9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
OPENING PLENARY SESSIONS

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
WELCOME
Tom Hogan, Information Today, Inc.
 

9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m
Coping with New Technology
Chair: Martha E. Williams, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This is the 21st National Online Meeting (NOM) coinciding with the beginning of the 21st century. As we start the new millennium we are faced with the prospect of ever-increasing amounts of new information technology (IT) for use in electronic publishing, database publishing, and search of and retrieval from resources available on the Internet as well as traditional online services. How are publishers, enterprises, and individual users coping? What can they do to simplify their selection of hardware, software, and information resources? Browsers, filters, indexes, and automated functions of a wide variety of types are now available and far more will be developed in this century. Keeping up has long been a problem but the volume of change may reach exponential proportions.

Speakers at the 21st NOM will address the problems and solutions from the perspectives of information professional users, end users, researchers, and product developers.

Highlights of the Online Database Industry and the Internet
Martha E. Williams, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
 

10:00 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.
KEYNOTE SPEECH
Hot Topics in Internet Law: How Do they Impact on Publishers and Users of Information?
David Mirchin, SilverPlatter
This talk will review the most current developments in Internet law and how they affect the businesses that produce information and users who access the information. David Mirchin will cover the following topics:
1. Is spamming legal? Recent cases & laws
2. Employee gripe sites: Free speech or invasion of a company’s property?
3. Clickwrap licenses: update on cases and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
4. Protection of factual databases: European and U.S. update
5. Deep-linking and framing
Depending on news breaks between now and May 16 David’s list of what’s hot will be expanded to what’s hot at the time of the conference. This will be a very up-to-date overview of Internet issues, cases, and decisions. 
 

10:45 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
Coffee Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

Track A • SEARCHING AND SEARCH ENGINES

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
A1 • Search Engines: Reliability, Quality, Comparative Characteristics
Chair: Ev Brenner, Brenner & Associates

52 Pickup: Characteristics for Search Engine Selection for Health Information Questions
Patricia F. Anderson and Nancy Allee, University of Michigan
Health information needs tend to be critical, both as an urgent need for the patient or caregiver but also in that the quality and appropriateness of the information provided can dramatically impact the quality of life for the health care consumer. Is there a way to consistently find quality answers for these types of questions? A qualitative comparison of standardized search results for 26 general search engines and 26 health information search engines yielded the evidence base for developing a decision tree to assist with the selection of an appropriate search engine for specific health information questions.

The Reliability of Internet Search Engines: Fluctuations in Document Accessibility
Wouter Mettrop and Paul Nieuwenhuysen, CWI and Vrije Universiteit Brussells
The result set of documents, shown by an Internet search engine as response to a query, changes constantly over time. Broadly speaking one can say that alterations in this set are correct if they are a reflection of alterations in the (Web) reality (documents are added or removed). If not, they are incorrect. Incorrect changes do not only concern incorrect removals of documents from the set of indexed documents, or incorrect (late) additions to this set, they also can result from the situation that, once an engine has indexed a document, it from then on does not always succeed in retrieving this document. Our investigations point out that most engines suffer from this “incorrect variable behavior,” in the sense that unexpected and annoying fluctuations exist in the result sets of documents, which means that documents cannot be retrieved reliably. The results from our investigations will be presented in this paper.

The author investigated 13 Internet search engines: AltaVista, EuroFerret, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, MSN, NorthernLight, Snap, WebCrawler and three Dutch engines: Ilse, Search.nl and Vindex. 
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
A2 • Research Toward Improved Systems, Services, & Resources
Chair: Ev Brenner, Brenner & Associates

Information Security & Sharing
Elizabeth D. Liddy, Syracuse University
The role of information specialists has broadened in recent years to include responsibility for the security of the intellectual property of the organization. Working together with network and system administrators, information specialists are asked to ensure that valuable internal information is not innocently or maliciously sent out via electronic messages to recipients who should not be in receipt of sensitive information. This presentation will cover pros and cons of current approaches, and discuss a new NLP-based technique that minimizes the drawbacks of the others. This technique goes beyond current ‘dirty word list’ approaches and instead uses semantic models of an organization’s business policies to better determine which electronic documents are acceptable for release and which are not. The new approach uses advanced Natural Language Processing techniques to extract vital facts and conceptual relationships from the organization’s business rules or corporate policies in order to construct semantic models of these policies. Then, the ‘meaning content’ of outgoing documents is compared against these models, which are known as semantic, releasability models. Based on similarity to the models of acceptable vs. unacceptable messages, the documents are either released or diverted for human review. As a result of the increased sophistication of the approach, only documents that really should not be permitted to pass through the organization’s firewall are halted. And increased, appropriate sharing of information occurs.

The Evolving Psychology of Online Use: From Computerphobia to Internet Addiction
Brian Quinn, Texas Tech University
In the brief space of thirty years, information technology has undergone a remarkable transformation in the minds of end users. This study traces the evolution of end user attitudes toward online use, from the time when computers were first introduced and the subsequent rise of technophobia and technostress, to the emergence of the Web and more recent psychological adaptations-including obsessive compulsive disorders, addiction, and surrogate companionship. The reasons for this transformation-both technological and human-are investigated. A detailed analysis of what makes online use so psychologically engaging is provided. The psychological potential of information technology, it will be shown, has been largely ignored by the media and is still largely untapped. The paper concludes with an in-depth look at some of the practical ways professionals are combining this changing end user psychology with emerging technology to bring about positive psychological adaptations and outcomes in the health care field.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
A3 • Quality: Metrics, Searching, & Practices
Chair: Peggy Fischer, Management Decisions

Quality Metrics: How to Ensure Quality Taxonomies
Claude Vogel and Joshua Powers, Semio Corporation
With the ever growing amount of information, directory and taxonomy building has become a very hot topic. Very different solutions claim to solve this problem, from topic search to neural or conceptual networks. In all cases, a central issue is the quality of the resulting hierarchy. Frequent updates, multiple user needs, growth of information mass are all adverse factors working against quality. This presentation will propose a set of quality metrics and demonstrate their applicability.

Quality Patent Searching
Cynthia Kehoe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A major challenge of patent database quality control is the maintenance of the changing classification scheme. Subject access to the patent literature is primarily through classification codes, which undergo continual revision. Classes and subclasses are added and dropped, as new technologies are developed and older ones modified, and these changes are retroactive. An entire class can be dropped. The original printed patents are not reissued, but database records are updated. Searching a database from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by the old classification will no longer retrieve any records for dropped classes. Most database vendors have instituted schemes of regular replacement of old patent records with the updated ones provided by the USPTO. It has been found that the database records do not accurately reflect changes in the classification scheme. Classification searches in the LEXIS patent database can yield quite different results than in the USPTO databases. Searches of classes that no longer exist in the USPTO files still retrieve records in the LEXIS database. A second quality issue is presented by the creation of patent image databases on the Web. The implications for quality subject searches are examined.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
A4 • Searching the Web by End Users and Professionals
Chair: Peggy Fischer, Management Decisions

End User Database Searching On the Internet: An Analysis of the State of Wisconsin's BadgerLink Service
Dietmar Wolfram and Hong Xie, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Wisconsin’s BadgerLink service, which became available in 1998, provides access to a range of databases from EBSCO and ProQuest to qualified institutions and individuals in Wisconsin. Both EBSCO and ProQuest provide access to the full text or abstract and citation information of more than 5,000 periodicals. Previously only available to information professionals with online access, the Web-based BadgerLink service has now made these databases available to hundreds of libraries and countless end users. The recent availability of usage statistics of the service presents a valuable opportunity to evaluate how it was being used. The authors analyzed six months of usage data, covering the period January through June. Data analyzed included databases accessed, periodical and monograph titles selected, document formats viewed, and institutional affiliation. The authors found that searchers did not just limit themselves to default databases, but were selective about the databases searched. The most frequently accessed titles reflected a broad range of information seeking, with academic information or current events being most popular. Implications of the findings for the provision of end user Internet-based information services are discussed.

The Changing Landscape of Business Research: 
How Internet-Based Services Are Empowering End Users and Focusing Information Professionals
Michael Gallagher, Powerize.com
The Internet has dramatically changed demands for information. Corporate personnel to corporate librarians are on a never-ending hunt for more information that is credible and easily attained. Traditional portals used by the general public don’t often produce the results necessary. Information professionals don’t often have the time or budget to launch full research initiatives to keep up with staff demands. Bridging the gap between demand and supply are new information portals that provide professional level information to all members of an organization — sans the hefty price tag and complicated search algorithms. Such services are enabling information professionals and their organizations to keep up with demand, and provide satisfactory results that are highly relevant and extremely budget-friendly. This paper will address what this means to the business research. Specifically it will address how Internet-based information services are empowering end-users and focusing information professionals.

Searching the Web: 
Users, Tasks and the Web: Their Impact on the Information-Seeking Behavior
Kyung-Sun Kim, University of Missouri-Columbia
This study seeks to investigate how users’ cognitive style and online database search experience affect their information-seeking behavior when they search for information on the Web. Two dimensions of information-seeking behavior are included for investigation: search performance and navigational tool usage. Search performance is measured by the time spent and by the number of nodes visited for the completion of a task. Navigational tool usage is gauged by the number of times a search/navigational tool (e.g. embedded-link, back, etc.) is chosen. Forty-eight undergraduate students participated in this study. Based on their cognitive style (field-dependent vs. field-independent) and online database search experience (experienced vs. novice), the participants were evenly divided into four groups. In a lab session, each participant was asked to search for information on the Web in order to complete tasks given. All screen displays and user inputs were recorded in real time, and the data were analyzed using ANOVA. Findings suggest that users’ online experience and cognitive style interact to influence the search performance. Among those with little or no online database experience (novices), the field-independent individuals outperformed the field-dependents by spending less time and visiting fewer nodes for completing a task. However, the difference created by the cognitive style was almost erased in those individuals with considerable online database experience (experienced searchers). A similar interaction effect was observed in tool usage. Among the novices, the field-dependents tended to use embedded-links and the home button more frequently than the field-independents, whereas these differences disappeared again among the experienced searchers.
 

Track B • WORKING ONLINE: INFORMATION STRATEGIES IN AN ONLINE WORLD

Track Leader, Organizer, and Chair: Jane Dysart, Dysart & Jones Associates
With the current infrastructure of Web and Net technology, the world has become a much smaller place. People work from various locations, continents away from their team and support groups. How do information professionals deal with this environment? This track focuses on working virtually, creating products and services for the desktop wherever it may be, providing 24/7 service to remote users, and more. 
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
B1 • Working Online With Customers and Colleagues: Making the Invisible Visible

Working Online With Customers and Colleagues: Making the Invisible Visible
Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones Associates
Working virtually or "at a distance" from colleagues, clients and, yes, management, presents both tremendous opportunities and daunting challenges. The online content and communication capabilities allow us to provide services globally, any time and to collaborate with team members we may have never met. This can be both innovative and isolating. Out of sight can be out of mind. This paper examines the issues involved with and the competencies necessary to thrive in these new working environments.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
B2 • Working Online: Case Studies
Richard Hulser, IBM
This session focuses on case studies reflecting the issues and experiences of information professionals who are thriving in new working environments. Discussions range from dealing with technology and telecommunications to ensuring that senior management understands your value even if they can’t see you balancing politics and team spirit from a distance.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
B3 • Working Online: Case Studies
Marsha L. Fulton, Arthur Andersen AskNetwork
Jim Hensinger, Bibliographical Center for Research
Carol Myles, SilverPlatter
Our speakers describe the products and services they have developed and currently deliver to global communities. They cover the challenges and learnings they have from those activities, including understanding client needs, licensing, working with intranets and extranets, testing, training, and more.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
B4 • Working Online: Case Studies (cont.)
Marsha L. Fulton, Arthur Andersen AskNetwork
Barbara Herzog, SilverPlatter
 
 

Track C • RESOURCES AND SEARCHING ON THE WEB

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
C1 • What Your Mother and Publisher Never Told You About Databases
Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii
Fee-based databases are expected to provide accurate, timely and comprehensive information, reliable and predictable coverage of core journals, and consistent indexing. The gut reaction to searching fee-based databases is that you get what you are promised and pay for. As the examples will demonstrate this is not always the case. Respected information sources often fall short of expectations and of the promises made in their promotional materials.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
C2 • Most Bang for the Buck Databases
Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii
There are databases on the Web that charge either a transactional fee or flat-rate subscription fee for high quality information resources that are affordable for individuals and corporate users on a shoe-string budget. They often provide far more value per dollar than their expensive competitors in the traditional world of information services.

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
C3 • Grey Literature and the Web of Innovation: Discovery Information Resources 
Chair: Judy Luther, Informed Strategies
Grey literature was redefined at the 1997 Luxembourg Convention. It is that which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, not controlled by commercial publishers. Over the past 30 years, since this term has been in use, it has steadily moved into the mainstream of information society. In the last decade of the 20th Century, it has come to dominate information supply side, and well before the end of the first decade of this 21st Century, Grey Literature will also dominate information demand side. The term Grey Literature had to be redefined not only because it met the problems, which it originally faced; but, more importantly, by doing so, it came to challenge commercial publishers, who had done everything to question the value of grey literature. Because the producers of grey literature are the users of grey literature, it was but a matter of time, before academic institutions, business and industry, as well as government and international organizations realized that what they were producing in print was not a commercially viable product, however, its content was of equal value to commercial publications. With the technological developments, especially the World Wide Web, Grey literature is now also seen by commercial publishers as both knowledge rich and market ready. 

The Grey Link in the Information Supply and Demand Chain
by Dominic Farace, Grey Literature Network Service (GreyNet); presented by Eileen Breen, MCB University Press
In the field of grey literature, perhaps even more than in other fields, Internet brings a deep change in the typology of information sources, in their circulation, production and use. Some typical features of grey literature such as quick and informal information exchange, particularly appreciated by businesses, are increased by the potentialities of the Net. Since the rise of Internet and the development of electronic access to information, an increasing mass of documents is available to a growing number of users. In this context, we can no longer talk of the limited dissemination of non-commercial, hard-to-access information and documentation. The speakers in this session will help you to understand and discover the wealth of grey literature on the web.

Corporate Research: Accessing Grey Literature through Traditional Sources
Helen Barsky Atkins and Helen Szigeti, ISI
It has long been the function of secondary, or abstracting and indexing (A&I), services to provide users with ready means to identify and access primary documents. A&I services traditionally provide this access to a limited number of primary document types; many services index only journal articles. As the various types of grey literature (which in the past have been difficult to find for both users and A&I’s) are becoming more easily accessible through the World Wide Web, they are becoming integrated more and more into existing A&I services. Secondary services are expanding their products’ content beyond descriptions of journal articles and books to descriptions of, and links to, new types of documents. In this paper we will provide examples of how this trend — expanding the types of documents that are indexed and/or linked to — serves the needs of the corporate research community.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
C4 • Grey Literature in the Government and Public Sector

Grey Literature in the Government: Mixing Up Black & White
Bonnie Carroll & Bonnie Klein, Information International Associates, Inc.
Today’s information technologies have fundamentally changed the nature of communication and are dramatically impacting the publication processes that have supported governmental functions. This includes scholarship (research and development), operations, and intelligence. In particular, the Internet has transformed the traditional life cycle of “documents” to the extent that the concept of a document itself has been a point of debate. In this regard, the definition of gray literature becomes a useful concept to help inform the discussion. We will explore the nature of gray literature in the context of a government structure which has been a strong advocate of an electronic society. Scientific and technical information will be used as a case study.

Grey Literature in Academics and Other Knowledge Rich Communities
Julia Gelfand, University of California, Irvine
Universities and academic research environments have been hotbeds of creativity in all disciplines they support. In addition, the proliferation of multidisciplinary activity and new emerging subdisciplines has spawned innovative practices of scholarly communication suggesting a variety of creative information products and partnerships between academic institutions, government and private industry. Many of these resources and its content had and have enormous value to diverse populations and did not make it into traditional publishing pipelines. Options for grey literature have multiplied with electronic distribution and the reliance of the Internet. This paper will explore how scholarly communication channels and new information technologies now enhance the attraction and value of grey literature from origins in academic communities and have positioned grey literature as knowledge in a more mainstream path for access, delivery, manipulation, use and archival retention.
 
 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17

8:15 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. 
SPECIAL BREAKFAST PRESENTATION

e-GADS!
Ron Dunn, President, Thomson Learning
The e-craze rolls on, and as we’re constantly bombarded with stories about sky-high Internet stock prices, megamergers, and overnight gazillionaires, it’s hard to keep those visions of sugarplums from dancing in our heads.

But to paraphrase an old TV commercial, “Where’s the e-beef?” How much is the real world going to change because of the Internet, and how fast? How should we prepare to cope with all the threats and opportunities the new century will bring?

Ron Dunn, whose views on all things “e-” have been variously characterized as rational, skeptical, irreverent, and even antediluvian (but never, to his knowledge, visionary), will explore these and other current issues in this special breakfast session.
 

9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. 
OPENING PLENARY SESSION
Chair: Martha E. Williams, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Information Visualization
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
Human perceptual skills are remarkable, but largely underutilized by current graphical user interfaces. The next generation of animated GUIs, information search, and visual data mining tools can provide users with remarkable capabilities if designers follow the Visual Information-Seeking Mantra: overview  first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand. But this is only a starting point in the path to understanding the rich set of information visualizations that have been proposed. Two other landmarks are: 

Direct manipulation: visual representation of the objects and actions of interest and rapid, incremental, and reversible operations

Dynamic queries: user controlled query widgets, such as sliders and buttons, that update the result set within 100 msec. and are shown in the early HomeFinder and FilmFinder prototypes, NASA environmental data libraries, WestGroup legal information, LifeLines (for medical records and personal histories), Spotfire (commercial multidimensional visualization tool), and PhotoFinder for personal photo libraries.

Information visualizations can be categorized into 7 datatypes (1-, 2-, 3-dimensional data, temporal and multi-dimensional data, and tree and network data). This taxonomy and its application can guide researchers and developers.
 
 

Track D • NEW SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL TECHNOLOGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Co-Track Leaders and Co-Chairs: Stephen Arnold, Arnold Information Technologies, and Susan E. Feldman, International Data Corporation

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
D1 • New Directions & Dilemmas

Retrieval Dilemmas: Barriers and Challenges to Information Retrieval Systems
Susan E. Feldman, International Data Corporation
Search engines are fairly competent at matching queries and documents. Now, where do we go from here? In particular, how will we deal with the special problems of searching very large mixed collections of multimedia, text and relational database materials? How do we make systems usable and understandable? Can we help searchers ask for what they really want by improving their queries? How do we measure how effective a retrieval system is? And how can we make today’s systems adapt to changing information needs and changes in subject terminology? This introduction to the New Technologies Track will raise the questions that other speakers will answer during the day.

Spiraling Into Control: New and Improved Searching
Matt Koll, AOL Fellow, Founder, Personal Library Software
Matthew Koll will discuss trends in the features and functionality of search services. He will talk about functional advances — why some work and why others do not, how they relate to each other, how they relate to research in information retrieval, and how they relate to knowledge of how users interact with systems. He will explore issues trade-offs in terms of scale vs. responsiveness, comprehensiveness vs. precision, functionality vs. ease-of-use, and novelty vs. authority. He will attempt to predict where this field is headed.

Visualization
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
D2 • Pushing the Retrieval Boundaries

The Eighth Text Retrieval Conference (TREC 8)
Ellen M. Voorhees and Donna Harman, National Institute of Standards & Technology
NIST and DARPA have sponsored the Text Retrieval Conferences (TRECs) since 1992, providing a cross-system evaluation forum for search engines that attracted 66 participating groups from 16 countries in 1999. The basic task is to search large amounts of text (around 2 gigabytes) and produce ranked lists of documents that answer a specific set of test questions. The more recent TRECs have included additional tasks called “tracks” that extend this paradigm to evaluating related areas. This emphasis on individual experiments evaluated within a common setting has successfully advanced the state-of-the-art: retrieval performance has doubled since TREC began. TREC-8 (1999) included 7 tracks, which taken together represented the bulk of the experiments performed in TREC-8. Tracks continuing from previous years investigated cross-language retrieval, retrieval of spoken documents (news broadcasts), automatic construction of text filters, the effect of query variability on search effectiveness, and cross-system evaluation of interactive systems. In addition, two new tracks were introduced. The Question Answering track was the first large-scale evaluation of systems that retrieve answers, as opposed to documents, in response to a question. The Web track investigated how Web searching differs from other search tasks.

Text Mining & Beyond
Elizabeth D. Liddy, Syracuse University
Recent advances in Natural Language Processing-based information access and analytic technologies can be coupled with clarifying visualization techniques to produce systems that facilitate advanced text-mining capabilities — a specialized form of data mining. The utility of Text Mining is pervasive in organizations where much of the knowledge needed to better manage, market, and sustain an organization resides in unstructured textual documents — either internal to the organization or externally. The same advanced NLP technology can be applied to all such sources to automatically produce rich, structured knowledge bases containing vital information for planning and decision-making.

Along with details of her most recent NLP research which is producing applications for a range of organization types, Dr. Liddy will describe extensions of Text Mining to information extraction and summarization, as well as showing semantically based tools for viewing, organizing, and retrieving text from a range of complex document types for use in relevant knowledge management applications.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
D3 • New Products Overview: Agents & More

New Search-and-Retrieval Services Technologies
Stephen Arnold, Arnold Information Technologies
This talk offers a rapid review of the newest search-and-retrieval services technologies, packaging and business models. Web-centric search-and-retrieval services are undergoing a sea of change. The implications of the shift from lists of sites and robot-created indices will increase the stakes in the already high-stakes games of content access. Through case analyses of new and innovative search-and-retrieval services, the technical, business and market issues provide the attendee with practical insight into these new directions.

The session will explore the embedding of intelligence within the user’s browsing environment. This will be illustrated by discussions of new search and retrieval technologies. Among the topics that will be explored in the talk will be:

• Metacrawlers. The deduplication and relevance ranking tools found in Copernic 2000 and Bull’s Eye reduce the time required to run searches across multiple engines.
• For-Fee Content with Value-Added Features. The addition of technical enhancements to fee and for-fee Internet search engines. The services that will be reviewed are Northern Light and Powerize.
• Agent-Enhanced Search-and-Retrieval. The focus will be on the use of the Internet Explorer 5.x software development kit as a host for search and retrieval.

Machine Learning for Text Categorization: Background and Characteristics
David Lewis, AT&T Labs Research
Text categorization is the automated assignment of documents to controlled vocabulary categories, or similarly meaningful classes. Interest in text categorization has exploded recently, with new applications such as email filtering, Web directories, and virtual databases.  Current research focuses on machine learning methods that produce text categorization rules automatically from examples of categorized documents.  We will review advances in these techniques and discuss how ready they are for operational use.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
D4 • Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Getting the User to Ask the Right Question and Receive the Right Answer: 
A Cognitive and Linguistic Science Approach to Searching the Internet
Jeff Stibel, Simpli.com
Why is it so difficult to search the Internet? It is difficult because people and computers store and retrieve information in fundamentally different ways. By utilizing the power of cognitive science and linguistics, search engines can correct the communication process and create an optimal environment for retrieving relevant information. Jeff Stibel, Chairman of Simpli.com will discuss search and information retrieval based on these principles and offer new suggestions. Simpli.com has developed a proprietary technology called SimpliFind™ to dramatically improve search and eCommerce infrastructure on the Internet.

Using NLP to Find High Quality Information on the Internet
Ilia Kaufman, KCSL, Inc.

Evolving Intelligent Agents for Dynamic Information Retrieval
Edmund Yu, MNIS-TextWise Labs
Productive use of online resources is hampered by the very thing that makes them attractive: the huge glut of information. An excessive amount of time is required to locate useful data, and the dynamic and transient nature of many online data repositories means that much information is lost, overlooked or quickly outdated. Information seekers require an individualized, autonomous agent-based system that can learn about a user’s specific interest in a particular topic, then efficiently scour diverse resources unattended, looking for relevant information to return to the user for inspection. We approach this agent learning task from two different levels, the local level of individual learning agents, and the global level of inter-agent operations. We ensure that each agent can be optimized from local knowledge, while the globally monitoring evolutionary/genetic algorithm acts as a driving force to evolve the agents collectively based on the global pooled knowledge. The end goal of this learning scheme is to produce a new generation of agents that benefit from the learning experiences of individual ‘parent’ agents and the collective learning experiences of all previous generations. We will describe our evolutionary, neuro-genetic approach to creating and controlling intelligent agents, and a prototypical Web-based agent system that we constructed using this approach.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
D5 • Criteria for Selecting Information Products and Software 

How to Choose Information Products and Software
Susan E. Feldman, International Data Corporation
We are on the very edge of what is practical and available when we design Web-based information access systems. Can we find affordable software that supports the most advanced ideas in digital libraries and corporate intranets? Will it survive the shifting demands and changes of the Internet? Find-It Illinois , a project of the Illinois State Library, hired Datasearch to develop criteria for selecting software that would search the Web sites of every state agency, a state-wide library OPAC, and digitized collections being created by the State Library. Since the ISL is the archive of record for state documents, grabbing and storing all significant changes to every agency document was of particular concern. This presentation discusses some of the criteria that were developed for the project. A round table discussion which follows the presentation invites the day’s speakers as well as the audience to brainstorm about how to choose information software. How do you select the right software for a state of the art digital library? What are the criteria to use, and can anyone meet them? We discuss the criteria developed for the Illinois State Library’s Web-based state information system. This included criteria for search engines, change monitoring, and Web-based OPAC access. The project required Web access to all state documents, digitized collections, and an OPAC covering all public, school, and some university holdings. Changes in all state documents needed to be monitored, and a dependable archive built for historical and legal purposes.

Round Table Discussion: Choosing Information Software
Steve Arnold and Susan E. Feldman will discuss with Technology Track speakers the best ways of selecting information software.
 
 

Track E • WALL STREET ONLINE 
Track Leader, Organizer, and Chair: Jane I. Dysart, Dysart, Jones & Associates
Instantaneous, global information on Wall Street and other financial corridors around the world is a given in the new millennium. Net and Web technologies provide organizations with key tools to make this happen and to enhance their ebusinesses. This track focuses on online financial information, intranets, desktop strategies, and case studies of successful information services on the street.

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
E1 • Content & Intranets
Simon Bradstock, Factiva
Richard Rowe, RoweCom
Gary Mueller, Internet Securities Inc.
Leading providers of strategic business information for corporate intranets share their views of distributing critical information throughout Wall Street and other organizations. Each provider gives a thumbnail sketch of their content in action and a brief case study aimed at providing strategies for information distribution and ideas to apply to an organization.
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
E2 • Optimizing Desktop Access: Enterprise Strategies & Impacts
Joel W. Bland, William Blair & Co.
Additional speakers to be announced
Web technologies are revolutionizing the way business is done on the street. On the way to being a one stop shop for critical content, these case studies focus on libraries that are providing access to key content in a fast, reliable way to hundreds of users over many different cities. They discuss the challenges, experiences, and learnings in providing access, guidance to effective usage of the content, and more.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
E3 • Optimizing Online Opportunities: New Roles
Craig W. Wingrove, Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Additional speakers to be announced
This session presents a look at the roles that information professionals on the Street are not only taking on but excelling in! From Internet and intranet librarians, Web trainers and publishers, and content negotiators to information architects and taxonomists, information professionals have key roles on Wall Street. Hear their success stories and learn from their experiences.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
E4 • Financial Vortals
Lawrence Sterne, Wall Street Research Net
Representative from Primark
“Portals and e-commerce, while certainly presenting new opportunities for code and content, will also accelerate the transformation of what were once proprietary products to commodity items,” Primark’s Chairman Joseph Kasputys said. “In the quest to gain subscribers and customers, portals and e-merchants will strive to make their sites, and the services offered therein, as complete as possible. So, an advertising supported portal may throw in an attractive free software tool, just as an e-commerce site for investors will include some free financial databases as an inducement to generate revenue-producing brokerage transactions.” Vertical portals, or vortals, are the latest hot sites on the web. This session presents several vortals in the financial services arena. 
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
E5 • Information Industry Picks for 2000
Jed Laird, Chris Balcius Laird, and Steve Case, Laird Squared, LLC
Additional speakers to be announced
Speakers from leading investment banks and venture capital firms, specializing in the information and information technology industries, share their picks and forecasts of winners in business information. Hear their ideas and make your own plans for the millennium.
 
 

Track F • THE LAW, THE NET, AND COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
F1 • The Law and the Net: Full Text, Copyright, and Rights Management
Chair: Cynthia Sidlo, LEXIS-NEXIS

Changing the Times: The Tasini Decision and Why Future Full-Text Sources May Cost More or Not Be Complete
Shelly Warwick, Queens College Flushing
In October of 1999 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Tasini vs. The New York Times reversed a 1997 district court decision that had held that The New York Times and the other defendants had the right to include the work of freelance writers in the full-text database it sold to vendors, even if the contract with the freelance writer did not specifically grant the rights for such further publication. Some possible impacts of the appeals court decision on information sources include a rise in cost of information resources based on publishers paying additional fees to freelancers for additional rights; a rise in the cost of information based on individuals having to pay per-article fees for the right to access the work of a freelancer within a database; the transition of full-text resources to “partial-text” resources if the work of freelancers is not included; and the loss of the viewpoints of freelancers who will not grant downstream rights.  The National Writer’s Union (NWU), which supported the freelancers in their suit, has created the Publication Rights Clearing House to license the work of writers and is encouraging writers to fight for their copyright and additional fees. 

The New Law and Technology of Copyright
Glen Secor, Yankee Rights Management, Inc.
Without effective rights management, digital content coupled with digital delivery mechanisms will only partially exploit the underlying value of copyrighted works. Effective digital distribution of copyrighted works depends upon fully automated, real-time rights management. How do you handle digital rights clearance and rights protection? The very latest in digital rights management and digital distribution technology and standards will be addressed, including real-world advice on how to implement and utilize Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMs). This paper also addresses the business case for digital rights management, a technology overview, business models, copyright meta-data standards, the new DRM tools and applications of DRMs in the online world. 

A New Model for Publishing on the Internet
Mike O’Donnell, icopyright.com
Content creators and publishers want to make money publishing online. They also want to have more control over how their content is being used. The RIP Model (Reprints and Interactive Permissions) provides a new source of revenue by taking full advantage of the breadth, depth and diversity of the online audience according to their needs for specific pieces of content and how they want to use it. 
The model recognizes that the product is not a newspaper, a magazine or a CD; it is the article, the photograph, the graphic, the lyrics, the score, the frame and the other “parts” that people really want and are willing to pay for. Each part over the long run will provide a return greater than that of the publication in which it was originally published. Therein lies the secret to a new business model that works equally well for creators of content, publishers of content and consumers of content in the digital age.
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
F2 • High Quality Free Web Alternatives for Information Professionals
Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii
There is an increasing number of free Web databases that can substitute some of the time for some of the most widely used fee-based resources that have been used by information professionals. These include abstracting/ indexing databases, table of content services, review sources and even full-text issues of journals for current awareness.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
F3 • Competitive Intelligence: Accuracy, Tools & Techniques for Small and Large Firms
Chair: Michael Gruenberg, Carroll Publishing

Small Business Intelligence: People Make It Happen
Jerry Miller, Simmons College
A manager of a small business needs to ask some critical questions: What is my business now? Who are my actual competitors? What products and services are they offering now? How can I grow my share of the market? These are challenging questions. To answer them, learn from managers of successful small businesses that use competitive intelligence extensively. This presentation will provide an overview of Miller’s findings, including examples from these firms.

Recent statistics from the Small Business Administration illustrate the rapid growth in this sector within the United States. Small businesses (those with 500 or fewer employees) number over 24 million; dominate the engineering, management services, amusement and recreation industries; accounted for 2.4 million new jobs in 1998; and employ a larger proportion of younger, older, female and part-time workers than large- and medium-sized businesses. Today, these managers are seeking a clear understanding of the intelligence function and how they should conduct it appropriately. However, little is available, because most studies have focused on Fortune 500 firms. In response, researchers are now studying the topic.

Miller’s ongoing survey includes firms that prominent business leaders, articles in the business press, and small business-related Web sites identify as operating successfully. To be included in Miller’s study, firms must exhibit the following attributes: employ 500 or fewer people, respond quickly to changes in their marketplace, and have been operating for at least five years.

Digging for Data? Make Sure to Use the Right Shovel: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition With Online Intelligence
Gidi Cohen, Vigil Technologies
Gidi Cohen will discuss online intelligence in terms of the new tools and techniques out there for keeping informed of important developments in your industry. Whether you are an entrepreneur monitoring the competition, a manager keeping tabs on your industry, or a sales exec personalizing your next pitch, you can benefit by using the Internet. But who has the time to effectively manage the enormous amount of information available on the Web? How can I use sophisticated delivery tools that are available to reduce information overload for myself and my employees in order to gain the greatest possible competitive edge? Is online intelligence about more than just search engines?

How has the growth of the Internet prompted entrepreneurs in the areas of competitive intelligence, customer relationship management, sales, and marketing to come together and develop sophisticated solutions for online information gathering?

Effective Competitive Intelligence
Morris Blatt, OnTrac Solutions
In today’s increasingly fast-paced, high technology world, project deadlines are becoming shorter and data gatherers, as well as competitive intelligence and competitive analysis professionals, are functioning in a time compression atmosphere and may not or can not make the time to verify or validate data accuracy. The session includes: (1) The definition of a competitive intelligence process from efficient data gathering through effective strategic decision making (including ways to improve the relationships and interactions between data gatherers and competitive intelligence personnel) (2) Definitions and examples of the differences between accuracy and precision (3) Examples of the impact of those differences on data gathering and competitive intelligence processes (4) The identification of numerous sources of global CI data (5) The identification of pitfalls encountered in global financial and non-financial data (6) Recommendations to resolve those pitfalls while gathering and processing competitive information (7) Examples of how implementation of these steps will enhance data gathering, competitive intelligence, competitive analysis, and strategic planning processes.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
F4 • Virtuality in Providing Information
Chair: Jerry Miller, Simmons College

The Virtual Internet Service Provider (ISP) 
Ronald Lipof, ZipLink, Inc.
Today’s consumers have grown to expect a lot from their vendors. They now expect to get information quickly and anonymously, and this means the Internet. But what can businesses do to further differentiate themselves on the Internet after creating a new Web site? Wholesale Internet connectivity providers offer new options. These organizations maintain their own dedicated national communications infrastructures to enable new opportunities on the Internet to organizations and businesses of all kinds. Many wholesale Internet connectivity providers also offer enhanced services such as billing, e-mail, and news services. Partnering with one of these organizations enables the service provider to become a virtual ISP, and to offer their subscribers low-cost Internet access. 

The advantages to outsourcing the ISP functions are many. Through outsourcing organizations can gain access to a national network and enhanced services without incurring the cost of installing, maintaining, and constantly upgrading equipment. 

Information Integration Technology: The Gateway to New Revenue
Jim Berardone, Time
Today’s information services are built upon a centralized data model. Content is acquired from multiple sources, transformed into a normal form, indexed and loaded into a central database. As a result, content aggregation is costly and the currency of the information suffers. Information Integration Technology provides a new model for aggregating information. This new technology is engineered for today’s network of distributed sources. It features dynamic creation of virtual databases from multiple heterogeneous sources, remote and local, in real-time. Users benefit from having a single interface to multiple distributed information sources. Information aggregators benefit because information services can be created in real-time without loading data.

This presentation will discuss and demonstrate the technology, its applications, and the benefits to information aggregators, and highlight the providers that offer this new technology.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
F5 • Sharing Resources
Chair: Cynthia Sidlo, LEXIS-NEXIS

Project DL: A Digital Library Resource Website
Thomas R. Kochtanek, Karen K. Hein, Carol Lee-Roark, Tulsi Regmi, Juraruk Cholharn and Heidi Currie, University of Missouri-Columbia
The Purpose of Project DL is to provide an integrated resource where diverse information sources on the topic of Digital Libraries (DLs) may be brought together to be used as a learning tool to explore research and development of Digital Libraries. The focus of this site is on accessing Digital Library collections as well as information resources related to the study of Digital Libraries. As such, the current Web site (www.coe.missouri.edu/ ~is334/project DL) is segmented into three distinct but integrated sections: DL collections, DL resources, and DL Web Sites. The first section of the Web site portrays URLs identified and submitted by graduate students in the School of Information Science & Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Students generated these unique resources as part of their class discussions revolving around topics in the area of Library Information Systems. The URLs presented in this first section are organized in three different schemes: An alphabetical listing of all of the DL URLs submitted to date, a listing of URLs arranged by subject area, and DL research and development projects participating in the Digital Libraries Initative—Phases 1 and 2.

The second section of the Web site represents electronically-available information resources related to issues of Digital Library Research and Development. This section includes: Sites reporting DL R&D (including a few DL project overviews), Web sites provided by researchers engaged in DL issues, bibliographic resources leading to additional information resources (both print and electronic), print resources and electronic journals providing broader coverage of information technology including DL R&D, and conferences and proceedings addressing DL R&D.

E-Mail This Story to a Friend: A Study of Sharing Tools on Newspaper Websites
Sanda Erdelez and Kevin Rioux, University of Texas at Austin
Many newspaper Websites include buttons or links that are labeled with the text “Email this Story to a Friend” or similar. These tools allow users to conveniently forward news and feature stories of interest to friends, family and colleagues via email. Forwarding behavior on the Web is a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of marketers who are interested in extending and fine-tuning their Web-based advertising campaigns. As their industry is heavily dependent on advertising, newspaper managers would also benefit from increased knowledge about “forwarding buttons.” Although forwarding buttons are increasingly popular on newspaper Websites, a systematic study of their design, placement and functions has not yet been undertaken. The proposed paper will report on new study findings that are intended to fill this research void. 

The authors have selected from a list of the top 50 daily newspapers in the United States a sample of 10-15 newspaper Websites that include forwarding buttons. Websites are categorized in terms of the location and design features of the forwarding button, functional features of the button (e.g., including multiple recipient options, the ability to include a personal note, feedback from mailer) and recipient issues (e.g., whether the recipient receives text or a URL link, the existence of a privacy disclosure, the presence of advertising included in the forwarded message, etc.).  The paper concludes with a discussion of perceived benefits and drawbacks of forwarding buttons for senders, recipients, and content providers.

How to Harness Technology for Better End-User Services
Gwyneth H. Crowley, Texas A&M University
It is a prevalent misconception that people can get any information they want on the WWW when in fact, it is a mish-mash of information. Users must be very discerning. Technology, though, does provide an excellent way to offer information. The challenge is in providing and organizing good information. In striving to meet the patrons’ demand for these electronic resources, Texas A&M General Libraries is participating in several technological collaborative projects. Like other universities and colleges, they can’t go it alone to provide electronic resources due to the enormous expense. They spend 1.2 million dollars a year on databases and e-journals, and this is a small portion of resources that they offer. It is hoped that by sharing the cost of providing electronic products cooperatively they can increase electronic access. The projects to be discussed are TEXSHARE, The Big 12 Plus Initiative, Web of Science E! DIS Service, and BioOne. These ventures entail database sharing, document delivery and a full-text publication project.
 
 

THURSDAY, MAY 18

9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. 
OPENING PLENARY SESSION
Electronic Publishing of an Online Emergency Reference Text and Other Multi-Author Online Medical References 
Scott Plantz, eMedicine.com, Inc.
In Nepal, a pediatrician determines the differential diagnosis for a sick child with fever and abdominal pain. In Boston, a Harvard medical student performs background research for a case study with the most up-to-date literature. In Albuquerque, a woman suffering from migraines reads about the side effects of the medication she is taking. Although at opposite ends of the globe, these three individuals can simultaneously take advantage of the most current, accurate medical information available located at www.emedicine.com. and developed during the past year by Scott Plantz, M.D. and Jonathan Adler, M.D. The site offers free, high quality, medical information on such topics as emergency medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery, dermatology, neurology and ophthalmology. The online references also integrate photos, x-rays, video and audio with the text to allow for a new dimension that a printed text cannot offer.

But what sets this site apart from other medical information databases is the cutting-edge nature of the information available. Since the doctors who author these texts are able to logon to the site and update their chapters any time, day or night, emedicine delivers the most contemporary medical information in an accessible medium with no cost to users.

Since almost forty percent of the searches done by the general public ask health care-related questions and the number one concern of these inquiries is the questionable quality of the information found, emedicine has found a way to educate both doctors and the general public. Updates are done through the Group Publishing System, also known as GPS. This technology allows authors continuous access to their works. GPS was designed and developed by Plantz and Adler in conjunction with the software development team of Jeff and Joanne Berezin.
 

Track G • SEARCH ENGINES, IR, AND THE WEB

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
G1 • Search Engines: Multiple Languages and Multiple Strategies
Chair: David Raitt, The Electronic Library

An Exploration of Search Strategies and Search Success in Digital Libraries vs. OPACS
Luisa Sabin-Kildiss, Engineering Information, Inc.
Research in the area of digital libraries has primarily focused on the development of techniques for building and providing access to these new and expanding digital collections. Less attention has been directed to questions about the uses and usability of digital libraries, or about users’ experiences with this new library form. This paper addresses a gap in our knowledge about digital libraries and their users by asking how users of the traditional library will adapt their pre-existing searching strategies and mental model of the library itself to the new digital environment, and how this might effect search success. To date, no published studies have focused on how searching for information in a digital library compares to searching in a traditional library, and what conceptual shifts the user of a digital library will need to make in order to effectively access information within it.

An empirical investigation was conducted to address the following questions: (1) What mental models of the traditional library OPAC or card catalog do users bring to digital libraries? (2) In what ways do these pre-existing mental models effect searching behaviors in the digital library environment? (3) How successful are novice users of the digital library at retrieving relevant information, and what factors predict success or failure? Results of the study will be presented.

How Are You Going to Find It: What Librarians Don't Know, Think They Know, Want to Know, and Should Know About Web Search Engines
Dennis Brunning, Arizona State University
Current estimates put the indexable Web at 320 million hypertext formatted pages. Of these pages, only one-third are indexed by available search engines. Within this indexing, scope, coverage, method, and performance vary widely, creating huge problems of finding pages relevant to queries typically dealt with by librarians. This paper focuses on dilemmas, solutions, strategies, and questions librarians face in using Web search engines. We will address the following questions:

• Which search engines do reference librarians rely upon in daily practice and why?
• How do reference librarians keep up-to-date on search engine technology and interfaces?
• How well do reference librarians understand the scope of search engine coverage?
• How do reference librarians go about confirming understandings of the scope, coverage, searching interface, and performance of search engines?
• What design, database scope and coverage, and performance features would reference librarians wish to be incorporated into search engines?

Multilingual Search Engines on the Internet: Country Distribution and Language Capability
Shaoyi He, Long Island University
The advanced evolution of the Internet has brought many new features into Web search engines and one of them is to search Websites in different languages. Among the hundreds of Web search engines that have been developed in various parts of the world, many of them have search capabilities in different languages, e.g., Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Despite many studies on Web search engines, little attention has been paid to multilingual search engines, and two questions remain unanswered: (1) Which countries have developed the most number of multilingual search engines? (2) Which multilingual search engines have included the most number of languages for Web searching? In order to answer the above questions, this paper discusses a survey on multilingual search engines for their distribution in countries and capability in languages. Shaoyi He suggests some future research directions for studying multilingual search engines on the Internet.
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
G2 • Online Search Systems: Quality, Features and Functions
Chair: Brian Quinn, Texas Tech University

Establishing and Maintaining Trust in Online Systems
Claire McInerney, University of Oklahoma
Quality may be the most important consideration in the responsible creation and maintenance of information. If high quality standards are missing from an organization's commitment to information collection, organization, and dissemination, the entire information and knowledge system may have serious flaws affecting how information is valued and used by clients and organizational members. 

The literature of the social sciences and humanities help us to understand trust and how it breaks down in organizations. As organizations become international players in a global economy, and individuals find themselves working in virtual offices and on virtual teams, trust becomes even more critical to work and collaboration. 

This session will examine trust factors in communication and information provenance and apply those factors to online systems. There has been a small amount of research on trust in electronic systems, but not a great deal. The presenter will report on some of her own research involving trust and online information. The research will be summarized, and used as a bridge to the practical matter of creating trust in systems design and implementation. Particular emphasis will be given to Web sites and Web designs that foster trust and credibility.

Online Interface Comparison: Features and Functionalities
Hong (Iris) Xie, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and 
Colleen Cool, Queens College, CUNY
This paper reports results of a study that was conducted to investigate user preferences for a variety of Web and non-Web interfaces to online databases. In particular, the focus was on identifying aspects of system features and interface functionalities that are preferable among online database users. Twenty-eight graduate students participated in the study. Each student performed similar searching tasks using multiple online systems with different interface conditions. Participants were asked to evaluate each of the Web and non-Web interfaces for usability, effectiveness and overall preference. Results of the study indicate that some of the functions of Web interfaces outperform non-Web interfaces; but at the same time they are not universally preferred. This study identifies specific system features and interface conditions that are highly preferable and usable, along with a discussion of particular weaknesses in poorly designed systems. Suggestions for improvements in the design of existing online systems and interfaces are discussed.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
G3 • Search Systems
Chair: Mary Berger, Ei

Internet vs. Traditional Online: The Changing Face of Government Information Access
Teresa McGervey, National Technical Information Service
As new search engines become available on the Internet and continue to make vast quantities of data and information accessible to the novice searcher, the traditional online search services, such as DIALOG, STN, and OCLC, have moved their primary public interface to the Internet. In addition, many database creators are now providing (in varying degrees and formats) direct access to their databases via the Internet. How have these “changes in venue” affected searching for government information? How have these changes affected the ways Federal agencies disseminate their information to the public as well as the perception of how the Federal government should disseminate information? This paper looks at some of the differences between databases (as well as database providers) presented through traditional online services versus the  Internet, giving special consideration to efforts by Federal agencies to disseminate information.

Read It To Me!
Frank L.Walker and George R. Thoma, National Library of Medicine
New Technology and software such as Ariel and DocView have made it possible for libraries to distribute information to patrons over the Internet. Ariel, a product of the Research Libraries Group, converts paper-based documents to monochrome bitmapped images, and delivers them over the Internet; the National Library of Medicine’s DocView enables library patrons to receive, display and manage documents received from Ariel systems, while some still find it difficult to use library document information. For example, the formats of files received through the Internet may not be usable on the recipient’s computer. Disadvantaged groups of people such as the blind, visually impaired and physically handicapped often have difficulties in reading either printed or electronic library information. Consequently, the Web site called the DocMorph Server was developed. The DocMorph Server provides speech synthesis to let users convert scanned images of the printed word into the spoken word. From any place on the Internet, a user can upload scanned images of a book, for example, and have DocMorph return a Web page that reads the material out loud on the user’s computer.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
G4 • Improving Information Retrieval: Influential Factors and Effectiveness of Data Fusion
Chair: Colleen Cool, Queens College of the City University of New York

The Factors Influencing the Evolution of an Information System and Their Impacts: From the Intranet to Advanced Information Systems
Shin-jeng Lin, Rutgers University
Information systems evolve through the following phases: invention, development, innovation, transfer, growth, competition, and consolidation (Hughes, 1987). Yet, scholars from the information science discipline tend to focus on the development phase only, studying user’s information seeking behavior and improving system information retrieval algorithms. Neglected is the context in which information systems are developed and used, not to mention the factors contributing to the evolution of information systems. Consequently, the necessity for the information science discipline to incorporate with other disciplines, such as computer science and management information systems, is less manifested. The practical applications of studies of information science are limited, and so are their impacts.
Shin-jeng Lin identifies the potential factors that are likely to influence the evolution of information systems and creates a conceptual model that describes the interactions among those factors. 

Predictive Models for the Effectiveness of Data Fusion in Information Retrieval
Kwong Bor Ng, Queens College, Flushing, NY
Effective automation of the information retrieval (IR) task has long been an active area of research, leading to sophisticated retrieval models. With many IR schemes available, researchers have begun to investigate the benefits of combining results of different IR schemes to improve performance, a process called data fusion (DF). The idea of applying data fusion method in IR has been discussed and explored. Empirically, data fusion in IR works well. Many data fusion experiments have been done and have shown positive results. However, this scattered empirical success still lacks a full theoretical foundation. In particular, there seems no way to predict, a priori, when data fusion will be effective.

This research builds on several small pilot investigations on data fusion conducted by the author (all published). The author analyzes hundred of thousand of cases of data fusion generated from the famous Text Retrieval Conferences (TRECs) and tries to create predictive models for deciding when two IR schemes (or more than two) can be effectively used in data fusion. 
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
G5 • Web User Communities
Chair: Michael Gruenberg, Carroll Publishing

Web Information Communities, Gatekeepers, Gurus, and Users, Defining New Relationships
Tula Giannini, PRATT Institute
The Web has changed the user’s relationship to information in unforeseen ways. Traditionally, users have connected with information through published sources and collections, and publishers have served as the user’s link to resources (books, journals, etc.). Today,with Internet access, organizations, associations and societies have assumed a central role as a user’s information gateway communicating directly to users in a Web environment where publications are but one facet of a wider range of information and communication options. This study examines the impact of this shift on traditional information delivery systems, including libraries, and tests user perceptions about information quality and authority in this new venue. Results of this study are discussed in terms of their implications for libraries and users.

A Marriage Made in Cyber Heaven: International Business Research on the World Wide Web
Jeanie M. Welch, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
The World Wide Web is an ideal medium for research in the fields of international business, foreign trade, and international economic conditions. It is a challenge for researchers to find and exploit this information efficiently. This paper discusses researching these topics, using sources of information that are available free via the Web. These sources include Web sites maintained by international agencies, government agencies, commercial publishers, and banks. Many foreign Web sites provide bilingual or English-language versions of their Web pages, making them very useful to American researchers and students. Several scholarly institutions have also compiled meta pages—Web sites that contain hundreds of hot links to these sources, arranged in subject categories—that are useful starting points in Web-based international business and economic research. 

Types of Web sources of international business and economic information will be discussed.

Criteria for evaluating international business and economic Web sites will be offered.

The Library-Use Survey Meets the 21st Century: 
New Methods for Evaluating Patron Needs and Electronic Resources in a Technological Library Environment
Philip M. Hurdle and Julia E. Schult, Elmira College
Using traditional research tools and new techniques such as terminal and Web-use monitoring software, the project forms a comprehensive picture of current use and patron needs at a small-college library. The goal of the project was to use new technological solutions to relate World Wide Web and research-database use patterns to user satisfaction. The study examines patrons’ responses to a satisfaction survey with a detailed account of their use of electronic resources in an attempt to increase user satisfaction and to evaluate the efficacy of future expenditures on a seemingly never ending need for new technology. The practical difficulties of processing huge amounts of computer-generated statistical data and the ethical issues of using monitoring software on public computers are also considered.
 

Track H • DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND WEB-BASED EDUCATION

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
H1 • Digital Library Users: Where Do They Come From?
Chair: John Hearty, OCLC

If We Build It, Will They Come?
Anne Prestamo, Oklahoma State University
In recognition of the information needs of Oklahoma State University’s distance learning students, as well as the increasing demands for remote access to library resources by all OSU constituents, the library created a new unit. The Digital Library Services unit facilitates access to electronic information, print materials, and library services to ensure that the information needs of OSU students, faculty, and staff are met, regardless of their location. Its goals are to: (1) insure that off-campus faculty and students have equal access to library materials and services, including research tools, print materials, electronic resources, course reserves, and interlibrary loan services; (2) provide reference services by telephone, Web forms, and e-mail; (3) design bibliographic instruction programs to enable students and faculty to effectively use research tools and library services available to them; (4) work proactively with faculty to meet their students’ information needs through appropriate linkages from course materials to library services, and to integrate bibliographic instruction into course materials; and (5) develop and implement policies and procedures to address the information needs of off-campus students and faculty.

Library Services to Distance Learners Across the Pacific: Experiences and Challenges
Wen-Hua Ren, Rutgers University
As American higher education institutions explore and develop international markets by offering educational programs in foreign countries, academic libraries face challenges of serving international distance users. The Graduate School of Management at Rutgers University has its International Executive MBA (IEMBA) program in Beijing and Singapore, administered by the school’s International Program Center. Though the courses are taught on site, library services are provided remotely. To identify the students’ needs for library service and resources, a survey was conducted. Based on the survey responses, Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) has established distance service for the IEMBA program in Beijing and Singapore. The students are provided with remote access to the library online catalog, index databases and other electronic resources from the site countries. Furthermore, a library resources and services Web page has been created to integrate the characteristics of the program. In addition to providing services from the United States, RUL also collects and integrates Internet information about the site countries into its resources for the program. Arrangements with libraries in the site countries enable students to utilize local library resources and assistance. 

Digital Libraries: Their Usage From the End User Point of View
Mounir A. Khalil, City College of New York 
Raja Jayatilleke, College of Staten Island of CUNY
There have been many published papers, articles, and even books about the Digital Library (also denoted Electronic Library or Virtual Library in various contexts). These address the definition, description, components, usefulness etc. of the Digital Library—but nothing has been researched and/or written about its usage by the end user, as well as the meeting of expectations and satisfaction by accessing needed information—in contrast with traditional methods of access. A questionnaire has been developed to survey the attitudes and behavior of end users and measure the level of understanding of the definition as well as nature of the Digital Library, and the expectations for meeting their information needs in any discipline be it in any location worldwide. “Globalization” is a common theme in the literature of library and information science, but no attention has been paid to the end user’s spectrum of satisfaction relative to such usage as is presently extant relative to the Digital Library throughout the world. Preliminary findings will be presented.
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
H2 • Digital Libraries: Telecommunications, Typology and Management
Chair: John Hearty, OCLC

A Typology of Digital Libraries and Their User Communities
Colleen Cool, Queens College of the City University of New York
Digital libraries are capturing the attention of many in the online community, yet there seems to be no single definition of what the digital library is or should be. It appears as if the term “digital library” is used as an umbrella concept by many who refer to quite different entities, some of which bear little or no resemblance to libraries at all. In a recently published article, Christine Borgman (1999) argues that there are two “competing visions” about the purpose of digital libraries; that which is held by the research community, and that which is held by academic librarians. According to Borgman, researchers are content driven, while librarians themselves are institution or service oriented. While this characterization is a useful first step, many questions remain about the conceptual boundaries surrounding digital libraries, and perhaps more importantly, about their uses, usability and effectiveness among the various communities they are designed to serve. This paper examines the vast range of projects, initiatives, and services that carry the label “digital library” and then presents a typology of existing digital libraries, along with their goals, objectives, and intended user communities. 

A Project Management Approach to Digital Library Development
Robert Downs, Montclair State University
This paper describes how organizations can apply a project management approach to digital library development. Employing a project management approach can assist various types of organizations in effectively and efficiently implementing a digital library. Applying this approach to digital library development includes obtaining top management support to create a team that integrates project management processes during each of the phases of the development effort. These processes include planning and managing time, costs, human resources, stakeholder communications, risks, quality, procurement, and scope of the digital library project. Using project management techniques, team leaders and members must plan, schedule, budget, and control digital library development efforts. In applying these techniques, the digital library project team should strive to create a document and knowledge management information system that supports the on-line learning and research behavior of both expert and novice researchers, regardless of their experience, using computer-based learning environments.

Telecommunications Alternatives in Accessing Image Intensive Digital Libraries
Harry Kibirige, Queens College of the City University of New York
Digital libraries are mushrooming in the information arena with various types of contents. Perhaps the most fascinating are those that are either solely or predominantly image based. The improvement in computer and telecommunications technology has enabled information professionals to include digital image intensive collections in their offering either internally within the organization or as links to external sites. The need to access such collections is not only vital to basic research, but also invaluable to human communication in the digital age. The adage “a picture is better than a thousand words” had never been more pertinent as when it is used to refer to digital resources on the Web. The Internet, particularly the Web, has made it possible to access such collection and has in fact accentuated the creation of remotely accessible image based digital collections. But unlike text based information access, image intensive digital libraries are fraught with downloading bottlenecks. Careful design of distribution and receiving information systems is needed. Various alternatives have been used to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck, which include: cable modems, frame relay, ISDN, Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), satellites, and high-end modems. This paper will summarize the latest developments of these technologies and how they can be used by various types of information professionals and end users in accessing digital libraries.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
H3 • Web Security and Web Pages for Libraries
Chair: Cynthia Sidlo, LEXIS-NEXIS

Do-It-Yourself: A Special Library’s Approach to Creating Dynamic Web Pages Using Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications 
Gerald Steeman, NASA Langley and Christopher Connell, Institute for Defense Analyses
Librarians of small libraries may feel that dynamic Web pages are out of their reach, financially and technically. Yet we are reminded in the library and Web design literature that our static home pages are a thing of the past. This paper describes step-by-step how librarians at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) library developed a database-driven, dynamic intranet site using commercial off-the-shelf applications. Administrative issues include gaining managerial support, surveying the library users group for interest and needs evaluation, and committing resources to managing time to populate the database and train in FrontPage and Web-to-database design. Technical issues will cover Access database fundamentals, lessons learned in the Web-to-database process (including redesigning tables and queries to accommodate the Web interface, understanding Access 97 query language vs. Standard Query Language (SQL), and setting up Database Source Names (DSNs) in Microsoft FrontPage). This paper will also offer tips on hacking Microsoft FrontPage template Active Server Pages (ASP) scripting to create desired results. Additionally, a how-to annotated resource list will close out the paper.

An Introduction to Web Security in Academic Libraries
Tammie Alzona and Yolanda Hollingsworth, University at Albany, State University of New York
Libraries are now faced with an increasing need for additional control over their computer networks. As users become more computer savvy, securing networks become more difficult and time consuming for academic library professionals. After examining the types of Web security issues and problems in academic libraries, our findings reveal a pattern of solutions that will offer enlightenment as well as some relief. Encryption and firewalls as technical solutions will be assessed, while products such as Kiosk and Fortress will be examined. Provided data charts act as resource guides to define terminology and bridge concepts.
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
H4 • Education: Distance/Electronic
Chair: Mary Berger, Engineering Information

The Next Wave of Integration in Electronic Information: 
The Integration of Electronic Journals, Full-Text Periodical Databases and Web Content into Curriculum and Decision Support Models
Donald Doak, EBSCO Publishing
Information Resource Managers, including librarians at public, university, school, medical and corporate libraries, face the challenges of determining what information will add value when integrated with their current collections and how to go about combining information resources of varying formats.This presentation will address how internal and external electronic information is managed and used, as well as the different integration needs of various types of libraries. In particular, topics to be discussed are: integration of electronic journals and other data types into full text aggregated databases, methods of access; authentication, statistics, MARC record information, allowing integration with the World Wide Web, editorializing information on the Web, linking to databases of differing formats, integration of dissimilar data types, obtaining complete and thorough search results, adding value to collections with Web integration and linking, and establishing gateways to other paths of inquiry. In addition, this presentation will address the integration of electronic content into curriculum through the use of customized text books and course-packs. Searchers retrieve information to use or incorporate into curriculum or decision support models. How do we move from information retrieval to curriculum integration, and should we?

Distance Education in Virtual Classrooms: The Model and the Assessment
Alexius Smith Macklin, Leslie Reynolds and Sheila R. Curl, Purdue University
Brent Mai, Vanderbilt University
As distance education moves more classrooms into a virtual world, students and faculty engage in a learning environment where on-demand instruction, hands-on training, and immediate access to information are available at any given moment. This evolution of intellectual exchange, however timely and convenient, makes a case for establishing and implementing high standards of excellence in information literacy across the curriculum. At Purdue University, members of the libraries’ faculty received a statewide grant in the spring of 1998 to develop a required, one-credit, distance education course designed to teach information strategies to undergraduate students in the School of Technology. Because of the high demand for this course, the libraries’ faculty continue to make use of emerging technologies to reach students at the main campus, as well as those registered across the state. To assess the effectiveness of a distance program versus the traditional classroom, a comparison study was conducted.

Distance Learning for Library and Information Science: Building Distributed Asynchronous Learning Networks
Thomas R. Kochtanek and Karen K. Hein, University of Missouri-Columbia
The introduction of Web-based course instruction into an existing degree program offers the opportunity to re-examine models that support learning and the transfer of knowledge among students enrolled in such course offerings. By removing the barriers of time and place, instructors can set about to create and sustain student learning communities using interactive communication support tools grounded in asynchronous learning models. The instructor’s role moves to that of a facilitator who seeks to stimulate student-student, student-group, and student- instructor interactions in the pursuit of opportunities that lead to improved learning and knowledge base construction.

A Web-based distributed course in “Library Information Systems” supported by asynchronous communications tools was offered by the University of Missouri School of Information Science and Learning Technologies beginning with the Fall of 1998 and again in Winter semester 1999. Sixty students were enrolled in these two courses. In each of the two course offerings students were presented with project-based learning opportunities. These group projects were the focus of semester-long team efforts for each of the two courses. There were five projects each semester, with about 5-7 members in each project group. Communications, both synchronously (chat) and asynchronously, were supported by FirstClass, a client-server based proprietary communication tool. Thomas Kochtanek and Karen Hein qualitatively document how asynchronous communications support increased student learning and collaborative opportunities that are representative of those professional team problem-solving tasks student learners will likely engage in upon graduation.
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
H5 • Instruction: Web-Based and Computer-Based
Chair: Mike Koenig, Long Island University

Adopting Principles of Good Practice for Web-Based Instruction
Thomas Walker, University of Southern Mississippi
Educational institutions and other organizations using Web-based instruction should be concerned about quality of instruction. Guidelines to ensure the development and offering of such instruction have been created by several institutions or consortia, and can be applied to existing or new ones. They can also be used to create assessment tools for evaluating such courses or programs. This session reviews some groups of principles and suggests a measurement instrument.

The CREATE Network Project and its Aftermath: 
An Effort to Improve Computer-Based Information Access in Tennessee’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Fletcher Moon, Brown-Daniel Library, Tennessee State University
The project’s overall objective was to assist libraries in the participating institutions in incorporating and/or improving computer information retrieval technology, with the desired goal of creating a level of Computer Equity of Access in these Tennessee Educational institutions (CREATE) through a cooperative network. Tennessee State University served as the lead institution for the project, and was awarded a three-year grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education, to support this activity between 1991 and 1994. The paper will present an overview of the institutions and their libraries, with emphasis on the status of information technology prior to the CREATE Network project, the effectiveness and impact of the project during its funding cycle, and further developments at each institution in the five years since the grant. 
 
 

Track I • WEB RESOURCES 

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
I1 • Web-Based Information Sources for Consumers and Professionals
(This session is sponsored by Online Information Review)
Chair: Mike Koenig, Long Island University

Health and Medical Internet Resources for Consumers and Providers 
Patricia Anderson, University of Michigan
Patients, patient advocates, and other consumers of health care information account for some of the largest growing segments of Internet use. There is a growing community of health information providers committed to providing reliable qualitative information. Resources for health care providers tend to be harder to find, and the commercial presence is quite strong. This presentation will cover Internet-based resources for health reference, drug information, clinical guidelines, employment, health in the news, and more for both health consumers and providers.

Ready Reference on the Internet
Linda Smith & Sarai Lastra, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Many libraries are building Web sites that include “virtual reference collections,” often divided into categories of materials found in their print ready reference collections (e.g., almanacs, biographical sources, directories). This paper will explore the strengths and weaknesses of Web-based resources for answering ready reference questions when compared to print resources typically found in library reference collections.

Environmental and Chemical Sources on the Internet: Availability and Evaluation Approach
Kristina Voigt and Gerhard Welzl, GFS-National Research Center for Environment and Health and
Joachim Benz, University of Kassel
In a constantly expanding world of environmental and chemical information resources on the Internet, the need for their effective detection gains more and more importance. This paper presents a strategy to handle the variety of data sources in order to find the information required. Important tools for finding environmental and chemical information are the so-called directories; they are context-specific listings of relevant URLs. Directories are compiled intellectually; hence they are rather small in size and have no claim to completeness at all. Examples of such directories will be given in the final paper.

The next step in the hierarchy of finding information on the Internet in a special field of interest are the so-called catalogs, metadatabases or metainformation systems. These are databases that index Internet resources according to special subjects. The main emphasis will be put on the DAIN —Metadatabase of Internet Resources for Environmental Chemicals, which is set up and maintained by the two authors [URL: http://dino.wiz.uni-kassel.de/dain]. DAIN comprised 568 documents in December 1999. The structure of this metadatabase will be given, its search interface explained, and the user statistics presented. 
 

11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
I2 • High Quality Free Web Databases for Ready Reference
Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii
There are hundreds of free Web databases that offer responses to short, factual questions or provide directional assistance. Many of them sport user interfaces and search capabilities that surpass those of the fee-based services. The top-notch and free encyclopedias, dictionaries, fact books, and directories are discussed and illustrated.
 

12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. 
Lunch Break - A Chance to Visit the Exhibits
 

1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
I3 • Evaluation of Systems and Databases
Chair: Kristina Voigt, GFS-National Research Center for Environment and Health 

Evaluating the Journal Base of Databases Using the Impact Factor of the ISI Journal Citation Reports
Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii
Databases in science and technology, arts and humanities differ widely in what journals of the target discipline they cover and what is the depth and retrospectivity of their coverage. The appropriateness of the journal base depends on the — occasionally subjective — preferences of the user community but there are also objective criteria that can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of the scope of journals and other serial publications (annual reviews, conference proceedings) covered by a database. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has been monitoring several thousand journals to determine — among other things — their importance in the discipline. The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) has historical data for science and social science periodicals that provide important measures every year about those sources. Although there is no perfect consensus about the core journals of a discipline, and the algorithm of calculating their impact factor, they are widely accepted and can be used as a benchmark for evaluating the journal base of many databases in the sciences and social sciences. 

A New Way of Evaluating IR Systems Performance: Median Measure
Howard Griesdorf, University of North Texas and Amanda Spink, Pennsylvania State University
In this paper we examine new approaches to evaluating IR systems performance and propose a new evaluation measure called Median Measure. This research builds on previous work by Greisdorf and Spink on partial relevance. Our study of relevance judgments of 36 end-users shows that: (1) the distribution of end-users’ relevance judgments is bi-modal (from not relevant to highly relevant) no matter what the scale used, and (2) the median of a relevance frequency distribution correlates with the number of relevant and partially relevant items retrieved. The median data point corresponds to the start of partially relevant items in the distribution. The paper will discuss the implications of the “Median Measure” for end-users and the evaluation of IR systems. 
 

3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
I4 • Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: ILL/Public Work Stations/Journals
Chair: David Raitt, Electronic Library

What Journals, If Any, Should Still Be Printed?
David Goodman, Princeton University
Contrary to expectation, most academic libraries that have adopted electronic journals still receive the print format as well. Indeed, the only journals that ordinarily are received in electronic format only are those published in that format only, or those received in publisher’s packages. Some resistance is due to libraries’ conservative attitude to archiving and distrust of the commercial stability of electronic publishing enterprises. But users, even in the most technological disciplines, often insist that their working patterns require paper. This study suggests that for reading specific known articles the electronic format alone, either directly or by way of paper prints, is always optimum, while for scanning the literature both electronic and paper are required. The data show that a minority of the titles used are actually read or scanned in unbound format, and are thus presumably suited to electronic availability only. It is  predicted that the availability of detailed use data for electronic titles will confirm this result and facilitate the comparison with other libraries. 

Evaluating the Use of Public PC Workstations at the Arizona State University Libraries
Scott Herrington and Philip Konomos, Arizona State University 
From the moment the ASU Libraries migrated from dumb terminals to PC workstations for access to electronic resources, there was great concern that these workstations would be used “inappropriately.” Whether students should be allowed to check their email from the workstations was debated, as was the need to restrict access to the Internet. The Information Technology division at the University was concerned with how the Library would provide accountability for anything that happened at a public workstation. After much discussion, it was decided that the library PC workstations would provide unrestricted access to the Internet. Telnet access was limited to library-related resources requiring telnet, in an effort to keep students from doing computing assignments and personal email on these workstations. 

After casually observing patrons’ use of the workstations for several months, the Library Systems department decided to take a more empirical approach to evaluating how workstations were being used. This presentation will describe the data collection techniques, the results of data analysis, and how the results of data analysis are being used to better manage the PC workstations in the library. 
 

4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
I5 • Web Aids and Needs: Classification of Portals/Common Language for Web Sites
Chair: Brian Quinn, Texas Tech University

Divided by a Common Language: A Look at University Library Web Sites in English Speaking Countries
Julie Still, Rutgers University
Any American traveling in Britain is repeatedly reminded that, although a common language is used, there are many differences. Library practices in English speaking countries also vary. Even something as simple as a dialog search is constructed differently, with clear cut cultural patterns. Would it not be likely that cultural differences would appear in library Web sites as well? While community college and research university library Web sites in the U.S. have some differences, they are often constructed along similar lines. Are these structures universal or cultural? This study will compare research university Web sites in four English speaking countries: Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. Concrete data on whether cultural practices extend into cyberspace and how they are manifested will be presented.

International Indexing Classification Activities of Internet Portals
Manuel Prestamo, Oklahoma City Community College
The exchange of information via electronic means propels us at an ever increasing pace toward the rapidly evolving realities of a world economy. At the same time, statistics show the amount of space given to international news in an “average American paper” declined from 10.2 percent in 1971 to a low of 2 percent at the present time. However, Nua Ltd. estimates that there are 201 million people using the Internet this year and there are indications that the number will continue to increase dramatically. Web communities that are language driven, and perhaps culturally related, are obviously developing throughout the Web. With more and more international users flowing into the Internet, it is important to realize the number of options available to facilitate communications with these rapidly emerging communities around the globe. This presentation will focus on the variety of international components present in Yahoo!, Altavista, HotBot, Lycos and others.