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1) Federal appropriation for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT) 2) The latest from the Pew Internet & American Life Project 3) DigiCULT Technology Watch Report 1 Available; Draft Available for Comment of "The XML Family of Technologies" 4) RCDL 2003: Fifth National Russian Research Conference on Digital Libraries. Saint-Petersburg, Russia, October 29-31, 2003. *************************** 1) Federal appropriation for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT) Dear Digital Promise Supporter: The second edition of our new quarterly newsletter, The Digital Promise Reporter, is attached to this email. It offers an update on our progress. The first quarter of 2003 brought a remarkable breakthrough, a Federal appropriation for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT). With the prospect of that Federal financial support and other private matching funds, we have begun to work with the Federation of American Scientists to develop a research road map and design a structure for the trust fund. The Federation is conducting a series of high level technical workshops to explore the opportunities for technological innovation to transform learning and teaching. This spring, we'll meet with members of the coalition of national educational, cultural and other organizations that have endorsed DOIT to get their input and ideas. Additional regional meetings will also be held throughout the country designed to widen and broaden support for DOIT. While the public's attention inevitably continues to focus on the war in Iraq, it is urgent that the nation's other vital public priorities not be ignored. We see how new information technologies are transforming the military and its methods of conducting the war. We also see how computer generated intelligence, simulations, portable satellite dishes, videophones, wireless lap tops, and other recent IT breakthroughs are causing a similar transformation in the ability of the nation's press to report the war. If our schools, universities, libraries, museums, and work places could take effective advantage of these remarkable new information technologies, as the Defense Department and the press have already done, we could transform the quality and character of American teaching, training, and lifelong learning for the information age. The now famous Commission on Homeland Security, chaired by former Senators Rudman and Hart, states categorically, "In this Commission's view, the inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine." And for the Administration, Undersecretary of Commerce Philip Bond said recently, "Our coming challenge is to use technology to foster change throughout the entire continuum of learning, both formal and informal. This is beyond getting computers into the schools, beyond getting the schools hooked up to the Internet, and beyond today's debate about deployment of entry-level broadband. This is about much bigger change - a new learning infrastructure." That is the challenge and the opportunity of DOIT, and with your help and support, together we can make it happen. Best regards, Lawrence K. Grossman and Newton N. Minow, Co-chairs. Anne G. Murphy, Project Director ********************************* 2) The latest from the Pew Internet & American Life Project * On April 1, we looked at how people were using the Internet during the early days of the Iraq war. We found record-levels of people going online for news, relying on the Internet for news, and email activity related to news. We also found some pretty interesting differences in Internet use between war supporters and war opponents. The report can be found at: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/pdfs/PIP_Iraq_War_Report.pdf * Last week, we took a fresh look at the digital divide and found that there was a lot of fluidity in the online population. It turns out that many people live lives that are quite close to the Internet, even though they don't actually use it. Much of the press coverage of the report focused on a group we called "Net Evaders" because they live in homes with Internet-connected computers, but do not themselves go online even though other family members do. The report can be found at: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/pdfs/PIP_Shifting_Net_Pop_Report.pdf Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project ********************************* 3) DigiCULT Technology Watch Report 1 Available; Draft Available for Comment of "The XML Family of Technologies" From: DigiCULT Forum <[log in to unmask]> Technology Watch Report 1 -- now available: "New Technologies for the Cultural and Scientific Heritage Sector." The Technology Watch Report identifies and describes technologies that are either not currently used in the heritage sector or are under-utilized by it. The Report provides accessible descriptions of new technologies, suggests how these might be employed, and indicates the implications and risks. Technologies examined in Report 1 include: -- Customer Relationship Management -- Digital Asset Management Systems -- Smart Labels and Smart Tags -- Virtual Reality and Display Technologies -- Human Interfaces -- Games Technologies Download DigiCULT Technology Watch Report 1: Low-Res (2,56 MB) http://www.digicult.info/downloads/twr2003_01_low.pdf High-Res (4,74 MB) http://www.digicult.info/downloads/twr2003_01_high.pdf Technology Watch Briefings: During its initial thirty-month lifetime, the project will release three Technology Watch Reports, each examining six core technologies. Each of the briefings are made available for comment on the project website. The first draft of the latest DigiCULT Technology Watch Briefing, subject "The XML Family of Technologies", is now online. Comments and suggestions to be implemented in the final draft are now cordially invited. http://www.digicult.info/pages/twb.php The DigiCULT Publications: The Technology Watch Reports are only one of four ways in which DigiCULT Forum contributes to improving the knowledge about the use of technologies within the cultural heritage sector: -- Thematic Issues: results of themed expert fora -- DigiCULT.Info Newsletter: articles about services, studies, technologies, and activities -- DigiCULT Website: info, events, links, all publications online for download http://www.digicult.info/pages/publications.php Subscribe to the Newsletter DigiCULT.info http://www.digicult.info/pages/subscribe.php Read and comment on the Technology Watch Briefings http://www.digicult.info/pages/twb.php Submit an Event http://www.digicult.info/pages/addevent.php (c) DigiCULT Forum 2003 http://www.digicult.info ********************************************** 4) First Call for Papers -- RCDL 2003 -- Fifth National Russian Research Conference on Digital Libraries. Saint-Petersburg, Russia, October 29-31, 2003. http://www.rcdl2003.spbu.ru Aims and Audience ================= Digital libraries (DL) that one day will evolve to full fledged knowledge repositories can be seen as complex information systems with many technical, practical and social issues. Building and deployment of such systems require contribution from numerous scientific disciplines. The purpose of this conference series is to stimulate evolvement of the Russian digital libraries community and encourage research in this field. RCDL brings Russian scientific and application communities contributing to DL field together and provides an open forum for exchange of experience, ideas and results as well as stimulates communication and cooperation between experts in the field. We welcome contributions and participation from all interested in relevant aspects of digital libraries including researchers, developers, practitioners, students, postgraduates, policy makers and users. Participation is sought from all parts of the world stimulating international collaboration in the digital library field. Attention will be paid to progress of digital libraries research and application projects funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and other programs. Several collocated pre- and post-conference workshops are expected. Being major Russian event in the digital libraries field RCDL attracts increasing attention from foreign participants and helps to improve international collaboration. Relevant Topics =============== The conference topics include but are not limited to: -- Models and standards for information and meta-information representation (including thesauri and ontologies) in DL. -- Methods and tools for data discovery, extraction analysis and retrieval in DL (including audio-visual and mixed data). -- Access to distributed and heterogeneous digital collections: interoperability, scalability, relevant information discovery, and meta-information integration. -- DL architectures. Mobile computing and agents related to digital libraries. -- Human aspects of DL (interaction with and collaboration in DL, personalization, data visualization (rendering) and analysis of data, intellectual property, user communities). DL and changes in information consumption processes. -- Multilingual data access and multilingual data service. -- DL, DL prototypes and digital collections for science, education, culture, health care and management. Deployment and promotion of digital libraries. -- Digital collections in traditional libraries, museums, archives, information centers. -- Advanced technologies of digital collection building, storage and system maintenance. -- Evaluation: metrics, testbeds, results. -- Digital collection cataloging, indexing, annotating, recommendation, maintenance of integrity and consistency. -- DL security and information protection. -- Grid technologies and digital libraries, data grid. Call for Contributions ====================== Submissions are invited for full papers and workshops that clearly demonstrate their relevance to Digital Libraries. All papers must be original contributions and not previously published nor currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Extended abstracts are required at the submission stage. Submitted abstracts should be at least 5 pages long (2500 words) and full version of papers must be with a limit of 10 pages (5000 words). Submissions can be either in Russian or in English. All contributions will be thoroughly peer-reviewed and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings as full papers. At least one author should attend the conference to present the paper. On submission authors should indicate one of the two directions to which their submission belongs -- "Core technologies" or "Practical application and experience". "Core technologies" direction is dedicated for research papers that compare or present new architectures, methods and technologies for digital libraries. These papers will be evaluated on the base of originality, technical quality, and demonstrated relation to prior research. Second direction is dedicated to papers reporting on building real-world Digital Libraries and collections. Program committee solicits submissions covering development of innovative digital libraries, novel applications of digital libraries technology, experience in applying recent research advances to practical cases and deployment of digital libraries. Such papers should be grounded on prior research, theory, or implementation, clearly indicating the new contributions of the work. Both extended abstracts and full papers are accepted only electronically in Postscript, PDF or RTF formats. Please, access submission server from http://rcdl2003.spbu.ru/ru/contributions.html. Full papers format requirements will be made available at the conference website. Important Dates =============== March 31, 2003 Workshop proposals due May 10, 2003 Submissions of extended abstracts due June 20, 2003 Notification of acceptance August 20, 2003 Camera ready papers due Venue ===== The northern capital of Russia, Saint-Petersburg (http://www.spb.ru) is one of the most beautiful cities of the world. Several architectural ensembles, created by Russian and European artists, contribute to unique architectural appearance of the city. Hundreds of museums, including Hermitage (http://www.hermitage.ru) and the Russian Museum (http://www.rusmuseum.ru), host several world-famous collections of pictures and fine arts. Several theatres, including Mariinsky opera and ballet theatre (http://www.mariinsky.ru), concert halls, classical philharmonic and jazz philharmonic halls are also working in Saint-Petersburg. In 2003 Saint-Petersburg celebrates its 300th anniversary. Extended renovation program is expected to be completed before the official celebration in May, 2003. Several cultural events, such as festivals and exhibitions, will be held in Saint-Petersburg during the year 2003 (http://www.spb300.com). An increased number of visitors is expected. The conference will be hosted by Saint-Petersburg State University (http://www.spbu.ru) -- the oldest and one of the largest universities of Russia. Conference Organization ======================= Program Committee Co-Chairs: Oleg Siountiourenko, Russian Foundation for Basic Research Leonid Kalinichenko, Institute for Problems of Informatics, RAS Boris Novikov, Saint-Petersburg University Program Committee: Jose Luis Borbinha, BN/IST/INESC, Portugal Vasily Bunakov, State Research Center, Institute for High Energy Physics Olga Dluzhnevskaya, Institute of Astronomy, RAS Boris Dobroff, Moscow State University Anatolii Fedotov, United Institute of Computer Science SB, RAS Elza Gousseva, Moscow State University of Culture and Arts Nikolai Kalenov, Library for Natural Sciences, RAS Victor Kapustin, Interdisciplinary Centre, Saint-Petersburg State University Mikhail Kogalovsky, Market Economy Institute, RAS Nikolai Kolchanov, Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Branch, RAS Efim Kudashev, Space Research Institute, RAS Victor Lebedev, IAMR KRC RAS Vladimir Litvin, California Institute of Technology, USA Jean-Yves Le Meur, CERN Igor Nekrestyanov, Saint-Petersburg State University Joseph Romanovsky, Saint-Petersburg State University Vladimir Serebryakov, Computing Centre of RAS Ilya Segalovich, Yandex, Moscow Vladislav Shirikov, Joint Institute Nuclear Research Guennadi Sigovtsev, Petrozavodsk State University Alexandr Tomilin, Institute of System Programming, RAS Alex Ushakov, Unversity of California of Santa Barbara Vladimir Vdovitsin, IAMR KRC RAS Vladimir Voevodin, Research Computing Center MSU Victor Zakharov, Institute of Informatics Problems, RAS Sergei Znamenskii, Program System Institute, RAS Organizing Committee Chairs: Vladimir Troyan, Saint-Petersburg University Boris Novikov, Saint-Petersburg University Organizing Committee: Dmitry Barashev, Saint-Petersburg State University Vladimir Dobrynin, Saint-Petersburg State University Igor Kuralenok, Saint-Petersburg State University Elena Mihailova, Saint-Petersburg State University Igor Nekrestyanov, Saint-Petersburg State University Ekaterina Pavlova, Saint-Petersburg State University Elena Tolkacheva, Saint-Petersburg State University European Coordinator: Yannis Ioannidis, University of Athens, Greece\ Details ======= Further details and latest news will be available at the conference web site http://www.rcdl2003.spbu.ru. Contact ======= Boris Novikov Address: Research Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics of Saint-Petersburg University Universitetsky prospekt, 28. Saint-Petersburg, 198504 Phone: +7-812-428-4206 Fax: +7-812-428-7039 E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Version for printing: http://www.rcdl2003.spbu.ru/rcdl2003-cfp-en.pdf David Seaman Director, Digital Library Federation 1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20036 tel: 202-939-4750 fax: 202-939-4765 e-mail: [log in to unmask] web: http://www.diglib.org/