NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative Projects

DLI Synchronization logo

Six research projects developing new technologies for digital libraries -- storehouses of information available through the Internet -- have been funded through a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The projects' focus is to dramatically advance the means to collect, store, and organize information in digital forms, and make it available for searching, retrieval, and processing via communication networks -- all in user-friendly ways.

A common strategy in all of these projects is to emphasize research partnerships. We view building partnerships between researchers, applications developers and users as essential to achieving success in generating new knowledge, promoting innovative thinking, and accelerating the technology transfer process.

The initiative will both capitalize on advancements made to date as well as promote research to further develop the tools and technologies needed to make vast amounts of useful information available to large numbers of people with diverse information needs.

Program Director for Digital Library Initiative

Stephen M. Griffin Steve's photographDivision of Information and Intelligent Systems
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Room 1115
Arlington, VA 22230

Phone: (703) 306-1930
Fax: (703) 306-0599
E-mail: sgriffin@nsf.gov

For more information on the initiative contact:
The Division of Information and Intelligent Systems: Phone: (703) 306-1930 E-mail: dl-info@nsf.gov

Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) Projects

Complete information may be found at the National DLI Synchronization page.  Information on individual projects may be found at their Web sites.

The following are the Digital Libraries Initiative Projects are:

"The University of Michigan Digital Libraries Research Project"
Institution: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Grant: $4 million (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Daniel Atkins, Project Director, atkins@umich.edu
William Birmingham, System Architecture, wpb@umich.edu
Randall Frank, Testbed Construction, frank@umich.edu
Wendy Lougee, Collection Development & User Support, wlougee@umich.edu
Elliot Soloway, Deployment and User Evaluation, soloway@umich.edu
Katherine Willis, Partner Liaison, kwillis@umich.edu

Organizational Participants include:

University of Michigan Libraries and Academic Departments
IBM
Elsevier Science
Apple Computer
Bellcore
UMI International
McGraw-Hill
Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation
Association of Research Libraries
Xerox PARC
Eastman Kodak Company
Ann Arbor Public Schools
Stuyvesant High School, New York City, New York
Ann Arbor Public Library
New York City Public Libraries

Project Description:

This project will conduct coordinated research and development to create, operate, use and evaluate a testbed of a large-scale, continually evolving multimedia digital library. The content focus of the library will be earth and space sciences. Potentially connecting thousands of users and information repositories, the library system will be designed to meet the need for systematizing the vast amount of information on an array of topics available on the Internet. A critical component of the project is the testing and evaluation of the prototype system by a wide variety of users, including those from on-campus, local high schools and public libraries.

For more information contact:
University of Michigan: JoAnne Kerr, jmkerr@umich.edu, (313) 763-6414

"Building the Interspace: Digital Library Infrastructure for a University Engineering Community"
Institution: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Grant: $4 million (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Bruce Schatz -- bschatz@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Bill Mischo -- w-mischo@uiuc.edu
Ann Bishop -- bishop@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu

Organizational Participants include:

University of Illinois academic departments and libraries
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA)
University of Arizona
Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
American Physical Society (APS)
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
Academic Press, Inc.
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
American Astronomical Society (AAS)
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE)
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
John Wiley & Sons
SoftQuad
Opentext

Project Description:

This project is based on the new Grainger Engineering Library Information Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and will be centered around journals and magazines in the engineering and science literature. The testbed will include a customized version of NCSA Mosaic (TM), software developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications under NSF and DARPA sponsorship to help users navigate the World Wide Web. This testbed will become a production facility of the University Library with thousands of documents and tens of thousands of users across the University of Illinois and other Big Ten universities. Research, based in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, will encompass sociological evaluation of the testbed, technological development of semantic retrieval, and prototype design of future scalable information systems (the Interspace).

For more information contact:
University of Illinois: Susan Harum, dli@uiuc.edu, (217) 244-8984

"The Environmental Electronic Library: A Prototype of a Scalable, Intelligent, Distributed Electronic Library"
Institution: University of California - Berkeley
Grant: $4 million  (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Robert Wilensky -- wilensky@cs.berkeley.edu
Michael Stonebraker -- mike@cs.berkeley.edu
Richard Fateman -- fateman@cs.berkeley.edu
Jitendra Malik -- malik@cs.berkeley.edu
Michael Buckland -- buckland@otlet.berkeley.edu
Ray Larson -- ray@sherlock.berkeley.edu
Nancy A. Van House -- vanhouse@sims.berkeley.edu

Organizational Participants include:

University of California, Berkeley academic departments and libraries
Xerox Corporation
Resources Agency of California
California State Library
Sonoma County Library
San Diego Assn of Govern.
The Plumas Corporation
Shasta County Office of Education
Hewlett Packard

Project Description

This project will produce a prototype digital library with a focus on environmental information. The library will collect diverse information about the environment to be used for the preparation and evaluation of environmental data, impact reports and related materials. The research prototype is intended for eventual full-scale deployment in the State of California's CERES production systems. To create the prototype, researchers will need to produce technologies which allow untrained users to contribute to and find relevant information in other world-wide digital library systems. Research areas include automated indexing, intelligent retrieval and search processes; data base technology to support digital library applications;new approaches to document analysis; and, data compression and communication tools for remote browsing.

For more information contact: University of California, Berkeley: Charlene Ryan, (510) 642-0930

"Informedia: Integrated Speech, Image and Language Understanding for Creation and Exploration of Digital Video Libraries"
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Grant: $4.8 million  (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Takeo Kanade -- kanade@cs.cmu.edu
Howard Wactlar -- wactlar@cs.cmu.edu

Organizational Participants include:

Carnegie-Mellon University academic departments and libraries
Microsoft Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Bell Atlantic Network Services
QED Communications
Open University, Milton Keynes, England
Winchester Thurston School
Fairfax County Public Schools

Project Description:

The Informedia interactive on-line digital video library system to be created by Carnegie Mellon University and WQED/Pittsburgh will enable users to access, explore and retrieve science and mathematics materials from video archives. The Informedia system works by integrating speech, image and natural language understanding technologies. The library will initially contain 1,000 hours of video from the archives of public television station WQED/Pittsburgh, Electronic Field Trips on video from the Fairfax Co., Va., public school system and video course material produced by the BBC for the Open University, a British college without walls, with an enrollment of more than 200,000. Issues involving human-computer interaction, pricing and charging for digital video use, and privacy and security will be addressed as part of the research program.

For more information contact:
Carnegie Mellon: Colleen Everett, cae@cs.cmu.edu, (412) 268-7674

"The Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project"
Institution: Stanford University
Grant: $3.6 million  (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Hector Garcia-Molina -- hector@db.stanford.edu
Terry Winograd -- winograd@cs.stanford.edu

Organizational Participants include:

Stanford University academic departments and libraries
Dialog Information Services (DIS)
HP Labs (HP)
NASA/Ames Research Center (NASA/ARC)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Interconnect Technologies Corp (ITC)
Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT)
Bellcore
Interval Research Corporation
O'Reilly and Associates
WAIS Inc.
Xerox Corporation

Project Description:

The Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project will develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated "virtual" library that will provide uniform access to the large number of emerging networked information sources and collections -- both on-line versions of pre-existing works and new works that will become available in the future. The Integrated Digital Library will create a shared environment that links everything from personal information collections, to collections found today in conventional libraries, to large data collections shared by scientists. The research thrusts of the project include: information sharing and communication models; client information interfaces; and information finding services.

For more information contact: Stanford: Maryanne Siroker, siroker@cs.stanford.edu, (415) 723-0872

"The Alexandria Project: Towards a Distributed Digital Library with Comprehensive Services for Images and Spatially Referenced Information"
Institution: University of California - Santa Barbara
Grant: $4 million  (FY94 - FY98)

Principal Investigator(s):

Terence A. Smith -- smithtr@cs.ucsb.edu
Michael Goodchild -- good@geog.ucsb.edu

Organizational Participants include:

University of California, Santa Barbara academic departments and libraries State University of New York at Buffalo University of Maine Digital Equipment Corporation Environmental Systems Research Institute ConQuest Corporation Xerox Corporation USGS Library Library of Congress

Project Description:

Project Alexandria will develop a digital library providing easy access to large and diverse collections of maps, images and pictorial materials as well as a full range of new electronic library services. The project is centered at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with its major collections of maps and images and its strong research focus in the area of spatially- indexed information. It also involves the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo), the University of Maine and several industrial partners. The project will begin with collections of digitized maps, images and airphotos relating to Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties using software developed for geographical information systems. Over four years, the project will grow to include other components at UCSB, SUNY- Buffalo, Library of Congress, the United States Geological Survey and the St. Louis Public Library, as well as other interested libraries. Each site will include, as necessary, facilities for geographical information interfaces, electronic catalogues, and information storage and acquisition.

For more information contact:
University of California, Santa Barbara: Patti Towne, towne@alexandria.sdc.ucsb.edu, (805) 893-7665

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