| AcIS R&D plays a substantial role in creating and delivering
online services. Some of our work is illustrated below.
|
|
| ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING INITIATIVE at COLUMBIA (EPIC) (1999–) | |
The Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) is a
groundbreaking new initiative in digital publishing at Columbia University that
involves Columbia University Press, the Libraries, and Academic Information
Systems. Its mission is to create new kinds of scholarly and educational
publications through the use of new media technologies in an integrated research
and production environment. Working with the producers of intellectual property
at Columbia University and other leading academic institutions, it aims to make
these digital publications self-sustaining through subscription sales to
institutions and individual users.
EPIC is committed to pursuing the highest standards in the development of content, use of technology, handling of issues of intellectual property and copyright, development of business plans, and evaluation of use. Its publications are designed to be innovative, efficient and cost-effective. |
|
| COLUMBIA INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS ONLINE (CIAO) (8/1997–) | |
A collaborative effort of the Libraries, AcIS,
and Columbia University Press to develop a new,
for-subscription, online publication of working papers and
related information in international relations. Columbia
International Affairs Online (CIAO) is designed to be the most
comprehensive source for theory and research in international
affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship from 1991 on
that includes working papers from university research
institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs,
foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from
conferences. Each section of CIAO is updated with new material
on a regular schedule. Working papers are augmented every
month, as are conference proceedings, policy briefs and
economic indicators. Links and resources, the schedule of
events and the response files are updated weekly. New journal
issues and books are added as they become available. Seed
funding for CIAO is provided
by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. |
|
| COLUMBIA EARTHSCAPE (1999-) | |
Columbia Earthscape provides access to cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, carefully selected, and easily searchable research, educational resources, and analysis in the rapidly emerging fields of the Earth sciences and environmental studies. |
|
| ONLINE BOOKS EVALUATION PROJECT (1995-99) | |
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, the Libraries and AcIS are collaborating with
publishers to assess costs, user preferences, and potential
delivery “packaging” for monographs in online
electronic form. Participating publishers include Columbia
University Press, Oxford University Press, Garland, Simon and
Schuster Higher Education.
| |
| Participating publishers: | |
| OVERSIZED COLOR IMAGES (1994–96) | |
This joint project, from the Libraries and AcIS, has evaluated options and recommended best practices for preserving and accessing brittle textual materials containing large sized color images. (Funded by Commission on Preservation and Access.) |
|
| INDEXING AND SEARCHING SERVICES | |
AcIS selects and employs a variety of full-text search engines and designs gateway services to deliver indexed material over the network in several ways. Examples range from the ongoing deployment of new search services for distributed campus Web sites, to specialized gateways for delivering structured (SGML) information. Content-based image retrieval systems as well as the evaluation of indexing systems is being pursued jointly with the CRIA.
|
|
| MULTI-MEDIA RESOURCES | |
Pilot projects are under development in both the
Department of Music and the Department of East Asian Languages
and Culture. In discussions on China
and Japan and a set of
Web-based teaching resources. |
|
| CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON INFORMATION ACCESS (CRIA) | |
With support from the National Science Foundataion and
Columbia's Executive Vice Provost's office, CRIA
coordinates projects emerging from and jointly investigated with the
departments of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and the
Earth Institute. |
|
| UNIVERSITY-WIDE BULLETIN (1990–) | |
Continuing a relatively long history, AcIS
provides a comprehensive University-wide schedule of classes,
updated daily. The current web-based schedule reflects both data
from the Registrar, by extracting from that administrative
database, as well as from individual departments and
instructors, by providing
a mechanism for them to supplement the central data with links
to, for example, instructional material ("course home pages")
and information on instructor's research.
|
|
| ADMINISTRATIVE PROJECTS | |
A number of joint projects are now underway with administrative units and with AIS to provide information to the Columbia community. AcIS participates actively by developing and providing software to permit central access control, to secure communications, and to coordinate and establish linkages between related data.
|
|
| WEB SERVICE (1993–) | |
The University-wide web service consists of a
large central service, containing over 100,000 documents
provided by over 350 departments, administrative units and
student groups, and over 3,000 individual home pages, as well
as several large satellite services operated by units such as
the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Biosphere 2, and the
School of
Engineering and Applied Science. AcIS operates and
coordinates activities on the central service, and provides
indexing and administrative coordination for all University
web services. Policy, dispute resolution, and strategic
planning are coordinated by the Web Advisory Committee, which
includes broad University
representation. |
|
| PUBLIC ACCESS FACILITIES | |
In an ongoing effort, public access terminals, workstations and printers are deployed throughout the campus. Interface adjustments, software and physical security are coordinated by the AcIS and the Libraries. Software capabilities and locations are determined through broader participation of the community.
|
|
| MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSING PROJECT (1994–97) | |
Columbia participated in this Getty-coordinated
project to explore the use and economics of digital images in
university research and teaching. The project developed
mechanisms, both technical and procedural, to deliver 10,000
images from eight U.S. museums to seven research universities.
A project to evaluate the process and economics of this
distribution has been supported from The Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. |
|
| ART HUMANITIES RESERVE COLLECTION (1995–) | |
The Libraries and AcIS have created an image library of
several thousand images. The
fully-cataloged collection focuses on material from a
core course, required of all undergraduates,
and is used both in electronic classrooms and for
study. |
|
| ADVANCED PAPYROLOGICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (APIS) | |
With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
APIS is a multi-institutional project to create
a digital library of papyri, transcriptions and related
bibliographical information. The Libraries and AcIS are
collaborating with faculty both in implementing the project at
Columbia and in coordinating the overall effort.
|
|
| EARTH INSTITUTE DATA CENTER | |
The Earth Institute Data Center has been created
to assemble existing and to develop new geospatial digital
resources into a coherent and flexible framework.
AcIS and CRIA are collaborating with Earth
Institute faculty in planning efforts in cataloging,
preservation, archiving, and large scale storage systems for
the Institute’s data. |
|
| DIGITAL SCRIPTORIUM | |
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
the Libraries and AcIS are collaborating with
University of California, Berkeley Libraries to create a digital
library of dated and datable medieval manuscripts.
|
|
| WORKING PAPERS SERVER | |
AcIS offers electronic publication of working papers series for a number of university-based institutes in economics, law and political science. |
|
| ELECTRONIC DATA SERVICE | |
The Center, jointly operated by the Libraries
and AcIS, the EDS is the University’s numerical data
archive. The index for much of this collection is being
provided over the network through the
EDS Datagate, and has
become a recognized national resource. Some 39 gigabytes of
raw data are also available to scholars
locally. |
|
| SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS JOURNAL | |
The Avery Library is converting page images of 15 years of JSAH that will be linked to corresponding index records from the Avery Index. It will be accessible via an RLG database. (Supported by Getty Information Institute.) |
|
| HUMANITIES TEXTS | |
The Libraries and AcIS provide classic literary and philosophical texts in ASCII, HTML, and SGML formats for study, searching and analysis. The Past-Masters series (ca. 60 texts) is currently available and additional sets and series are in process. |
|
| CCWEB | |
A joint project of Columbia College, AcIS and the Libraries to create annotated versions of works studied in Core Curriculum courses. These versions will be integrated with instructional support software facilitating student annotation and discussion. A pilot project is in process using Mill’s On Liberty. |
|
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD | |
| The weekly Newspaper of the University. | |
| PROJECT BARTLEBY ARCHIVE (1993–1997) and BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS (1993–1997) |