New Center at Columbia University for Digital Library Research

Fostering Interdisciplinary Research and Bridging Cultural Clashes

Judith L. Klavans
Director, Center for Research on Information Access
Columbia University
[email protected]

D-Lib Magazine, March 1996

ISSN 1082-9873

The purpose of this article on the Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA) is to present Columbia University's creative solutions to ongoing problems which, in the view of many, are blocking the success of digital libraries as an interdisciplinary effort. Columbia University has provided a unique and, we believe, visionary resolution to this predicament. The thrust of this article is to relate the reasoning behind our solutions. Other articles in D-Lib will give reports on the extensive set of successful digital library projects at Columbia University. Columbia University houses one of the largest and most effective production digital library efforts in the country and among the most advanced technology research efforts as well. However, the topic of this article is research on the integration of production oriented and research oriented digital library projects.

Goals of the Center for Research on Information Access

The Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA) at Columbia University was founded in January 1995 with the goals of providing an integrating function for ongoing digital library projects, both within the university itself, and between the university and industry, educational, and foundation partners. The new center has been actively involved in building further integration among existing digital library projects already underway throughout Columbia University and in initiating new interdisciplinary projects reaching both within and outside Columbia University. Participants represent the University Libraries, the Academic Computing division, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the Office of the Provost, the Institute for Learning Technologies in Teacher's College, and several Academic departments. We are currently establishing corporate partners, as well as seeking government and foundation funding. The Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA) is initially funded through the Columbia University Provost's Investment Fund and the Strategic Initiative Fund as a university-wide resource to establish collaborations between departments and divisions working on similar projects.

The Center for Research on Information Access is committed to facilitating connections between projects for improving instruction, for developing new electronically available resources, and for exploring new technologies. CRIA is housed within the Columbia University Libraries with close links to the Computer Science Department.

Why Establish a New Center?

One of the most fundamental problems inhibiting the deployment of digital libraries is lack of integration. This problem is not surprising, given the fact that a successful digital library must reach across established disciplines representing different cultures that have not traditionally been partners. This problem is not a secret; in fact, it is a well-known although often unacknowledged issue. Indeed, the keynote address at the 1995 Annual ACM SIGIR conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval featured a provocative and controversial keynote address by Professor Terry Winograd, from Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, entitled ``Digital vs. Libraries: Bridging the Two Cultures'' addressing some of these points. Some of the controversy, as Winograd suggests, is embodied in dispute underway in the URC/URN community and the libraries standardization community. But some of the controversy runs deeper, involving deeply-rooted and often discrepant attitudes toward the organization of information, the presentation of information, the development and use of ontologies and other classification schemata, and the role of the human in the information access process.

A realistic look towards successful digital library projects reflects this rift. Certain projects have moved forth from communities functioning independently of the knowledge and resources of other disciplines, and the result is a narrowly successful project. This is not the place to list the successes and failures, since most of us working within the digital library community could easily create a list for ourselves. Rather, the purpose is to highlight the fact that the collaborations are, as Winograd stated (op cit p. 2) ``fruitful and also at times frustrating.''

The key question to ask is whether such differences are unfathomable. If so, then there may be no hope of achieving the goal of making as much digital information available to as many people as possible, with effective user interfaces, useful access tools, acceptable networking speed, and so on. But if such differences are surmountable, then with some effort at integration between researchers and practitioners, there is promise of achieving these goals.

The premise of CRIA is that integration between projects, across cultures, is essential to success. The objectives of CRIA are to enable seamless coordination, and to minimize cultural differences, for the purpose of achieving the common goal. As such, CRIA is organized with four related committees:

• The Research Advisory Committee
  
  The purpose of the Research Advisory Committee is to suggest research directions for CRIA, to oversee the research, and to participate in finding funding for this research. This last point involves identifying appropriate funding sources, identifying people who should be involved in proposal efforts, and identifying appropriate topics for funding. The chair of the Research Advisory Committee is Professor Kathleen McKeown. Members of the committee include representatives from libraries administration, academic computing, the department of computer science, the department of electrical engineering, the Columbia- Presbyterian Medical Center, the Lamont Doherty Earch Observatory, and Teacher's College Institute for Learning Technologies.
  
  
• The Intellectual Property Committee
  
  The role of the Intellectual Property Committee is to bring together related projects at Columbia, and to develop a strategy to manage the difficult questions, both theoretical and practical, arising from digital data distribution. The Intellectual Property committee is chaired by James Hoover, Professor of Law and Law Librarian at Columbia University. Members represent a wide range of research and applications interests at Columbia, including legal counsel, libraries, academic departments such as art history, instructional staff, academic computing, and the central administration.
  
  
• The Internal Advisory Committee
  
  The role of the Internal Advisory Board is to act as an administrative guide within the Columbia University Community. This committee is chaired by Dr. Elaine Sloan, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian.
  
  
• The External Advisory Committee
  
  The role of the external advisory board is to provide input on research projects, and to suggest future research directions. There is an annual, one-day meeting on the campus of Columbia University for presentations and discussion of CRIA activities, and for input on future research directions. The external advisory board attends along with the three committees of the Center. The first meeting will be in June 1996. Members are drawn from academia, industry, government, and professional organizations with diverse backgrounds and interests including librarianship, computer science, engineering, and law.
  
  

Digital Library Projects at Columbia University

• the Columbia digital library , which encompasses administrative computing as well as academic and scholarly computing;
  
• the digital collections page, a model within the National Digital Library Federation;
• the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences digital library technology research projects ;
• the Department of Medical Informatics, at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center;
• the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory ; and
• the Institute for Learning Technologies.

CRIA and Digital Library Projects

Since CRIA is an integrating organization, our role is to ensure interdisciplinary involvement both between ongoing projects, as well as newly initiated projects. CRIA has been involved in a wide range of new and ongoing research and development projects, many of which bridge the various cultures that come together in achieving successful digital libraries. Some of the projects CRIA has taken an active role in initiating include:

• Columbia Multimedia Presentation System (COMPRESS) - to develop novel techniques for the efficient extraction, timely delivery, and effective presentation of information from increasingly large numbers of heterogeneous knowledge repositories. The initial testbed will be in a health care delivery domain, with subsequent development for and application to earth sciences education. (Partners: Department of Computer Science, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, CRIA)
  
• JANUS Digital Library - to continue development of project for the content development of legal documents. (Partners: CRIA, Law Library, Academic Computing)
  
• Using Electronic Library Resources in Education - to develop new strategies for teachers to utilize the resources now available electronically; project within high schools in the Harlem Environmental Access Program. (Partners: CRIA, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Teachers College)
  
• Yiddish Language Data Base - to convert the contents of the largest archive of recorded data of Ashkenazic Yiddish into digitally available format. (Partners: Libraries, Academic Computing, Department of Germanic Languages, CRIA)
  
• Domain Independent Summarization - to develop a multi-level process of summarization for the presentation of information available during browsing or search. (Partners: Department of Computer Science and CRIA)
  
• Search engine evaluation and improvement - to establish the infrastructure for technology developments in algorithms to be tested within the Columbia University production systems. (Partners: Department of Computer Science, Academic Computing, CRIA)

For more information, please contact Judith Klavans at
[email protected]

Copyright © 1996 Judith L. Klavans

hdl://cnri.dlib/march96-klavans