, with the additional collaboration of the European University Institute and the SilverPlatter company, submitted a proposal for a follow up project to the 1997 Call of Proposals of the EC Libraries Programme which has been approuved. The project’s work started in February 1998. DECOMATE II is a short name for Developing the European Digital Library for Economics, which builds on the former experience of DECOMATE project and aims to enhance its features with the addition of: . distributed searching of heterogeneous information resources within a specific scientific area, economics, . access to services provided by different libraries in Europe through a single uniform interface, . integration of current awareness services, . development of an information broker module with advanced capabilities for deduplication, ranking, tracing of documents, implementation of thesauri and subject matching algorithms, . integration of an accounting module which allows the library to extend its services to external users while complying with commercial providers’ conditions. | |
| "The RAIN Network - Regional Public Internet Broadcasting." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Our study will emphasize the use of GIS, audio and video based Internet publishing tools as key elements in the expansion of the scope and reach of the Internet as a public information vehicle. The global Internet has made possible the creation of a digital library which permits scientific, technical and humanities publications to exist within a global environment, with peer review and public access possible worldwide. What was once only a memory of the great library at Alexandria and all that it represented is now a reality on the global network. | |
| "THE ROLE OF THE LOCAL ALPHABET IN ENHANCING OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND THE ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | One of the often overlooked aspects of the today’s electronic information spread is that not all people use the Latin alphabet for writing, and even those who use it do not use the standard English version of it. Since the standards and software applications of those standards are mainly made by people who use the Latin alphabet and speak English as a first language, the situation today is that people who do not use English or would like to use their own alphabet are somewhat deprived and as a result are sometimes quite reluctant to start using electronic communication. This paper concerns itself with the sources, consequences and means to solve this problem. The issue is discussed with regard to real-life examples involving the use of the Macedonian language and a comparative analysis of the solutions applied. The examples concentrate on Internet publishing using the Macedonian language and the digital usage of the Macedonian Cyrillic Alphabet, which is different from any other Cyrillic alphabet and thus incompatible with the specific solutions applied in other countries. The paper provides an analysis of the current situation from which conclusions applicable to other cultures can be extracted. | |
| "TOWARDS AN INFORMATION-RICH SOCIETY? OR AN INFORMATION-OVERLOADED ONE? (IS THE MEDIA BECOMING MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MESSAGE?)." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | The rapid growth in all forms of electronic publishing is creating many new problems – both technical and socio-economic. This paper examines some of these from three different perspectives, representing the author’s personal involvement in this field in three different capacities. As the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Educational Media there is a need to address the issue of what role, if any, electronic publishing can and should play in the future of the journal. The particular subject of this journal, moreover, means that there is a need for the journal readers to have access to samples, at least, of the television and multimedia material which frequently forms the basis of the papers in the journal. This poses difficult issues, both technical and procedural, relating to both the paper version of the Journal and any future electronic versions. A particularly important question is the status of any electronic supplements to the printed journal, since it is extremely unlikely that they will be usable in 50 years’ time, even though the paper copies will still exist in libraries around the world. As Convenor of an ISO Working Group, the author is required to distribute, solely by electronic means, a wide range of documents throughout the world. The paper will discuss the technical issues that this raises, particularly when documents may be created using many different software packages, and yet must be delivered in a form that often requires very strict adherence to the original author’s formatting. As a user of electronic documents in many different fields, the author is faced with still more problems. In particular, the amount of email received by the author makes it quite impossible to read it all; yet how does one decide what to delete before reading? Equally, the number of web pages found as a result of a search on almost any topic is so vast that it is inconceivable that anyone could look at them all. Finally, very few people are able or willing to read documents of more than a page or two from a screen, and resort to printing before reading. Is electronic publishing increasing the rate of deforestation of the planet? Electronic publishing, in the broadest sense of the word, thus raises a great many problems at every stage of the process. These can best be captured by the growing sense of information overload that many (most?) people are suffering from, and the undoubted fact that, in many cases, the medium is becoming more important than the message that it conveys. Based on more than ten years’ experience of using electronic document distribution in several, quite disparate, fields, the paper concludes by suggesting some key principles which must be observed if the brave new world of electronic publishing is not to collapse under the weight of its own success. | |
| "Towards Flexible Metering and Charging for Information Services." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Electronic publishing is evolving to overlap with the world of on-line multimedia services. While there are many issues still to resolve, including copyright protection and content presentation, it is generally accepted that the Internet, and specifically the World Wide Web, provides a glimpse at a possible future electronic publishing industry. The Internet itself has witnessed incredibly rapid growth in the last five years, thanks to the popularity and ubiquity of user-friendly Web clients like Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Many organisations now consider a presence on the World Wide Web to be vital to their commercial interests. However, due to the absence of a suitable remuneration mechanism, most Internet publishing is funded indirectly by advertisements that adjoin popular articles and sites, or through public subsidy of universities and research institutions. With the exception of some fixed-fee subscription based services with dynamic content, e.g. newspapers, very little content, or information, pays for itself at the moment. | |
| "Towards on Information Rich-Society: electronic publications in UK public libraries." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Discussed are the findings of a PhD research project ""Use and nonuse by library users of open access CD-ROMs in UK public libraries"". The paper will focus mainly on the analysis of data collected during 1997 from a number of public libraries in the UK .. The findings cover 1) CD-ROM provision: details of which CDROM publications and type of hardware and services currently available for public use; 2) User profiles: a demographic profile of users; 3) CD-ROM usage: looks at the titles users have searched. | |
| "Towards Real Digital Libraries." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | As the Internet has grown, so has the amount of informal information available on it, and latterly access to formally published content has emerged. The potential of the Internet as an information resource is clearly enormous. Realising this potential, however, can be difficult: building software tools that can help a user to do this is one of the most important challenges facing computer scientists in the late 1990s. As users, we need rich, personalised, added- value services that help us find, retrieve, manage, understand, interpret and use the wealth of valuable information that is so obviously present both on and via the Internet. | |
| "Use of Electronic Publications in the National Library of Lithuania and its Impact on Library Services." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | As society moves into the information age changes need to be made in Library services. Readers will be able to choose their information source. Electronic publications are a key to fast and high quality information. Using electronic publications in the National Library of Lithuania (NLL) started in 1992 when the first CD-ROM was received. Internet services were arranged in 1995, but we had only one computer dedicated to these services. Our task was to arrange a reading room for the use of electronic publications and on-line databases. Finance for arranging the Internet Reading Room was received in 1996. In March 1997 this project was implemented and now our readers have favourable conditions for the use of CD-ROMs and Internet. The acquisition of a CD-ROM collection is a very important task for any library. There are over one hundred and twenty CD-ROMs in the NLL. Our acquisition of electronic publications focused on bibliographical information, the humanities and social science and justice. We have also started to collect exact and applied sciences periodicals and patents databases. Not all publications from our CD-ROM collection are popular. Readers request new information, so the CD-ROM published in earlier years are used very seldom. On the other hand we have a lot of problems in seeking for scientific articles published in the period 1960-1980. Prices of CD-ROMs are also very important. Unfortunately, many wonderful publications are very expensive, so we must choose printed books and periodicals or their electronic versions. The Library needs to investigate the problems related to the use of electronic publications. Information about our collection of electronic publications was presented at the computers and telecommunications exhibition "lnfobalt'97". It was the second such exhibition in which the Library took part. The conclusions of this exhibition are the following: 1. More and more people request faster ways of finding high quality information; 2. Rapid change in computer technology impact ways of searching of information and establishing personal contacts; 3. Electronic publications are very useful for practical information; 4. Popular publications and databases are very expensive and the majority of readers cannot afford to subscribe to them; 5. The majority of exhibition visitors were not aware of electronic Publications. | |
| "USERS’ INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR WHEN USING AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | RIS - Review of Information Science, a full refereed electronic journal, has been published at the Department of Information Science, University of Konstanz, Germany since July 1996. This text firstly gives a brief introduction to RIS and then reports the main results of a study on the users’ behaviour when using RIS followed by a discussion on these results. The study is based on an analysis of WWW server log files. The results of the study are both interesting for understanding of users’ behaviour when using electronic journals in general and interesting for (re-)designing of scholarly electronic journals, in particular for RIS, as well. | |
| "Virtual Gallery: Electronic Mail Art 1 - 5." In Proceedings of an ICCC/IFIP Conference. ELPUB. Washington D.C.: ICCC Pres, 1998. | Computer Graphics and Electronic Mail Art exhibitions are annual shows of computer generated or manipulated images, transmitted via e-mail, printed and exhibited in Bratislava in the occasion of the greatest computer exhibition in Slovakia-COFAX. Until now, artists and computer graphics scientists from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greenland, Israel, Japan, Holland, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia and USA have participated. The reason why electronically created and transported images are printed and exhibited in a traditional way is that few artists in our country use the Internet. Another reason is that classic exhibitions and their openings are also social events. 'The Global Village is not created by the motorcar or even by the airplane. It is created by instant electronic information movement. The Global Village is at once as wide as the planet and small as a little town, where everybody is maliciously engaged in poking his nose into everybody's business'. Marshall McLuhan |