A new American Council of Learned Societies initiative provides a unique opportunity for libraries and archives to collaborate with scholars in defining the requirements of the new digital infrastructure -- what the National Science Foundation calls the "cyberinfrastructure." Libraries and archives are asked to redefine their roles, responsibilities and funding strategies while focusing on the needs of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Humanists, social scientists and engineers will define and build this infrastructure to meet the needs of researchers and scholars in all disciplines. The ACLS commission's areas of emphasis will be applications like Geographic Information Systems, three-dimensional modeling of built environments, and text mining -- ones that have already begun to change the ways in which scholars interrogate primary sources. Libraries and archives are encouraged to attend public information-gathering sessions, participate in discussions, and contribute to the commission's work. The commission is especially interested in these groups' understanding of the impact of current intellectual property and privacy rights on access to information; the value of standards for information markup and searching; the need for interoperable information technology systems; and the imperative of preservation in a world of scholarly inquiry founded on an uninterrupted record of research.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:10 AM
