Agenda
Digital Libraries Working Group
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Konferenzraum 2, 3rd floor
Monday, 22 March 1999, 2:00-6:00pm
MISSION STATEMENT
The Digital Libraries Working Group encourages and fosters the digitization of important research-oriented materials to be made broadly available to the world via the Internet. Among this group's tasks are to assist in the funding and completion of such digital collections, while agreeing on standards for interoperability, metadata, and identifying useful items/collections.

TOOLS:

The emphasis is on a flexible choice of tools, within a framework of broadly accepted standards (SGML/XML).

COORDINATING:

A couple of suggestions were made. One was to use a general discussion list. The other is that a good bit of autonomy is necessary, or we'll spend all of our time sitting on committees!

CRITERIA FOR PROJECTS

Again I think it was Richard who suggested: that we should aim to "present to the world of scholarship local or formerly unknown materials (to the extent the owner or holder of such property is willing to share... within limits)."

We had some debate about whether small "boutique" projects were appropriate, and whether we ought to emphasize getting German materials from Germany. I don't think we had any consensus here.

WHAT COMES UNDER THE RUBRIC OF DIGITAL LIBS

No comments here. Perhaps it's obvious what we mean by digital libraries? I think of Making of America, JSTOR, and places like that. Perhaps others have different models?

RESULTS FROM THE GERMAN MEETINGS:

One suggestion was that we not have only major projects. My (personal) hope is that we come to some understandings that establish an "intellectual infrastructure" where we can have a variety of cooperative projects.

Earlier draft of agenda:

MISSION

Basically I think our mission is to establish an infrastructure in which projects at our individual institutions can prosper and build on each other. Such an infrastructure would help group projects too, of course. So my principle goal at this meeting is to establish -- or at least begin the process of establishing -- a set of standards or "common practices" which we can all agree to and live with. Many of my notes below focus on this.

CONTENTS

In general, I think we shouldn't concern ourselves about contents too much, since there are other working groups slaving over that big issue. But some aspects of contents does affect our mission. For example, the use of Fraktur. I think one of our research goals might be to work with German colleagues on OCRing Fraktur.

USERS

Again this is not exactly our issue, but we need to know what kind of training the users will have, and what their reading and search-and-retrieval needs are in order to design effective digital libraries.

SCANNING

We ought to establish standards for scanning that both we and our German colleagues can live with. I think this should be a high priority, because it should be something that we can all agree on fairly quickly. My own scanning standards is a mix that comes variously from the Cornell/Yale projects and from U of Virginia. Basically it is this: Black & white = 600 DPI, 1 bit (used mainly for text); gray scale = 400 dpi, 8 bit (used for photographs); color = 400 dpi, 24 bit (used for anything where the look-and-feel matters). Anyone else doing something similar?

MARK-UP

I suggest SGML TEILite as the standard for text mark-up, with either permanent or on-the-fly HTML derivatives for viewing until the (hopefully not too mythical) XML browsers get in place. We use Author/Editor, which forces "well formed" SGML. I think that's important to make the transition to XML easy.

METADATA

We need to think about several issues with metadata. We need information that feeds easily into our OPACs, as well as metadata that stays with the digital object. There are programs to convert from USMARC to XML and I have tended to treat the MARC record as the master. This is obviously a problem in working with German colleagues who do not use USMARC or anything much like it. This may not be a quick issue to solve, but understanding the practices and preferences of our German colleagues will help.

INTEROPERABILITY

There are several ways that we can promote interoperability. One is through Z39.50 calls to OPACs. Anyone who has actively worked on Z39.50 knows that the level of consistency leaves something to be desired. SGML-sensitive search engines is another way to share meta-information. There are a host of administrative interoperability issues too, about how, when, and where we put up digital artifacts. Beginning conversations will increase this list.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

This is my area of greatest research interest. Despite the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and various treaties, there is a substantial divergence between US and German copyright law, particularly in basic areas such as Moral Rights. I am eager to begin the conversation with German colleagues about what their understandings and requirements are regarding IP rights in metadata, compilations, introductions, and related subjects. Others may have completely different agenda items in mind. Please put them on the digital table too. The more conversation we can have about these issues before 19 Marz, the more we will get out of the meetings.

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Michael Seadle seadle@mail.lib.msu.edu

Digital Sources and Copyright Librarian

Michigan State University

Phone: 517-432-0807

Fax: 517-432-4795

Editor: Library Hi Tech

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