Boston, Massachusetts
May 17-19, 1995
Three core challenges face the research library community as it moves toward an increasingly electronic future: how to portray “digital libraries” in terms that resonate for and are meaningful to our constituents, funders, and ourselves; how to balance and influence expectations of potential and actual performance during this period of transition; and how to manage an ambitious transformation of research libraries within the context of these diverse expectations. The 126th Meeting of the Association of Research Libraries offered a special opportunity to engage these topics as a community and to seek opportunities for cooperative initiatives that will speed the realization of digital libraries.
The keynote program set the context for the issues and concerns addressed by this meeting. John Gage (Sun Microsystems) offered insights into developments that will shape the environment in which academic and research libraries must operate. Bruce Seely (Society for the History of Technology) addressed the evolution and impact of technology on scholarship.
A framework for coordinating and advancing digital library projects is needed to help avoid redundancy of effort and to secure support for those projects that make a special contribution to the collective core of experience and knowledge. In Program Session I, Paul Peters (Coalition for Networked Information) explored with attendees some of the possible futures inherent in the movement toward the realization of digital libraries. The goal of the discussion was to suggest ways members of the Association can operate collectively both to influence and to respond aggressively to a range of events and outcomes latent in today’s complex world of distributed, electronic information resources.
Program Session II presented a showcase of currently available, large-scale electronic initiatives that presage the kinds of products and services academic and research libraries can expect to leverage into new capabilities for their users. Examples from higher education, the for-profit arena, and government highlighted the diversity of sources and approaches that will continue to expand in the decade to come.
Changes in philosophy both within the Clinton Administration and the new Congress are driving a reexamination of the current approach to disseminating government information. Members of the ARL Information Policies Committee, Nancy Cline (Pennsylvania State University), Ernie Ingles (University of Alberta), and James F. Williams II (University of Colorado), used Program Session III to brief their colleagues on the issues and the questions that require members’ attention. Plans for addressing this critical set of concerns were the focus of their report and discussion.
Copyright and fair use of copyrighted material are defining issues for the successful transition to an electronic environment. Kenneth Crews (Indiana University), Catherine Rudder (American Political Science Association), Karen Hersey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Jerry Campbell (Duke University) offered their perspectives in Program Session IV on the public policy choices that must be made to define the rights and responsibilities of copyright owners, users, and libraries in the framework of digital libraries.
On Friday morning, an early bird session was led by the ARL Research Collections Committee on the AAU/ARL Demonstration Projects. This session was an opportunity for directors to grapple with some of the important organizational issues that have emerged from the projects to date.