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Preview ERIC ED414913: The Continuity Project, Fall 1997 Report.

DOCUMENT RESUME IR 056 771 ED 414 913 Wasilko, Peter J. AUTHOR The Continuity Project, Fall 1997 Report. TITLE 1997-00-00 PUB DATE 26p. NOTE Descriptive (141) Reports PUB TYPE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Artificial Intelligence; Cataloging; Classification; DESCRIPTORS Computer Mediated Communication; *Computer Software; Futures (of Society); Hypermedia; Indexing; *Information Retrieval; Information Technology; Knowledge Representation; Library Collections; Natural Language Processing; Online Catalogs; *Online Searching; *Online Systems; Programming; *Relevance (Information Retrieval); *Strategic Planning; World Wide Web Campuswide Information Systems IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT The Continuity Project is a research, development, and technology transfer initiative aimed at creating a "Library of the Future" by combining features of an online public access catalog (OPAC) and a campus wide information system (CWIS) with advanced facilities drawn from such areas (KR), natural as artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge representation language processing (NLP), computer applications and software engineering (CASE), literate programming, hypertext research, and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). By taking this approach, Continuity will be able to provide an intelligent, unified, and proactive information infrastructure for the learning organization of the future. The explosive growth rate of the body of accumulated knowledge and increasingly powerful information technology and computing tools have exceeded the capabilities of traditional approaches to cataloging and collection management. In the new millennium, the ability to find and integrate relevant existing knowledge is the new limiting factor on the rate of scientific and commercial innovation. This report describes the Continuity Project and contains the following sections: Project Overview; Project Update; Project's Inspiration; Philosophy Behind the Project; Need and Prospects for the Project; Desiderata; Scenario--illustrating system capabilities; Simulated User Session; We Can Build It; Director-- personal description; Project Advisory Board; Managing the Project; Common Concerns--questions and answers; Project on the Web--description of further information on the Web; and the project director's resume. (SWC) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** Continuity It is time to reconceptualize the role of the library and re- fashion the on-line catalog into an intelligent proactive medium for the social construction of knowledge. Strategic Planning... The Continuity Project Fall 1997 Report "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Peter J. Wasilko TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Peter J. Wasilko, Esq. J.D., LL.M. OF EDUCATION U.S. DEPARTMENT Research and Improvement Office of Educational Project Director & Principal Investigator INFORMATION EDUCATIONAL ERIC) RESOURCES CE been reproduced as This document has or organization received from the person originating it. been made to Minor changes have quality. improve reproduction opinions stated in this BEST COPY AVAILABLE Points of view or necessarily represent document do not policy. official OERI position or 2 t 1 of 23 fal11991Report The Continuity Project Rational for the Project Continuity Indeed, the creation of tools to augment our An Extensible cognitive abilities goes to the very heart of the Intelligent Integrated Collaborative Catalog Technopolis Strategy' of promoting advanced tech- & Distributed Institutional Memory Archive nology for economic development. Since we now find ourselves enmeshed in a new global economy in which, for the most part, we can't afford to com- pete in commodotized areas, our best hope to main- tain a high standard of living is to become more ef- Project Overview ficient at research, innovation, and technology trans- fer at the cutting edge. By staking out this high Welcome to The Continuity Project! ground, we can command high enough margins for the fruits of our labor to maintain and expand our The Continuity Project is a new research, devel- lead well into the next century. opment, and technology transfer initiative aimed at creating a Library of the Future by combining fea- But to do so, we must work smarter, and that tures of an on-line public access catalog (OPAC) means we must learn to get the most leverage from and a campus wide information system (CWIS) with what we know and find more effective ways to col- advanced facilities drawn from such areas as artifi- laborate with one another in the pursuit of new representation, knowledge intelligence (AI), cial knowledge and products. (KR), natural language processing (NLP), computer applications and software engineering (CASE), liter- No area offers greater potential leverage in this ate programming, hypertext research, and computer regard than an effort to integrate use of the library supported cooperative work (CSCW). By taking this catalog and campus wide information system into an approach, Continuity will be able to provide an in- ubiquitous knowledge-based infrastructure that goes telligent, unified, proactive, information infrastruc- far beyond the traditional OPAC to directly model ture for the learning organization of the future. the people and their research embodied in the col- lection and working in the community. The Genesis of the Need for Continuity Continuity Such systems were first envisioned as far back as the 1930's when the first hints of information over- Thus Continuity would serve as a virtual Wagon people, ideas, and re- load were beginning to appear on the horizon. Since Wheel2 bringing together then, the body of accumulated knowledge held in sources to establish a much more intimate continuity our collections has grown at a truly explosive rate between the sources of written knowledge and their with disciplines spawning sub-disciplines far to rap- uses, between authors and readers, between research- idly for even the finest research libraries to keep ers and practitioners, between librarians and patrons, pace. Moreover, this growth of total knowledge is between students past and present, and between the locked in an accelerating feedback loop with the university and its community. powerful information development of increasing technology and computing tools Our traditional ap- Without continuity, we are far too dependent on proaches to cataloging and collection management serendipity. were never designed to cope with these dynamics. Its just too much work to find new people, ideas, Thus as the new millennium approaches, the projects, and resources using our current tools. The to find and integrate relevant existing ability catalog lacks the depth of coverage, the campus web knowledge, rather than the need to make discoveries lacks the organization and automated access, and de novo, is emerging as a new limiting factor on the our would be collaborators (be they on or in the rate of scientific and commercial innovation. Indeed, community) lack the time to sift through it all. even the most basic of original pure research is often predicated on just such an understanding of its ante- With your help, Continuity will change all that. cedents. Since this ability to innovate and facilitate inno- I See The Technopolis Phenomenon : Smart Cities, Fast Systems, Global vation is, and will no doubt remain, the primary Networks Edited by David V. Gibson, George Kozmetsky, and Ray. source of competitive advantage at the firm, re- mond W. Smiior. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1992. gional, and national level, the importance of creating 2 The Wagon Wheel bar in Mountain View has been credited as the key such advanced active information infrastructures can catalyst for many of Silicon Valley's semiconductor industry collabora- not be stressed too highly. tions. See Regional Advantage : Culture and Competition in Silicon 3 Valley and Route 128 by Annalee Saxenlan. Harvard, 1994. (914) 941.5705 http://vArAv.cloud9.netrfuturist/continurty/ 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 mailto: Peter 1. Wasllko <[email protected]> 2 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111991 Revorl perience a 3-D flythrough of our site hierarchy and the conceptual relationships within it. We will be us- Project Update ing Eastgate Systems Web Squirrel to generate the MCF and to begin to catalog the many on-line re- sources with which we have been working. Its been a busy and productive summer with the Continuity Project making visits to the American As to substance, we plan to add syllabi, course Intelligence Fourteenth Association for Artificial Intelligence in notes, and lecture notes in preparation for meeting National Conference on Artificial the teaching responsibilities and opportunities to Providence, Rhode Island; Mac World in Boston; engage undergraduate and graduate students in the JavaWorid and later ITForum in New York City; and work of the project when we find a host institution. several university campuses. In the meantime we hope that the materials them- selves will be of value to our many colleagues whose Our library continues to grow with the addition current course offerings touch on the issues we are of new tiles and resources in artificial intelligence, addressing. computer science, computational linguistics, infor- mation studies, innovation management, program- In terms of our own research and development ming language design, and technology transfer. initiatives, we have made the first in a series of tech notes" available with a description of Epoch the ho- Dr. Susan Thomas and Steven J. McCaffrey have moiconic multiparadigm literate end-user program- joined the Continuity Advisory Board. ming language & extension framework that we are developing for Continuity. I have recently completed a major update and reorganization of our project website3 adding navi- Of course we recognize that no one institution gational graphics and abstracting out common page will have the resources to fully develop Continuity elements through the use of server side includes di- independently, which is why I am establishing and rectives which will make it dramatically easier to coordinating the new Stone Soup' clearinghouse for execute future revisions. I have also made liberal use research on Component Integration and Distribution of server redirection to avoid breaking any existing in the Development of New Millennium OPACs at the links pointing into our site. Finally I am incorpo- CyberStacks7. This clearinghouse will encourage re- rating meta tags into the site to insure optimal in- searchers developing elements of next generation dexing and abstracting by automatic search engines. systems to leverage their work off existing tools and to make their own efforts more widely available. It is For the first time, we have made design mock also hoped that clearinghouse participants will join ups of our user interface development efforts avail- in producing an anthology that could be used as a able as design notes° in which you will find a num- supplemental reading at the graduate level. ber of simulated screen shots that capture the flavor of what it will be like to work with a Continuity ter- By drawing on the work cataloged in the Stone minal. Soup clearinghouse, The Continuity Project will be able to make the truly optimal use of existing tech- As a result, the web site itself has generated con- nologies, placing it in a preeminent position to serve siderable interest, putting us into contact with several as the nucleus of a possible new catalog consortium.8 colleagues in such places as France and Norway, who have written to us to request additional infor- All we would then need to create a unified col- mation and to share the fruits of their research. Our laborative catalog & campus wide information sys- server logs indicate a slow but steady growth in the tem would be a strategic partnering with a network popularity of our site with hits arriving from as far computer (NC) vendor to create the physical infra- away as Japan and Australia, showing a fairly even structure of low cost terminals. split between academic and industry domains with a slight bias towards the former. We plan several major enhancements to the web site during the fall semester. First we are going to augment. the site with a Meta Content Format (MCF) 5 <http://www.cloud9.net/futurist.continutty/tech_notes/> description of our offerings, which will enable Win- 6 <http://www.public.lastate.edu/CYBERSTACKS/StoneSoup.hbn> dows and Macintosh users who download the free <http://www.public.lastate.edu/C(BERSTACKS/> HotSauce plug-in for Explorer and Navigator to ex- For a most enlightening treatment of such initiatives see R&D Collabo- ration on Trial : The story of MCC America's first major, for-profit and its quest to enhance the competitiveness of R&D consortium American high-tech firms by David V. Gibson and Everett M. Rogers. <http://www.doud9.net/futurlst/continutty> 3 Harvard Business School Press, 1994. <http://vAvw.cloud9.net/futurist/continutty/design_notes/> 4 http://www.cloud9.net/futurist/continuity/ (914) 941-5705 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 malito: Peter J. Wasilko <[email protected]> 4 3 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111997 Report the desk. The attendant [keys it in and returns with] The Project's Inspiration a strip of photographic paper. On it appear a dozen items. One of these reads: "217,384, Phys. Rev. Oct. '36, P. 483, Osborne, U. M. 3846, Precise Examina- tion of a Series of stripped Atoms, methods of ex- We are not the first to look beyond the library of citing double ionized dis- Electrodeless lithium, today and in the often quoted words of Isaac New- charge. should be checked and, if found operative, ton, if we "have seen further it is by standing on ye will supersede prior methods. KSJ." shoulders of Giants". Let us pause then and consider the futures that might have been: Much of this is self-explanatory. The first num- ber is the serial number of the item, so that it can be Yet even the expert today has often to ignore readily found if Professor Jones should later order it past work in his field because of the labor of getting amplified or cancelled. The U. M. gives the location at it; because of the inescapable preliminary drudg- where the author, Osborne, performed the experi- ery he may be deterred from tackling even a prob- ment. The 3846 is the shelf number in the library lem which he is especially qualified to attack, think- where the Journal is to be found. Then follows the ing it better to put his skills on other tasks.... title of the article, and finally Jones' comments of six months before and his initials. Here are placed be- fore Smith all the pertinent references within articles, on the specific matter of inquiry, with critical com- ments by experts in the field. Smith aed a The pressing of a button should place immedi- ately on the desk not merely one book or one arti- week's hunt, and he has all there is to be had. cle, but every appropriate item which the individual has collected, every thought or theory which he had formed or recorded, plus all those data which coop- erative judgment had shown to be useful in attacking The multiple intelligence of the reviewers whose the problem under consideration. ... judgments are stored for the use of others is the king-pin of the machine. To the individual reviewer, then, the machine will offer a new opportunity for usefulness, a consequent new dignity. More immedi- ately, what will it mean to him? Many things, of ...the device will implement cooperation and aid which these so soon can be clearly foreseen: The in giving to the "fellowship of learning" the instru- peace of mind which comes of being able to have a mentality which is implied in that term. judgment on the literature of his subject recorded quickly and accurately, stored safely, recalled in- stantly; the accession of energy for other things which comes of this freedom; the sharpening of Professor Jones is a spectroscopist... He has an thinking which comes of the corroboration of his article in the Physical Review before him and, not judgment, or the criticism of it, by fellow reviewers once but several times in the course of this article, he in his field; the increase of effectiveness and effi- In the writes mysterious words in the margin. ... ciency which comes of the foregoing values; the course of an evening he makes 30 or 40 such en- widening of his range of thinking and acting which He tosses the journals he has reviewed into a tries. ... comes, to the reviewer as well as to the student, basket marked "library", and forgets them. After a through familiarity with and use of the service of- day or two the journals appear back on his desk fered by the device. If he is a teacher, he will be able stamped "entered". to transmit to students his thoughts in specific, not general terms. If he is a researcher, he will be able to ;Six months later he meets a student named communicate to his colleagues his judgment by di- Smith in the corridor. Smith has got to the point in rect, not slow and unwieldy means. The machine will his research where he wishes to examine the spec- thus, whatever his main activity, implement him to trum of doubly ionized lithium; so he asks the pro- perform his work more readily and more fully, and fessor what is the best method of obtaining it. "Read so will help him in transcending the limits which his the literature on the subject for the last year, and we physical self places upon his intellectual effective- will then discuss it," says Jones and goes his way. ness. A Reference Selector Smith, in the library, consults a code book and Vannevar Bush, 1937 writes his initial on a slip, together with the ['code word' for the topic] and "recents," and passes it in at http://www.cloud9.netrfuturist/continuity/ (914) 941.5705 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562.2916 mailto: Peter J. Wasilko <[email protected]> 5 4 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111991 Report It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be I am in cyberspace. I once again resort to a freer writ- operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture ing, a writing more fluid and random.... at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient Every paragraph an idea, every idea an image, every im- reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. age an index, indices strung together along dimensions of Othenvise it looks like an ordinary desk. my choosing, and I travel through them, sometimes with them, sometimes across them.... ...Thus he goes building a trail of many items. Occa- sionally he inserts a comment of his own... ...Like a bird of prey my acuity allows me to glide high above the plains of information, seeking jewels among the And his trails do not fade. grains, seeking knowledge. As We May Think I sense the presence of others. I see the traces of pas- sage, the flares of trajectories of other searches. Those who share my interests visit the spaces around me often... I open Question: Has any digital-computer system responded to channels and request communication. They blossom into questions phrased in ordinary English, or other natural lan- identities that flow in liquid metamorphosis. guage, by giving correct answers in natural language? Cyberspace: First Steps Requested bibliographies will be available at about 18:00. Do you want them delivered, or will you call, or will you request typeout? ...when we design computer media we are hardwiring a Unfortunately, my office is not located near a pneumatic mechanism for the social construction of knowledge. tube station. ...Ten years from now our old card catalog may well Refer to bibliographies I requested last Friday. have metamorphosed into a "virtual library" of its own. It should be possible to "browse" the stacks without leaving Do cited or related references contain explicit definitions the terminal; to "open" a book and view its table of con- of "syntax", "syntactics", or "semantic"? tents; perhaps even, to flip through the pages of two books, Libraries of the Future physically located on different levels of the stacks and com- pare them. Sociomedla In essence, this new model is based on the social con- struction of knowledge... support for the conver- ... focus is now upon computer The computer textualizes everything: it is our writing sation of knowledgeable peersthe social content of the of the world as we know it, a map of illiteracy. It must al- interface is predominant; ways contain a black space, a margin in which to write... The Society of Text be just as important a goal as ... empowerment may simplicity for many users. Contextual Media http://www.cloud9.netrfuturist/continuity/ (914) 941-5705 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 mailto: Peter J. Wasilko <futurishgcloud9.net> 5 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa11199/Report the continuity of the larger academic community; The Philosophy Behind the for to them, the Invisible College remains, for the most part, invisible! Project Yet, historically our greatest strides have been made by those individuals who freely slipped the of bounds of disciple avoiding the calcification thought that comes with too narrow a focus. The Continuity Project is a Manifestation of the In- visible College The Continuity Project is a manifestation of this long tradition that strives to extend it to embrace these unmet needs, to model and cast light on the Centered on and named by the philosopher, discourse communities that dedicate themselves to physicist, and chemist Robert Boyle (famous for the pursuit and transmission of knowledge. It is this Boyle's Law), The Invisible College was an informal educators, the of amateurs, mentors, tradition learned society in seventeenth century England. It boundary spanners, and life-long multi-disciplinary began meeting circa 1645 at about the same time and inter-disciplinary contributors that the Invisible that the mathematician John Wallis organized a College represents and which this project hopes to similar group to meet at Gresham College Even . empower! after these groups went on to change history by formalizing their efforts in the founding of Eng- As we set forth to develop the Continuity soft- land's legendary Royal Society on November 28, principles of ware, we embrace the pedagogical 1660, the concept of an informal invisible college Seymour Papert's Constructionist model which holds held a powerful allure. It was again manifest in the that people learn best while creating personally eighteenth century when the Lunar Society of Bir- meaningful artifacts! mingham was constituted to promote the study of Dissenting the pioneered by practical arts the It is our hope that the various facilities devel- Academies among the middle classes. The modern will possess this quality and oped for Continuity conception of the Invisible College as something of that, in working on a large scale real world project a collective conscious embodied in interpersonal that must of its very nature knit together many correspondence of the academic community origi- strands of research, our students may escape the nated quite recently when science historian Derek J. Catch-22 that recent plagues de So lla Price (1922-1983) published his magna lack-of-experience graduates. opus Little Science, Big Science in 1963, in which he argued that distributed groups of scientists working We are confident that the undergraduates and on common problems constitute invisible colleges to offer encouragement, confer status, and "solve the graduates working on the project will come to inter- communication crisis by reducing a large group to a nalize a holistic view of the academic enterprise and build a rich set of shared skills and individual core small select one". competencies that will enable them to make signifi- cant high-impact contributions over the full course The idea of an invisible college has taken on of their lifetimes.9 new currency with the explosive growth of the In- ternet, which, with its dedicated mailing lists and e- journals, is literally saving the art of scholarly com- munication from extinction as skyrocketing sub- scription costs consume ever greater percentages of 9 The reader concerned with such pedagogical issues in the context of our libraries budgets crippling their ability to keep science and innovation is commended to see Discovering : Inventing pace with the expansion of the record. and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge by Robert Scott Root-Bernstein. Harvard, 1989. If your interest goes In a sense Price's focus was too narrow, for it is more to the use of technology to facilitate education, see Engines for not enough to think in terms of supporting individ- Education at <http://vAvw.ils.nwu.eduie_for_ei> by Roger C ual discourse communities which are arguably well Schank and Chip Cleary. The Institute for the Learning Sciences, served by our current generation of Internet tech- 1994. The former work is also a rich source of insight in the de- nologies and the marked increase in specialization velopment of a general research ontology. The later, while ostensibly that characterizes on-line scholarship. Unfortunately, focused at the K-12 level, serves as a functioning example of an this environment is not particularly friendly to the ASK system that also touches on the problem of "Inert" knowledge lay researcher, the undergraduate students, the un- at <http://www.lis.nwu.eduie_for e/nodes/NODE-19-pg.html>. initiated, and the boundary spanners struggling to The ILS Technical Report series at <http: / /techreport.ils.nwu.edu /> is a bridge the gaps between the disciplines and maintain veritable gold mine of ideas for case-based reasoning and computer aided instruction. Reports #2 and #25 bear particular attention. http://www.cloud9.netrfuturist/continuity/ (914) 941-5705 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 mailto: Peter i. Wasilko <[email protected]> 7 6 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111991 Report of this from the raw text of encoded documents. However, as a discipline matures it evolves a con- The Need and Prospects ceptual schema and historical gloss that writers as- sume they share with their audience, thus in many for the Project cases the most critical meta-content simply cannot be found in or inferred from the text itself! Current library catalogs don't reflect how people really work with information, making them very in- Lessons from Law efficient tools, particularly for users new to a disci- pline. They represent monolithic centralized efforts to structure access to the written record that are fail- It is to the world of law that one must turn for a ing to adequately address the growth of that record glimpse at what should be common place. For in or to tightly integrate newer forms of scholarly law, effective information retrieval is the cornerstone communication (e.g. the web). Attempts to address of juris prudence, the doctrine of stare decisis de- the later of these concerns tend to focus on indexing mands that we reconcile our decisions with similar print classification newer media under traditional past cases leading to much more explicit attribution systems (e.g. the Cyberstacks(sm)'° project at Iowa of ideas within our literature. Opinions are scrupu- State University) or on converting traditional print lously indexed by proprietary topical "key numbers" sources into a digital form (e.g. the Cornell Digital and the intent of bibliographic references is loosely Several projects have developed Library project). captured by Shepard's Citations such that one can testbed platforms succeeding to varying degrees in readily find cases that explain, distinguish, or follow integrating sundry commercial and public domain a given one. tools to achieve these goals." With this bounty of raw data, it is little wonder that law has been such a rich source for bibliometric Universal scanning and indexing is not enough. research. More generalized citation databases were introduced in the 1970's to cover broader areas of But even if every book were digitized, if every periodicals, but as Professor Geraldene scholarly web page were assigned an LC call number, and if Walker has observed they lack authority control and every catalog record in the world were available on errors propagating inconsistencies, often contain the desktop, this approach would still have failed to from the original journal's copy. address the more pressing issues of providing a fine enough granularity to the indices, protecting the user from information overload, and supporting the Keeping Pace with the Growth of the Record naive user's efforts to embrace a new field of knowl- edge. Indeed such a system would prove even less This leads us back to the dilemma facing any useful than current ones (even if we assume the centralized indexing or authority control enterprise. presence of full text searching and some heuristics While it may be convenient for libraries to subscribe to reduce the number of records presented to a more to the services of such bibliographic utilities they manageable number than the millions that could can't hope to keep up with the explosion of self- well be returned in response to any query) because published scholarship on the web, offer variable our underlying approach to cataloging doesn't cap- grained indices to meet the needs of experts as well ture the often subjective and uncertain domain spe- as novices, and perform the back work to eradicate cific directory knowledge that guides real research- all vestiges of uncertainty. ers. While their are many domain specific controlled Granted that any future catalog ought to employ vocabularies and thesauri that can do much to ame- Natural Language Processing techniques and Info- liorate the granularity problem within a discipline, metric Analysis which could probably extract some they have traditionally been prepared for the library professional and are seldom integrated into the end- user experience; moreover, they tend to be highly <http://www.public.lastate.edu/CYBERSTACKS/> context sensitive making any effort to serve a broad We must note however that current initiatives have been subject to constituency of discourse communities quite daunt- criticism for too great an emphasis on building technology testbeds ing. Only a large scale distributed solution will do at the expense of content /collection development and user/usage and only through such a means can we reasonably in short a software studies. By providing an extensible architecture intentional relation- hope to capture the "modals" framework for dynamically adding and evaluating new search and ships akin to the distinctions reflecting the purpose retrieval strategies, Continuity will allow multiple experiments to lev- of citations that make legal information retrieval ef- erage off a common knowledge base making it possible to compare fective. and contrast approaches while providing an unprecedented level of user feedback. http://www.cloud9.net/futurist/continuity/ (914) 941.5705 mailto: Peter J. Wasilko <[email protected]> 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 7 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111997Report dence to form an accurate opinion. I can't consult The Invisible Web the catalog and determine which sources are most popular. I can't find out at a glance which works Law has long strived to capture the gestalt rec- have been discredited or which contribute to the ognizing that individual works do not stand alone most lively debate. I can't directly learn anything of and since legal outcomes effect powerful interests substance about the authors in a field or the issues there has been no shortage of funds to maintain the I can't even find any guidance in that concern it. intensive centralized efforts needed to maintain the deciding whom I might want to talk to in person to meta-record. Once we move outside of this unique seek guidance. context the economics change and one cannot hope to significantly expand the role of the bibliographic In short, I can't work efficiently since little of the utilities which already strain the budgets of their information I would seek from an expert is captured subscribers. in the traditional catalog which is organized around physical sources instead of the people, places, ob- jects, issues, ideas, and dialogues they concern. Eve- Fadlitating the Research Process rything is reduced to a handful of subjects and de- scriptors that capture none of the nuance and texture Let us now pause to consider how real research- behind them. ers work. Over the years I have spent much of my research, entering new time on interdisciplinary fields of knowledge and new bodies of literature Implications for the University with considerable regularity. The library catalog is of limited utility at these times. I may turn to an en- The University has institutionalized amnesia as cyclopedia for some background and to identify semester after semester students repeat the same potential subject terms, but unlike legal encyclope- background research forming opinions and making dias, general reference works make no serious effort observations that are lost to the world unless their Still, they give you to key one into the literature. work is deemed specialized and advanced enough to enough to plug in some search terms and find the warrant formal publication. This is not to say that area of the stacks in which that subject is housed. they ought not master such research skills, merely that their efforts ought to contribute something of Unfortunately the linear arrangement of shelf lasting value on which the next scholar who passes spaces will frequently put relevant material out of their way might build. reach displacing material on a topic like Schank's will not be conceptual dependency theory so it Clearly there is need for a shared core of read- found with general artificial intelligence work where ings, but some significant measure of effort should one might expect it. Thus if one didn't know about it be channeled where it is not reduplicative of earlier in advance it might never be found. Short of stuff- work. One ought not have to await a Ph.D. to take ing index cards into books or publishing a survey an issue must be addressed in part in the dialog article, there is no mechanism by which I might alert any solution to our dissatisfaction with the conven- other scholars to this peculiarity of organization. tional catalog. Augmenting the Record Condusions Suppose now that a naive user arrives at my Throwing hoards of professional indexers at the public library and randomly picks up a gardening information explosion may not prove to be eco- or cookbook. He or she might find an old recipe nomically tenable or generate qualitatively accept- calling for the use of an herb, such as Comfrey able results in the long run, nor will imaging and (Symphytum officinale Boraginaceae), which some OCR'ing the entire corpus of print resources for authorities no longer deem safe for internal con- centralized storage, nor will any other technique ap- sumption. Again, short of defacing the book or plied in isolation. By creating an extensible inte- having it removed from the shelves depriving every- grated framework that puts end users at the core of one of access to the rest of its content, there is no its strategy, we can shift paradigms and make the way to address this issue dynamics of change work for us! There is no way for me to find out what books But if we close our eyes and carry on along our are valued in the new discipline short of asking a present course, the Library and to a lesser degree human or falling back to the old grad student strat- much of Academia itself, will come to be seen as egy of "reading around" at random for some weeks increasingly irrelevant in the face of a web-based on the assumption that I will chance on enough evi- http://www.cloud9.netifuturist/continuity/ (914) 941-5705 mailto: Peter J. Wasilko <[email protected]> 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 9 8 of 23 The Continuity Project Fa111991Report domain applications, broad, multidimensional con- free for all as the window of potential funding for texts of evaluation, and user/usage-oriented focus. new information infrastructures closes and purely Some participants further stressed the need for more commercial considerations come to dictate the shape emphasis on the applications of digital libraries. This of future information access. How ironic it would be was proposed in order to build user support for if we failed to fully unlock the benefits of technolo- digital libraries, to deliver value to teachers and gies we have so long nurtured with public support at scholars in different contexts, to link up with the the very point when their potential to transform our commercial publishing world, and to focus research libraries, universities, governments, and corporations in the most valuable directions. for the benefit of all was at its greatest! There was general agreement over the days of Across the nation a whole generation of scholars should be the workshop that any new initiative is being lost to underemployment, downsizing, and a structured to encompass a "diversified portfolio" of pervasive lack of opportunity that stems from the research, embracing small and large, highly specific loss of self-confidence throughout our great institu- and highly These research general trajectories. tions. This new lost generation has great potential would call for strategically structured funding initia- and much to offer. Given the opportunity and mod- tives involving cooperative contracts and grants with est support, it stands ready to take up the challenge the various partners suggested in the previous sec- and join with government and industry to create a tion. truly innovative information infrastructure for the future that will finally unleash the missing produc- it should be In light of these considerations, tivity gains which we have so long sought from our clear that The Continuity Project would be an ideal information technology investments. candidate for funding in the second round of the NSF / DARPA / NASA Digital Library Initiative. Our unique mix of user-centric design and our planned Future Directions end-user programming capabilities would make our proposal particularly intriguing to these agencies. The time is ripe to move forward. In March of this year Daniel E. Atknis of The University of By making it easy to incrementally adapt Conti- Michigan's School of Information & the Depart- nuity to changing conditions we will move away ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci- from the current monolithic model in which institu- a National Science Foundation ence organized tions completely replace their OPAC roughly once Planning Workshop on Distributed Knowledge Work every five years, with a model based on continual Environments : Digital Libraries in Santa Fe, New evolutionary improvements and extensive customi- Mexico. The purpose of the workshop was to evalu- zation at the departments, work group, and individ- ate the results to date as the initial period of funding ual levels. for digital library research under the NSF / DARPA / NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI) draws to a Our plans for the Epoch extension language and close.'2 framework will allow our proposal to offer an alter- native to the troubling trend of pressuring pro- Those initial projects took, for the most part, a grammers to standardize on a common program- high budget narrow domain imaging intensive tack ming language.'- In essence, the purpose of Epoch is and lead the workshop to these conclusions ex- to compliment Java by providing a range of server- pressed in the Abstract of its final report: side programming options and CASE tools making it feasible for different research groups to integrate Some desirable distinctions between the current their results. DLI and future programs include the following: Current DLI, involves broad technical agendas, ex- Therefore we are confident that, The Continuity perimental, technology testbeds, modest support for Project will be able to attract strong corporate, gov- content & collections, narrowly circumscribed con- ernment, and institutional support! text of evaluation, and few user/usage studies. Sug- gestions for future initiatives should, by contrast, have refined technical agendas, real-world testbeds u This move, primarily towards Java, Is driven by the desire for "write interoperability and integration, in- emphasizing byte-code interpreters once, run anywhere" code based on which creased support for content and collections, opera- emulate the effect of running the code on a common architecture tional systems containing collections of value to This introduces a significant performance virtual machine. neutral is complied down to native virtual machine code penalty unless the Michael Franz and Thomas Kistler of the University of Califor- code. 12 While we still await receipt of the full hard copy report, the Work- nia at Irvine offer a more elegant tree-based approach to portability site web found at shop's can be Juice Slim Binaries browser plug-in. which is used by the <http://www.slumkh.edu/SantaFe/>. called http://www.cloud9.netrfuturist/continuity/ (914) 941-5705 mailto: Peter J. Wasilko <[email protected]> 3 Meadowbrook Drive; Ossining, NY 10562-2916 ©

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