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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 ------------------------------------------------ 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.