For those of you working on user-centered design, I thought this would be useful to know about even if you can't spend a week in Italy in September.

David

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Third DELOS International Summer School on Digital Library
Technologies (ISDL 2004), 6-10 September 2004, Pisa, Italy

Introduction

The DELOS Network of Excellence is pleased to announce its Third
International Summer School on Digital Library Technologies (ISDL 2004)
to be held in Pisa, Italy, on September 6-10, 2004. This edition of
the School will focus on "User-Centred Design of Digital Libraries". 
In  particular, it will analyze a broad set of requirements for
Digital Library systems coming from various user environments
(libraries, museums, and archives) and will discuss the state of
the art in several user-related themes such as user interfaces,
information visualisation, and personalisation & recommendation.

The Directors of the School are Tiziana Catarci (Universita' di
Roma "La Sapienza") and Yannis Ioannidis (University of Athens).
The lecturers are leading researchers and practitioners with
extensive experience in the topics above.  The School will open
with an introductory lecture on Digital Libraries and the
problems of user interfaces.

The DELOS Network of Excellence is an initiative funded by the
6th Framework Programme of the European Commission, within the
Work Programme of the Information Society Technologies (please
visit the web site www.delos.info for further information about
DELOS).

Aims and Objectives

The main purpose of the DELOS Summer School is to foster research
in and understanding of the fundamental technologies underlying the
Digital Libraries field. It is directed towards graduate students
and young researchers and professionals involved in R&D in DL-related
areas. Ideally, the participants should represent both the computer
science community and the user communities interested in Digital
Libraries. Representatives of industrial communities (electronic
publishing, broadcasting, software industry, etc.) could also benefit
from a participation in the School.

The main theme of this edition of the School is "User-Centred Design
of Digital Libraries" and will include lectures on the following
topics: functional and non-functional user requirements from the
perspective of library users, museum users, archive users; user
interface design and evaluation; digital library information
visualisation; personalisation of user-system interaction
and information retrieval.

No particular qualifications or prerequisites are necessary. However,
we recommend that participants have basic experience in using some
form of information management systems, such as digital library
environments, database systems, information retrieval tools, etc.

Course Programme

The one-week intensive course will consist of nine half-day lectures
and one half-day dedicated to BOF (Birds of a Feather) sessions, i.e.,
discussions in smaller groups on specific topics of common interest,
with the participation of the lecturers. The morning half-day lectures
will begin at 9:00 and end at 12:30, with a coffee break at 10:30.
The afternoon lectures will begin at 14:00 and end at 17:30, with a
coffee break at 15:30.  The preliminary programme for the School is
shown below:

Monday, 6 September 2004

8:30 - 9:00   Presentation of the School
              Costantino Thanos (IEI-CNR, Italy)
9:00 - 12:30  Introduction to Digital Libraries and User-Centred Design
              Tiziana Catarci (Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza", Rome,
Italy)
              Yannis Ioannidis (University of Athens, Athens, Greece)
14:00 - 17:30 Archives' User Needs
              Mariella Guercio (University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy)

Tuesday, 7 September 2004

9:00 - 12:30  Personalization (1)
              Barry Smyth (University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland)
14:00 - 17:30 Personalization (2)
              TO BE CONFIRMED

Wednesday, 8 September 2004

9:00 - 12:30  Museums' User Needs
              TO BE CONFIRMED
14:00 - 17:30 Birds of a Feather (BOF) Sessions

Thursday, 9 September 2004

9:00 - 12:30  User Needs and Digital Libraries Design (1)
              Rudi Schmiede (Darmstadt U. of Technol., Darmstadt,
Germany)
14:00 - 17:30 User Needs and Digital Libraries Design (2)
              Rudi Schmiede (Darmstadt U. of Technol., Darmstadt,
Germany)

Friday, 10 September 2004

9:00 - 12:30  User Interfaces (1)
              Alan Dix (Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK)
14:00 - 17:30 User Interfaces (2)
              Alan Dix (Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK)

Accommodation and Venue

The School will be held in Pisa in the beautiful Conference Centre
of Santa Croce in Fossabanda, an ancient monastery dating from the
14th century recently renovated, fifteen minutes walking distance
from the center of the city.

Students and lecturers are expected to reside in the Conference Centre
For the duration of the School, giving students ample opportunities to know
each other and to exchange ideas among themselves and with the
lecturers, who are expected to stay for most of the duration of the School.

Registration and accommodation information can be found at the DELOS web site (www.delos.info), in the list of events.