Digital Libraries and Information Science

A fundamental challenge in building information services on the Internet is interoperability and manageability -- how to combine independently managed collections and services distributed around the world into a coherent whole made available in a reliable and secure manner. Cornell has developed two architectures for interoperability: a production system called Dienst and Fedora, which is used for experimentation with new concepts of information structuring,
extensibility, and security. Dienst is being used to build a prototype national digital library for science education for the National Science Foundation. 

Interest in integrity and availability of distributed information spaces has led to research in the theory and practice of metadata (data about data), and in reference linking (automatic methods to link references in one source of information to the target that they refer to). Our aim is to develop general principles that can be applied to wide varieties of digital objects, while
minimizing the costs of adoption. 
 
Long-term availability is a key aspect of information integrity. The Cornell  University Library was a pioneer in conversion of historic documents to digital form and remains one of the leaders in this area. Computer science and the library have expanded this work on long-term preservation to all classes of digital objects, especially those that originate in digital form. This is a primary focus of the Prism project, which is funded by a large grant from the NSF. In addition, we are advising
the Library of Congress on preservation of the Web. 

The technology of digital libraries is interwoven with social, legal, and economic issues. Cornell has a particular interest in lowering the cost of access to scientific information. This work includes experimental publications, studies of the economics of open-access publishing, reducing the
cost of metadata, and the use of automated digital libraries to minimize the cost of research libraries. 

Several groups within Cornell cooperate in this area, including the Department of Computer Science, the Human-Computer Interface group in the Department of Communication, and
the Cornell University Library. Beyond Cornell, we have numerous joint research projects including two international research grants. Both Dienst and the Fedora concepts are  widely adopted by other research groups. A recent initiative is the extension of digital libraries to mobile and wireless computing. The research is supported by the NSF, DARPA,Intel, and the Library of Congress.