Martin Halbert

Lessons from the information commons frontier

The spontaneous appearance of facilities and services termed Information Commons in many major academic libraries across North America represents a significant new trend which is likely to grow in coming years. The perspectives provided in this commentary may clarify some issues, but also raise new problematic challenges for libraries adopting this new paradigm

The Information Commons: A Platform For Innovation

ABSTRACT Information Commons have successfully served as platforms for innovations in facilities and service programs within libraries over the past 2 decades. In this article, the author makes a series of points concerning the significance and meaning of the Information Commons as a trend, including the strength of the concept as a bridge between the past and future of libraries, limitations in perceptions concerning Information Commons, and the ways that the trend may play out in the future.

Findings from the Mellon Metadata Harvesting Initiative

Findings are reported from four projects initiated through funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001 to explore applications of metadata harvesting using the OAI-PMH. Metadata inconsistencies among providers have been encountered and strategies for normalization have been studied. Additional findings concerning harvesting are format conflicts, harvesting problems, provider system development, and questions regarding the entire cycle of metadata production, dissemination, and use (termed metadata gardening, rather than harvesting).

The Metascholar Initiative: AmericanSouth.Org and MetaArchive.Org

The MetaScholar Initiative is a collaborative endeavor to explore the feasibility and utility of scholarly portal services developed in conjunction with Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting technologies. The MetaScholar Initiative comprises two projects, the MetaArchive and AmericanSouth projects, both funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation totaling

iCAMP: building digital information curation curriculum

600,000. These two projects have created two metadata aggregation networks connecting some 24 libraries, archives, museums, and electronic text centers. Each network has an associated portal being created under the guidance of teams composed of scholars, librarians, archivists, and technologists. The MetaScholar Initiative is studying issues such as metadata normalization, alternative forms of scholarly communication through portals, and the process of facilitating smaller archival institutions in providing better access to their collections through the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH). The MetaScholar Initiative is based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Combined searching of Web and OAI digital library resources

The iCAMP (Information: Curate, Archive, Manage, and Preserve) project is developing a curriculum in digital curation and data management. The project will design and implement four courses using a competency-based curriculum approach. It also integrates principles of sound pedagogy, instructional design, and a learning environment that emphasizes practical training. This paper summarizes the goals and guiding principles behind the curriculum development and instructional design framework.

The DataRes research project on data management

We describe an experiment in combined searching of Web pages and digital library resources, exposed via an open archives metadata provider and Web gateway service. We utilize only free/open source software components for our investigation, in order to demonstrate feasibility of deployment for all institutions.

Chronicles in preservation project

The University of North Texas together with the Council on Library and Information Resources, have received

Metaarchive/lockss distributed preservation networks

226,786 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a two year research project to investigate how the library and information science profession can best respond to emerging needs of research data management in universities. This project will address broad new issues concerning the emerging roles, expectations, and practices arising from requirements announced by NIH, NSF, IMLS and other funding agencies for data management plans as part of proposals.

The cyberinfrastructure for scholars project: componentized architecture for sustainable scholarly portals

The Educopia Institute, with the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the libraries of University of North Texas, Penn State, Virginia Tech, University of Utah, Georgia Tech, Boston College, and Clemson University, have received