Digital Library Conference at Rice University Dec. 11 to feature founder of Internet Archive and other experts

CONTACT: B.J. Almond
PHONE:
(713) 348-6770
EMAIL: balmond@rice.edu

DIGITAL
LIBRARY CONFERENCE AT RICE UNIVERSITY DEC. 11
TO FEATURE FOUNDER OF INTERNET
ARCHIVE AND OTHER EXPERTS
Brewster Kahle will present the closing keynote
address

The founder of The
Internet Archive will present a keynote address at a Digital Library Symposium
being held at Rice University in Houston Dec. 11.

This all-day symposium
will feature a number of experts from around the nation who are setting the
trend in how information from a variety of media formats is being stored and
retrieved electronically.

“Because of the
overwhelming volume of material available electronically, the need to organize,
find and manage information has become greater than ever before, and digital
libraries can address that need,” said Charles Henry, chief information officer
at Rice. “As Fondren Library at Rice continues to adapt to digital technology,
we want students, teachers and researchers to be aware of what is available and
how to use it.”

Digitizing refers to
translating information — be it text, a photo, video, sound or other medium —
into bits of data that can be recombined for easy manipulation and compressed
for storage. Regardless of the format in which information originally appeared,
that information should be readily accessible in a digital library.

Dan Greenstein, director
of the Digital Library Federation (DLF), will discuss the challenges confronting
academic and research libraries over the next decade when he presents the
opening keynote address for the symposium at 8:45 a.m. DLF is a consortium of
libraries and related agencies that are pioneering the use of electronic
information technologies to extend their collections and services.

The morning
presentations will deal with information retrieval.

Michael Lesk, division
director for the National Science Foundation’s Information and Intelligent
Systems, will give a lunchtime talk at noon about how online information is
changing education and research.

The afternoon
presentations will be geared toward digital library architectures.

The closing keynote
address will be presented at 4 p.m. by Brewster Kahle, founder of The Internet
Archive, who will offer a thought-provoking examination of the roles, rights and
responsibilities of libraries, archives, Web sites and other information
institutions in providing public access to information in the Digital
Information Age.

The Sheafor-Lindsay
Digital Library Symposium is being sponsored by the Computer and Information
Technology Institute, the Department of Computer Science and the Office of the
Chief Information Officer, with funding from an endowment established by Rice
alumni Steve Sheafor ’72 and Cindy Lindsay ’73.

The event will be held
from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in McMurty Auditorium in Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. For
a complete list of speakers or to register for the symposium, go to the Web site
at <www.citi.rice.edu/dls>.