The authors are conducting a three-part study to evaluate current trends in the preservation of digital content, with an emphasis on electronic records. The study emanated from the authorsâ work on the Preservation Task Force of the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) project. This article incorporates the findings of both the survey and individual key-informant interviews that we conducted from August 2001 through February 2003, as round 2 of the study. Round 2 builds on the 2000â 2001 round 1 survey that sought to identify and describe strategies for preserving electronic records. In this second round the authors found that progress has been made in some areas while it is still lags in others.1 The full study consists of three phases: round 1 identified and surveyed 13 institutions, projects, and programs in North America, Australia, and Europe. Round 2 surveyed eight of the 13 institutions again to follow up on their progress. Additionally, we interviewed 18 key informants, including archivists and librarians. In round 3 the authors will each conduct one case study drawn from the survey participants in rounds 1 and 2. By the end of the three rounds, the authors will have studied a continuum of activities (over a six-year period) that constitutes a range of digital preservation strategies. The study will have charted the change in technological developments over this periodâ developments that have occurred in our survey institutions to meet the requirements of their mandates to preserve digital content for as long as needed.

As the Recombinant DNA, Gene Cloning and DNA sequencing technologies improved in 1970s the scientists began to think about the possibilities of sequencing the 3x109 nucleotide pairs in human genome. This led to the launch of the Human Genome Project (1990), and the greatest discovery in the field of life sciences, is near to completion. Vast and ever expanding diverse information on bioinformatics resources are being developed. These include databases of biological information, software tools etc. Advances in Internet Technology have largely affected to the bioinformatics resources as heterogeneous sources of information. It facilitates the uniform access to the educational, academic and research information sources to the bioinformaticians for their research and developmental activities. This paper describes awareness about the bioinformatics information resources and digital library needs of students at Jaypee University of Information Technology, Solan (HP) and how it can be helpful to access the information resources on bioinformatics through digital library techniques.

There is a strong history of social science research within Latin America, but its visibility (both within and outside the region) has been low for reasons of language and print distribution. The introduction of the Internet and online publication makes this information potentially more visible to the global research community, and within Latin America several organizations have undertaken to exploit this opportunity. The approaches taken show how collaboration between countries, and particularly between librarians and publishers, can provide innovative solutions. The CLACSO project uses a digital library model as a publishing platform for its member journals and this has provided a successful - and hopefully sustainable - model.

This is a presentation at the 4th State GILS (Government Information Locator) Conference, Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records, Scottsdale, AZ, April 24-27, 2002. It discusses how metadata is akin to traditional library cataloging and classification practices by providing the context of users and intellectual access. Definitions, objectives, history, and types of metadata, a list of metadata standards are listed. Finally, it is all put together as theory that drives metadata in the form principles. Contains a list of resources and references.

Purpose: This paper is a high-level investigation of the physical-conceptual continuum occupied by both digital and physical libraries. Methodology/Approach: A framework is provided for thinking about the notions of place and library. The issue of materials and the ideas they represent is considered. Places for people are considered, including issues of people’s sense of place in physical and digital spaces. The issue of physical and digital spaces as places for work, collaboration, and community-building is considered. Findings: As more digital libraries are built, and as more physical libraries offer electronic access to parts of their collection, two trends are likely to result: (1) The role of the library as a storage space for materials will become decreasingly important, and (2) The role of the library as a space for users, for individual and collaborative work, and as a space for social activity, will become increasingly important. Research limitations/implications: Digital libraries are unable to fulfill some of the functions of the physical library as physical spaces, but are able to offer functions beyond what the physical library can offer as cognitive spaces. Practical implications: Areas of likely future development for digital libraries are suggested, as vehicles for enhancing cognitive space by augmenting representations of ideas in materials. Originality/value of paper: This paper argues that in many ways digital libraries really are places in the conceptual sense, and will continue to broaden and enrich the roles that libraries play in people’s lives and in the larger social milieu.

This is presentation slides entitled Metadata Architecture for Digital Libraries: Conceptual framework for Indian Digital Libraries. The original paper describes approach of development of Metadata solution for digital library architecture for resource description and retrieval. This deals with the concept of Metadata[2], the different Metadata standards (Dublin core in particular[3]), Digital library Environment, Computer Network capabilities etc. This paper also discusses two of the Digital Library architecture protocols, for resource description and retrieval: they are STARTS (Stanford Protocol Proposal for Internet Retrieval and Search)[4.2] and SODA (Smart Objects and Dump Archives)[4.1] architecture to arrive at a possible protocol which would help to build Indian Digital Libraries [5]. While proposing the new architecture the existing Indian Environment with respect to Information Sources and User's query of the Information Sources[5.1], which are feasible for launch of this protocol for information processing and retrieval has been taken care. This is a pilot study which the author has done while doing his Fulbright fellowship in the College of Library Information Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD during 1999-2000.

This Guide was shared at the NSF NSDL Educational Impact and Evaluation Workshop, October 2003. URL: http://eduimpact.comm.nsdl.org/evalworkshop/

The findings of technical report has been presented at ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) 2004 annual meeting in Providence, R.I., November 13-18, 2004. Abstract published in conference proceedings (pp. 564-566); panel abstract on conference website: http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM04/abstracts/59.html. / The study surveys two large sets of activities concentrating on digital libraries to examine the following questions: Does digital library research inform digital library practice? And vice versa? To what extent are they connected, now that nearly a decade has passed since they began? Examined were research projects supported by the first and second Digital Library Initiative (DLI), digital library projects listed by the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) and Digital Library Federation (DFL), and selected literature, focusing on the last five years. Methods concentrate only on examination of visible or â surfaceâ sources or records, i.e. information that can be gathered from web sites, open literature, and published data. Limitations of the method are acknowledged; accordingly, caveats are made about conclusions. From this data we conclude that the two activities are not as yet demonstratively connected. A set of differing interpretations and conclusions are included.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / Digital libraries of geo-spatial multimedia content are currently deficient in providing fuzzy, concept-based retrieval mechanisms to users. The main challenge is that indexing and thesaurus creation are extremely laborintensive processes for text documents and especially for images. Recently, 800,000 declassified satellite photographs were made available by the United States Geological Survey. Additionally, millions of satellite and aerial photographs are archived in national and local map libraries. Such enormous collections make human indexing and thesaurus generation methods impossible to utilize. In this article we propose a scalable method to automatically generate visual thesauri of large collections of geo-spatial media using fuzzy, unsupervised machine-learning techniques.

Preserving long-term access to digital information resources is one of the key challenges facing libraries and information centers today. The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries has entered into partnership agreements with federal and state agencies to ensure permanent storage and public access to a variety of government information sources. As digital resource preservation encompasses a wide variety of interrelated activities, the UNT Libraries are taking a phased approach to ensure the long-term access to its digital resources. Formulation of preservation policy and creation of preservation metadata for electronic files and digital collections are among the most important steps. This paper discusses the issues related to digital resources preservation and demonstrates the role of preservation metadata in facilitating the preservation activities in general. In particular, it describes the efforts being made by the UNT libraries to ensure the long-term access and preservation of various digital information resources.