Journal of Internet Cataloging
Volume 1, Number 2 1997

Allerton '96 provided an informal setting for over forty individuals to discuss a number of major issues that relate to the social, behavioral and political aspects on the use, creation, maintenance, and study of digital libraries (DLs). The program focused on understanding the contributions and implications of applying different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches from the social sciences to DL research. Noteworthy sessions included presentations by Andrew Dillon, Indiana University, on the use of digital documents, a presentation and group discussion by Edward A. Fox, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Gary Marchionini, University of Maryland at College Park, on issues relating to the evaluation of digital libraries, and presentations organized by David Levy, Xerox Corporation, and S. Leigh Starr, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on organizing information in digital libraries.

In a one-day conference co-sponsored by the Librarians Association of the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Friends of the University of California, Santa Barbara Library, librarians and other information specialists from Southern California and across the country offered more than two dozen presentations, demonstrations and poster sessions to attendees of  a comprehensive program devoted to individual and institutional efforts to facilitate access, management and use of Internet resources. Among the sessions that focused on resource selection and access were a presentation on the Yahoo! Web directory service (Anne Calley), a group presentation by members of several University of California campus libraries on Internet collection development tools and procedures, a review of the technological evolution and development of the CyberStacks(sm) model (Gerry McKiernan) and a poster session devoted to the application of Library of Congress subject headings in the INFOMINE virtual library of the University of California, Riverside (Steve Mitchell).

The World Wide Web (WWW) has rapidly become a powerful medium for human communication and dissemination of information. While most information on the WWW is expressed in natural language texts, most software tools built for accessing the WWW do not apply NLP techniques for searching, retrieving, presenting, or generating texts. The field of NLP has the potential of easing information overload through the use of tools that utilize the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural language texts found within Web documents.

The WWW itself is an excellent domain in which to further develop practical applications of NLP. Additionally, NLP and machine translation (MT) can ease language barriers on the WWW by providing multilingual solutions to both accessing information on the WWW and aiding the generation and translation of texts for the WWW. Some potential applications of NLP include automatic and interactive summarization and machine translation of WWW documents, natural language interfaces for assisting users in finding the right information on the WWW, document filtering and collecting and presenting current articles of personal interest to users, and automatic generation of WWW documents.

For additional information contact Kavi Mahesh ( mahesh@crl.nmsu.edu ), New Mexico State University, Computing Research Laboratory, Las Cruces, NM, USA.

The conference will continue the DL series: DL '94 and DL '95 in Texas and the expanded and very successful ACM DL '96 in Bethesda, MD. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), through SIGIR and SIGLINK. In 1997, the conference will be co-located with and immediately prior to SIGIR '97. ACM DL '97 will immediately precede ACM SIGIR '97 in Philadelphia. Organizations cooperating with ACM in the sponsorship of this second international conference include the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), D-Lib, the National Agricultural Library (NAL), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Special Libraries Association (SLA).

For additional information contact Edie Rasmussen (erasmus @sis.pitt.edu,) University of Pittsburgh, PA 152 13 USA.

As more libraries undertake the cataloging of electronic resources, the need to better understand the subject access requirements of these materials increases. To address this issue, the Subject Analysis Committee of the Cataloging and Classification Section of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) has organized a one-and-a-half-day preconference to be held prior to the annual meeting of the American Library Association in San Francisco, California.

The program's faculty are Allene Hayes, Senior Cataloger with the Computer Files Team at the Library of Congress, Lynn El Hoshy, Senior Subject Cataloging Policy Specialist in the Cataloging Policy and Support Office at the Library of Congress, and Arlene G. Taylor, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh.

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (21 [3/4] 1996) devoted an entire issue to the conceptual and pragmatic issues surrounding the selection and bibliographic control of electronic resources. Guest edited by Ling-yuh W. (Miko) Pattie and Bonnie Jean Cox, both of the University of Kentucky, the special issue contains a dozen contributions that examine the philosophical, professional and practical issues encountered by librarians in their effort to manage the wealth of information resources offered in a increasing variety of electronic forms. Among the seminal articles to be found is the lead article by Peggy Johnson, University of Minnesota, which presents a decision-making model for selecting and handling electronic resources, a report by Beth Davis-Brown and David Williamson, Library of Congress, on LC's digital cataloging efforts, and a review by Martin Dillon and Erik Jul, OCLC, on the OCLC Internet cataloging projects and the strengths and weaknesses of adopting a library catalog model to improve access to Internet resources. The effect of cataloging digital resources on the form and function of the traditional OPAC is explored by Eric Lease Morgan (North Carolina State University) in a profile article of his Alex catalog, by Dennis Nicolson (Strathclyde University Library) and Mary Steele in their review of the CATRIONA project, and by Diane I. Hillman (Cornell University) in her proposals for an integrated, enhanced public access systems.

The issue also contains reports of several panel discussions, including a review of non-traditional uses of classification, the use of classification in libraries and networks abroad, and the future of classification in information networks. An outstanding excerpt bibliography on the new role for classification in libraries and information networks prepared by Angela R.S. Thomas and a review of classification in the online catalog by Elaine Broadbent complete the issue.

Potential topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

For additional information, including author guidelines, visit the journal's Web site at URL: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pacsrev.html . Those interested in submitting to Public-Access Computer Systems Review should contact Pat Ensor ( PLEnsor@uh.edu ) or Tom Wilson ( Twilson@uh.edu ), the journal's new co-editors, and indicate the target date for a submission.

Through a simple interface, users are presented with the option of searching or browsing its growing collection of over 1,400 sources. Within the EEVL browse mode, users are presented with a structured alphabetical outline of selected major fields of engineering and their respective subfields, with the number of available resources accessible within the collection noted for each. In browsing any category, users are presented with the full set of resources for a category. For each selected resource, the category, resource name, URL, brief profile, and keyword subjects, where assigned, are provided. Users are also presented with the option to display a full record for an item, which includes the selected and alternative titles for the resource, the brief description, assigned keywords, a hotlinked URL, and assigned broad and specific subject classifications. The geographic location of the server (e.g., UK or non-UK) and the type of resource (e.g., Database/Databank, Commercial Server, Reference, etc) are indicated. Where assigned, subject keywords are also displayed. In the browse mode, users may perform limited EEVL searches to specific server locations or to specific resource types.

Funded through the Electronic Library Program (eLib), EEVL is overseen by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Councils of the United Kingdom. The EEVL Project lead sites are Heriot-Watt University Library and the Institute for Computer Based Learning. Partner sites include the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, Cambridge University, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, the University of Nottingham, Trent University, and the Institution of Electrical Engineers (lEE). The EEVL service is maintained by a team of engineering information specialists headquartered at Heriot-Watt University Library.

EEVL had its formal inauguration on Friday, December 13, 1996 at the Web 13 cybercafe in Edinburgh.