We provided demonstrations and discussions of our D-Lib collection to visitors from Ajou University in Korea.
· Using the ASM Handbook full-text, we developed a table search interface allowing users to search for specific tabular data within the ASM Handbook. We also improved the conversion of images for better display over the web.
· We completed the conversion of the American Institute of Physics’ (AIP) mathematics to MathML. Significant progress was also made in converting the mathematics of other publishers.
· We developed XML schemas for the AIP’s full-text XML journal markup. The XML Schemas are equivalent to the previous DTDs.
· We also completed processing of ACM’s sample journal articles, including complete rendering of the XML using XSLT and CSS, including the MathML. Using our new RDF metadata format we also developed a database and search mechanism for their collection.
Project staff had continued involvement at various levels in numerous other related projects:
· As part of their work with MathML, project staff continued their minor involvement in the STIX fonts project, an effort by the STI Pub Companies to develop a set of freely available fonts for use in scientific and technical publishing, especially on the web.
· Project staff met with representatives of the library of the Illinois Fire Services Institute to discuss building a digital library of materials related to fire fighting technologies.
· Project staff also corresponded with the Beacon Group regarding techniques used in our D-Lib Test Suite for converting and manipulating graphic images for web display.
· We shared information about full-text article DTDs and metadata XML Schema with the Mellon Electronic Journal Archiving Project at the Harvard University Library.
· We also corresponded with Texas Southern University about issues involved in setting up their own digital library project.
· For several weeks we hosted a Mortenson Center for International Library Programs visiting scholar from Belarus, Jahor Novikau. Mr. Novikau assisted us in the conversion of several metadata databases into OAI-compatible Dublin Core records.
· As part of our ingoing work with metadata schemas, we began to become more involved in several of the Dublin Core working groups, sharing a number of our proposed DC and RDF metadata schemas.
Stephen Matich from the University of Waikato in New Zealand met with project personnel to learn more about the project and how it could possibly be applied to digital library projects at his home institution.
In late January three members of the project staff made a site visit to the American Institute of Physics' (AIP) headquarters in New York to discuss the transfer of various of our XML technologies to AIP. This included programs for converting SGML to XML, for extracting metadata from XML files, for providing citation linking data, XML Schemas to replace SGML DTDs, and web server scripts for rendering the XML in various web browsers, including the mathematics.
Long-distance talks were also held with the Beacon Group, the publishing service bureau for the American Physical Society (APS), on possible process improvements that they could implement in relation to the APS files that are sent to us.
Additional work was done in the conversion of the American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) article metadata into the AIP Searchable Physics Information Notices (SPIN) metadata records for use with the American Institutes of Physics' Online Journal Publishing Service (OJPS).
The 6th Annual UIUC D-LIB Collaborating Partners Workshop was held on September 7-8 at the Grainger Engineering Library. It was well attended by representatives from the American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Physical Society (APS), ASM International, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), Naval Research Laboratory, University of Chicago Press, Seagoat Consulting, Elsevier Science, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
We reported on the latest results of our research and development efforts, plus our ideas for other avenues of investigation. Everyone was very enthusiastic regarding our progress and the direction of our research. We also received invaluable feedback from our partners regarding directions they would like to see the research take.
We met with engineers from the NTT J-Stage project in Japan to discuss protocols for sharing citation metadata between our two projects, specifically so that forward and backward links could be made between the citations in our respective journal article collections.
Met with a visitor from the University of Maine who was interested implementing digital library projects at her home institution.
Held discussions with Eric Hellman, president of Openly Informatics, Inc., about scholarly linking technologies, and about incorporation of their LinkBaton product into our project.
We hosted a delegation of managers and engineers from the NTT J-Stage project in Japan. This included two representatives from the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST). We held four days of meetings and discussions at various levels of technical detail with this group.
We also hosted a meeting of the D-Lib Test Suite Project participants which was attended by representatives from the various other D-Lib projects, including CMU, CNRI, DARPA, NIST, UCB, UCSB, and UIUC. Discussions centered around the ISO11179 metadata standard
Bill Mischo, the project's principal investigator, visited Tokyo, Japan for technical meetings and presentations at the request of the NTT J-Stage project, one of our newest industrial sponsors.
We demonstrated our system and discussed the DLib project with the Sr. Vice President of Technomic Publishing Company, Inc.
We held discussions with the President of Openly Informatics, Inc. about their LinkBaton technology and its possible application for scholarly linking. We are considering incorporation of LinkBaton into our testbed on an experimental basis.
We also held discussions with the Director of the Internet Math Consortium regarding issues of mathematics and the Internet, specifically using MathML for rendering mathematics on the web.
We also held discussions with Elsevier and ACM about their possible inclusion in our industrial partners program.
A presentation about the project was also made to the President of the Grainger Foundation, the primary contributor to the construction of the Grainger Engineering Library.
NTT Learning Systems Corporation from Japan
A group of five managers and staff from their Internet Department visited us for three days for presentations and discussions regarding potential participation in our partners program. NTT Learning Systems Corporation is developing an online technical journal system, similar to our testbed, for the government of Japan.
ASM International
We are in negotiations with ASM International, a professional society for materials engineers, to add them to our partnership program and possibly include some of their Metals Handbook material in the testbed.
The annual partners’ workshop was held in Champaign on August 19-20. It was well attended by representatives from the American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), ASM International, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), Naval Research Laboratory, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), University of Chicago Press, Seagoat Consulting, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
We reported on the latest results of our research and development efforts, plus our ideas for other avenues of investigation. Everyone was very enthusiastic regarding our progress and the direction of our research. We also received invaluable feedback from our partners regarding directions they would like to see the research take.
Several engineers and managers from both AIP and APS visited prior to the partners’ workshop for some in-depth technical discussions regarding our work.
This was a group from the IT department of the Chicago State University library who were here to learn more about Grainger Library’s IT infrastructure and special projects, such as DLI.
We presented a brief overview and demonstration of the project to two visiting researchers from Singapore.
Temporary access to the testbed has been granted to a researcher at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Keio University, Japan, for his research on a theme called "Implications of the non-semantic attributes of documents for IR".
Tim Ingoldsby from the American Institute of Physics (AIP) visited the Testbed Team.
A teleconference was also held with Bob Kelly and other staff members of the American Physical Society (APS).
Testbed Team members Timothy Cole, Tom Habing, and William Mischo presented a workshop on XML use in the Testbed at the CESSE (Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives) Conference on July 19-20, 1999 in Cleveland.
Testbed Team member Robert Ferrer also presented the Testbed to a Sun Microsystems.
Chinese Delegation visiting from The National Library of China
Tom Habing presented the Testbed to a group of Mortenson Center for International Library Programs Associates visiting from Russia.