* A network version of American Memory should be developed or consideration should be given to making the data in it available to people interested in doing network multimedia. Given the current dearth of digital data that is appealing and unencumbered by extremely complex rights problems, developing a network version of American Memory could do much to help make network multimedia a reality.
* Concerning the thorny issue of electronic deposit, LC should initiate a catalytic process in terms of distributed responsibility, that is, bring together the distributed organizations and set up a study group to look at all the issues related to electronic deposit and see where we as a nation should move. For example, LC might attempt to persuade one major library in each state to deal with its state equivalent publisher, which might produce a cooperative project that would be equitably distributed around the country, and one in which LC would be dealing with a minimal number of publishers and minimal copyright problems. LC must also deal with the concept of on-line publishing, determining, among other things, how serials such as OJCCT might be deposited for copyright.
* Since a number of projects are planning to carry out preservation by creating digital images that will end up in on-line or near-line storage at some institution, LC might play a helpful role, at least in the near term, by accelerating how to catalog that information into the Research Library Information Network (RLIN) and then into OCLC, so that it would be accessible. This would reduce the possibility of multiple institutions digitizing the same work.
CONCLUSION
The Workshop was valuable because it brought together partisans from various groups and provided an occasion to compare goals and methods. The more committed partisans frequently communicate with others in their groups, but less often across group boundaries. The Workshop was also valuable to attendees—including those involved with American Memory—who came less committed to particular approaches or concepts. These attendees learned a great deal, and plan to select and employ elements of imaging, text-coding, and networked distribution that suit their respective projects and purposes.
Still, reality rears its ugly head: no breakthrough has been achieved. On the imaging side, one confronts a proliferation of competing data-interchange standards and a lack of consensus on the role of digital facsimiles in preservation. In the realm of machine-readable texts, one encounters a reasonably mature standard but methodological difficulties and high costs. These latter problems, of course, represent a special impediment to the desire, as it is sometimes expressed in the popular press, "to put the [contents of the] Library of Congress on line." In the words of one participant, there was "no solution to the economic problems—the projects that are out there are surviving, but it is going to be a lot of work to transform the information industry, and so far the investment to do that is not forthcoming" (LESK, per litteras).
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PROCEEDINGS
WELCOME
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GIFFORD * Origin of Workshop in current Librarian's desire to make LC's collections more widely available * Desiderata arising from the prospect of greater interconnectedness * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++