Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts Part 5

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCUSSION * Several additional features of WPP clarified *

Discussion following TWOHIG's presentation served to clarify several additional features, including (1) that the project's primary intellectual product consists in the electronic transcription of the material; (2) that the text transmitted to the CD-ROM people is not marked up; (3) that cataloging and subject-indexing of the material remain to be worked out (though at this point material can be retrieved by name); and (4) that because all the searching is done in the hardware, the IBYCUS is designed to read a CD-ROM which contains only sequential text files. Technically, it then becomes very easy to read the material off and put it on another device.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LEBRON * Overview of the history of the joint project between AAAS and OCLC * Several practices the on-line environment shares with traditional publis.h.i.+ng on hard copy * Several technical and behavioral barriers to electronic publis.h.i.+ng * How AAAS and OCLC arrived at the subject of clinical trials * Advantages of the electronic format and other features of OJCCT * An ill.u.s.trated tour of the journal *

Maria LEBRON, managing editor, The Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials (OJCCT), presented an ill.u.s.trated overview of the history of the joint project between the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC). The joint venture between AAAS and OCLC owes its beginning to a reorganization launched by the new chief executive officer at OCLC about three years ago and combines the strengths of these two disparate organizations. In short, OJCCT represents the process of scholarly publis.h.i.+ng on line.

LEBRON next discussed several practices the on-line environment shares with traditional publis.h.i.+ng on hard copy--for example, peer review of ma.n.u.scripts--that are highly important in the academic world. LEBRON noted in particular the implications of citation counts for tenure committees and grants committees. In the traditional hard-copy environment, citation counts are readily demonstrable, whereas the on-line environment represents an ethereal medium to most academics.

LEBRON remarked several technical and behavioral barriers to electronic publis.h.i.+ng, for instance, the problems in transmission created by special characters or by complex graphics and halftones. In addition, she noted economic limitations such as the storage costs of maintaining back issues and market or audience education.

Ma.n.u.scripts cannot be uploaded to OJCCT, LEBRON explained, because it is not a bulletin board or E-mail, forms of electronic transmission of information that have created an ambience clouding people's understanding of what the journal is attempting to do. OJCCT, which publishes peer-reviewed medical articles dealing with the subject of clinical trials, includes text, tabular material, and graphics, although at this time it can transmit only line ill.u.s.trations.

Next, LEBRON described how AAAS and OCLC arrived at the subject of clinical trials: It is 1) a highly statistical discipline that 2) does not require halftones but can satisfy the needs of its audience with line ill.u.s.trations and graphic material, and 3) there is a need for the speedy dissemination of high-quality research results. Clinical trials are research activities that involve the administration of a test treatment to some experimental unit in order to test its usefulness before it is made available to the general population. LEBRON proceeded to give additional information on OJCCT concerning its editor-in-chief, editorial board, editorial content, and the types of articles it publishes (including peer-reviewed research reports and reviews), as well as features shared by other traditional hard-copy journals.

Among the advantages of the electronic format are faster dissemination of information, including raw data, and the absence of s.p.a.ce constraints because pages do not exist. (This latter fact creates an interesting situation when it comes to citations.) Nor are there any issues. AAAS's capacity to download materials directly from the journal to a subscriber's printer, hard drive, or floppy disk helps ensure highly accurate transcription. Other features of OJCCT include on-screen alerts that allow linkage of subsequently published doc.u.ments to the original doc.u.ments; on-line searching by subject, author, t.i.tle, etc.; indexing of every single word that appears in an article; viewing access to an article by component (abstract, full text, or graphs); numbered paragraphs to replace page counts; publication in Science every thirty days of indexing of all articles published in the journal; typeset-quality screens; and Hypertext links that enable subscribers to bring up Medline abstracts directly without leaving the journal.

After detailing the two primary ways to gain access to the journal, through the OCLC network and Compuserv if one desires graphics or through the Internet if just an ASCII file is desired, LEBRON ill.u.s.trated the speedy editorial process and the coding of the doc.u.ment using SGML tags after it has been accepted for publication. She also gave an ill.u.s.trated tour of the journal, its search-and-retrieval capabilities in particular, but also including problems a.s.sociated with scanning in ill.u.s.trations, and the importance of on-screen alerts to the medical profession re retractions or corrections, or more frequently, editorials, letters to the editors, or follow-up reports. She closed by inviting the audience to join AAAS on 1 July, when OJCCT was scheduled to go on-line.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCUSSION * Additional features of OJCCT *

In the lengthy discussion that followed LEBRON's presentation, these points emerged:

* The SGML text can be tailored as users wish.

* All these articles have a fairly simple doc.u.ment definition.

* Doc.u.ment-type definitions (DTDs) were developed and given to OJCCT for coding.

* No articles will be removed from the journal. (Because there are no back issues, there are no lost issues either. Once a subscriber logs onto the journal he or she has access not only to the currently published materials, but retrospectively to everything that has been published in it. Thus the table of contents grows bigger. The date of publication serves to distinguish between currently published materials and older materials.)

* The pricing system for the journal resembles that for most medical journals: for 1992, $95 for a year, plus telecommunications charges (there are no connect time charges); for 1993, $110 for the entire year for single users, though the journal can be put on a local area network (LAN). However, only one person can access the journal at a time. Site licenses may come in the future.

* AAAS is working closely with colleagues at OCLC to display mathematical equations on screen.

* Without compromising any steps in the editorial process, the technology has reduced the time lag between when a ma.n.u.script is originally submitted and the time it is accepted; the review process does not differ greatly from the standard six-to-eight weeks employed by many of the hard-copy journals. The process still depends on people.

* As far as a preservation copy is concerned, articles will be maintained on the computer permanently and subscribers, as part of their subscription, will receive a microfiche-quality archival copy of everything published during that year; in addition, reprints can be purchased in much the same way as in a hard-copy environment.

Hard copies are prepared but are not the primary medium for the dissemination of the information.

* Because OJCCT is not yet on line, it is difficult to know how many people would simply browse through the journal on the screen as opposed to downloading the whole thing and printing it out; a mix of both types of users likely will result.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PERSONIUS * Developments in technology over the past decade * The CLa.s.s Project * Advantages for technology and for the CLa.s.s Project *

Developing a network application an underlying a.s.sumption of the project * Details of the scanning process * Print-on-demand copies of books *

Future plans include development of a browsing tool *

Lynne PERSONIUS, a.s.sistant director, Cornell Information Technologies for Scholarly Information Services, Cornell University, first commented on the tremendous impact that developments in technology over the past ten years--networking, in particular--have had on the way information is handled, and how, in her own case, these developments have counterbalanced Cornell's relative geographical isolation. Other significant technologies include scanners, which are much more sophisticated than they were ten years ago; ma.s.s storage and the dramatic savings that result from it in terms of both s.p.a.ce and money relative to twenty or thirty years ago; new and improved printing technologies, which have greatly affected the distribution of information; and, of course, digital technologies, whose applicability to library preservation remains at issue.

Given that context, PERSONIUS described the College Library Access and Storage System (CLa.s.s) Project, a library preservation project, primarily, and what has been accomplished. Directly funded by the Commission on Preservation and Access and by the Xerox Corporation, which has provided a significant amount of hardware, the CLa.s.s Project has been working with a development team at Xerox to develop a software application tailored to library preservation requirements. Within Cornell, partic.i.p.ants in the project have been working jointly with both library and information technologies. The focus of the project has been on reformatting and saving books that are in brittle condition.

PERSONIUS showed Workshop partic.i.p.ants a brittle book, and described how such books were the result of developments in papermaking around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The papermaking process was changed so that a significant amount of acid was introduced into the actual paper itself, which deteriorates as it sits on library shelves.

One of the advantages for technology and for the CLa.s.s Project is that the information in brittle books is mostly out of copyright and thus offers an opportunity to work with material that requires library preservation, and to create and work on an infrastructure to save the material. Acknowledging the familiarity of those working in preservation with this information, PERSONIUS noted that several things are being done: the primary preservation technology used today is photocopying of brittle material. Saving the intellectual content of the material is the main goal. With microfilm copy, the intellectual content is preserved on the a.s.sumption that in the future the image can be reformatted in any other way that then exists.

An underlying a.s.sumption of the CLa.s.s Project from the beginning was that it would develop a network application. Project staff scan books at a workstation located in the library, near the brittle material.

An image-server filing system is located at a distance from that workstation, and a printer is located in another building. All of the materials digitized and stored on the image-filing system are cataloged in the on-line catalogue. In fact, a record for each of these electronic books is stored in the RLIN database so that a record exists of what is in the digital library throughout standard catalogue procedures. In the future, researchers working from their own workstations in their offices, or their networks, will have access--wherever they might be--through a request server being built into the new digital library. A second a.s.sumption is that the preferred means of finding the material will be by looking through a catalogue. PERSONIUS described the scanning process, which uses a prototype scanner being developed by Xerox and which scans a very high resolution image at great speed. Another significant feature, because this is a preservation application, is the placing of the pages that fall apart one for one on the platen. Ordinarily, a scanner could be used with some sort of a doc.u.ment feeder, but because of this application that is not feasible. Further, because CLa.s.s is a preservation application, after the paper replacement is made there, a very careful quality control check is performed. An original book is compared to the printed copy and verification is made, before proceeding, that all of the image, all of the information, has been captured. Then, a new library book is produced: The printed images are rebound by a commercial binder and a new book is returned to the shelf.

Significantly, the books returned to the library shelves are beautiful and useful replacements on acid-free paper that should last a long time, in effect, the equivalent of preservation photocopies. Thus, the project has a library of digital books. In essence, CLa.s.s is scanning and storing books as 600 dot-per-inch bit-mapped images, compressed using Group 4 CCITT (i.e., the French acronym for International Consultative Committee for Telegraph and Telephone) compression. They are stored as TIFF files on an optical filing system that is composed of a database used for searching and locating the books and an optical jukebox that stores 64 twelve-inch platters. A very-high-resolution printed copy of these books at 600 dots per inch is created, using a Xerox DocuTech printer to make the paper replacements on acid-free paper.

PERSONIUS maintained that the CLa.s.s Project presents an opportunity to introduce people to books as digital images by using a paper medium.

Books are returned to the shelves while people are also given the ability to print on demand--to make their own copies of books. (PERSONIUS distributed copies of an engineering journal published by engineering students at Cornell around 1900 as an example of what a print-on-demand copy of material might be like. This very cheap copy would be available to people to use for their own research purposes and would bridge the gap between an electronic work and the paper that readers like to have.) PERSONIUS then attempted to ill.u.s.trate a very early prototype of networked access to this digital library. Xerox Corporation has developed a prototype of a view station that can send images across the network to be viewed.

The particular library brought down for demonstration contained two mathematics books. CLa.s.s is developing and will spend the next year developing an application that allows people at workstations to browse the books. Thus, CLa.s.s is developing a browsing tool, on the a.s.sumption that users do not want to read an entire book from a workstation, but would prefer to be able to look through and decide if they would like to have a printed copy of it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DISCUSSION * Re retrieval software * "Digital file copyright" * Scanning rate during production * Autosegmentation * Criteria employed in selecting books for scanning * Compression and decompression of images *

OCR not precluded *

During the question-and-answer period that followed her presentation, PERSONIUS made these additional points:

* Re retrieval software, Cornell is developing a Unix-based server as well as clients for the server that support multiple platforms (Macintosh, IBM and Sun workstations), in the hope that people from any of those platforms will retrieve books; a further operating a.s.sumption is that standard interfaces will be used as much as possible, where standards can be put in place, because CLa.s.s considers this retrieval software a library application and would like to be able to look at material not only at Cornell but at other inst.i.tutions.

* The phrase "digital file copyright by Cornell University" was added at the advice of Cornell's legal staff with the caveat that it probably would not hold up in court. Cornell does not want people to copy its books and sell them but would like to keep them available for use in a library environment for library purposes.

* In production the scanner can scan about 300 pages per hour, capturing 600 dots per inch.

* The Xerox software has filters to scan halftone material and avoid the moire patterns that occur when halftone material is scanned.

Xerox has been working on hardware and software that would enable the scanner itself to recognize this situation and deal with it appropriately--a kind of autosegmentation that would enable the scanner to handle halftone material as well as text on a single page.

* The books subjected to the elaborate process described above were selected because CLa.s.s is a preservation project, with the first 500 books selected coming from Cornell's mathematics collection, because they were still being heavily used and because, although they were in need of preservation, the mathematics library and the mathematics faculty were uncomfortable having them microfilmed. (They wanted a printed copy.) Thus, these books became a logical choice for this project. Other books were chosen by the project's selection committees for experiments with the technology, as well as to meet a demand or need.

* Images will be decompressed before they are sent over the line; at this time they are compressed and sent to the image filing system and then sent to the printer as compressed images; they are returned to the workstation as compressed 600-dpi images and the workstation decompresses and scales them for display--an inefficient way to access the material though it works quite well for printing and other purposes.

* CLa.s.s is also decompressing on Macintosh and IBM, a slow process right now. Eventually, compression and decompression will take place on an image conversion server. Trade-offs will be made, based on future performance testing, concerning where the file is compressed and what resolution image is sent.

* OCR has not been precluded; images are being stored that have been scanned at a high resolution, which presumably would suit them well to an OCR process. Because the material being scanned is about 100 years old and was printed with less-than-ideal technologies, very early and preliminary tests have not produced good results. But the project is capturing an image that is of sufficient resolution to be subjected to OCR in the future. Moreover, the system architecture and the system plan have a logical place to store an OCR image if it has been captured. But that is not being done now.