CNI Fall 1994 Task Force Meeting Summary Report
Introduction
Nearly 350 individuals attended the Coalition for Network Information's Fall
Task Force Meeting in Orlando, Florida on November 29 - 30, 1994. The Meeting
theme was "Managing the Networked Organization." This was the second time that
the Coalition Task Force met outside of Washington, DC, and the first time that
it met according to the new Fall Task Force Meeting strategy of co-scheduling
with the CAUSE and Educom annual conferences on alternate years.

Mary Jane Brooks, Office Manager
at the Association of Research
Libraries, greated attendees of the
Coalition's Fall 1994 Task Force
Meeting as they arrived at the
registration desk. Prior to the
opening plenary, she chats with
Duane Webster, Executive Director
of the Association of Research
Libraries.
Managing the Networked Organization
Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director of the Coalition, introduced the first
panel, which addressed the meeting theme. He noted that one of the most
important functions of the Coalition for Networked Information is assisting
managers of networked enterprises in the research and education community in
their efforts to face two critical challenges: recognizing the full potential
of the networked environment in a coherent, actionable manner; and, choosing
the best means to generate, develop, and preserve value in this environment.
He commented that more and more, it seems that successful managers of networked
enterprises are meeting those two challenges by, among other things,
reformulating the three most significant variables in the value equation: the
"content" variable, which covers the specific products and services they
offer; the "context" variable, which covers the ways in which customers access
those products or services, often together with other, related products and
services; and, the "infrastructure" variable, which covers the mechanisms by
which enterprises actually deliver their products or services. The
reformulation of these three key value variables is but one of a number of a
still growing list of important issues affecting the management of networked
enterprises.
Four senior information resource and technology managers from Coalition member
institutions spoke about this set of issues from their professional and
institutional perspectives.
Jerry Campbell, University Librarian, Duke University, and President,
Association of Research Libraries (ARL), opened his presentation with a joke
that there is a new country song about the network entitled, "How can I miss
you when you won't go away?" On a more serious note, he then addressed what he
sees as the key challenges of managing in the networked environment. He
identified seven key organizational characteristics that are particularly
affected: the management system, organizational structure, information flow,
work environment, work process, response to stimuli, and funding model.
In the networked environment, changing the organization is a complex and
long-term task. Campbell focused on three areas of change drawn from the
experience of libraries:
- Managing finances
- Campbell characterized this issue as "old money and a
new piece of pie." While carrying out existing tasks, institutions must build
a new networked infrastructure. Given the magnitude of networking costs, a
"roll forward" approach to budgeting is not workable. He suggests a zero-based
type of process. Another major economic issue is the control of intellectual
property in the networked environment and our inability to superimpose the
economics of print on the network environment.
- Managing risk
- As a concept, risk management is relatively new to libraries.
The network environment poses risks, including the robustness of the network
itself. There is a risk to libraries that they will lose access to information
since an institution is often licensed only for access, not archiving of
information. Libraries have a particular concern with information integrity
over time, which is one of the motivations of the American Association of
Universities (AAU) in its recent report to call for the management of
intellectual property of the academy within the academy.
- Managing transition
- The establishment of the network environment is one
tangible sign that our organizations are already changing. Librarians must be
more deliberate managers and should redesign their entire organization. As the
demand for information increases, the major constraints are legal, not
technical. Concluding on a high note, Campbell said that in the networked
environment, the possibilities for increased cost-effectiveness of our
organizations and our ability to deliver information are extraordinary.
Jack McCredie, Vice Provost for Information Systems and Technology, University
of California, Berkeley began with a brief overview of management philosophies
since the 1960s and noted that the current paradigm is "if it works, it's
obsolete." McCredie said that he worries about three issues: first, what are
we doing as an organization and how should we do it; second, what do we need
and can we pay for it; and, third, how do we support the goals of the
organization through information technology? He covered a wide range of
issues, including how to use information technology in the learning process,
the bandwidth challenge as connections move from focusing on e-mail to full
text and images, student use of the institutional name and resources in the
client-server environment, and the economics of information.
McCredie urged the audience to approach campus administrators in the context of
using information technology to help address the overall priorities of the
institution. He also wants information technologists to participate in an
active way in campus discussions to facilitate the development of economic and
practical solutions.
He remarked that the major focus at Berkeley when he arrived was extending the
campus network infrastructure. Berkeley went from 2,000 to 20,000 connections
in two years. At Berkeley, as in other large institutions, the focus has
switched to home access. Campus constituencies have become accustomed to a
high level of network service on campus and this has resulted in a demand for a
similar level of service where the individuals live so that they can continue
their work at home. It is difficult to provide this level of service to the
home. McCredie would like to see an urban network develop with the university
as an anchor tenant on that network and hopes to work on shaping that reality.
McCredie closed with the comment that he is frequently asked, "When will the
network be finished?" His answer is, "Never - it evolves and creates new
demands."
Carla Stoffle, Dean of Libraries, University of Arizona, described the
continuous quality improvement environment of her campus and the ways in which
the library is evolving to meet the challenges of the networked environment.
She commented that her university is not looking for incremental change and
that they have done some major re-engineering in the library. She shared her
experience in managing issues of electronic capabilities in a dynamic
environment. Key issues have been the need to flatten the organization and the
need to change more rapidly.
Stoffle related that as she flattened the library organization, there were
increasing needs for better communication, which the network facilitates.
However, she also found that by removing the filtering previously performed by
middle managers, there were new demands on staff to translate information into
their own context. She found that some staff were overwhelmed by the increased
volume of information that they receive and felt more out of control than in
the past. The electronic environment creates high customer expectations, and
the library doesn't manage customer expectations very well, particularly
customer demand for immediate response.
Stoffle concluded with comments on whether libraries may or may not play a role
in the policy issues of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).
Libraries should not limit their role to only that of safety nets for the
information technology have-nots. Rather, they should seek to increase the
participation of the communities they serve in NII discussions and in the NII
itself.
Ann Stunden, Director, Academic Computing and Network Services, Northwestern
University, used the context of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things
Are to provide a perspective of a week in the life of an academic computing
director. She described the challenges she faces as:
- redefining campus community values;
- putting policy and policy education in place;
- developing campus processes for resolving problems;
- ensuring communications and collaborations;
- obtaining funding for resources to meet growing demands;
- defining a campus-wide information architecture; and,
- ensuring network security and privacy.
On a day-to-day basis, Stunden deals with such issues as how to handle flaming
by students in Internet newsgroups, violation of copyright by a student who
uploaded a game to a campus server, pornography placed on campus servers by
students, and sensitive e-mail sent to an incorrect address. She described her
concern that existing campus policies may or may not cover some of the problems
encountered in the network environment, and with the rapid pace of change and
unanticipated developments, it is a challenge to prepare for anything that
could happen.
Other challenges Stunden raised included the great increase in network use on
campus. As at Berkeley, use has accelerated dramatically in recent years. In
1993, 4000 individuals had Northwestern accounts, and in 1994, 10,000
individuals had accounts. The Computing Center operates seventy LISTSERVs,
including 10 used by faculty for teaching. Four classes use electronic
conferencing involving 700 students.
Stunden concluded with some challenges encountered in managing information:
collaboration and communication between the library and computing, and the
challenge of the WorldWideWeb (WWW), particularly learning how to navigate it
and understanding how to organize it.
All four panelists gave a genuine flavor of what it means to manage in a
networked information resource environment where change is rapid, user
expectations are high, and demand is exponential. The challenges of managing
personnel, services, and resources are great in this environment, and the
panelists provided insight into how to focus efforts and make progress.

Anders Gillner, Institute of Numerical
Analysis at the Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden
takes time out on Tuesday to demonstrate
WWW technologies he is cooperatively
developing with Swedish museums.
Network and Networked Information Policy Developments
Toni Carbo Bearman, Dean and Professor, School of Library and Information
Science, University of Pittsburgh, provided an overview of recent National
Information Infrastructure (NII) developments. An appointee to the Clinton
Administration's Advisory Council to the Information Infrastructure Task Force
(IITF), she is the sole individual representing library and information science
and higher education in that group. Bearman described the various committees
and working groups that have been set up by the administration and the reports
that they have generated.
The Advisory Council has set up Mega-Projects in three areas: 1) vision and
goals driven by specific applications; 2) universal access and service; and,
3) privacy, security, and intellectual property. Bearman is working on
Mega-Project #1, which is focusing this year on education, including training,
life-long learning, and libraries. They will issue a report and a set of
principles for the applications they have chosen, addressing a set of
questions: 1) what is the vision; 2) what technologies and services exist and
how will they be impacted by the NII; 3) what is the national interest being
served by the development and implementation of the information superhighway;
4) what are the private interests; 5) what are the public interests; 6) where
do the public and private interests intersect; 7) what are the national
implications of the application; and, 8) what should the government's role
be?
Bearman encouraged the Meeting attendees to give her ideas of applications to
highlight in their report and to express their opinions on the issues. She
urged the attendees to become involved in the NII process by attending meetings
which are being held around the country and to develop outreach programs to
educate their colleagues, friends, and neighbors about what the NII actually is
and how it applies to them. She closed with a statement of what she sees as
her personal challenges: to help protect fair use, to protect privacy, and to
support educational principles in the NII, especially in the context of
lifelong learning.
Jim Williams, Executive Director, Federation of American Research Networks
(FARNET), described the emerging National Science Foundation (NSF) three level
architecture of the U.S. portion of the Internet. He noted that some liken
this change in the national research and education networking structure to
changing the tires on a car at 60 miles pr hour. For a number of years, the U.
S. network architecture included the NSF backbone, the mid-level networks
connected to it, and campus or other networks connected to the mid-levels. In
the new architecture, there will not be a single backbone but multiple
backbones provided by a number of providers. Network access points or NAPs
will connect networks to each other. Williams commented that the new
architecture is working quite well, but there are some problems with scaling
and with the new economic infrastructure.
He concluded by noting some concomitant events, such as the emergence of many
start-up network service providers, including one RBOC (Ameritech); the growth
of online service providers (content providers) on the network; continued
growth of network usage; and, some increased orientation towards the
commercial sector by the mid-level networks.
Derek Law, Librarian, King's College, London, described current projects in the
United Kingdom which, together, are becoming a distributed national electronic
information collection which is centrally defined but meets user needs in all
disciplines. He described the work of the U.K. Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils as an effort to
devise national structures for end-user access to information resources. This
effort is being funded as part of the ongoing higher education budget and also
through new funds from the Follett program. Law described the overall goal to
provide a core of essential resources which will be the first resort of network
users and that will be used as a magnet for other high quality locally created
resources which can be linked through metadata.
At present, an impressive range of services and information resource
collections are already available to the U.K. higher education community via
the network: BUBL produces an internationally used set of metadata; MAILBASE
organizes LISTSERV activity in the U.K.; the UK Office for Library Networking
acts as a strategic think tank; HENSA is a shareware archive; NISS provides
current information ranging from yellow pages to newspapers and provides a
gateway to other services and resources, such as OCLC's FirstSearch; MIDAS
services large data sets, including the U.K. census and satellite mapping data;
BIDS provides all of U.K. higher education with access to commercial services,
such as ISI datasets; and, ESRC Data Archive contains many governmental and
social science datasets. There are plans to add an arts and humanities data
service, an image center, and there are discussions about adding a national
higher education OPAC, services to the disabled, and a digitization program for
a variety of resources.
JISC has also taken positions on a number of policy issues: information must
be free at the point of use; subscription or licensing models, not
transaction-based models, must be implemented; the higher education community
must be involved in the resource selection process; common interfaces for
types of data are preferred; and, information must be delivered to all levels
of equipment, including the most basic.
Internet Security and Privacy
In his introduction of the security and privacy issues panel, Paul Evan Peters
commented that strategies for addressing security and privacy threats in
networked environments frequently address three mechanical components (the
clients, servers, and networks) and two non-mechanical components (the users
and providers) in a particular environment. These strategies are formulated
and pursued in the awareness that most threats in cyberspace today are
decidedly low-tech and that the organizational problems of building and
managing secure and private systems are so difficult that they frustrate any
purely technical solution. Four very experienced and well-positioned technical
and policy experts explored aspects of security and privacy issues.
Bill Ruh, Associate Technical Director and Director, Workstation Systems
Engineering Center, Mitre Corporation, spoke about the Internet and security
from his perspective at Mitre, a non-profit think tank that works on projects
for the federal government. His talk, "We're not in Kansas a Anymore!" used
the analogies of small town and urban America to describe attitudes and
security concerns in the Internet. Ruh stated that the early Internet culture
was similar to that found in small town America where everybody knew everybody
else and people left their doors unlocked. This tendency was operationalized
in the Internet by means of guest accounts and anonymous FTP. However, the
Internet has become suburbia where there are lots of new people and even a few
"bad influences" and isolated incidents. In the Internet, we have now locked
our doors by giving people access but controlling that access. We have a
neighborhood watch program for security that includes an Internet firewalls
mailing list, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and a Computer Incident
Advisory Committee (CIAC).
We are emerging into a "Bright Lights, Big City" scenario where there will be
millions of inhabitants, rising crime rates with no police force (and a federal
government ignoring its role in this area), and a resulting move towards
electronic security and private communities. The Internet population is
changing and there will be more and more computer crime. As commerce comes
online, this will become a more serious issue.
Providing security measures requires a balancing act, preserving the positive
features of the network such as open lines of communication and collaboration
while ensuring the safety of our information assets. Ruh feels that we are
moving into an era where we can balance these factors, primarily through the
use of firewalls: a computer or a set of computers that control(s) the flow of
network traffic in and out of the local community. Typical firewall
capabilities are: access control, network service restrictions, user
authentication, and transaction logging. Today there are over thirty different
firewall products, a tripling of a year ago.
Benefits of firewalls include:
- creation of a barrier (or network "fence") that prevents unauthorized
intrusion;
- user access to Internet resources in controlled manner; and,
- reduction of the "zone of risk" to firewall components.
Drawbacks of firewalls include:
- lack of complete commercial firewall solutions;
- firewall techniques for some protocols are not available;
- need for security management responsibilities, e.g. authentication
management, log reviews; and,
- Negative impact on performance and user needs, e.g. popular network
applications may not immediately be allowed by the firewall.
Rue concluded with a recommendation that institutions implement firewalls and
noted that they are critical in situations where there are personnel records
and copyrighted information.
Raman Khanna, Director, Distributed Computing and Communication Systems,
Stanford University described the work of the Common Solutions Group's (CSG)
Authentication Project. The CSG, which has both representatives of individual
universities and other organizations such as EDUCOM, NTTF, CREN, and CNI is
working on inter-institutional authentication. The group has been formed to
collaborate on the definition, development, and deployment of a higher
education information infrastructure and development of middleware for higher
education. The authentication project will architect an inter-institutional
security infrastructure which will: provide the capability for secure,
unambiguous universal identification of an actor for "store and forward"
interactions, e.g. e-mail, for which we need public key technology; support
privacy, integrity, and digital signatures; and, evaluate existing approaches,
e.g. PEM (privacy enhanced mail) and PGP (pretty good privacy). The group has
recommended the PGP approach for store and forward transactions and they are
using MIT's Kerberos-mediated PGP key-signing service. CSG wants to use its
leverage to influence vendors on directions in this arena.
Peter Graham, Associate University Librarian for Technical and Networked
Information Services, Rutgers University, discussed information authentication,
or what he described as intellectual preservation. Graham noted that one of
the library's missions is to ensure that information is preserved in the form
it was intended to be in. Librarians work to preserve the intellectual content
of materials well beyond the timeframe of their own lives. Graham divided the
work of preservation into three categories. In "medium preservation," the
problem is the decay of the artifact itself, e.g. paper, magnetic tape, and the
solution is to "refresh" the information. In "technology preservation," the
problem is obsolescence, e.g. new media and data structures, and the solution
is to migrate the information. In "intellectual preservation," the problem is
the malleability of information, e.g. accidental updates, version control, and
fraud, and the solution Graham proposed is digital time-stamping.
Graham stated that two solutions commonly proposed for intellectual
preservation are encryption, which can require a private key and thereby
restricts access to information resources, and digital signatures, which
require secrecy and encrypted records. Digital time-stamping is an
authentication solution that combines two techniques: "hashing" digital
content and engaging in a "widely-witnessed event." Digital time-stamping, a
generic name for a process developed at BellCore, can be used for public or
private documents and there is no need for trust between the producer and user.

Coalition Executive Director
Paul Evan Peters looks on as David
Peyton, Vice President, Processing
and Networking Services Division,
Information Technology Association
of America delivers his message
during the plenary session on
Internet security and privacy issues.
David Peyton, Vice President, Processing and Networking Services Division,
Information Technology Association of America (an association that represents
computer software and service companies), presented a round-up of the status of
security and privacy issues in the Federal arena.
He discussed three specific security issues:
- Digital telephony ("FBI Wiretapping") - A middle-of-the-road bill
(PL103-414) was passed this year to retrofit the existing public network
and to engineer for the future.
- Message protection ("Clipper Chip") - The Administration feels that the
current data encryption standard need to be updated, and it has promoted the
Clipper Chip, which Peyton said "flunks every user acceptance test," in this
light. The Administration seems to be pulling back from its preference for the
Clipper Chip, but it is not clear where things actually stand.
- Digital signature protection - In the absence of a Federal standard, most
firms in the computer industry have licensed implementations of a commercial
standard in this area. Unfortunately, NIST proposed something totally
different.
The three privacy issues he discussed were:
- Application areas - In the health care reform discussions, there was a
general consensus that privacy issues should be addressed. In the new
Congress, in which health care reform is not thought to be a priority, we will
need a new bill to frame privacy concerns in this area. Transportation
provides a second excellent example of how privacy issues surface in
application area. Intelligent vehicle systems (IVHS) will generate huge
databases of very personal information about an individual's movements, which
can be used for both good and bad purposes.
- Workplace issues - Monitoring of electronic mail by employers is becoming an
issue on the minds of more and more Americans, but bills protecting employees
were died a quiet death in the last Congress.
- Direct marketing - Indiscriminate solicitation of business on the Internet is
an issue that may soon come under Congress scrutiny, as tele-marketing has
before it.
An Anthropologist's View of the Library and Computer Center Cultures
A joint plenary session with the
CAUSE '94
conference featured Jennifer James,
an urban cultural anthropologist. In a humorous presentation with serious
themes, she discussed her interest in belief systems and mythological barriers.
She noted that when creating partnerships, we need to understand the culture of
the groups involved. She described librarians as having ancient credentials,
their own rules, and a bias for precision. "Techies," on the other hand, she
described as having no credentials and no culture worthy of the term. She
feels that our mythological systems hold us back from forming new
partnerships.
James described the current period as the start of a long-term "brains,
technologies, services" era, but said that society has not yet accepted the
notion of computer nerds as the leaders of the new era. She described the
members of the audience as the new entrepreneurs, and said that the new era
will rely on entrepreneurial individuals working in teams with minimal
management structure. She urged the audience to use the myths and symbols of
the past and to integrate them in creative ways into new technologies. She
challenged the audience to crack the model that currently operates in academe.
She closed by stating that she feels optimistic about our moving to a higher
level of society, and asked members of the audience to think of themselves as
society's guides on this journey.
Kevin Gamiel, a programmer at
the Clearinghouse for Networked
Information Discovery and Retrieval
(CNIDR) relaxes between project
briefing sessions.
Update on Coalition Initiatives and Projects
Paul Evan Peters opened the final session with the three core beliefs guiding
the Coalition and its program:
- Networks like the Internet and digital libraries like the resources and
services already found on the Internet will be important features of all 21st
Century research and education communities.
- Networks and digital libraries must therefore also be important features of
all enterprises that serve those 21st Century research and education
communities.
- Networks and digital libraries will ultimately transform research and
education, and the enterprises that serve research and education, by changing
not only how, and when, and with what resources programs are designed and
pursued, but by changing as well the types of programs pursued and the
identities of the folks who plan and participate in them.
In short, he said, the Coalition and its program are dedicated to the
proposition that networks and digital libraries will mean at least as much to
the "life of the mind" in "knowledge communities" as roads and energy sources
have meant to the "life of the body" in agricultural and industrial
communities. Libraries, computer centers, disciplinary societies, and
publishing houses typify the enterprises and professions that serve the life of
the mind by supporting scholarly and scientific creation, communication, and
publication. So it is quite natural, even necessary, to try to imbed the
question of the impacts of networks and digital libraries on these enterprises
and professions in the question of the impacts of networks and digital
libraries on the life of the mind. Helping Coalition members to accomplish
this imbedding is the central program planning challenge of the Coalition.
A number of project leaders then reported on Coalition initiatives:
- Robert Ubell, President, Robert Ubell Associates, gave an update on the
Rights for Electronic Access to and Delivery of Information (READI) project.
In its initial stage, The goal of the READI project was to generate a
universally acceptable contract for electronic, networked information, which
did not prove possible. Instead, this year, the Project turned in a new
direction to develop a handbook on how to develop contracts and site licenses
for networked information. At present, a draft of the handbook is under review
by a group including librarians, faculty, attorneys, information service
providers, publishers, and information technologists. The draft document is
available on the CNI server.
- Gerry Bernbom, Assistant Director for Data Administration, Indiana
University, reported on "Working Together: A Planning Retreat for Library and
Information Professionals." The retreat offered an intensive,
participant-oriented environment, using case studies and a variety of
participative techniques to help foster collaborative projects. Attendance was
open only to paired teams. Participants met in advance to assess their current
situation and plans. At the retreat, participants divided their time between
skill development and work on institutional planning. The first retreat, held
in October, 1994, was targeted at large research institutions. CNI plans to
offer the program this spring to small institutions.
- Susan Perry, Director, Departmental Systems Group, Stanford University,
reported on the "New Learning Communities" workshop, a conference held in
Phoenix in the summer of 1994 which brought together cross-functional teams
developing courses and curriculum involving networked information.
Participants discussed their projects and provided peer consultation. A
report on the project is available on the Coalition server and a video of the
retreat will be available soon. The Teaching and Learning Working Group
sponsored the conference along with EDUCOM, ACRL, and AAHE. In addition, the
Working Group sponsored its third program at the EDUCOM Annual Meeting
featuring innovative uses of networked information in teaching and learning. A
database of projects submitted to this program is available through the CNI
server; it is an excellent resource for information on teaching and learning
projects.
- Judith Turner, Director of Electronic Services, Chronicle of Higher
Education, briefed the audience on the "Purple Paper on Advertising in the
Networked Environment." The paper is completed and is on the CNI server. The
paper describes and categorizes advertising practices on the network and
emphasizes that junk electronic mail techniques should be avoided.
- Chuck Henry, Director, Vassar College Libraries, reported on the joint
initiative that CNI has with ACLS and Getty, the "National Initiative for a
Networked Cultural Heritage" (NINCH), and related activities. NINCH is the
next step in the "Humanities and Arts on the Information Superhighway"
initiative. A summary of last year's efforts is on the CNI server. NINCH is
being developed to create an environment in which the importance of the
cultural heritage is recognized as a priority in NII planning. It is also a
strategy to bring people in the humanities community together to work for
mutual benefit. The initiative will be seeking sponsors and will be seeking to
establish a Washington office. The initiative will also expand globally by
linking to similar initiatives in other countries.
- Clifford Lynch, Director, Library Automation, University of California,
reported on a new Coalition initiative, the "Networked Information Discovery
and Retrieval (NIDR) White Paper." A Call for Input has been issued,
and everyone is encouraged to send comments to the team developing the paper:
Lynch, Avra Michelson, Mitre Corporation, Craig Summerhill, CNI, and Cecilia
Preston. The genesis of the paper is the concern that while much work is being
done on network resource discovery and identification, an overall framework or
architectural picture for that work is lacking. The team is also focusing on
the issue of metadata, information about network resources that systems use as
an information base that can be mined for specific resources. Many
communities, e.g. the museum community, are defining classes of data, but there
is no cross-fertilization of these classifications or common taxonomies. Lynch
expressed hope that this white paper will serve as a useful point of departure
for standards developers, network architects, and others.
- Joan Lippincott, Assistant Executive Director, Coalition for Networked
Information, reported on the two CAUSE/CNI Regional Conferences that were held
in the summer in Philadelphia, PA, and in the fall in Fullerton, CA. The
conferences enable individuals beyond the Task Force representatives and those
in non-Task Force member institutions to benefit from programs that highlight
CAUSE and CNI issues and projects. The programs are also intended to serve a
region, and to thereby keep the travel costs of participants to a minimum.
Project Briefings and Synergy Sessions
Attendees had the opportunity to select from twenty-four project briefings and
synergy sessions on a wide variety of topics.
Two sessions followed up on plenary panels at the Meeting:
- "Key Issues Affecting the Management of the Networked Organization."
- "Key Developments Affecting the Evolution of Networks and Networked
Information."
Nine sessions were devoted to ongoing Coalition-sponsored projects:
- "Group Electronic Site Licenses: Hopes, Fears, and Issues as Seen From Many
Sides of the Table."
- "Cost Centers and Measures in the Networked Information Value-Chain."
- "Arts, Culture, and Humanities Priorities and Activities."
- "Creating New Learning Communities via the Network."
- "Networked Access to and Delivery of Dissertations and Theses."
- "CUPID Update and Demo."
- "Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (NIDR) White Paper."
- "Working Together: A Planning Retreat for Library and Information Technology
Professionals.
- "Architectures and Standards: Priorities and Activities."
Three sessions focussed on topics in which the Coalition has a general
interest, and is currently formulating a strategy by which to play a useful and
appropriate role:
- "Forging a National Image Alliance."
- "Describing Image Files: The Need for a Technical Standard."
- "Fair Use of Networked Information."
And the remainder of the sessions covered other ideas and initiatives of
interest to Meeting attendees:
- "A Center for Collaborative Learning: A Model for Supporting the Library
Without Walls."
- "Government Information Locator Services (GILS)."
- "The Berkeley Finding Aids Project: Providing Access to Images Through SGML
Encoded Text."
- "Building the Digital Library from the Ground Up: A Collaborative Effort."
- "INforum: A Library/Information Technology collaboration in Professional
Development."
- "The Columbia Action Agenda: A Strategic Project Proposal to Advance
Electronic Scholarly Communications in Universities."
- "Scholarly Publishing Using the WorldWideWeb."
- "Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative."
- "The Princeton University Electronic Card Catalog."
- "CIC Virtual Electronic Library Status Report."
Spring 1995 Meeting
The Spring
1995 Task Force Meeting will be on Monday April 10th and Tuesday
April 11th, in Washington, DC immediately following the National NET '95
conference. The theme of the Spring 1995 Meeting is "Digital Library Research
and Development."
Fall 1995 Meeting
The Fall 1995 Task Force Meeting will be on Monday October 30th and Tuesday
October 31st, in Portland, Oregon immediately preceding the Educom '95
conference.
Additional Information
Many documents (including the final, detailed agenda) from the Fall 1994 Task
Force Meting are available on the Coalition's Internet server.
If you access the Coalition's server by gopher, point your gopher client to
gopher.cni.org 70 and follow this series of menus:
Coalition FTP Archives (ftp.cni.org)
Coalition Task Force Meetings (/CNI/tf.meetings)
Fall, 1994 Meeting of the Coalition Task Force
If you choose to access the materials via NCSA Mosaic (or some other browser)
and WWW, you can use this URL to access a HTML formatted document:
URL: http://www.cni.org/tfms/1994b.fall/
If you choose to access the materials via FTP, browse the following directory
on host ftp.cni.org:
/CNI/tf.meetings/1994b.fall
If you need additional information, contact:
Joan K. Lippincott
Assistant Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Circle
Washington, DC 20036
Voice: 202-296-5098
Fax: 202-872-0884
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 institution 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.