Shigeo Sugimoto
With the initiative to build National Information Infrastructure, it has become much more important to develop digital libraries. Research projects of digital libraries are being initiated at number of universities. The author attended "1994 Workshop on Digital Libraries: Current Issues" held at Rutgers University (Newark, NJ, May 1994), and "Digital Libraries'94: Conference on the Theories and Practice of Digital Libraries" held at Texas A&M University (College Station, TX, June 1994). This paper reports the workshop and the conference, and discusses the approaches to digital libraries in U.S.A. and other countries that were talked and discussed in these meetings.
Jun Adachi
NACSIS is planning to launch an electronic library service,
NACSIS-ELS, from the end of 1994. The overview of this new information
system is presented, which integrates conventional bibliographic
databases with direct display and printing capabilities of primary
information, i.e., pages of journal articles.
Based on this introduction, considerations on the functionality of
library on networks is discussed. Requirements for the convenience of
users are described in anticipation that aggregate of WWW and MOSAIC
does not necessarily constitute a future digital library.
Takeo Yamamoto
A technological and socioeconomic look into the future predicts that many libraries will effectively become multimedia digital(electronic)libraries. The work and tools for a librarians in such a digital library --- a digital librarian --- are discussed. A CSCW(Computer Assisted Cooperative Work) tool, which is proposed here and called "network reference service systems" will enable the digital librarian to serve users on the network in various modes, including network navigation piloting, cooperative search, cooperative translation and read-aloud on network. The importance of information creation and output in the digital library is pointed out. Ways of promoting privacy and security for the user as well as the librarian are also discussed.
Hiromichi Hashizume
Digiltal libraries, together with the enlarged network functions,can serve as future academic societies: in this sense they can be more than automated libraries. This paper proposes a model of total academic information circulation model, considering the digital library functions as academic societies.
There are various methods for providing information on the Internet. This paper describes WAIS, WWW, and such information providing systems which are currently used on the Internet.
Shigeo Takei*1, Kazuo Takai*2, Masayuki Arai*1 and Hiroyoshi Watanabe*1
Teikyo University plans the new type of the library system for School of Science and Engineering at Utsunomiya Campus. The first aim lies in ensuring accessibility from Internet and realizing the remote education between Cranfield University in UK and its graduate school newly settled in the Teikyo Utsunomiya Campus. The second aim lies in constructing the utilizable system for library services and providing services for not only the campus but also the outside. Therefore, we plan to construct a completely open and very slim system by using TCP/IP protocol and minimizing functions. This paper reports details of the plan and future works.
Koichi TABATA
In order to create an open forum for those who have interests in researches and activities on digital libraries,
the research organization "Digital Library Network: DLNET" is going to be established based on the following
policy. (1) DLNET participant canbuild his/her own digital library(DL) where publications written by
himself/herself are open to the public without charge. (2) DLNET participant can collect any copies of
publications from the network of DL's, and not only primary but secondary information of his/her collection,
in turn, is open to the public without charge.
Several research activities in DLNET are discussed in this paper.