A future in which vast amounts of digital information will be easily accessible to large segments of the world's population is seemingly within reach. The pace of technological innovation and the rapid emergence of powerful, new information infrastructure components has altered the way individuals, communities of all sizes, and institution's perceive and conduct their day-to-day affairs. We are experiencing a time of dramatic and far-reaching change, with implications that we are unable to predict, or even imagine. Past experience offers little to assist us n anticipating the future.
While we do not yet have a full understanding of the causes of the rapid transition toward a global information environment, certain factors can be credited with great certainty. Among them are:
Although the results of our current efforts may not be fully known or appreciated for decades, we will be judged by those who use the things we build now, on how quickly we perceived and took advantage of opportunities presented, how wisely we selected between alternative paths, and most of all, whether we allowed local and parochial interests to interfere with creation of resources for the common, global, social good.
Digital libraries are meant to provide intellectual access to large, geographically distributed stores of information of all types. This implies incorporating semantic capabilities into information environments which significantly advance access beyond electronic access to raw data - the bits. Digital libraries research is concerned with developing concepts, technologies and tools to gain access to the fuller knowledge and meaning contained in digital collections. As examples, for users this means intelligent search, retrieval and presentation tools and interfaces; for content and collections providers this means new information types, structures, document encoding and metadata for enhancing context; for system builders this means designing hardware and software systems capable of interpreting users' requests, federating collections and selecting from a vast multitude of possibilities to provide what is desired and needed - not merely what is requested as bounded by a particular users knowledge and imagination. A primary challenge for funding agencies is to discern a reasonable balance between resources directed to content structure and markup (metadata) at the early stages of creating digital libraries or basic research aimed at building more intelligent software to compensate for lack of this later on.
A major goal of DLI-Phase 2 is to foster advances with the potential of measurable impact on research, education and commerce in an increasingly complex global environment. The current state of the world's store of digital content is one of explosively increasing amounts of information created by many people or data gathering instruments, in many forms, stored in many formats on millions of systems located around the world, increasingly interconnected via electronic networks. Different pieces of this elaborate complex are managed by different individuals and organizations, embracing different values and principles, and speaking different languages.
Digital libraries are designed to enable more people to better create and use vast amounts of distributed information in relatively uncontrolled, dynamic, open environments. In such a rapidly evolving environment, traditional roles and distinctions between content creators, providers and consumers become blurred, breakdown and even reverse. Because digital libraries are dynamic and widespread, with content, content organization, content location, delivery systems and users changing frequently and instantaneously, they require new thinking and models for information management, access, use, and long-term archiving and preservation. Experience has shown that digital technologies are pushed by application to new domains - both scientific and non-scientific. Involvement in new subject areas informs technology research. Of particular note in the DLI - Phase 2 program are interdisciplinary efforts in the natural sciences, humanities and cultural heritage applications areas.
International cooperation and collaboration is key to attaining the goals outlined above. Global coordination in the way digital libraries are developed and used is essential to accessing globally distributed, multilingual information and enabling users to easily access digital collections, regardless of location, language or formats, for research, education and commerce and other purposes. Only through joint international research and application efforts can world-wide systems for accessing information sources on the internet be realized.
The development of a global information environment requires international cooperation and collaboration in many domains. At the lowest level, it requires joint work and agreement on interoperable technologies to enable creation and common use of many kinds of information. It requires joint work and collaboration on content development to help create and make available on the internet useful and usable information of cultural, social and scientific value. It requires joint work on the development of standards for ensuring consistency and long-term sustainabilty of resources which are geographically distributed and independently administered. It requires joint work and collaboration on protecting intellectual properties in an open, fluid, global marketplace.
The Digital Libraries Initiative - Phase 2 is committed to increasing international collaboration in these areas. The following WWW addresses point to the program announcements, sponsored projects, and activities which have been funded to date. We look forward to a continually expanding program of support for joint international activities.
http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/ http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/intl.html http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/projects.html http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/intl.html http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/workgroups.html