In September 1997, the University of California established a tenth research library, the California Digital Library (CDL), to serve its nine campuses and eventually, all citizens of the state. Viewed as a collaborative venture of UC's nine campuses, this 'co- library' is the result of 3 years of intensive planning. This new virtual library will 'open its doors' in January 1999, integrating licensed content, the Melvyl system On-Line Archive of California, and services to facilitate sharing among the UC campuses. The panel will discuss the vision for the CDL, its initial release including design and design process, its unique organizational structure as a co-library, and its experience in collection building through licensing, digitization, technology transfer, and data base development.

COS, Inc. is developing a web-based Collaborative Authoring Platform (CAP) for scientific meeting abstracts. The new, open online system allows societies to manage their entire meeting program, from abstract submission, through peer review, to publication - on the WWW. The Entomological Society of America used the COS system to manage their annual meeting this year. The CAP for Scientific Meeting Abstracts enables researchers to submit abstracts to societies on the Web, drafting the content directly in an online form or cutting and pasting it from a word processing program. Because the new system uses the society's membership database as the basis for access management, it can automatically populate itself with information about submitting author(s) who are members. The system assigns a unique ID number to each abstract, then stores it in a centralized relational database enabling fellow authors to review and/or contribute to the abstract- in-process during multiple sessions.

Once submitted, the secure review functionality of the system is activated. Finally, program committees and reviewers can organize and assign abstracts, automatically create the schedule, publish the meeting on the Web, or output the file for printing. Scientists planning to attend can search the database, and prepare personalized itineraries online.

The new system's advanced mechanisms for distrbuted access and secure review lay the groundwork for the next evolution of online collaboration: peer review of full-text scientific and scholarly journal content.

This session will update the attendees on the International DOI Foundation, their contract with the International ISBN Agency for maintenance of the DOI Foundation, system, the identifier itself and related metadata. Activities in Europe and the U.S. have brought together individuals concerned with the identifier itself, as well as the discovery and rights- related metadata required as final decisions on syntax and metadata are reached.

Albert Simmonds will provide an overview of the ISBN Agency arrangements with the Foundation and details on how the system will run; Godfrey Rust will highlight several international initiatives related to the metadata considerations.

The Global Information Locator Service (GILS) is designed to identify and describe information resources so as to assist searchers in obtaining the information they seek. GILS allows a high level of interoperability among disparate communities through use of international standards. This briefing will touch on the policy, standards, and technology aspects of GILS and will describe exemplar implementations in various international, national, and other fora around the world.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in cooperation with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), has developed and is accepting submissions for a database of digital initiative projects taking place in or involving libraries. The objective of the ARL Digital Initiatives Database is to gather information about digital projects of all sizes and scope together in one place. Representation of a wide range of projects will identify knowledge and technical skills within the library community and promote information sharing.

Engineers and librarians team up to enable access to visual resources for faculty, students and citizens alike. CONTENT has applications across a wide range of industries including education, photohouses, museums, libraries, healthcare, newsrooms, etc. It is currently being used for collections of historical photographs, paintings, sports videos, medical images and library materials.

The University of Toronto Library provides access to over 7,500 licensed and public journals and to a wide range of other electronic information resources <http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/eir/summary.cfm>. Use of these resources is primarily by people working outside of the Library. For example, more than 75% of the user of the Elsevier journals on one of the Library's servers is by people working at a distance. About 66% of the use of the Library's electronic information resources server is by people outside the Library.

One of the challenges faced by the University of Toronto Library and by other libraries is how to support people working at a distance from traditional service points. The Library has initiated a project to provide interactive, web-based support for people working at a Library public access computing site far removed from reference/information staff and for people accessing the Library's information systems from one of the University's affiliated teaching hospitals.

During this project, the Library is examining:

-- the kinds of questions asked by remote users and the skills needed to answer them

-- the impact on staff resources if this service were extended to a wider population

-- how to develop an "knowledge base" out of the answers provided - ways to organize resources and information to minimize the need for questions

This project briefing will present an overview of the project and will present preliminary observations.