Eugene, Oregon
May 13-15, 1998

The Future Network: Transforming Learning and Scholarship

Program Session III

Research Development & Trends

Introduction

Convened by David Green, Executive Director
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)

Welcome to our third program session on this grand and timely topic of the future digital networks and how they will transform learning and scholarship. In Program I this morning, by seeing some of the strategy for developing the advanced infrastructure and the development of applications we glimpsed something of how the new networks may be employed in the future. We have seen that speed, flexibility, and--if you like--muscular ability to process vast amounts of information, often in new combinations and across many media, are the hallmarks of these new networks.

In Program II we heard about strategies for creating systems to take advantage of these new capacities in order to transform institutional learning across all domains.

Now, in Program III, we focus on how researchers will engage with new network capabilities. We are looking at research and researchers in very different domains. Perhaps there is a double strand here: How researchers can exploit and use these new capacities and capabilities, but also--and from my perspective certainly more interestingly--how these communities are preparing for these new opportunities. Are they ready? Do they know what they need? How are they positioned for shaping and helping to develop the new tools? Already some domains are dependent on these new capacities. Others are still learning to use them. Finally, what do researchers need from librarians in this environment?

So our speakers represent various areas: Teresa Sullivan, the social sciences; Sherrilynne Fuller, the medical sciences; David Schade, astronomy; and John D'Arms, the humanities.

First, let me introduce Teresa Sullivan, Vice-President and Graduate Dean at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Sullivan has held this post for two years, during which time, among many other achievements, she has developed guidelines for and accepted the first electronic dissertation. She has been at Austin for quite a while in other capacities, as Vice-Provost, Associate Dean of Graduate Students, and Chair at the Department of Sociology.

Among her many responsibilities are not only the Austin general libraries, but also Austin International Programs, the University of Texas Press, the Center for American History, the Texas Center for Writers, the Dobie-Paisano Ranch and Fellowship Program, the Sam Rayburn Library in Bonham, and the Winedale Historical District in Winedale. So we can expect from Teresa a broad and generous view of the network as an opportunity for the social sciences.

We then move to a field that has clearly been one of the leaders in developing advanced networking, the medical sciences. We are very fortunate to have as our presenter for this program Sherrilynne Fuller, Coordinator of the Health Sciences Information Systems Integration, Acting Director of Informatics in the School of Medicine, and Director of the Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center, all at the University of Washington. Dr. Fuller also serves as Director of the Pacific Northwest Region Network of the National Library of Medicine. She is also an Associate Professor in the UW Department of Medical Education, and leads the newly created division of Biomedical Informatics.

In addition, Dr. Fuller is a member of the White House Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and the Next Generation Internet. I'm sure she will say a few words about that, and I'm sure there will be some questions on that.

We then shift from focusing on the human body to focusing on the universe. Our next speaker, David Schade, is an astronomer with the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. In 1990, Dr. Schade received his doctorate from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and since then has studied the evolution of galaxies and quasars, focusing on high-resolution imaging and specifically working with data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1996, Dr. Schade joined the National Research Council of Canada as a scientist with the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, where he continues to work on the formation of structure in the universe. He is especially interested in the development of new tools to enable research scientists to explore the existing data archives as well as to design new archives and to develop the field of data mining.

We are very honored and privileged to be joined by John D'Arms, the President of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a position he has held since last September. The American Council of Learned Societies represents 300,000 scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It was also one of the three founding members of NINCH, and we are working together on a number of projects, including, perhaps most interestingly, projects between NINCH, ACLS, CNI, and the National Academy of Sciences that will be looking at how the humanities and computer sciences can work together more effectively.

Professor D'Arms' field is classical studies, notably the history and archaeology of ancient Rome and the Bay of Naples, especially social, economic, and cultural history. He is also Adjunct Professor of History and Classics at Columbia. From 1972 to 1997 Dr. D'Arms was Professor of History and of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, where, for other extensive periods, he was Dean of the Horace H. Rackham School for Graduate Studies and Vice-Provost of Academic Affairs. He has also served as Director and the A. W. Mellon Professor in the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome and has been Trustee of the National Humanities Center and a member of the national committee for Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities.

Please join me in welcoming our panelists.