Howard Besser

Impact of distance independent education

Distance independent learning has the potential for a fundamental and beneficial transformation of higher education. By combining the best aspects of our present university and college systems with the opportunities offered by recent developments in communications and information technology, distance independent learning could lead to high quality, highly individualized instruction and the creation of intellectual communities that transcend the limitations of time and space. This potential infuses the rhetoric of the proponents of distance independent learning. But much of the rhetoric around distance education is misleading and fails to articulate the potential negative effects of widespread adoption of these new instructional delivery vehicles. In this article, the authors examine the motivations behind proponents of distance education, as well as the potential impact of distance learning upon instructors and students. They also raise questions as to curricular subjects and pedagogical styles that may not be appropriate for this type of instructional delivery. The authors emphasize that the educational community must consider not just the benefits but the non-monetary costs of relying on distance independent educational delivery. Educators must not see distance education as a universal innovation applicable to all types of instructional situations, but must carefully analyze the appropriateness of distance independent learning to various types of instructional situations.

Issues and challenges for the distance independent environment

Instructors are familiar with an infrastructure that supports both instructor and students occupying the same classroom, and with most instructional delivery taking place while they are all present. This same‐time/same‐place delivery system is currently the norm, and few instructors are familiar with other types of delivery. In this article, the author outlines changes in infrastructure that are frequently necessary when one breaks from the traditional same‐time/same‐place model. Not all of these are applicable to all implementations of distance independent education. The author hopes that this article will serve as a basic guideline to the issues that an instructor must tackle in moving from the same‐time/same‐place model to various forms of distance independent education.

Imaging: Fine Arts

Imaging in the fine arts shares many problems and characteristics with imaging in other domains. But almost by definition the fine arts are especially concerned with the preservation and quality of images. In this article we focus on those issues that take on a particular character in the fine arts—issues that are likely to be less crucial in other domains, such as medicine or document scanning. We look at general image quality issues including image capture, resolution, and display, and then turn our attention to the uses of imaging technology for conservation and preservation purposes. Next, we examine the implications of the distribution of digital fine arts images outside their normal environment—libraries, museums, and educational institutions. Finally, we briefly summarize published resources for imaging in the fine arts.

Reference models for digital libraries: actors and roles

This article summarizes the discussions of the DELOS/NSF Working Group that reviewed current research and existing practice to better understand the ways in which actors and their roles are perceived within the digital library community. Definitions given to new roles depend too often on the narrow, subjective perspective of a local context. The current situation makes it difficult to understand objectively the key actor/role issues that arise in individual cases and also to perform comparative analysis between different cases. This work brings to light several issues that warrant further research and underscores the community’s need for formal and objective reference models for the description of actors and their roles in digital libraries.

Collaboration for Electronic Preservation

Resource-sharing and knowledge dissemination have been the driving forces behind late twentieth century preservation collaboration. But with the challenge of digital preservation that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century, collaboration for the discovery of new ways of doing things took on increased importance. Collaborative projects tackled problems like developing new methodologies, establishing standards and best practices, and developing procedures and tools for areas such as emulation and data recovery. This article explains the different driving forces behind collaboration for preservation of electronic material1 and situates them within recent U.S. preservation and library collaboration history. It then provides two case studies of collaborative electronic preservation projects that the author participated in. Finally, it uses the experiences of those studies to identify a modest set of predictors for success in such future projects.

Will copyright protect the public interest

In the past two years the U.S. has witnessed a major effort to overhaul intellectual property law. Under the guise of responding to challenges posed by the increasing amount of information in digital form, the content industry (publishers, motion picture studios, music distributors, etc.) has engaged in a veritable assault on long‐standing public interest practices. In what law professor Pam Samuelson has termed the “Copyright Grab,” the content industry is exploiting concerns over digitization and attempting to reshape the law by strengthening protection for copyright holders and weakening public rights to access and use material.

Finding aid as interface? Enhancing K-12 access to digitized cultural heritage resources through adaptive systems technology: An exploratory study

To what extent must diverse users adapt themselves to singular one-interface systems, and in what ways does this impede access and use? In a perfect world of adaptive systems, backend architecture structuring digital information would be accessible through multiple user interfaces that support the literacy levels, technological capabilities and other characteristics of different user groups. Collaborating with the California Digital Library, usability testing was conducted with 4th and 12th graders to compare the effectiveness of an existing finding aid-based interface with a newly developed prototype interfaco in retrieving cultural heritage information. Findings inform the growing number of efforts by cultural heritage communities—including libraries, archives, museums, and community organizations—to create broader access to their rich resources through digitization.

Interactive distance-independent education : Challenges to traditional academic roles

Distance-independent learning environments will necessitate shifting roles for instructors, research assistants, libraries, administrators, and computer support personnel. This paper reports on a distance-independent class taught at the University of California and the University of Michigan, and examines the challenges this course posed to existing academic culture.

Current research in digital image management. Sponsored by SIG VIS

This panel brings together four LIS researchers in the area of the management of digital images. It offers a look at some of their research activities with a view to providing an update on a number of aspects of research in this important area. Each panelist will provide a brief summary of current research activities with regard to still or moving images. This will be followed by a discussion of how these activities fit into the broader portrait of image research, identification of the main research issues in image management, and an indication of where development is needed.

Image and Metadata Distribution at Seven University Campuses: Reports from a Study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

This paper summarizes the major findings of a University of California study of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL) -- the first large-scale multi-institutional image and metadata distribution experiment in the US. The study examined the costs and social impacts of distributing a large body of digital images and metadata from a set of different museums to universities. Among the findings are that the digital distribution environment, as a whole, appears to be good for individual image usage, but is problematic for group viewing situations such as classrooms. Impediments to widespread adoption include: lack of comprehensive content, absence of necessary tools to facilitate use, and inadequate recognition and support for faculty who adopt new technology in their teaching. Other key issues that still need to be addressed include: integration of consortia-provided images and metadata with images acquired elsewhere; allowing instructors to change descriptive information or annotate images; encouraging the creation of added-value tools; and providing particular user interfaces or new integrated tools. The study also compared the cost of digital distribution to the costs of running an analog slide library.