The Western Governors University started enrolling students in September 1998. What makes WGU unique? Why is it different from other distance education programs? What should librarians know about the Western Governors University?

In December 1997 WGU announced its intention to award a contract for its Central Library to the University of New Mexico. The speakers will describe the unique aspects of WGU and the management of the Central Library web site. The presentation will include a description of the Central Library's electronic resources and what "traditional" services are needed to support the WGU electronic library.

Since the last CNI meeting, the Internet2 Project has launched several new projects, including the Internet2 Middleware Initiative, the I2-Digital Video Network, the I2-Distributed Storage Initiative, the Q-Bone (a quality of service testbed), and the Abilene network. This talk provides an overview of each of these new initiatives and a general status update for the Internet2 Project. We will also discuss opportunities for CNI / I2 cooperation on digital library applications in 1999, including middleware testbeds (e.g., authentication and authorization) and demonstrations.

In the 1980s, the Research Libraries Group played a major role in developing the online format for cataloging archival and mixed collections, resulting in a database that today is approaching half a million descriptive records of archival collections and items. Now, RLG has integrated access to this resource with use of a growing range of online finding aids -- the detailed collection guides or inventories that reveal where a collection came from, how it is arranged, and what it contains. And both the catalog records and detailed collection guides can provide a further resource: a link to digitized archival materials themselves. In this presentation RLG describes its recent work to improve access to these primary sources, including an in-depth look at RLG's Archival Resources service.

Recently the Internet Scout Project released a call for collaborators for a new research initiative, the Isaac Network, which is co-sponsored by CNI. The Isaac Network links together human-mediated, highly authoritative collections of Internet resources from content providers who have developed metadata for the resources. Using the latest directory protocols and the Dublin Core metadata set, the Isaac Network provides a search interface to the distributed collections of metadata. The overall goal is to allow users to submit a single query to search geographically distributed and independently maintained metadata collections and to return the combined results to the user. During the session the Issac Network will be described, the collaborator criteria will be discussed, and the software and content support provided to collaborators by the Internet Scout Project will be detailed. Providers of high-quality content are encouraged to join the discussion as potential collaborators in the network's development.

The ATHENS Access Management System was designed to provide a unified authorization and authentication service for electronic services in the UK academic community. The service has now been in use for over one year and the briefing will provide an update on the experiences of introducing and developing this service. It will also describe how the service is expected to develop in future and how it has been deployed elsewhere, both in academic environments and in the commercial sector.

On September 14, 1998, the University of Washington Libraries released its new Information Gateway, a result of a 9-month effort to design and format a new web site based on user needs and functions rather than the Libraries administrative structure. Throughout the prototyping, development, and implementation of the Information Gateway, the Libraries systematically employed usability testing for continual inclusion of faculty, student and staff input. This project briefing features test designs developed in consultation with campus usability experts, a demonstration of how results influenced product design, a checklist for conducting usability testing with limited resources and expertise, and lessons learned.

On September 14, 1998, the University of Washington The Sixth Dublin Core Workshop, held in Washington DC November 2-4 led to the initiation of formal procedures for reporting and approving Dublin Core decisions (and ultimately issuing versions of the Dublin Core standard) and to a work plan for 1999. It identified a number of areas in which further clarification needs to occur, especially in the requirements for "qualified" Dublin Core. In this context, discussions prior to, during and following the meeting identified a semantic framework and a syntactic framework for resolving differences between the Dublin Core and the metadata required by the rights holding community which also seeks to create metadata for discovery. It is hoped that in the coming year, the requirements of several metadata communities can be mapped to these semantic and syntactic frameworks to more precisely specify their overlaps and differences.

In this session, Stu Weibel will report on DC6 and the 1999 Dublin Core work plan. The other speakers will address the ways in which the IFLA Functional Requirements for the Bibliographic Record (FRBR) and the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF) are being used to explore, clarify, and resolve areas of apparent differences between metadata creating communities. The commitment to seek common ground between DC and INDECS by modeling requirements in the semantics suggested by the FRBR and the syntax suggested by RDF, is itself a significant achievement, and this development has already served to clarify some needs of each community. Much work by both communities remains to be done to ensure that the needs of each are met and that the common expression can be made to work.