[multiple], 'LITA Interest Groups and Committees in Miami Beach', LITA Newsletter v15n04 URL = ftp://dewey.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/lita/lita-v15n04-[multiple]-lita V15N4.IGCOM LITANEWS -------------------- LITA Interest Groups and Committees in Miami Beach Authority Control Interest Group (LITA/ALCTS) Karen Calhoun, Chair, welcomed 400 people to a joint program of ACIG and the Authority Control/Expert Systems IG (see report elsewhere in this issue) and noted that this was the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group. Barbara Tillett, founder and first chair of the group, received a round of applause, as did the other chairs from the past ten years. Following the program, more than thirty ACIG members stayed on for the business meeting. Past Chair Joan Schuitema announced that Susan Moore was cycling off the Ad Hoc Committee on Subject Authorities. Her replacement as Chair of that Committee is David Reser (Library of Congress). Joan nominated James Maccaferri (Clarion University) as Vice Chair/Chair-elect of ACIG. He was elected unanimously. Several changes in ACIG's bylaws were proposed and accepted, while other possible changes remained undecided. The Executive Committee will discuss these proposals and come to an agreement on the bylaws via e-mail before summer's end. The new bylaws will be in effect by the Midwinter meeting. Daniel Pitti, the new Chair, presented plans for the Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. An open discussion will concern practical matters. Pitti asked the Ad Hoc Chairs to keep track of listservs and notify him of people doing research in the area of authority control. The group will ask these people to present brief reports, with written summaries, at the Midwinter meeting. Officers will suggest questions for the discussion and post them in advance on listservs in order to whet people's interest. David Reser volunteered to give a report on international cooperation, while Barbara Henigman will coordinate a bibliography of best books and articles on authority control. We also hope to have a MARBI update. The program at the Chicago ALA Annual Conference will concern authority control in an integrated library and museum environment. Speakers will represent art museums, natural history museums and archives. --Douglas Koschik, Baldwin and Bloomfield Township Public Libraries. Electronic Mail & Bulletin Board Systems Interest Group During this group's meeting in Miami Beach, Eric Lease Morgan (North Carolina State University) gave an excellent introduction to the topic of Mosaic and what librarians can be doing with it. Morgan presented background information about Mosaic and the hypertext transfer protocol (http). He then explained why http servers should be used instead of gopher servers and how libraries can use World Wide Web (WWW) clients and servers to provide better service. Uses include organizing electronic Internet resources (both local and elsewhere) into a coherent whole. He advised that the organizational scheme should be comprehensible to the intended audience, enumerative and synthetic, not based on format if at all possible and that the classification should be consistent throughout. Morgan stated that the real potential of http servers is their ability to run programs behind the scenes and return results to the user, known as the common gateway interface or CGI. He described several CGI scripts in use. As to the future of network navigation tools, Morgan believes that it will certainly include multimedia. There will be better layout capabilities, development of one or more Z39.50 CGI scripts, more advertising and businesses selling information on the Internet and thus more new and maybe better WWW browsers for which we can expect to pay. Morgan ended his presentation with the suggestion that the time is now for librarians to begin maintaining http servers. He strongly advocated the creation and maintenance of Internet resources by librarians. Richard Luce (Los Alamos National Laboratory) spoke about Mosaic library projects currently underway at Los Alamos. Projects include a Mosaic interface to Science Citation Index using TOPIC as the database retrieval engine and testing full-text retrieval of archive issues of the Physical Review for the American Physical Society. They are also developing full-text search capability for Los Alamos technical reports using Mosaic as the front-end and both "free WAIS" and TOPIC as database engines for the retrieval component. Another project is the development of a Mosaic to Z39.50 gateway to provide links to their online catalog and to other systems. Steve Cisler (Apple Computer) presented sample Mosaic sites that illustrate the diverse array of information available. Sites included the Louvre, commercial information, maps and travel information as well as Doctor Fun and a European pornography site. He commented that new tools are being developed every week and although they are currently free, there will be a charge when they are commercially developed. Cisler finished his presentation with his suggestions for improving Mosaic. He stated that designers with the latest in high-technology equipment need to take into account the intended audience and how that audience will access information. Areas that could use improvement include speed, congestion and bandwidth, page design, editing tools, text interfaces, navigation and the existence of multiple versions. Look for the article in Library Journal soon! The presentations were followed by a useful question/answer/discussion period. --Maryjane Poulin, University of Maine Emerging Technologies Interest Group Robbie Rand (National Agricultural Library and chair of ETIG) welcomed a small audience of six to an informal discussion at Miami Beach. The topic was the Global Change Data and Information System (GCDIS), which arises out of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and is a multi-agency program of the federal government. Participating agencies will identify relevant repositories and design and implement a distributed system that will make it possible to use such repositories to support the goals of USGCRP. Four presenters provided information about current projects. Carol Watts (NOAA) described the National Institute for the Environment, which (if created) will assess current environmental knowledge, fund research, build a database of research information and sponsor education and training. Kathleen Eisenbeis (NASA) described GCDIS. A basic principle guiding development of the system is the desire to identify key holdings and make them available to the user community in useful form, and to be assured of their quality and continued availability. Thus GCDIS is actually a set of individual agency systems that provide access to global change data. Implementation will be evolutionary and will rely on existing agency information infrastructures. Betty Coyle (ConQuest Software Inc.) described text and image retrieval software being used in a GCDIS pilot project. The software builds a library of word meanings and relationships for underlying data repositories. Using this library, it is possible to use the ConQuest search interface to locate and retrieve data in multiple formats. The ConQuest software supports natural language searching and relevance feedback. Robbie Rand gave a detailed report on one proposed pilot project named Assisted Search for Knowledge (ASK). The concept behind ASK is to build a prototype system that uses off-the-shelf software to link access to heterogeneous and distributed data and information resources. The heart of the system is a natural language search engine based on ConQuest software. In addition to providing access to a variety of existing data repositories, ASK will try to accommodate individual user needs, recognizing different skill levels and providing a variety of paths to desired information. The session ended with a brief discussion of ETIG program plans for the 1995 ALA Annual Conference. George Rickerson (1994/95 chair) is organizing a program on component software. Speakers will discuss the concept of component software and provide information to help attendees assess the significance of this trend. --George Rickerson Leadership Development Committee During its Miami Beach meeting, the Leadership Development Committee reviewed plans for the LITA Orientation scheduled for the following day and discussed planning required as new hosts for the program at the next ALA Annual Conference. The program will follow the same basic format as this year's. Following this discussion, the Committee examined plans for the Midwinter training session. This session has been scheduled for Monday afternoon and will consist of two parts. Part I will follow the agenda for the LITA Orientation Program held at ALA Annual. Following this, Part II will consist of a mini-workshop on Time Management presented by a expert on the topic. This training session will be open to all current and potential LITA leaders. More information will be made available before Midwinter. --Denise Forro Membership Committee The LITA Membership Committee organized a number of activities in Miami Beach to increase LITA's visibility to diverse populations. The LITA booth was set up in the exhibits and was staffed during most of the exhibit hours. The Committee really appreciates it when LITA officers and Board members (past and present) are able to volunteer some of their busy time for staffing the booth, and this conference was no exception. The Committee also very much appreciates all of the other booth volunteers. It is often the knowledge and enthusiasm of the booth volunteers that acts as the best form of public relations for LITA. The raffled one-year membership in LITA was won by Carl Chan, Head of Public Services at the Defense Language Institute's Aiso Library. The Committee specifically focused membership activities on some LITA programs that they thought would be attended by a well-mixed audience, many of them not currently LITA members. At these programs, the Committee tried to ensure that the program moderator mentioned the benefits of joining LITA and that LITA Membership brochures were available. The Committee hopes to see the success of this new idea as it tracks the coded forms when they are returned to the LITA Office. The Membership Committee also sponsored opportunities for LITA members and non-members to meet informally at local restaurants for lunch or dinner. The people who attend these meals appreciate both having a specific place to meet for a meal, as well as having an opportunity to talk to others interested in various aspects of library technology. At least 30 people signed up to attend one of these meals. Future projects to be tackled by the LITA Membership Committee include investigating the new LITA-L discussion forum as a potential vehicle to promote LITA membership. The committee will continue successful activities from the past such as mailing letters and membership brochures to library schools and sponsoring the LITA Happy Hour at the Midwinter conference in Philadelphia. Watch in the December LITA Newsletter for more information on the Happy Hour. --Billie Peterson, Chairperson, LITA Membership Committee