CNI Spring 1994 Task Force Meeting Summary Report
Introduction
The Coalition for Networked Information's Spring Task Force Meeting was held at
the Loews L'enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C. on April 5 - 6, 1994 and was
attended by three hundred ninety-two individuals. The meeting, whose theme was
"Advances in Networked Information Technologies," served to highlight some of
the significant developments in applications that will provide enhanced
capabilities to use and manage networked information. In addition, the meeting
provided a framework for understanding and analyzing National Information
Infrastructure (NII) developments at the national and state levels.
State Government Networking Infrastructure and Policy
Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director of the Coalition, welcomed attendees from
around the country and around the world and then introduced the opening
speaker, Robert B. Adams, Commissioner, New York State Office of General
Services. Adams presented his views on why networks and networked information
resources and services are excellent targets for state government initiatives
and investments. He noted that telecommunications has been identified as the
fourth most important factor businesses consider when deciding where to
locate.
Robert B. Adams (Commissioner, New York State Office of General
Services) delivered the opening plenary address.
Under leadership from New York's Governor Mario Cuomo, the New York
Telecommunications Exchange was established to strengthen the state's economic
position and enhance the quality of life of the state's citizens. The Exchange
brought together the public and private sectors to work on issues ranging from
regulatory matters to public sector applications. The group emphasized
strategies that would lead to technology diffusion to small and medium-sized
businesses and also promoted services to citizens using an agricultural
extension model that would reach rural, low-income, and disabled citizens.
The Exchange established some principles and goals for the state's
telecommunications infrastructure:
- Accelerate economic growth
- Provide quality services
- Promote social inclusion and universal service
- Rely on a competitive market for most purposes
- Enhance the quality of life for citizens
- Foster innovation
- Strengthen democracy and individual rights
The Exchange identified a number of recommendations in its report, including
developing an open network-of-networks telecommunications system, establishing
a universal service funding mechanism, creating a level regulatory playing
field, promoting diffusion, developing a strategy for the impact of changes on
the workforce, and forming a working group for implementation of the report.
In his conclusion, Adams commented that New York has come out of this process
with a broad consensus on a direction that needs to be taken, a strategy for
dealing with the issues that were identified, and much support in the
legislature and from many groups.
Legislative Update
Robert Gillespie, Principal, Robert Gillespie Associates and HELCIIP, surveyed
the landscape of Administration and Congressional plans and activities
pertaining to the telecommunications policy reform in general and the National
Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative in particular. He noted that in
the telecommunications arena, the stakes are very high - perhaps a trillion
dollars of business will be affected by regulatory reform. He reported that
education needs by and large are not being specifically addressed in the
telecommunications debate. The role for higher education and libraries is
small but important. He stated that we are about to change a large number of
parameters and it is very hard to predict what will occur. Gillespie
recommended a review in a year or two to examine how legislative decisions
affect our communities.
Katherine Webster (Sun Microsystems) and Alan Emtage
(Bunyip Information Systems) relax at the Tuesday evening reception.
Advances in Internet Intellectual Property Management Systems
In his introduction to this session, Paul Evan Peters noted that each of the
last three Task Force Meetings have included a plenary session on some aspect
of intellectual property management of networked information resources. This
session explored the technological capabilities for managing Internet
intellectual property as developed by four initiatives.
James Barker, Project Director, Library Collection Services, Case Western
Reserve University (CWRU), opened the panel with a description of the
Permissions Manager project, which was initiated in 1990. He described how the
project was developed in response to the University President's desire to
establish a new electronic learning environment on campus, including a mandate
to make information resources available to students in whatever format they
desired and wherever they wanted it.
The overall project perspective is to examine issues around how to manage
digital materials and to understand the environment and the market. Currently
they have projects in the performing arts; art and art history; paleography;
engineering; law; and health sciences. They capture and catalog materials;
deal with copyright and royalty managment of intellectual property; and,
demonstrate some academic value of having digital information available.
Permissions Manager is a client-server application designed to maintain and
manage security, copyright, royalty, and permission provisions for intellectual
property. Its functions include: encoding usage agreements, managing access
to materials, recording usage data, producing usage reports, creating
billing/compensation reports, and protecting patron privacy rights. The
project will help CWRU understand what their cost models should be. Each piece
of intellectual property is divided into individual elements that can be
separately managed or can be managed together; each element may have separate
rules (downloadable, readable, etc.). In response to questions, Barker
commented that the granularity of their approach is partly dictated by the
nature of the materials, especially in the humanities, where they are working
with anthologies of many authors and that include visual materials. He noted
that they try to embrace fair use principles and press publishers to license
their materials as "library copies" rather than as course-adopted texts. At
times this results in more than one CWRU license for a particular material.
Willem Scholten, Director of Computer Science and Research, Columbia University
School of Law and Future Info Systems, discussed intellectual property
management and the JANUS Digital Library project. JANUS is the effort to build
a digital library environment for Columbia University. The project is looking
not only at technology but at a philosophy of using digital materials.
The developers of JANUS think of digital libraries as complex systems with
building blocks, e.g. storage functions, intellectual property control
functions, billing mechanisms, an information retrieval facility, a collection
building function, an administration function, and a user interface. In the
project, users are the primary concern. The JANUS project will build tools to
deal with a new paradigm, which is based on collaborative knowledge management.
Digital libraries could become the basis for teaching and learning systems,
building multi-media tools for learning. The user would interact with the
digital library system through a set of tools, e.g. learning tools, simulation
tools, interactive assistance tools, collaborative tools, and remote sensing
database tools.
Scholten discussed the current system of copyright and fair use in terms of
rights of individuals and libraries. He feels there will be a shift from an
emphasis on guaranteeing the rights of an author to royalties to ensuring an
author's rights to credit for his/her publications. In the transformation, he
feels we will move from the competitive environment of the present to a
cooperative system and eventually to a collaborative environment. He concluded
that we need to build intellectual property management systems based on the
collaborative model.
Marvin Sirbu, Professor of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon
University (CMU), described his project in the context of intellectual property
and electronic commerce. He indicated that commercial users are a growing
portion of the rapidly expanding Internet population. To facilitate commerce
in the electronic environment, his team conceived of NetBill, an electronic
credit system to enable network-based commerce. Currently, there is no
generalized Internet billing capability that can support a number of providers.
The business model is one in which consumers establish an account with NetBill
and businesses sign up for service with NetBill. For service providers, it
provides easy access to account holders, provides a mechanism for reimbursement
for small transaction fees, eliminates credit risk, offloads account management
and collections, and provides support for flexible pricing. For consumers, a
NetBill account provides access to many service providers, the convenience of a
consolidated invoice, assurance that service providers can't use the
individual's account to defraud, and access control, e.g. control of a child's
access to material. NetBill provides such features as authentication, credit
checking, access control, and transaction recording and receipt.
Sirbu provided a number of research issues identified in the project:
authentication, non-repudiatable transactions, user interface design,
scalability, reliability and availability, protection of privacy, auditability,
standards, flexible support for alternative pricing models, economics of
information markets, and changes in patterns of information use.
At this point, the project team has built three generations of billing server
prototypes. All have support for file transfer service and electronic digital
library service. The first trial will be internal to CMU. External trials are
planned in conjunction with the part of the ELIXIR Digital Library Project that
includes commercially provided journal articles and in conjunction with M.I.T.
They are also planning a Mosaic and WWW trial. Eventually, NetBill service
provision will make a transition to a commercial financial services firm.
John Garrett, Director, Information Resources, Corporation for National
Research Initiatives (CNRI), noted that his organization has been working on
intellectual property management in the electronic environment for many years.
He stated that for the systems that they are working with, fundamental
requirements of an electronic copyright management system (ECMS) are that it
must support thousands of libraries, thousands of rightsholders, billions of
documents, millions of transactions, and millions of users. The ECMS must be
fast and easy to use, seamless and invisible to the user, ubiquitous and
inclusive, and responsive to users and owners.
CNRI is working with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress on a
project that will enable registration of a digital work over the network. As
part of the project, they are:
- exploring architectural models for managing intellectual property in a
network environment
- developing techniques for handling electronic rights and premissions
- demonstrating integrated distributed systems for automated management of
copyright
- obtaining hands-on experience with electronic copyright management in the
network environment
- working together with interested parties in the intellectual property
community to understand issues and requirements.
CNRI is also conducting research on linking electronic libraries. Their
project involving Cornell CMU, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, CNRI, ARPA, and
Library of Congress is experimenting with linking digital libraries of
technical reports. Garrett stressed that they are finding that difficult
questions will only be identified and solved by building and running actual
systems. They are working on things they never thought would be problems
before they began actual implementation of a system.
NII Policy
Bruce McConnell, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of
Management and Budget, and a key staffer of the Information Policy Committee of
the Clinton Administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force, reported on
progress that has been made on the National Information Infrastructure (NII)
initiative by the Clinton / Gore administration and by participants across the
country. He reviewed the President's Agenda for Action, issued in
September, 1993, and reported on the state of play in the nine areas of concern
identified by the Administration. Many reports have already been issued by
working groups and committees working under the auspices of the NII Task Force.
McConnell reported that the Administration is finding two issues most difficult
in a structural sense: to what extent should the regulation of
telecommunications services be left up to the states, and how should the public
interest be served through regulation? He noted a concern that we generally
fix problems that are happening now rather than trying to form structures to
anticipate alleviating problems in the future.
Internet Audio-Visual Services
The closing plenary session featured audio and audio-visual advances in
networking technology. Glenn Ricart, Director, Computer Science Center,
University of Maryland, College Park, opened the session with a description of
the MBONE, multiple channels of packet video and audio sent as a real-time
multicast. MBONE enables institutions to run programs, such as a conference
program, to distributed sites over the Internet. As a multicast, one copy of
the broadcast is sent out to each registered link over the network and then is
sent on to further branches, e.g. first to one state and then duplicated and
sent to sites within a state. MBONE has intensive technical requirements; a
multicast would take up around one-fourth of a T1 connection. Hardware and
software requirements are also high. The first audio MBONE multicast was made
in March, 1992 and the first video multicast was made in November, 1992. Seven
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meetings have been broadcast via MBONE.
For more information, there is a FAQ file at venera.isi.edu.
Stuart Lynn, Vice President, Information Technologies, Cornell University,
demonstrated CUSeeMe through a realtime Internet connection. There was a stir
in the audience as Lynn brought on six individuals at various sites, displaying
their faces on the screen and conducting a conversation with them. One
participant sent an image over the network as part of the discussion.
Developed by a number of individuals at Cornell, CUSeeMe provides low cost
conferencing for everyone over the network. Lynn demonstrated the latest
version of the system, which is not yet publicly available. However, current
versions can be brought up on a Mac or a PC running Windows. The objectives of
the project are to keep costs down, to minimize equipment requirements, and to
enable users to access the system via their desktops.
Some projects using CUSeeMe include: a global schoolhouse, an architecture
design project to design houses in Shanghai, the Exploratorium in San
Francisco, which will use it with people across the nation, and a group of
faculty doing collaborative research on the topic of global nomads.
Carl Malamud, Internet Multicasting Service, described his operation, the
"world's first Cyberstation," which is about one year old. Housed in the
National Press Building, he and his staff produce data and radio programs for
the Internet. Some projects that they work on include sending out existing
radio programs, such as some produced by National Public Radio, sending out
National Press Club meeting speeches live, and producing some of their own
programs, such as "Geek of the Week." They send audio data live over the MBONE
and also send out files of audio information. Malamud noted that this is
happening right now; he has hundreds of thousands of listeners.
Malamud feels that a key for successful deployment of new Internet technologies
is going to be matching an available technology to appropriate applications.
He feels that good programming and a willingness and ability to leverage "cheap
stunts" are key. He has developed a number of innovative programs, including
one that features a well-known Washington restaurant and displays visuals of
the dishes they serve while waiters explain the menu. He is working with a
Harper/Collins audio program in which well-known poets read their own works.
At the next InterOp conference, he will operate a live Cyberstation and will
have reporters covering the conference. He is interested in demonstrating to
businesses that the Internet can serve as a marketing tool for products.
Carl Malamud (Internet Multicasting Service) talks about his
experience with Internet Talk Radio.
Malamud expects that much of the hardware needed for multicasting will be built
into new equipment within the next year. He feels that as multicasting starts
moving into the network, we will see a great increase in the capability to
receive that data. Ultimately, he would like anyone with a user interface to
be able to interact with the data he is producing. His organization is looking
at a variety of ways to solve data distribution issues.
Project Briefings and Synergy Sessions
Attendees had the opportunity to select from twenty-five project briefings and
synergy sessions on a wide variety of topics. Among these sessions were some
devoted to Coalition-sponsored projects such as the Rights of Electronic Access
to and Delivery of Information (READI) Project, moderated by Robert Ubell and
Mark Tesoriero of Robert Ubell Associates, and "University Presses in the
Networked Information Environment," moderated by Peter Grenquist of AAUP, Colin
Day of University of Michigan Press, and other representatives from
participating institutions. Paul Evan Peters, the Coalition's executive
director, presented a session entitled "Cost Centers and Measures in the
Networked Information Life-Cycle."
Projects relating to the Arts and Humanities included "The CIMI (Computer
Interchange of Museum Information) Project" presented by John Perkins,
Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information, Jennifer Trant,
Getty Art History Information Project, Steve Dietz, National Museum of American
Art, and Lyn Eliot Sherwood, Canadian Heritage Information Network, and "The
Virtual Slide Library: Should We Build It?" presented by Paul Gherman, Kenyon
College, and David Bearman, Archives and Museum Informatics.
Two presentations pertained to projects occuring overseas: "Libraries and
Environmental Information Centers in Central Eastern Europe: Consortium
Cooperative Agreement" moderated by Czeslaw Jan Grycz of The Wladyslaw Poniecki
Foundation, Inc. and Barbara Rodes of the World Wildlife Fund; and,
"Australia's National Collection Access Strategy" presented by Warwick Cathro,
National Library of Australia.
New and ongoing projects were discussed in sessions on "Agricultural Network
Information Center (AgNIC)" presented by Richard Thompson, National
Agricultural Library, Linda Hutchison, Iowa State University, George Strawn,
Iowa State University, and Pamela Andre, National Agricultural Library, "The
Elixir Project" presented by David A. Evans, Carnegie Mellon University and
CLARITECH, and Charles B. Lowry, Carnegie Mellon University, "The Computer
Science Technical Reports Project (cs-tr): A Networked Library" presented by
John Garrett, Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Vicky Reich,
Stanford University, Greg Anderson, MIT, Marilyn McMillan, MIT, and William
Arms, Carnegie Mellon University, "The NIST Virtual Library" presented by Paul
Vassallo, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Lawrence A.
Welch, National Institute of Standards and Technology, "The Government
Information Locator Service (GILS) Initiative" moderated by William Moen,
Syracuse University, and "Application of `Knowledge Management' Concepts to the
Interdisciplinary Area of Biotechnology" presented by Patricia Leigh, Iowa
State University, Ed Stockey, Indiana University and Nancy L. Eaton, Iowa State
University.
Federal grant programs were discussed in two sessions "Public Sector Access to
the NII through the TIIAP Program" presented by Laura Breeden, Department of
Commerce, and Donald Druker, Department of Commerce and "Networking
Infrastructure for Education" presented by John Clement, National Science
Foundation.
Two of the sessions focused on general discussion topics: "Campus Wide
Information System (CWIS)" presented by Barbara von Wahlde, State University of
New York at Buffalo and Richard Lessniak, State University of New York at
Buffalo, and "Copyright Implications of Electronic Reserves" presented by Paul
Kobulnicky, University of Pittsburgh, and Ron Naylor, University of Miami.
Joseph Hardin (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
answers questions on the Mosaic Web browsing tool.
NCSA Mosaic was featured in two sessions: "Recent Development in the NCSA
Mosaic Environment: The Present and the Future" moderated by Joseph Hardin,
National Center for Supercomputing Applications Software Development Group,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and "Interfacing MOSAIC and Z39.50
Client" moderated by Vinod Chachra, VTLS.
Other presentations included "Data Administration in a Distributed Computing
Environment: The Role of Information Policy" presented by Gerry Bernbom,
Indiana University, and "Developing Infrastructure for the Virtual University"
presented by Jeremy Shapiro, Fielding Institute and Shelley Hughes, Fielding
Institute.
WORKING GROUP MEETINGS
Issues and projects discussed in each group are identified below.
Modernization of Scholarly Publication. Discussion focused on the
draft paper on advertising on the Internet. The paper attempts to identify
different types of Internet advertising, explain them, and come up with some
brief but important recommendations to current and potential advertisers that
will help them design advertising that best meets the needs of Internet users
and advertisers themselves.
Modernization of Scholarly Publication working group leaders,
Judith Turner (Chronicle of Higher Education) and James
Williams (University of Colorado at Boulder), following the
working group meeting.
Transformation of Scholarly Communication. Discussion focused on the
status and plans of "Humanities and Arts on the Information Highways: A
National Initiative." The Initiative, which is sponsored by The Getty Art
History Information Program, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the
American Council of Learned Societies, endorses the principle that humanities
and arts voices are critical - indeed, equal to the more generally recognized
interests of the sciences - in the balanced development of the Nation's
technological infrastructure.
Architectures and Standards. Discussion focused on what we are
learning from the TULIP project and similar efforts. A number of important
prototype efforts are now underway to explore network-based distribution and
access for full text and bitmapped image files. Some problem areas are coming
to light, and there are also concerns about scaling. Topics included: FTP as a
means of distributing files; network printing approaches; authentication;
compression of files; the X window system; standards for multipage bit-mapped
images; and, linking contents information, abstracting and indexing databases,
and primary content.
Directories and Resource Information Services. Discussion focused on
a number of recent directory and resource discovery developments by the
Internet community including the new clearinghouse of subject guides to
Internet resources at the University of Michigan and the continuing work by the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on universal resource locators and
numbers (URLs and URNs). In addition, participants were asked to discuss ways
and means by which the Coalition might aid work in this general area.
Legislation, Codes, Policies, and Practices. As a follow-up to the
opening plenary session, discussion focused on state and local decision making
in response to the changing federal regulatory environment as a means of
assisting Coalition membership in their own planning and decision-making
processes and enabling them to connect to and fully participate in the NII as
it emerges and develops.
Access to Public Information. Guest speakers addressed issues and
activities related to federal information policy, ACE (Americans Communicating
Electronically), GILS (Government Information Locator Service), the Bureau of
the Census gopher, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
draft regulations concerning electronic mail. A second session focused on
future priorities for this Working Group.
Teaching and Learning. Discussion focused on the plans for a
conference on new learning communities, formed through the integration of
networking and networked information into undergraduate teaching and learning,
which will be held this summer. In addition, there was discussion of the
Working Group's annual Call for Project Descriptions on uses of the network and
networked information in teaching and learning, which has resulted in a
database of project descriptions and programs at the EDUCOM annual
meetings.
Management and Professional Development. Discussion focused on the
design and plans for a workshop for teams from computing centers and libraries.
The two primary objectives are for participants to become more effective in
working together collaboratively and to provide an opportunity to either begin
or build upon existing joint efforts. A second session focused on future
priorities for this Working Group.
Additional Information
Many documents from the Spring 1994 Task Force Meeting are currently available
on the Coalition Internet server, which is accessible by FTP, Gopher, and NCSA
Mosaic. These include handouts from Project Briefings and Synergy Sessions and
discussion documents from Working Groups. The version of this meeting report
in the Coalition archive will include photos taken at the meeting with a
digital (Apple QuickTake) camera. As additional documents become available,
they will be posted to the archive. Instructions for locating the directories
are given below. In addition, audio tapes of plenary sessions are available
for purchase.
via FTP
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/tf.meetings/1994a.spring/agenda.txt
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/tf.meetings/1994a.spring/agenda.Word.hqx
via Gopher (same documents as FTP)
URL:gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/0/cniftp/tfmeets/1994a.spring/agenda.txt
URL:gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/0/cniftp/tfmeets/1994a.spring/agenda.Word.hqx
URL:gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/11/cniftp/tfmeets/1994a.spring/proj.briefings
If you need additional information, contact:
Joan K. Lippincott, Assistant Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Circle
Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20036
Voice: 202-296-5098
Fax: 202-296-0884
Internet: joan@cni.org
Note on Redistribution
You are encouraged to use this Summary Report to provide information to
interested individuals in your organization or insitution by, in part or in
full, posting it to institutional and organizational electronic distribution
lists or incorporating it into relevant newsletters, reports, and the like.
Publishers of periodicals and other materials that cover networks and networked
information are also encouraged to use this Summary Report in similar
ways.
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