NSF ANNOUNCES AWARDS FOR DIGITAL LIBRARIES RESEARCH

$24.4 Million to Fund Advanced Research and Technology Development by Teams
from Universities, Industries and Other Organizations

Six research projects developing new technologies for digital
libraries--storehouses of information available through the Internet--have
been funded through a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA),
and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The projects' focus is to dramatically advance the means to collect, store,
and organize information in digital forms, and make it available for
searching, retrieval and processing via communication networks--all in
user-friendly ways.

The four-year projects are centered at Carnegie Mellon University, the
University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the
University of Illinois, the University of California, Santa Barbara and
Stanford University.  Each effort brings together researchers and users
from the local university with those from other organizations including
other academic institutions, libraries, museums, publishers, government
laboratories, state agencies, secondary schools, and computer and
communications companies.

"We see these projects as taking the next step - and a very large one - in
our ability to make available vast stores of knowledge and innovative
information services based on High Performance Computing and
Communications technologies to researchers, students, educators and the
general public," said Paul Young, Assistant Director, of the Directorate
for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

Digital Libraries have been identified as a "National Challenge" in the
Information Infrastructure Technology Applications component of the U.S.
High Performance Computing and Communications Program (HPCC).   National
Challenges are fundamental applications that have broad and direct impact
on the Nation's competitiveness and the well-being of its citizens, and
that can benefit from the application of HPCC technology and resources.

"One goal of this initiative is to establish better linkages between
fundamental science and technology development upon which key aspects of
the National Information Infrastructure depends," Young said.

Within the past decade the number and kinds of digital information sources
have proliferated.  Computing system advances and the continuing
networking and communications revolution have resulted in a remarkable
expansion in the ability to generate, process and disseminate digital
information.  Together, these developments have made new forms of
knowledge repositories and information delivery mechanisms feasible and
economical.

Source information targeted by the joint initiative takes many forms ---
text, numerical data, visual images and symbols, sounds and spoken words
and video clips.  It is stored and recorded on numerous types of media --
paper, film, and high capacity magnetic and optical storage.  The content
may include reference materials, scholarly journals, satellite mapping
images, video archives, environmental data and instructional materials of
all types.  The information sources may reside physically at hundreds of
thousands of geographically remote locations.   When stored in digital
form, organized and connected through an electronic network, the
information resources become the ingredients of a digital library,
available to users from around the country and the world.

Guided by ongoing work and new research, each project will develop a
testbed for research and prototyping purposes.  The testbeds will then be
scaled to accommodate more information, more advanced information handling
tools, and a greater number of users.

The six projects are:

* Carnegie Mellon University, $4.8 million: The Informedia interactive
on-line digital video library system to be created by Carnegie Mellon
University and WQED/Pittsburgh will enable users to access, explore and
retrieve science and mathematics materials from video archives.  The
Informedia system works by integrating speech, image and natural language
understanding technologies.  The library will initially contain 1,000
hours of video from the archives of public television station
WQED/Pittsburgh, Electronic Field Trips on video from the Fairfax Co.,
Va., public school system and video course material produced by the BBC
for the Open University, a British college without walls, with an
enrollment of more than 200,000.  Issues involving human-computer
interaction, pricing and charging for digital video use, and privacy and
security will be addressed as part of the research program.   Industrial
partners and collaborators include Microsoft Corporation, Digital
Equipment Corporation, Bell Atlantic Network Services, QED Communications,
Open University, Winchester Thurston School and Fairfax Va.  County Public
Schools.

* University of California, Berkeley, $4 million: This project will produce
a prototype digital library with a focus on environmental information. 
The library will collect diverse information about the environment to be
used for the preparation and evaluation of environmental data, impact
reports and related materials.  The research prototype is intended for
eventual full-scale deployment in the State of California's CERES
production systems.  To create the prototype, researchers will need to
produce technologies which allow untrained users to contribute to and find
relevant information in other world-wide digital library systems. Research
areas include automated indexing, intelligent retrieval and search
processes; data base technology to support digital library
applications;new approaches to document analysis; and, data compression
and communication tools for remote browsing.  Partners and collaborators
in the project include Xerox Corporation, Resources Agency of California,
California State Library, Sonoma County Library, San Diego Association of
Governments, The Plumas Corporation, Shasta County Office of Education,
Hewlett Packard.

* University of Michigan, $4 million:  This project will conduct
coordinated research and development to create, operate, use and evaluate
a testbed of a large-scale, continually evolving multimedia digital
library. The content focus of the library will be earth and space
sciences. Potentially connecting thousands of users and information
repositories, the library system will be designed to meet the needs for
systemizing the vast amount of information on an array of topics available
on the Internet.  A critical component of the project is the testing and
evaluation of the prototype system by a wide variety of users, including
those from on-campus, local high schools and public libraries.  Commercial
sponsors including IBM, Elsevier Science, Apple Computer, Bellcore, UMI
International, McGraw-Hill, Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational
Corporation, and Kodak.

* University of California, Santa Barbara, $4 million: Project Alexandria
will develop a digital library providing easy access to large and diverse
collections of maps, images and pictorial materials as well as a full
range of new electronic library services.  The project is centered at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, with its major collections of
maps and images and its strong research focus in the area of
spatially-indexed information.  It also involves the State University of
New York at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo), the University of Maine and several
industrial partners.  The project will begin with collections of digitized
maps, images and airphotos relating to Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los
Angeles counties using software developed for geographical information
systems.  Over four years, the project will grow to include other
components at UCSB, SUNY-Buffalo, Library of Congress, the United States
Geological Survey and the St.  Louis Public Library, as well as other
interested libraries.  Each site will include, as necessary, facilities
for geographical information interfaces, electronic catalogues, and
information storage and acquisition.

* Stanford University, $3.6 million: The Stanford Integrated Digital
Library Project will develop the enabling technologies for a single,
integrated "virtual" library that will provide uniform access to the large
number of emerging networked information sources and collections--both
on-line versions of pre-existing works and new works that will become
available in the future.  The Integrated Digital Library will create a
shared environment that links everything from personal information
collections, to collections found today in conventional libraries, to
large data collections shared by scientists.  The research thrusts of the
project - - include: information sharing and communication models; client
information interfaces; and information finding services.  Participating
organizations - - include: Dialog Information Services (DIS), HP Labs
(HP), NASA/Ames Research Center (NASA/ARC), Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), Interconnect Technologies Corp (ITC), Enterprise
Integration Technologies (EIT), Bellcore, Interval, O'Reilly, WAIS Inc. 
and Xerox Corporation.

* University of Illinois, $4 million: This project is based on the new
Grainger Engineering Library Information Center at the University of
Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and will be centered around journals and
magazines in the engineering and science literature.  The testbed will
include a customized version of NCSA Mosaic (TM), software developed at
the National Center for Supercomputing Applications under NSF and ARPA
sponsorship to help users navigate the World Wide Web.  This testbed will
become a production facility of the University Library with thousands of
documents and tens of thousands of users across the University of Illinois
and other Big Ten universities.  Research will encompass sociological
evaluation of the testbed, technological development of semantic
retrieval, and prototype design of future scalable information systems
(the Interspace).  Partners in the project include the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Arizona, Corporation for
National Research Initiatives (CNRI), Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE), American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (AIAA), American Physical Society, Institute of Physics, John
Wiley & Sons, and U.S.  News and World Report.  Industrial partners - -
include: United Technologies, Softquad, BRS/Dataware and Spyglass .

"A common strategy in all of these projects will be to emphasize research
partnerships.  We view building partnerships between researchers,
applications developers and users as essential to achieving success in
generating new knowledge, promoting innovative thinking, and accelerating
the technology transfer process," said Y. T. Chien, Director of NSF's
Division of Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems.  "The
initiative will both capitalize on advancements made to date as well as
promote research to further develop the tools and technologies needed to
make vast amounts of useful information available to large numbers of
people with diverse information needs."

For more information on the initiative contact:

The Division of Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems

        (703) 306-1930
        email: dl-info@nsf.gov

For more information on any of the projects contact:

* University of California, Berkeley
  Jesus Mena (510) 642-3734
* University of California, Santa Barbara
  Fred Golden (805) 893-7220
* Carnegie Mellon
  Anne Watzman (412) 268-3830
* University of Illinois
  Neal Singer: (217) 244-0469
* University of Michigan
  Laurie Crum (313) 763-6035
* Stanford
  Terry Shepard (415) 723-2558

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