The Council on Library and Information Resources is supporting a planning phase to investigate the development of rich test database of digital visual resources in art history. The image database would have sufficient breadth, depth, and variety to constitute a ground-proofed collection for the field and will be promoted as a community resource to provide a common benchmark against which to measure and compare processes and approaches. It is envisioned that the database will be developed in such a way that it serves the broad humanities computing culture in general and the art history field in particular. Its availability could provide a powerful unifying force for comparative analysis that supports a range of disciplines, technological approaches, and longitudinal studies. Such test databases exist in other domains--full text, fingerprints, handwriting, photography, and face recognition and their availability has driven the development of new processes and products.

CLIR is supporting the work of a small planning group, chaired by Cliff Lynch, which will develop a formal proposal for the test database that can be submitted to funders in 2001.

The University of California, San Diego Libraries have developed a new web infrastructure in support of delivering library resources. This system enables non-programmers to easily create an almost infinite variety of web pages. The site provides users with a subset of available knowledge, carefully selected to support programmatic needs. Currently there are 8,000 distinct subject and type pages online.

Key to this initiative is an underlying relational database of selected resources. Subject specialists identify and select resources and services and enter them into the database known as Sage. Descriptive data elements are added to enhance the retrieval and display. These database records form the content for dynamically created web pages that are assembled "on the fly" when a user browses Sage.

Text from each Sage record is also copied into a Netscape Compass Server database and is indexed in that full text index. To further expand access, URLs from Sage records become the starting point for spidering by Compass to find other potentially relevant resources. The level of spidering is assigned by each record creator in order to control subsequent search results. Sage streamlines the creation and maintenance of web pages by reducing redundant work on the part of web authors and facilitates sharing of data among web authors for resources relevant to more than one subject area. Sage provides for efficient data entry, easy updating of web resources, and custom designed page building for both static and dynamic pages. Selected records from the OPAC are exported into the database to provide an integrated array of resources. Java, Servlets, and JDBC enabled SQL database access were used to establish a foundation for future migration to potential new technologies.

The digital revolution--the proliferation of digital information, digital networks, and the World Wide Web--makes it possible to distribute information easily, in innovative ways, and for dramatically lower cost. This revolution is challenging policies and practices throughout our society, but those institutions whose primary charter is to provide access to information, such as libraries, archives, and publishers, are perhaps most affected. What does it mean to "collect" digital information if Web links cause the physical location of information to be irrelevant? How does our society ensure that digital information is preserved for future generations? How must the roles of libraries, publishers, and other institutions evolve? What do the answers to these questions imply for the management of libraries and other information-oriented institutions in the coming decade?

With an understanding of these profound changes underway, the Librarian of Congress asked the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Academy of Sciences to assist the Library of Congress, which includes the U.S. Copyright Office, Congressional Research Service, and Law Library of Congress, in developing the Library's strategy with regard to information technology. Accordingly, CSTB empaneled its Committee on an Information Technology Strategy of the Library of Congress. The committee has completed its work and its final report, LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress,  will be presented and discussed at this session by three members of the study committee.

Project Euclid is an electronic publishing initiative led by the Cornell University Library and the Duke University Press to advance effective and affordable scholarly communication in theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. The Euclid site will support the entire span of scholarly publishing from preprints to the distribution of published journals. It will also provide journal editors with a tool kit to streamline their editorial and peer review processes and publish in a timely and cost-effective manner. Editors will pick and choose different tools to meet their particular needs. They will be able to maintain a database of their reviewers, post papers to a reviewer's password-protected pick-up and drop-off space, and alert reviewers via e-mail regarding review deadlines. Reviewers will submit their comments and/or the edited papers confidentially. Editors will also be able link the revised version of a paper to its preprint version, if applicable. After preparing articles with the Euclid editorial tools, editors will then upload the articles comprising a journal issue. Euclid's goal is to contribute to the the creation of a vibrant online information community that is based on a healthy balance of commercial enterprises, scholarly societies, and independent publishers. The project is supported in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is a SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) partnership.

BioOne  <www.BioOne.org>  is a new Web-based aggregation of research in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences. In this presentation, SPARC Enterprise Director Rick Johnson provides a progress report on BioOne's development in advance of its upcoming launch, scheduled for the first half of 2001.

A broad selection of the journals published by many of the American Institute of Biological Sciences' (AIBS) over 70 member societies will form BioOne's core offerings. BioOne's development has been spearheaded by its collaborating organizations, including AIBS, SPARC, the University of Kansas, the Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium, and Allen Press. BioOne development has been funded by SPARC and Big 12 Plus member libraries, along with other institutions that are committed to playing a leading role in transforming scientific communications.

What if you could wave a wand, in this very Harry Potter decade, and make libraries - at least digital libraries - more open, more easy to manage, cheaper, and even more eclectic and democratic? What if content contributors could submit, catalog, index, manage, rate and rank materials in large collections themselves? I believe that, thanks to the innovations from the Open Source community and perhaps more importantly the Free Software community, that we can have a contributor-run library at this very moment.

IMS Working Groups gather functional requirements, technical capabilities, and deployment priorities from end users, vendors, purchasers, and managers. These requirements are consolidated into one or more specifications as the groups follow a proven, open process to develop a specification package consisting of a definition, XML binding and best practice guide. Working Group documents undergo detailed internal review by the IMS Technical Board before public drafts or releases are made available to the public via the IMS Web site  <www.imsproject.org>. Feedback from test beds, product developers and adopters is incorporated through systematic revision cycles. Specifications for Content Packaging, Question and Test Interoperability, Enterprise Data Exchange, and Meta-data have been released. Specifications for Content Management and for Learner Information Packaging and Exchange are nearing completion. Working Groups which will gather requirements and develop specifications for Instructional Design and for Accessibility by Disabled Learners are being formed. This presentation will provide a technical overview of the specifications so far produced and discuss their potential use in mechanisms for locating, retrieving and (re)using networked learning objects.

The speakers will review successes of ECURE 2000: Preservation and Access for Electronic College and University Records and engage participants in a discussion of processes, topics and potential speakers for proposed executive development seminars and the ECURE 2001 conference. ECURE programs are dedicated to advocacy and dissemination of research, models and best practices for management of electronic records produced by institutions of higher education.