Monterey Conference
by Joan Lippincott, Assistant Executive Director, CNI

Higher Education and the NII - From Vision to Reality was the topic of
a conference held in Monterey, California on September 26-29,
co-sponsored by ALA, ARL, CREN, Computing Research Association, CASC,
CAUSE, CNI, Educom, FARNET, and IEEE/USA.  Representatives of the
higher education community were invited to attend the conference and
assist with identifying and debating the networking and networked
information issues that will be of priority concern to higher
education institutions and their sponsoring agencies and partners over
the next several years.  Attendees joined one of three working groups
on scholarly communication and publishing, networked applications, and
broadband network technologies to agree upon benefits being sought
from networking and networked information, to identify obstacles to
and enablers of progress toward those benefits, and to formulate
strategies and recommendations.

Paul Evan Peters, Executive Director of CNI, was the leader for the
scholarly communication and publishing track.  Among the benefits of
networking and networked information the group identified were:

- Wider and more timely access to people and knowledge
- More productive communication and publication system
- New genres of communication and publication
- New, cross-disciplinary, global knowledge communities
- Coherent, responsive environment for life-long learning

They identified the following obstacles/enablers:

- Technological infrastructure
- Culture, and inertia of existing human systems
- Intellectual property, security, and privacy regimes
- Different, divergent, and poorly articulated expectations
- Early networked information environment

They identified the following strategies for realizing the potential
of networks and networked information:

- Harden and expand the technological infrastructure
- Harmonize and innovate the intellectual property system
- Address human, social, and economic factors
- Address long-term preservation and access challenges
- Link higher education vision to others, in a global context

The proceedings from this conference will be available early next year
and will be used for a variety of agenda setting and education
purposes in the months ahead.


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ARL 182
A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions
Association of Research Libraries
October 1995