Institutions of higher education increasingly need to share resources over the network in a controlled manner. A common set of attributes for person information and a common definition of the kind of situations in which those attributes are appropriately used would make that sharing substantially easier. The edu-Person 0.9 project brings together directory and resource experts to define an initial set of such attributes and practices. With the support of Internet2 and EDUCAUSE and in cooperation with standards-promotion bodies such as the Post-secondary Electronic Standards Council, this effort is well underway. This briefing will introduce the work of the project staff and describe how to connect with and participate in the ongoing work in this area.

This session will be a discussion of policy issues related to portals in the higher education environment. We'll discuss build or buy, single portal vs many, and the challenges of making this happen on your campus. Attendees will be invited to share their experiences, issues, and concerns about portals or plans for portals at their home institutions.

There is growing awareness of the need for a second layer of national infrastructure for higher education and research, focused on identifiers, authentication, directories, and authorization. A number of efforts in this area are beginning to produce the building blocks of this middleware infrastructure. This session will review recent developments and next steps in the construction of an information and trust fabric within our community.

What is an authentic digital object? What are the core attributes that, if missing, would render the object something other than what it purports to be? In January of this year, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) convened a group to discuss the essential elements that define a digital object and guarantee its integrity. Participants included members from diverse communities with an interest in the authenticity of electronic information – scholars, computer scientists, librarians, archivists, publishers, digital asset managers, and foundation officials.

Position papers were commissioned from five experts and served as the basis of the discussion. The papers focused on authenticity, but in considering this central issue, other questions arose, such as:

• If all information – textual, numeric, audio, and visual – exists as a bitstream, what does that imply for the concept of format and its role as an attribute essential to the object?
• Does the concept of an original have meaning in the digital environment?
• What role does provenance play in establishing the authenticity of a digital object?
• What implications for authenticity, if any, are there in the fact that digital objects are contingent on software, hardware, network, and other dependencies?

In some states, legislatures or executive agencies are proposing to tie state funding for computing resources or services to the implementation of filtering software on publicly available computer terminals. The concern by some in state government is that publicly funded equipment could be used by individuals (including minors) to access pornography on the Internet.

This issue is shaping up as a major public policy debate around the country. The real challenge is how to manage this dialogue to improve understanding on both sides of the issue and to reaffirm the importance of library services in the community. The question is not whether or not to filter but how to use this occasion to open a dialogue. Libraries and other educational institutions must weigh in with their values and perspectives to ensure that the principles of access, choice, and community involvement are recognized. This session will describe experiences in the State of Arizona and invite discussion of the issues and strategies by CNI participants.

The Collaborative Digital Reference Service provides professional reference service to users anytime anywhere, through an international, digital network of all types of libraries. Through this service, users can have access to library experts who draw on both digital and non - digtal resources in supplying answers to inquiries. The Library of Congress and its partner libraries, some twelve academic and public libraries will initiate a series of pilots over the next six months to test incrementally features of the service including response time, interoperability, scope, and size.

ARL is in the process of engaging interested member libraries in a study aiming at describing usage measures for electronic resources as part of the ARL New Measures Initiative. This effort emerged from an informal meeting of a small group of ARL directors at the December 1999 CNI meeting and continued with a day and a half project planning session in Scottsdale, AZ, at the end of February. Input received from the participants of the Scottsdale retreat is incorporated in the design of a revised prospectus by Charles McClure and Jeff Shim from the Information Management Use and Policy Institute of the School of Information Studies at Florida State University. An update of the questions and framework defining this study will be provided by Sherrie Schmidt and Rush Miller and more input will be sought by participants attending this project briefing session. For more information, please see   <http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/e-usage.html>.  

Founded in 1823, the Library of Virginia is located in Richmond and serves as the archival repository for state and local governmental records and as the reference library at the seat of government. Since its inception in 1995, the Library's Digital Library Program (DLP) has generated digital images of more than 700,000 original document pages, 1,100 maps, 18,000 photographs, 1.6 million catalog card images, and created 20 new bibliographic databases with more than 300,000 MARC records, and 50 electronic card indexes and two finding aids. In 1998, the Library initiated the Virginia Digital Library Program (VDLP) to provide consulting, funding, and implementation services for local Virginia libraries to digitize and provide access to significant local collections. During Phase I, the VDLP provided the opportunity for nineteen (19) local digital library projects at fifteen (15) libraries to be developed and completed, which include local newspaper indexes, maps, indexes to cemetery interment records, indexes to diaries and journals, ancestor charts, and numerous local photograph collections. This session will provide an update on the Library's progress and generate discussion regarding emerging issues, technologies and standards relating to large-scale indexing and digitization projects.