Copyright 1998 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 4, Winter 1997-98, pp. 3, 20. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Jim Roche at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

For the last few years, the Coalition for Networked Information has published a formal program of activities for the upcoming year. Clifford Lynch, the recently appointed executive director of CNI, has prepared the 1997-98 program under the direction of the CNI Steering Committee. Many of the themes of this year�s program are familiar. How to find information on today�s high-speed performance networks, how to handle commercial activities around the use of scholarly materials, and how new information technologies affect our institutions and our jobs in those organizations are all part of this year�s activities.

The three organizing themes for CNI�s 1997-98 activities are developing networked information content; transforming organizations, professionals, and individuals; and building technology, standards, and infrastructure. Within each of these areas are specific initiatives that help advance our knowledge and tools in networked information.

The content area has projects that develop new information resources on the Internet, but also concentrate on examining ways to improve finding information on the Net. This year, CNI continues its emphasis on the arts, the humanities, and cultural heritage. National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) was founded jointly in 1996 by CNI, the Getty Information Institute, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

NINCH acts as a forum for bringing together scholars and technologists in universities with individuals from museums, historical societies, and state humanities councils to help develop new content, and CNI is also active in helping develop standards for the arts and museum areas through the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI). Initiatives in digital preservation and new ways of describing networked information are also being supported by CNI using metadata. Metadata describing information resources is recognized as an essential element in organizing content to ease its discovery and use.

The Institution Wide Information Strategies (IWIS) project is a way for CNI to assist member organizations in determining best practices in the use and management of networked information on an organization-wide basis. Based on these projects, documentation of best practices is expected to aid other institutions in changing their practices and approaches to support an information world that relies on the Net for a majority of its scholarly information. Workshops in forging new work relationships among librarians, technologists, and university administrators will be continued this year.

Finally, technology initiatives focus on new types of applications and also on the role of standards in ever-improving data communication networks. As work on Internet2 infrastructure proceeds, applications that can benefit from the new high-speed network need to be developed. CNI is working with the applications group within the Internet2 project to explore these new applications.

If networked information resources are to improve on existing print resources, commerce in scholarly resources must be as easy to accomplish on the Net as it has in print. Authorization and authentication efforts are another task in this year�s CNI program. These efforts will try to define methods, approaches, and standards to determine if an individual networked user is allowed to use a particular information resource and what use of a particular information resource has been approved.

The 1997-98 program is an ambitious one. It continues CNI�s tradition of being a catalyst in determining the most promising ways that high-speed networks can be used for the dissemination of scholarly material. The complete CNI program can be reviewed at: http://www.cni.org/docs/CNI.prog.oview.html

SIDEBAR:

Paul Evan Peters Award Established

An endowment made possible by the Association of Research Libraries, Educom, CAUSE, the Xerox Corporation, and Microsoft will fund the Paul Evan Peters Award, in honor of the founding executive director of CNI, who died in November 1996. This award will be made periodically to individuals on their own or within an organization who have made a demonstrated contribution to the advancement of scholarly information through the implementation and use of advanced networked information technologies. This award will remind us of Paul�s contribution to CNI and the scholarly community.

The first annual award will be presented in 1998. For complete information on the award please check the CAUSE Web page at http://www.cause.org/pd/awards/pep/pep.asp. Nominations are actively being sought. Please send any nominations you believe would create a standard of excellence for the Paul Evan Peters Award to [email protected].

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