Digital Library Symposium attracts regional educators

February 15, 2002 -- Renowned experts in the field of library digitalization drew 150 attendees from community colleges, universities, and public libraries from all over the region to the Digital Library Symposium in Duncan Hall on December 11, 2001. Registrants included representatives from AI Discovery, Inc., Compaq, Exxon/Mobil, IBM, Lockheed Martin, and Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Rice's first Digital Library Symposium explored ongoing work in the areas of information retrieval and information management architectures to support use of the rich, multimedia and traditional content needed for effective teaching and research. The symposium was sponsored by the Department of Computer Science, the Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), and the Office of the Chief Information Officer, with funding from the Sheafor-Lindsay Innovation Endowment, established by Rice alumni Steve Sheafor '72 and Cindy Lindsay '73.

"The challenge of creating digital libraries is motivating fundamental research in information science, multimedia information retrieval, human computer interaction, distributed computing, economics, business and other disciplines," said CITI Director Moshe Y. Vardi. "The success of the symposium at Rice highlighted our intense interest in this vital area. I am pleased that Rice has been selected to host the annual Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) in May 2003."

Presentations covered a full spectrum of topics on digitalization, including "From Classic Information Retrieval to Web Search and Beyond" by Andrei Broder, Alta Vista Co., and "Concepts Across the Interspace: Information Infrastructure for Community Knowledge" by Bruce Schatz of Community Architectures for Network Information Systems Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Available electronic symposium presentations are accessible at http://citi.rice.edu/dls/.

See the Rice News article for additional information.