Synopsis

Digital information needs to be a first class citizen in the networked environment. The fundamental attribute of digital information is that it is processable data, enabling new forms of electronic commerce, creativity and social benefit.

Some existing and emerging applications have successfully managed information in the form of digital objects which are stored, accessed, disseminated and managed. A digital object is a data structure whose principal components are digital material, or data, plus a unique identifier for this material. A digital object architecture provides naming conventions for identifying and locating digital objects, a service for using object names to locate and disseminate objects, and access protocols, forming an infrastructure that is open, and which supports a large and extensible class of distributed digital information services. Digital libraries are one example of such services; numerous other examples of such services may be found in emerging electronic commerce applications.

Digital information can be similar to or quite different from other forms of information that we are used to dealing with outside the networked environment. This seminar will discuss several examples of information management using digital objects, and also hear from application areas where digitisation is a hot topic.

Agenda with Links to Presentations

1.30 pm

• Introduction (Norman Paskin)
• Video presentation: Bob Kahn on Digital Object Architecture

• Digital Object Architecture overview (Larry Lannom, CNRI)

• Managing digital objects in context:
• The Defense Virtual Information Architecture and the ADL CORDRA registry
  (Larry Lannom/Christophe Blanchi, Corporation for National Research Initiatives)

• Text as digital objects:
• Commercial digitising text initiatives (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)
• Digital text and libraries (Michael Popham, eLibrarian, Oxford University)

• Digital objects and video: (Jim Wilkinson, Chief Research Scientist, Sony Broadcast & Professional Research Labs)

• Digital objects and E-Research: (Anne Trefethen, Oxford e-Research Centre and e-Horizons Institute)

• Social implications: (Ralph Schroeder, Jenny Fry, Matthijs den Besten, Oxford Internet Institute and e-Horizons Institute, University of Oxford)

5.30 pm Close