Alexandria Digital Library: ANNUAL REPORT
9 EXTERNAL RELATIONS AND INTERACTIONS
9.1 Advisory Board
The current membership of ADL's advisory panel is: Joseph
Boisse (Librarian, UCSB), Jean Bonney (DEC), Francis Bretherton
(University of Wisconsin), Jack Dangermond (ESRI), Jeff Dozier
(Graduate School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB),
Jim Grey (Microsoft), Bruce Gritton (MBARI), Bonnie McGregor (USGS),
Terry Smith (ADL, ex officio), Winston Tabb (Library of Congress).
A meeting for the board is planned for early Spring of 1996.
9.2 Third DLI meeting at UCSB
ADL organized and hosted the third of the DLI meetings at
UCSB on November 9th-10th, 1995. The first day of the meeting
was held at the Red Lion Resort Hotel in Santa Barbara, and the
second day at UCSB. Over 200 attendees attended the meetings,
which were deemed very successful by nearly all participants.
9.3 Alexandria Metadata Workshop
ADL organized and hosted a one-day workshop on November 8th
1995 in Santa Barbara that focused on metadata for spatially-referenced
materials. The workshop was attended by over 30 specialists in
spatial metadata from a variety of organizations and agencies.
A synopsis of the report of the workshop has been placed
on the ADL home pages and a full report is in preparation.
9.4 First Alexandria Design Review
ADL organized and ran its first Alexandria Design Review
(ADR) at the Xerox facility in Leesburg (VA) in September 1995.
The meeting was intended to provide a forum at which ADL could
demonstrate the WP to high-level users, such as librarians, and
receive feedback on its design and functionality.
The meeting was very successful and follow-up activities
will include a second design review in the Fall of 1996 as well
as the constitution of a standing "Design Review Panel"
that will meet with some regularity to provide high-level user
feedback to ADL.
The ADR was attended by about 65 people from a variety of
organizations including: Association of Research Libraries, University
of Michigan, US Geological Survey, UCSB, NAVY, Central Imagery
Office, DEC, Montana State Library, DMA, Smithsonian Institute,
OGIS, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Stanford University
Libraries, Center for Electronic Records, National Archives and
Records Administration, University of Arizona Library, Pennsylvania
State University, University of Colorado, University of Kentucky,
Office of the President of UC, American Library Association, Library
of Congress, OCLC, Inc., URI, Incorporated, National Agriculture
Library, ESRI, St. Louis Public Library, NOAA, and North Carolina
State University.
Executive Summary of First Alexandria Design Review
On 7-8 September, we hosted the First Alexandria Design
Review, in Leesburg Virginia. This is a joint effort of the Library
Requirements team at UCSB and the evaluation team at Buffalo.
The meeting targeted members of the federal library community,
including reference, repository, and data archiving organizations.
The purpose was to achieve a clear sense of user requirements,
to raise visibility for the project, and to get user responses
to the design of the Alexandria rapid prototype. We presented
the system and its goals in software demonstrations of all three
versions (CD-ROM, Rapid Prototype, and Web versions, each in various
states of development). Alternating full-group and small-group
structured discussions, we solicited insights from spatial data
producers and archivists on how these individuals evaluate their
own activities and client base as well as how they prioritize
resources for online archival and browsing. The product of the
meeting is a scientific report (currently in draft form) on user
requirements for digital libraries of spatial data and information.
The report itemizes the challenges that must be met by the library
and scientific communities to meet these requirements. The report
is due out in March, 1996, and will be published widely in hardcopy
form and distributed via the internet, to foster discussion in
other library groups. A second Alexandria Design Review meeting
is currently in preparation, to be held late in 1996. The Steering
Committee includes Prue Adler and Bruce Gritton from the Alexandria
Board of Directors. Mary Larsgaard and Suzanne Larsen will represent
the Library Community. A representative from one of the Federal
agency partners and from the external library community will also
be asked to serve.
9.5 Interactions with Old and New Partners
ADL has continued to interact closely with its original partners,
and continues to be active in forming new partnerships with organizations
in both the public and the private sectors. Many of these partnerships
have been, and continue to be, of great benefit to the Project.
It is of interest to note that such partnerships, particularly
with commercial organizations, often take significant investments
of time and effort to bring to fruition. It is often the case
that significant efforts do not lead to any useful partnership.
The main cause of such failure results, in our view, from the
difficulty that many commercial organizations have in realizing
immediate profitability from the partnership.
We list and briefly discuss the most important partners and
outline the nature of our interactions with them.
9.5.1 California Environmental Resources Evaluation System
(CERES)
Meetings have been held in Santa Barbara by CERES, the San
Diego Supercomputer Center, the National Biological Service and
Alexandria for the purpose of creating an MOU that outlines how
these organizations will cooperate in providing access to California
state agency spatial data holdings. The MOU is centered on the
development of a distributed computing technology to meet this
goal. This MOU has reached a semi-final draft stage.
9.5.2 Central Imagery Office (CIO)/National Imagery and
Mapping Agency(NIMA)
Exchanges of visits and information have occurred throughout
the year with the CIO, soon to be incorporated with DMA into NIMA.
The main outcome of these interactions has been the development
of a proposal for research. Under the terms of the proposal, ADL
is to perform research on metadata for spatially referenced information
and for catalog interoperability in areas of interest to both
CIO and ADL. The research agreement, which is for three years
(renewable annually) will support the ADL metadata research at
a level of $150K/pa. This amount, after overhead, will be used
to support research assistance and related activities. This funding
is currently being channeled through NSF. A copy of the proposal
is appended to this report.
9.5.3 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Several presentations and subsequent conversations have taken
place between those managing information e.g., various agency
information centers and libraries and Alexandria personnel. We
are, as a group, continuing our discussions trying to arrive at
a common requirement for dealing with collections of spatially
indexed materials. We are also exploring standards issues that
effect both organizations.
9.5.4 CIESIN
A cooperative effort with CIESEN was begun in January, 1996,
with an agreement for ADL to share its metadata schema with CIESIN,
which has agree to reciprocate with items of value to ADL.
9.5.5 Excalibur/ConQuest
Excalibur merged with ConQuest this year. We continue to
use ConQuest software for our gazetteer and will open negotiations
with the new organization as their internal structure stabilizes.
9.5.6 Defense Mapping Agency
Exchanges of visits and information have occurred throughout
the year with the DMA, soon to be incorporated with CIO into NIMA.
A major outcome of these interactions to date has been ADL's acquisition
from DMA of a copy the Board of Geographical Names (BGN) gazetteer.
9.5.7 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
During this year several conferences have taken place for
setting up an ongoing partnership. Digital's internal grants office
worked with Alexandria personnel to locate a research sponsor
within DEC. Progress has been made in that we are in discussions
with DEC's GIS group.
9.5.8 ERDAS
Ongoing discussions continue with ERDAS. They have supplied
their software, licenses on two different platforms and technical
support while we explore other areas of cooperation. ADL sees
ERDAS as a potential partner for image processing and small-sat
data delivery.
9.5.9 Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)
In addition to software and licenses ESRI has provided a
new spatial searching technology, support for that technology
and assistance in obtaining a platform to test the software. They
are also participating in ADL's building of a consortium of hardware
and software vendors for testing the next generation of Web technology.
They are assisting Alexandria engineers in adding functionality
to the current ADL implementation.
9.5.10 Hughes
ADL and Hughes have an agreement to explore the potential
for a digital library to serve as a value-added provider (VAP)
of ECS data and services. Under the agreement, for which ADL will
receive $100K over twelve months, there will be a joint evaluation
of the extent to which the interfaces, protocols, schemata, data
models, and usage assumptions of ECS are compatible with its integration
into the ADL. While this evaluation will be the principal deliverable
of this proposal, it will be driven by actual experience, in that
there will be, as far a possible, an integration of such components
of ECS as are available into the Alexandria testbed system. A
secondary deliverable is thus the testbed system itself, in an
ECS-friendly configuration.
9.5.11 Library of Congress
Several meetings and presentations have taken place and a
verbal agreement has been made to have Alexandria serve out to
the Web scanned mapping data currently being prepared by the Geography
and Map Division. They will provide both metadata and scanned
maps for the testbed. LC has expressed a desire to establish a
full Alexandria implementation at LC.
9.5.12 Lockheed/Space Imaging
Following discussions extending over several years and expressions
of interest in Alexandria by various staff at Lockheed, we have
explored possible applications of Alexandria technology in Lockheed's
new Space Imaging venture. This project will acquire and sell
high-resolution imagery of the Earth to traditional users of aerial
photography, starting in 1997. The dissemination of acquired imagery
from the archive raises questions very similar to those being
researched by Alexandria. In late 1994 contracts were agreed between
all three of the NCGIA institutions and Space Imaging. Reports
were written on user interface design and the functional requirements
of the image distribution system. The work ended in late 1995.
9.5.13 NASA
NASA, in relation to its Earth Science Data and Information
System (ESDIS) program, is currently providing support to ADL
in two important ways. First, they are supporting long terms visits
from one of their experts in spatial metadata and library science,
Dr. Linda Hill, who is currently visiting at NASA's expense for
January-March, 1996. Dr. Hill is working closely with our Library
Team and Cataloging subteam. Second, they have been instrumental
in helping us to obtain major financial support from the main
EOS contractor, Hughes.
9.5.14 Oracle
We have been holding discussions for some months with Oracle
and currently negotiating a partnership with them in which Oracle
would provide significant resources in support of ADL's development,
including a full-time engineer on the project, software and software
technical support, research interactions, and support of graduate
students.
9.5.15 O2
O2 is providing ADL with free copies of all relevant software
packages, as well as access to technical consultation. O2 has
also given technical presentations to ADL.
9.5.16 San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
ADL has an MOU with SDSC, which involved the provision of
support from SDSC for a T1 line to ADL. SDSC has also made available
about 1TB of mass storage for storing parts of ADL's collections.
Research interactions are currently occurring in relation to support
for collections of scientific information.
9.5.17 Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP)
The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP) is a scientific
analysis of the current state of the ecosystems and human communities
of the Sierra Nevada region of California. SNEP was requested
and funded by Congress and the USDA Forest Service for a 3-year
study that will conclude in March 1996. A team of independent
scientists integrated knowledge on the biological, physical and
human environment of the region for future use by policy makers.
One of SNEP's major goals was to design and construct a comprehensive geospatial data base that would be made accessible to all interested parties at the local, state, and federal levels. To this end, SNEP scientist and staff have now integrated and catalogued roughly 350 ARC/INFO coverages of physical, biological, cultural and political features. These range from local to regional in extent and originate from various public and private organizations as well as SNEP assessments.
Under an agreement between ADL and SNEP, all coverages, as
well as a small number of text and image files, have been catalogued
using metadata entry forms supplied by Project Alexandria or by
the State of California CERES project. Thus the metadata will
comply with FGDC and Alexandria guidelines. A digital copy of
the SNEP metadata and database is currently being provided to
the Alexandria Project, and ADL is making the SNEP collection
available as part of the Alexandria collection.
9.5.18 SPOT Image
The SPOT Corporation has agreed to be ADL's first publishing
partner. It has supplied its collective set of worldwide metadata
records and sample images and is preparing browse images for California,
a dataset held by UCSB. Discussions continue regarding security,
copyright, payment via the Web processes, third-party services
and data delivery systems.
9.5.19 The Analytic Science Corporation (TASK)
We are sharing information on spatial metadata with TASC
and are co-operating on the development of appropriate models
of metadata for a variety of applications.
9.5.20 United States Geological Survey (USGS)
Interactions and exchanges of visits have occurred over the
year with USGS. Doug Nebert has visited on several occasions to
provide technical help to ADL in relation to FGDC and Clearinghouse
issues. A recent memorandum from USGS that was presented at a
meeting between ADL and USGS in December 1995 lays out several
areas of interaction and cooperation including: metadata, standards,
gazetteer, USGS library map collection, USGS ADL test site, digital
data access, Mojave project, contractor support from TASC, and
raster browse files.
9.5.21 United States Navy, Stennis
The US Navy at Stennis, which has a large mapping facility,
is currently putting together a proposal which would give ADL
annual funding. These funds are to be made available to the project
through NSF.
9.5.22 United States Navy, San Diego (NRAD)
NRAD continues to support Alexandria with both funding for
student RA's and map generating software (Caricature). The software
may offer a more advanced map browser for Alexandria. It is being
ported to the DEC Alpha platform.
9.5.23 Earth Data Analysis Center (EDA), University of
New Mexico
An MOU has been drafted outlining EDA's participation in
Alexandria. They wish to deliver data they hold for New Mexico
to clients via the ADL. They are also an archive of NASA imagery.
ADL is reviewing this proposal at this time.
9.5.24 Utah State University/Mojave Database Cooperative
In connection with the Mojave Desert Ecosystem (MDEI), Project,
funded by the Bureau of Land Management, ADL and Utah State University
have developed an MOU under which ADL is providing DL support
for the four phases of the project. In particular ADL is supporting
the creation and entry of catalog metadata according to the ADL
metadata schema, the creation of the MDEI library, space for the
MDEI operations, and expert advice on a range of issues. Utah
State is providing resources to the UCSB location of ADL that
include a full-time project coordinator for two years, a server
for the MDEI database, and funding not to exceed $80K to cover
ADL costs.
9.5.24 Xerox
Interactions with Xerox have included technical exchanges
and, in particular, Xerox providing ADL with source code for a
map browser, which we modified to become the first background
map for the WP.
9.6 Interoperability Agreements and Activities
9.6.1 Stanford DLI Project
Eight members of the ADL team visited the Stanford DLI project
during 1995 and worked out both an interoperability agreement
and a working plan to implement the agreement. The plan involves
connecting ADL to the Stanford InfoBus, which is a CORBA interface
specification.
To implement the connection, Stanford will expand the InfoBus
Geo-1 query attribute set. (Geo-1 is a Z39.50-extented query attribute
set based on the FGDC metadata standard.) The Testbed Team of
ADL will write an ADL InfoBus Service proxy using the Xerox Parc
Inter-Language Unification (ILU). The proxy will accept any query
based on the Geo-1 set and delivered through the InfoBus. The
proxy maps Geo-1 query into our native catalog query, and then
assembles and returns the query result in a format understood
by the InfoBus.
ADL has committed the necessary resources for this effort
and an implementation environment is ready. In particular, ILU
2.0 alpha is installed; ILU test examples have been created; Python
3.0 for the InfoBus proxy implementation has been installed; the
Testbed Team is currently examining examples of InfoBus implementations.
9.6.2 Berkeley DLI Project
After mutual visits to each others sites in 1995, the UCSB and UCB DLIs made an informal agreement to pursue experiments in catalog-level interoperability. The results of the first of these experiments were presented by Robert Wilensky (Berkeley) and James Frew (Santa Barbara) at the November 1995 DLI meeting in Santa Barbara. In this first experiment, a Berkeley "view" of the Santa Barbara catalog was installed in the Santa Barbara catalog server and queried by a Berkeley client. The Berkeley client was able to simulate a distributed catalog by merging query results from the Berkeley and Santa Barbara catalogs into unified presentations (e.g. maps of data density).
This initial experiment was encouraging because the common ancestry
of the Berkeley and Santa Barbara schemata (both borrow significantly
from the FGDC geospatial metadata standard) yielded considerable
semantic equivalence. However, the experiment was also discouraging
in that the construction of the Berkeley view at Santa Barbara
required about 6 person-weeks of effort. As Wilensky noted, this
clearly does not scale into a general catalog-level interoperability
solution.
Both Santa Barbara and Berkeley are moving toward more open
database technologies (e.g. support for ODBC) that could permit
the construction of middleware layers that would translate between
the two schemata, via a neutral intermediate language. Future
interoperability experiments with Berkeley will focus on middleware-oriented
solutions.
9.6.3 Illinois DLI Project
Together with the Illinois Project, we are planning a major
project to extend their research and development on using AI techniques
for finding associations among simple expressions in text and
for finding clusters of expressions. The extensions that we will
investigate and develop initially involve textures for images
and spatial footprints for maps. The project involves using collection
items and expertise from ADL, extensions of the procedures developed
by Dr. H. Chen (Arizona) for extracting associations and clusters,
and the supercomputer facilities at NSC. Discussions between Illinois
and ADL personnel and a visit to ADL by Dr. Chen have led to the
development of a proposal for the research, which will be modified
as a proposal for extramural funding. Significant research is
expected to be underway by May 1996.
9.6.4 CMU DLI Project
We are interacting with the CMU DLI project in relation to
the NetBill system for managing transactions that involve payments
for library services. We believe that there are many collections
of items in the area of geographically-referenced information
that their creators/owners will not make available through a DL
unless some secure and easy mechanism for managing financial transactions
is in place.
We have agreed, therefore, to be both an alpha and a beta test site for the NetBill System and are planning to adopt it for transactions in operational versions of ADL if the testing is successful.
In relation to CMS's preferred approach to the beta testing,
we will make arrangements with third party vendors of map products
to use NetBill in providing students at UCSB with access to their
products. We are currently waiting for the first release of the
software from CMU.
9.7 Digital Libraries for School Students
During the past year, ADL partnered with the Graduate School
of Education (GSE) in developing the SUNDial project, whose goal
is to make the services of ADL available to local and regional
elementary and high schools.
These interactions led to the writing of a proposal to NSF
that requested support for achieving these goals. Although the
proposal was unsuccessful, the writing of the proposal led to
a major series of meetings between ADL personnel, GSE personnel,
and many local school teachers and administrators. Our many interactions
led to the realization of the importance of this endeavor. We
are therefore committed to finding resources that will permit
us to extend ADL into these important areas.
We now provide the summary of the unsuccessful proposal to
indicate the nature of the interactions that we envisaged, and
that we still hope to implement.
The purpose of The SUNDiaL Project is to develop and test
technology-supported methods for creating information-rich classrooms.
Such classrooms will offer secondary teachers and their students
the opportunity to gain meaningful access to the holdings of National
Digital Libraries such as the Alexandria Digital Library at UCSB
in a manner that will directly support teaching and learning.
SUNDiaL intends to leverage NSF's existing investment in digital
libraries, especially Alexandria, toward the goal of developing
a widespread high performance electronic communications infrastructure
in support of science, mathematics, engineering and technology
education reform.
Specifically, SUNDiaL proposes:
SUNDiaL's approach will be to explore the mediating role
of graphical user interfaces which are constituted as a suite
of tools useful in accessing digital libraries. The project will
be specifically concerned with the utility, in typical classroom
and library environments, of such interfaces for integrating on-line
resources with current standards-based curricula and for supporting
the adoption of reforms in teaching and curriculum which are called
for by these standards. The work will be accomplished by four
work teams.
The results of SUNDiaL's work will have substantial significance
for reform of education in the delivery of the SMET curriculum.
It will include:
9.8 Visits and Demonstrations
A large number of visitors, local, national, and international,
were given tours of the ADL facilities and demonstrations of the
WP. These visitors included:
3M Corporation, Alexandria Advisory Board, American Planners Association,
Boar's Head Corporation, California Cadastral Mappers Association
Conference attendees, US Bureau of the CENSUS, Center for Computational
Sciences ORNL CERES, Chambers Group, Inc., CIA, CIESIN, Congressional
representative Andrea Seastrand (R), Digital Equipment Corporation,
Distributed Object Computing, Dow Chemical Co., E-Systems, EarthWare
Systems, Endeavour Corp., ERDAS, FAW, General Dynamics, Geographic
Survey Institute, Government of Japan, Geography classes from
Moorpark Community College, Geography classes from Santa Barbara
City College, Geological Survey of Canada Library, GIS National
Training Center, Fort Irwin, Heads of UC Computing Centers and
UC V.P.s for Computing, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Department of Computer Science, IBM, Informatics, Intergraph,
ISLA project (USC) Library of Congress (senior management and
Geography and Map Division), Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed Martin,
Magellan Geografix, Map Services Center, MCI, Mojave Desert Project,
National Biological Survey, National Library of Malaysia, Naval
Research Laboratories, NCGIA board of directors, NCGIA K-12 teachers,
NSF, O2, Oracle, Pacific Western Aerial Surveys, Polytechnic State
University, Regents of the University of California, Robert E.
Kennedy Library, Santa Barbara county teachers, Santa Barbara
County Fifth District supervisor, Silicon Graphics, SINTEF, Stanford
DLI Project, U. S. Central Imagery Office, U. S. Defense Mapping
Agency, UC Division of Library Automation, UC Librarians, UC Office
of the President, UCB DLI Project, UCB Library Head of Preservation,
UCB Museum Informatics Project, University of Alaska, University
of New Mexico, University of Queretaro (Mexico), US Navy, San
Diego, US Navy, Stennis, USC library, USGS, EROS Data Center,
USGS Headquarters, Utah State University, "Unlimiting The
Library" conference.
9.9 Talks and lectures
Project members gave a large number of presentations at various
fora during the past twelve months. Presentations, for example,
were given at the following national and international conferences:
Asilomar Conference on Signal, System and Computers (Pacific Grove,
CA); Association of American Geographers, Chicago; AUTO-CARTO
12 (Charlotte, North Carolina); CHI'95, Denver, Colorado; Eighth
TOYOTA Conference (Mikkabi); First Conference on Spatial Multimedia
and Virtual Reality (Lisbon, Portugal); GeoInformatics '95 (Hong
Kong); IEEE International Symposium on Computer Vision (Coral
Gables, Florida): International Conference on Cooperative Systems
(Vienna, Austria); International Conference on Computer Analysis
of Images and Patterns; International Symposium on Digital Libraries
(Tsukuba, Japan); North American Cartographic Information Society,
Wilmington, North Carolina; Second International Conference on
Image Processing; SPIE Photonics East'95 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania):
SPIE Conference on Storage and Retrieval of Image and Video Databases,
(San Jose, CA); Third International Conference/Workshop on Integrating
GIS and Thirty Second Annual Clinic of Library Applications of
Data Processing; Environmental Modeling (Santa Fe, NM); Thirty-Seventh
Allerton Institute, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana;
URISA 95 (San Antonio, TX).
9.10 Professional interactions with DL Community
Project members regularly attend library community and digital
library community conferences and workshops. Members of the project
team are serving on the committees of ADL96 and DL96 DL conferences
and on the editorial board of Journal of Digital Libraries.
9.11 Publicity
Articles covering the Alexandria project continue to appear
in local, regional, and national newspapers and magazines about
the Alexandria Project. We have been involved, in particular,
in several national level articles. Our current Web presence,
established in October 1994, continues to draw a large response.
Alexandria Digital Library: ANNUAL REPORT