Annotation Fourteen technical papers presented at the May 1997 meeting featuring the latest technical results and issues in digital libraries. The papers focus on digital library images (digital image indexing and retrieval, wavelet-based image indexing techniques), a discussion of digital libraries in Europe, specific library projects such as Columbia's digital news system, and new technologies for documents, information sources, and security. Includes illustrations. Lacks an index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Digital library is commonly seen as a type of information retrieval system which stores and accesses digital content remotely via computer networks. However, the vision of digital libraries is not limited to technology or management, but user experience. This book is an attempt to share the practical experiences of solutions to the operation of digital libraries. To indicate interdisciplinary routes towards successful applications, the chapters in this book explore the implication of digital libraries from the perspectives of design, operation, and promotion. Without common agreement on a broadly accepted model of digital libraries, authors from diverse fields seek to develop theories and empirical investigations that to advance our understanding of digital libraries.

Digital Libraries are complex and advanced forms of information systems which extend and augment their physical counterparts by amplifying existing resources and services and enabling development of new kinds of human problem solving and expression. Their complexity arises from the data-rich domain of discourse as well as from extended demands for multi-disciplinary input, involving distributed systems architectures, structured digital documents, collaboration support, human-computer interaction, information filtering, etc. In addition to the broad range of technical issues, ethics and intellectual property rights add to the complication that is normally associated with the development, maintenance, and use of Digital Libraries. The Second European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL’98) builds upon the success of the first of this series of European Conferences on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, held last year in Pisa, Italy, September 1-3, 1997. This series of conferences is partially funded by the TMR Programme of the European Commission and is actively supported and promoted by the European Research Consortium on Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). The aim is to bring together the different communities involved in the development of Digital Libraries, to review progress and to discuss strategies, research and technological development (RTD) issues, as well as specific topics related to the European context. These communities include professionals from universities, research centres, industry, government agencies, public libraries, etc.

Digital libraries (DLs) are major advances in information technology that frequently fall short of expectations [7, 28]. Covi & Kling [7] argue that understanding the wider context of technology use is essential to understanding digital library use and its - plementation in different social worlds. Recent health informatics research also - gues that social and organisational factors can determine the success or failure of healthcare IT developments [8, 11, 12]. Heathfield [11] suggests that this is due to the complex, autonomous nature of the medical discipline and the specialized (clinician or software engineer) approach to system development. Negative reactions to these systems is often due to inappropriate system design and poor implementation. H- ever, there may be other less obvious social and political repercussions of information system design and deployment. Symon et al [26] have identified, within a hospital scenario, how social structures and work practices can be disrupted by technology implementation. Although these systems often deal with sensitive, personal infor- tion, other system design research has found that apparently innocuous data can be perceived as a threat to social and political stability [1,2,3]. To understand the impact of DLs within the medical profession, an in-depth evaluation is required of the int- duction and later development of these applications within their specific social and organisational settings. However, as Covi & Kling [7] have highlighted, there are few high-level theories that aid designers in understanding the implication of these issues for DL design and implementation.

Digital libraries (DLs) have introduced new technologies, as well as leveraging, enhancing, and integrating related technologies, since the early 1990s. These efforts have been enriched through a formal approach, e.g., the 5S (Societies, Scenarios, Spaces, Structures, Streams) framework, which is discussed in two earlier volumes in this series. This volume should help advance work not only in DLs, but also in the WWW and other information systems. Drawing upon four (Kozievitch, Murthy, Park, Yang) completed and three (Elsherbiny, Farag, Srinivasan) in-process dissertations, as well as the efforts of collaborating researchers and scores of related publications, presentations, tutorials, and reports, this book should advance the DL field with regard to at least six key technologies. By integrating surveys of the state-of-the-art, new research, connections with formalization, case studies, and exercises/projects, this book can serve as a computing or information science textbook. It can support studies in cyber-security, document management, hypertext/hypermedia, IR, knowledge management, LIS, multimedia, and machine learning. Chapter 1, with a case study on fingerprint collections, focuses on complex (composite, compound) objects, connecting DL and related work on buckets, DCC, and OAI-ORE. Chapter 2, discussing annotations, as in hypertext/hypermedia, emphasizes parts of documents, including images as well as text, managing superimposed information. The SuperIDR system, and prototype efforts with Flickr, should motivate further development and standardization related to annotation, which would benefit all DL and WWW users. Chapter 3, on ontologies, explains how they help with browsing, query expansion, focused crawling, and classification. This chapter connects DLs with the Semantic Web, and uses CTRnet as an example. Chapter 4, on (hierarchical) classification, leverages LIS theory, as well as machine learning, and is important for DLs as well as the WWW. Chapter 5, on extraction from text, covers document segmentation, as well as how to construct a database from heterogeneous collections of references (from ETDs); i.e., converting strings to canonical forms. Chapter 6 surveys the security approaches used in information systems, and explains how those approaches can apply to digital libraries which are not fully open. Given this rich content, those interested in DLs will be able to find solutions to key problems, using the right technologies and methods. We hope this book will help show how formal approaches can enhance the development of suitable technologies and how they can be better integrated with DLs and other information systems.

An authoritative and truly global exploration of current research in digital libraries. Internationally-renowned academics discuss what has been achieved with digital libraries and what we can expect in the future through the prism of research. The increasing number of digital libraries in all sectors and the pressure of ever demanding and diverse user needs has encouraged development of user-centred interfaces, intelligent search and retrieval capabilities, effective metadata description and contents organization. In addition to the two editors who are renowned for their works in digital library research, this collection brings together established international names in the field to analyse these developments in relation to users and information access and the future trends and challenges that practitioners will face. Readership: LIS students, academics and researchers interested in digital libraries and access and those developing, managing or just starting out with digital libraries

ECDL2000, the Fourth European Conference on Research and Advanced Te- nology for Digital Libraries, is being held this year in Lisbon, Portugal, following previous events in Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), and Paris (1999). One major goal of the ECDL conference series has been to draw information professionals, stakeholders, and user communities from both the research world and from - dustry into a discussion of the alternative technologies, policies, and scenarios for global digital libraries. The success of previous conferences makes them a hard act to follow. The eld of digital libraries draws on a truly diverse set of scienti c and technical disciplines. In the past three years, moreover, global cooperation on research and development has emerged as an urgent priority, particularly in the new European Framework Programme and in the Digital Library Initiative in the United States. Because of this diversity, the eld is perhaps still struggling for an identity. But this struggle for identity is itself a source of energy and creativity. P- ticipants in this eld feel themselves to be part of a special community, with special people. Each of us may claim expertise on a narrow issue, with speci c projects, but the choices we make and the methods we use in local solutions can have unforeseen impacts within a growing universe of interconnected resources.

Since year 2000, scientists on artificial and natural intelligences started to study chance discovery - methods for discovering events/situations that significantly affect decision making. Partially because the editors Ohsawa and Abe are teaching at schools of Engineering and of Literature with sharing the interest in chance discovery, this book reflects interdisciplinary aspects of progress: First, as an interdisciplinary melting pot of cognitive science, computational intelligence, data mining/visualization, collective intelligence, ... etc, chance discovery came to reach new application domains e.g. health care, aircraft control, energy plant, management of technologies, product designs, innovations, marketing, finance etc. Second, basic technologies and sciences including sensor technologies, medical sciences, communication technologies etc. joined this field and interacted with cognitive/computational scientists in workshops on chance discovery, to obtain breakthroughs by stimulating each other. Third, “time” came to be introduced explicitly as a significant variable ruling causalities - background situations causing chances and chances causing impacts on events and actions of humans in the future. Readers may urge us to list the fourth, fifth, sixth, ... but let us stop here and open this book.