Newsletter |
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Spring 1999 Issue |
From the Chair | Notes from the January SOASIS Program | The State of (Electronic) Information in the State of Indiana | Joint IASIS/SOASIS Meeting - March 24 - University of Cincinnati |
From the ChairIASIS 1999...Working together and moving forward!During 1999, the Indiana Chapter of the American Society for Information Science is working together and moving forward! We are re-organizing and re-invigorating, and we want you to be a part of it! Moving forward to March 24, IASIS is having a joint meeting with SOASIS, the Southern Ohio Chapter of ASIS. The original "seeds" for this meeting were planted by fellow IASIS members Ralf Shaw, Chuck Davis, and Steve Hardin, along with Jim Cretsos, the current Chair-elect/Program Chair of SOASIS. In addition to S. Duncan Coleman's presentation on Knowledge Management, this meeting will provide an opportunity for you to network with IASIS/SOASIS members and experience them working together. Many thanks to the "seed planters"! Moving forward to Saturday, April 24, plans are in the works for an IASIS Officers/Interested Members meeting to be held at IUPUIs University Library. This is the day we have set aside for re-organizing and re-invigorating our Indiana Chapter of ASIS. Allison Kopczynski, the current IASIS Chair-elect/Program Chair and I are working together with Jim Cretsos of SOASIS to work out the agenda. Known to many in ASIS as "Mr. ASIS," Jim is a 40+ year-member of ASIS and will serve as guest facilitator and motivator. During the past few months, Jim has very generously shared his time, knowledge of ASIS, and wisdom with me. Based on this experience, I can assure you that attending this meeting and working together with Jim will be a rewarding experience for all. My thanks to Jim for his dedication to ASIS and willingness to share so much of himself and to Allison for embracing her role as Program Chair with so much enthusiasm and energy. Moving forward to your involvement in IASIS, learn all about this at the April 24 meeting. There are countless opportunities for you, and IASIS possesses great "human resources." The Indiana Chapter of ASIS is not large, but within our membership we boast two Past Presidents of the national organization (Ralf Shaw and Chuck Davis) along with former Board members. Many of our members, including Jim Morgan - Chapter Assembly Representative and Past Chair, have been active in ASIS for over twenty years. Secretary/Treasurer, Charles Sweet, has diligently served IASIS for several consecutive years, while members Julie Fore and Steve Hardin have also served continuously in a variety of official and unofficial roles, locally and nationally. IASIS member, Geoff Mckim, who currently serves as Technical Advisor to ASIS, won the 1997 James R. Cretsos Leadership Award for demonstrating "outstanding leadership qualities in professional ASIS activities." Moving forward and working together, IASIS Newsletter Editors, Allan Barclay and Barbara Gushrowski, will also be re-organizing and re-invigorating the Chapter's Web-based newsletter. They welcome your contributions! At the April 24 meeting, we will invite your participation with and suggestions for the newsletter. Working together and moving forward, 1999 promises to be a great year for IASIS!
Patsy Allen
Jim
Cretsos professionally introduced and opened the program. He introduced
Victoria Whipple, SOASIS Chair, and invited her to say a few words.
Victoria spoke about her placement in the organization, her history, and
how she came to be here with SOASIS. She spoke of the benefits she's
received while being a member, such as professional affiliation
recognition, references, and networking, etc. Jim introduced Karen Marsh, a
past Chair of SOASIS, Chair of the SOASIS Awards Committee, and Chair-elect
of ASIS' SIG/MED, and Elna Saxton, SOASIS most recent past chair. Jim then
introduced me, as a guest from their sister chapter, I-ASIS, and spoke
fondly of our efforts and who we are to the organization.
The presenter
for the program was Alice Cornell, University of Cincinnati Archivist,
Editor of the University Digital Press and Newsletter. She presented a
digitization project which was recently published by the University of
Cincinnati's Digital Press (http://www.ucdp.uc.edu/ucdp_nf.html), "George Catlin (1796-1892): The Printed Works."
George Catlin
was a writer, a collector, and a painter. As a painter, he traveled the
Northwest in the early-mid 1800s and painted scenery, which historically
represents many aspects of Western-Americana, such as dress, traditions,
song, dance, community, and environment.
Alice presented the
publication and demonstrated its access features, navigation, supplemental
intellectual content, and relational attributes. She spoke about the
dedication of the three full-time employees who worked on the product, the
support from their organization, and equipment used.
This is a digital
library of text and images using ImageBase 5 software that stores the data,
provides a graphical user interface, categorizes content, and supplies
access. There are over 600 pieces in this collection. A supplemental
index was added with complete catalog entries for each piece. A
bibliography was also added for each piece as well, using ProCite.
The
images were relationally linked to their area location on a map. If the
user accessed just the map, he/she could click on an area and access the
paintings that were created in or about that area and vice versa.
The
significance of the Digital Press CD is that the cataloguing, bibliography,
and indexing were all done in-house. They chose to specialize in
Western-Americana, the strength of University of Cincinnati's archival
collections. The product integrates a wide variety of formats, focusing on
the original works. The product is searchable using the ImageBase 5
software. Through lessons learned, they are now writing their own software
to meet their specific needs for their next project. This will be able to
search across collections. This project supports preservation, in that it
gives the user the ability to research before handling.
For more
information on this digital publication, please visit the University of
Cincinnati's Digital Press Home Page at http://www.ucdp.uc.edu/ucdp_nf.html.
Allison R. Kopczynski,
Indiana is a very good place to be in terms of new
developments in information networking. The
selection of the state as the
networking control center for the new high speed Abilene network,
coupled
with advances in the state's information resources, contribute to an
exciting atmosphere
for information technology. Still, the state has a
way to go to get a solid information
infrastructure in place.
These
were a few of the ideas put forth by a panel of academic, business and
government
representatives as they discussed "The State of (Electronic)
Information in the State of Indiana."
About 40 persons took part in the
joint meeting of the Indiana Chapter of the Association
for
Information Science (I-ASIS) and the Indiana Chapter of the Special
Libraries Association
(INSLA) November 11 in Indianapolis.
Moderator
Patsy Allen - the incoming I-ASIS Chair - began the program by explaining
each of
the four panelists would make a few introductory remarks. Then
the floor would be opened for
questions and a general discussion.
The first speaker was the Special Assistant for Digital Libraries and
Distance Education in
Indiana University's Office of the Vice President
for Information Technologies, Gerry Bernbom.
He discussed Internet2
which, he pointed out, is not a network. Instead, it's a collective name
for
an organization including about 130 research institutions. I2 has two
emphases: engineering and
applications. The applications are pushing the
engineering side of network design to put new
things in place. I2 will do
things differently than the present Internet. For example, it's
concerned
with Quality of Service - the concept of a guarantee of the timely arrival
of packets in
the right sequence. There's also multicasting, the delivery
of the same stream of packets to
multiple destinations without having to
spawn too many copies. I2 is also concerned with the
development of
standards for interoperability.
While I2 is not a network, Bernbom
noted, Abilene is; it's a physical backbone being built as a
project of
I2. It'll be a testbed for advanced research applications. It won't
succeed the Internet;
instead, it'll help us learn how to design the
networks that will succeed the Internet. IU has been
selected to run
Abilene's network operations center at the Indiana University-Purdue
University
at Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. You can find more information
about I2 at
http://www.internet2.edu. More
information on Abilene may be found at
http://www.internet2.edu/ucaid/ab
ilene/.
The next speaker was Rick Brown, the Director of Marketing
and Operations of the Access
Indiana Information Network. Access Indiana,
he began, started in 1995. It's a comprehensive
gateway to information
about the State of Indiana. It's one of the few self-funded state networks
in the nation; no tax dollars support it.
Access Indiana, Brown
said, provides information from all 90 state board and organizations.
Users can search this information at no charge. Access Indiana also
provides people with the
ability to transact business with the state.
Indiana was the second state in the nation to provide
"Rapid Renewal" for
automobile plates online. Businesses can interact with the state ad get
information such as driving records, whether doctors are licensed in the
state, and so forth. This
ability makes things more efficient both for
the state and for business. Over the next year,
Brown said, it should be
possible to file income taxes online with the state. More information on
Access Indiana may be found at AI's Web site: http://www.ai.org.
The next panelist was
Jack Carr, the Vice President of IQuest Internet, Inc. Iquest Internet is
an
Internet service provider (ISP). Founded in 1986, the company now has
about 40-thousand dial-
up customers, with 255 using leased lines. It's a
$30-million concern providing dial-up access
for residential customers,
access for businesses, Web page hosting and server hosting. Carr said
the future of the ISP business includes items such as "virtual private
networks," using the
Internet to do private networks and permit secure
transactions between remote locations. This
area is hot in corporate
America, he said. You can get more information on Iquest Internet at
http://www.iquest.net.
The last
panelist to make introductory remarks was Millard Johnson, the executive
director of the
Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA).
He had a few words about
INCOLSA's INSPIRE suite of databases.
INSPIRE is downloading more text - 72 thousand
pages a day - than anyone
else. On Mondays, INSPIRE's peak day, the figure exceeds 100
thousand.
INSPIRE's suite of 13 databases serve any citizen in the state - 5.5
million people.
Johnson said INCOLSA got started with INSPIRE about
five years ago. There were nine library
networks in the state, making
consolidation necessary. It was obvious that the Internet would
change
everything. INCOLSA got together the important players in Indiana
librarianship,
including academic and public libraries, the Indiana State
Library, and the Indiana Library
Federation. The message went out in a
series of "Windows on the World" (WOW) workshops,
letting people know what
could be done and what could happen. Johnson said there were two
messages
that came through. First, information is the stuff of business for the
21st Century, and a
good information infrastructure is essential for
competition. Second, people will come to places
where there are good
schools, good quality of life and good libraries. More information about
INCOLSA is available at http://incolsa.palni.edu.
At this
point, the floor was opened for questions. A wide-ranging discussion
ensued. Here are
some of the highlights:
IU's Ralf Shaw asked what
about Indiana is good or bad for information systems. Bernbom
responded
that Indiana is one of the most exciting places in the country right now
for
networking. The selection of IUPUI as the networking control center
for Abilene has put us
closer to the networking center of the world than
we've been before. We're also managing high
speed connections to Asia and
the Pacific Rim. Carr agreed that Indiana is an exciting place for
networking right now. He sees the telephone companies as the most
limiting factor in further
development. Johnson said Indiana has no
nature advantages in climate or geography. The
future of technology and
processing is all based on brainpower. There must be something here,
Johnson said, to attract the people who can do it. Indiana has an
advantage, he said, with a very
conservative legislature historically
interested in keeping taxes low.
Someone else asked about the impact
the developing information industry will have on the
Indiana job market.
Will firms locating here bring their own people, or will they help people
here who are looking for jobs? Carr answered that right now he can't find
people who know the
technology.
Allen wanted to know whether state
agencies provide their own web content, train their own
people, or bring
in new people? Brown answered it varies from agency to agency. Agencies
are
now putting Internet knowledge in their position descriptions.
The meeting officially ended at this point, but informal conversations
continued for some time.
There was general agreement that this had been a
very good discussion, and that I-ASIS and
INSLA should try to plan another
joint program.
Steve Hardin,
S. Duncan Coleman on "Knowledge
Management"
4:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 24,
1999
University of Cincinnati Faculty Club
Some of us may not be aware of it,
but we are all part of the knowledge business. Whether we work in
a
one-person library or public library, an academic or corporate
information facility, or for an information
service provider, we facilitate
the transfer of knowledge. Knowledge Management is the "hottest" topic
in
our field today, and we are fortunate to have an expert to speak on that
subject. His presentation will cover
an overview of Knowledge Management,
encompassing its historical roots, objectives, value potential,
popular
approaches and technologies, and challenges going forward. Mr. Coleman will
also provide an
integrating framework to describe underlying commonalities
among elements of Knowledge
Management and elements of Enterprise
Architecture, Enterprise Data Management, and Enterprise
Warehousing.
Additionally, he will discuss the notion of "Ontology" as a theoretical
foundation for
Integrated Knowledge Management of the future.
Mr.
Coleman is a Principal Consultant at NCR, specializing in enterprise
architecture and integration
management. Prior to joining NCR in 1995, Mr.
Coleman owned and operated a variety of small
businesses; served as a
senior executive in three management consulting firms; and held
senior
management positions in engineering, manufacturing, product research
and development, as well as
government and commercial business development,
and management systems. For two years, he was a
Program Manager for the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the area of
electronic
commerce deployment for supply chain optimization.
Mr.
Coleman has been heavily involved in the development of Integration
Definition (IDEF) methods for
the U.S. Government since 1978, including the
Federal Information Processing Standard for Enterprise
Function/Process
Modeling (FIPS-183) and Enterprise Information Modeling (FIPS-184). He has
also been a
principal source of Enterprise Integration Management Practices
for the U.S. Air Force Medical Systems
Agency (AFMSA), the Defense
Tri-Service Infrastructure and Integration Management Program
Office
(TIMPO), and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
Mr.
Coleman also served for over seven years as an Industry Advisor to the
Knowledge Based Systems
Laboratory at Texas A&M University School of
Industrial Engineering, and is a past member of the
Industry Advisory Panel
on knowledge-based integrated information systems engineering at MIT's
Sloan
School of Management.
Directions:
The Club Room of the University of Cincinnati
Faculty Club (lower level). The UC Faculty Club is
the building on the left
side of Campus Drive, a few steps from either garage.
Refreshments
will be provided.
Registration Cost:
$10.00 for ASIS
members; $13.00 for non-members
RSVP by Noon, Monday, March 22,
1999
Please make your reservations with any of the following (pay when
you come to the meeting):
Indiana
Kentucky
& Ohio
James M. Cretsos
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