IFLA Universal Dataflow and Telecommunications Core Programme

Archive - Historical Material

Programme Plan for 1997

Introduction

The UDT Core Programme will build upon its efforts in 1996 to improve personal and professional communication between IFLA HQ, its membership, and the international library community. A key component of this effort is the development of IFLANET, the highly successful Internet service of IFLA. With IFLANET firmly established, the UDT 1996/1997 workplan will centre around four major themes:

• to extend, promote, and integrate the use of IFLANET into the regular activities of IFLA HQ, Divisions, Sections, Roundtables, and Core Programmes.

• to continue to expand the content of IFLANET, ensuring that it remains the premier site for library information on the World Wide Web

• to continue the UDT program of creating, collecting, and making available valuable content on all aspects of information and telecommunications technologies and their impact upon libraries.

• to address the needs of less developed countries by providing Internet training and methods by which libraries without a direct Internet connection to take advantage of IFLANET content and services.

Work Plan for 1996

System and service maintenance

A significant portion of UDT’s time and energy is applied to the maintenance of IFLANET¾ensuring that the electronic publications are current, accurate, and provide useful content to users, and that the management and future of the service is administratively supportable. This activity also includes continually seeking out new technologies and enhancement that keep the system state-of-the-art.

Integration of IFLANET into regular IFLA activities

With IFLANET now fully operational, it is important that it be fully utilized as the information infrastructure of IFLA. To this end, UDT will work to promote its use in all areas of IFLA. UDT will:
• establish IFLANET coordinators to be the liaison between IFLA organizational units and IFLANET administration

• establish procedures, in cooperation with IFLA HQ and other IFLA organization units, for the appropriate use of IFLANET. This includes developing and promulgating standards and procedures for getting content on IFLANET.

• encourage participation in IFLANET by all parts of IFLA, through email correspondence, onsite visits, and training, where needed.

• encourage and assist special interest groups within IFLA to exploit the advantages of electronic communications. Mailing list guidelines and training materials will be distributed to these special interest groups to facilitate this process.

• establish a new IFLA list devoted to general discussions about metadata issues for electronic information will be set up when volunteer moderators come forward.

Expand the content of IFLANET

Exemplary electronic information services to the international library community will depend on the content that IFLA can provide—organizational information, research papers, conference proceedings, directories and current awareness services, and other types of electronic publications. Towards this, UDT continues to:
• work in consultation with other IFLA organizational units to deepen the content offerings.
  
• expand the information about various projects, electronic text archives, specialized lists of resources of interest to librarian. These resources and document collections have proven to be extremely popular and are a strong attractor for IFLA visitors. Maintaining the quality of these resources and collections remains a core task of the UDT Core Programme. IFLANET Internet training documents are a popular source of information for visitors to the Website.
• provide electronic databases such as the IFLA membership directory and specialized collections databases.
  
• to provide access to mailing list archives and development of e-mail based archive services.
  
• expand the conference information and papers.

UDT Publications and information activities

UDT will continue its program of analyzing and making available information on all aspects of information and telecommunications technologies and their impact upon libraries through publications, seminars, and workshops. UDT will:
• continue to add to its series of electronic Occasional Papers that address current technological developments. The first of these included papers on networking in Russia, document management systems, and the Z39.50 standard. This series will be continued and papers will be solicited from interested parties.

• embark on an investigation of digital library technologies and issues, and well as a deeper analysis of the related domain of document management systems. These topics are vitally important in answering many questions that librarians have as they embark upon the construction of digital libraries. Analysis papers and bibliographies will the product of these investigations.

• continue to provide workshops on Internet and digital library topics at the IFLA conference and at other conferences (e.g., most recently, Crimea ‘96). Specific workshops proposed include:
  See Z39.50 In Action: Information Retrieval in an Open Network Environment.
  The Objective of this workshop, to be held at IFLA ‘97, is to provide an introduction to the Z39.50 Information Retrieval Standard and demonstrations of a variety of Z39.50 products. The session will include a brief overview of the Z39.50 standard, demonstrations of Z39.50 client products that can be used to search Z39.50 compliant systems, and a panel discussion on Z39.50 issues and trends.

  Digital library and Internet technologies.
  This workshop, to be held at IFLA ‘97, will provide both introductory and in-depth presentations on technologies that are components of a digital library, including Web technologies, indexing and database software, and document management systems.

Addressing the needs of libraries in less developed countries

While the use of the Internet has expanded rapidly in North American, Western Europe, and Australasia, other countries have either no direct Internet connection (i.e., and IP connection) or only have recently obtained a direct Internet connection. Such countries are therefore in need of either alternate information technologies or information about how to best utilize those technologies. To address the needs of the libraries in such countries, UDT will:
• investigate mirroring IFLANET in other parts of the world to speed up local access. One mirror has already been established in France and investigations are underway to set up mirrors in Eastern Europe and Asia.

• reproduce all of the IFLANET Web site on CDROM. Called, IFLANET Unplugged, this CDROM provides countries with no network connectivity, but who have CDROM drives, with an opportunity to use IFLANET documents, as well as gain experience with Netscape, Web technology, and HTML documents.

• develop a “training the trainers” series of workshops that will expose librarians to Internet and digital library technologies. The goal of this series is to train librarians who can then become the Internet expert in their local library. The first series is proposed for several cities in Central and Eastern Europe in May/June of 1997.

Conclusion

(Prepared August, 1996)