Pacific Neighborhood Consortium

Third Annual Meeting

Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel

Bangkok, Thailand

January 18-20, 1995

MEETING REPORT

The third annual meeting of the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium opened with a reception on the evening of January 17, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm in Ballroom I of the Royal Orchid Sheraton. In addition to PNC members, attendees to the first Asia-Pacific APNIC meeting at Chulalongkorn University were invited guests. The reception was supported by gifts from Innovative Interfaces, Inc. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. and PNC wished to thank them for this support.

The Pacific Neighborhood Consortium wishes to express its appreciation and gratitude to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for their support of many PNC activities.

The meeting began at 8:30 with welcoming remarks by Dr. Prachak Poomvises, Director of the Centers for Academic Resources of Chulalongkorn University, the academic host for the conference. Dr. Poomvises, speaking for the President of Chulalongkorn University, Dr. Charas Suwanwela, welcomed the members of PNC and offered the hospitality of Chulalongkorn University during their stay.

Curtis Hardyck, Executive Director of PNC , introduced Dennis Smith, the new Associate Director of PNC and welcomed two new members--the University of Macau, represented by R.D.A. Max-Lino and the University of Arizona, represented by Stuart Glogoff. Visitors from Chile, Malaysia, Russia and Ohio were also welcomed.

Curtis Hardyck then began the first general session by reviewing the accomplishments of PNC from the founding meeting in Honolulu in 1993. His remarks are reprinted as Attachment 1 to the meeting report.

Following a brief review of meeting changes and announcements, the first tutorial session began with a presentation by David Wasley, Director of Network Operations at the University of California, Berkeley. (Note: All tutors prepared papers available to participants at the meeting. David Wasley's paper is included as Attachment 2 of this report).

In his remarks, David stated that he wished to make a slightly different presentation than that implied by his title: “Developing and coordinating a regional World Wide Web server network” and present the idea of a virtual cultural exposition as the justification for a network of regional servers. David stated that, in his view, network server technology now has an immense number of possibilities to present an ongoing virtual equivalent of the kinds of international cultural expositions that were formerly held as events perhaps every fifty years. As background to his idea of a cultural exposition, David reviewed the history of server technology, which can be considered as beginning with the Internet itself. The first illustration of exchange was the unmoderated sharing which characterizes the Usenet news system--a large number of bulletin boards on which anyone with access can offer opinions, read the views of others, start a discussion, etc. As a systematic information medium, Usenet news is almost worthless, since there is no conceptual organization to the topics nor any grouping of similarities in viewpoint and content.

The next level of organization would be such developments as anonymous FTP sites or electronic mail. The level of organization is substantially improved over bulletin boards but are usually limited to exploration of specific topics or communication with a given group of people

Moderated information sharing is illustrated by the library catalog, which allows grouping, and linking to other information, but only within the system encompassed by the catalog. Electronically, Gopher servers represented the next level of improvement by allowing easier search procedures across related topics and the more effective use of menu systems.

World Wide Web technology is currently the best example of information linking within a context. WWW technology is an improvement in three fundamental ways: (1) The development of a markup language for hypertext documents that provides a consistent way to link across a wide variety of documents (2) a standardized transfer protocol, simplifying the process of linking documents (3) a uniform locator scheme that provides consistent mapping over a wide variety of things. As a standalone example of this kind of linking, the CD-ROM is probably the best. It offers a wide set of ways to link information and transmit it easily with no bandwidth limitation. Only the fact that the CD is fixed prevents it from being the ideal way to link disparate set of information. The server has no such limitations and can be located anywhere. As an information device, it may be an excellent way to display a culture--we could have exhibits in multiple languages, displays of the unique qualities of a culture, government information of various kinds. We could even have a souvenir shop, consisting of things that we could download into our home machines.

It seems clear that coordinate regional servers may be the best way to proceed at sharing information among Pacific Rim countries, given the lack of bandwidth in many parts of the Pacific. We would have to have multiple regional servers, each mounting in duplicate, the databases that we develop and modify to share with each other. The server will help cope with the problem of heavy network traffic over limited bandwidth lines. However, there are still a good many problems to face. We have not dealt with the issue of licensing databases within and outside the PNC and if this server model, is to work, we will need permanent staffing. Perhaps our next priority should be a funding model.

Discussion following David's tutorial focused on the issues of developing a standard of quality for exposition material, the question of cost, particularly the prospect of increasing frequency of metered rather than flat rate usage and the choices of technology.

Following lunch, a brief presentation of the SUNSITE program was done by Kevin Roebuck of Sun Microsystems, Inc., reviewing how the SUNSITE program works and who is eligible for participation. An open discussion followed, allowing participants to meet in small groups and discuss topics of mutual interest or consult with others.

The afternoon session focused on the commentary of five panelists assigned the task of commenting on the tutorial: William Max Ivey of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Yungyong Teng-Amnuay of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, Robin Erskine of the Australian National University, Victor Guerra Ortiz of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Tan Tin Wee of the National University of Singapore.

Max Ivey began the panel by stating that he wished to comment on the difficulties he saw in implementing the kind of regional network proposed in the Wasley tutorial. He commented that even within countries, we are going to have severe bandwidth limitations in many instances and that regional servers will not overcome this until more bandwidth is provided. He expects opposition from telephone companies, whether private or nationalized, given that telcos have to date regarded the Internet with little enthusiasm. He viewed the problem of producing quality product as one that would be very difficult to overcome, citing the Plato project as an example of a project that consumed a great deal of funding and did produce a quality product, but not one with lasting effects. Getting faculty to produce material for a server network will be difficult, since faculty are still not rewarded for writing computing programs. He expect that high quality educational material will probably come finally from commercial producers. He thought PNC's goals were not well defined and that PNC will not be terribly effective without a permanent staff. PNC could try to define standards for video and audio. Finally, he felt that most content will probably be produced in English and that we should provide this material in other languages, but that this would again, entail substantial cost.

Yungyong Teng-Amnunay began his presentation by announcing that he had set up the first Internet gateway in Thailand and that an important next step was to make sure that people such as him were not be invited to talk at future meetings. He described himself as a technical person and stated that the important things to accomplish now are not technical matters but content. If PNC will accomplish anything, we must concentrate on the content and not on the delivery system. Currently, it is hard to find quality in the Internet. In Thailand, the delivery system is fine but if we are to provide effective WWW service, three kinds of people are needed.

First is the person with the content and the knowledge--whether about books, painting, biology, etc.,--these are the most important people. Second is the administrators who can obtain and organize this material from the people who know it. Third are the technical people who make access to the information work smoothly. Of these three, the person with the content is the most important.

As a closing remark, Yungyong comments that he does not believe we use the network effectively. Currently, owning a server is a mark of status and everyone wants their own server. Network problems are not dealt with over the Internet, but are still solved more by personal contact.

Robin Erskine commented that David Wasley's tutorial had led him to think about 5 topics connected with PNC, with a common theme of differentiating what we do as individuals, as institutions in a particular nation, and as members of PNC.

1. PNC has very few resources available to use in providing information. In considering resource allocation, we need to be realistic about what we do for our institution and what we do for PNC. In Australia, as elsewhere, large amounts of money have been limited to big science projects, which did not include network development and use. Publications on the Australian net have been primarily in the social sciences and development has been a low budget effort. Fortunately, this is changing and there are now substantial amounts of money available for information provision. However, if he has to decide whether he will do something for PNC, or spend his time pursuing some of the 70 million Australian dollars now available for Australian program development, the answer should be obvious.

2. We need to concentrate on ways in which can provide information to our own institutions and to PNC--we cannot have a conflict of resources.

3. PNC should not concern itself with trying to build networks but remain focused on ways in which the networks can be used for more effective providing of information.

4. Although we may try to avoid it, the issues of charging for network access will probably surface in the future. Australia has had to go from a flat rate system to metered use in order to control the problems of network saturation occurring whenever new software can be downloaded free on the Internet from the USA. Similarly, PNC should not try to do software development.

5. In his opinion, it will be very difficult to keep PNC operating on the current volunteer basis.

Victor Guerra Ortiz provided a brief description of the current Mexican network system. He commented that the network in Mexico took quite some time to develop since Mexican universities were slow to recognize the importance of telecommunication and networking systems. Currently, Mexico has 4 T1 lines to the United States, that link about 15,000 computers on the Mexican Internet, all used on a flat rate basis. To obtain this service from the Mexican telephone company, the National Autonomous University of Mexico pays 75 million pesos per year. Libraries in Mexico have now become connected to the Internet in substantial numbers and even banks in Mexico now use the Internet for messages and non-cash transactions.

Tin Wee Tan said that he viewed PNC activities from two perspectives: as the representative of the National University of Singapore who is been very active in PNC development and secondly, as a provider of network services. He sees problems both as a provider and as a user. He views the limitations on bandwidth through the Pacific as a serious concern and one that will have to be dealt with via regional servers for the present. He is also in agreement that content is the most important concern. Delivery has to come together with services and the ability to interact and transact easily is of prime importance for PNC to be effective.

If we are to discuss how to establish, coordinate, and maintain a regional WWW network, we have to know what content we want to provide and establish an order of priority. In Singapore, the emphasis is on essentials such as library services, since we consider up to date library information of major importance. It is his hope that PNC can help with improving the current level of library communication. There is also great interest in access to specialized databases such biotechnology and databases in languages other than English. To accomplish this, we will need regional coordinating groups in Pacific regions. He hopes that PNC can provide some support for this or help in soliciting funding.

Thursday, January 19

The morning of day two of the meeting was devoted to concurrent sessions, including a demonstration of the Berkeley PNC server, a demonstration of Thainet and the library automation system of Chulalongkorn University, and meetings of special interest groups on language, library access and networking development.

The next tutorial was given by Michael Greenhalgh, Professor of Art History at the Australian National University. Professor Greenhalgh stated at the onset that he would talk about how an electronic museum of the Pacific would be organized if he were to do it and that he would illustrate this by demonstrating the ways in he has organized thousands of images on his server at ANU. His paper detailing his approach is Attachment 3 of this report.

To do this effectively, we must have a good definition of an electronic museum.

• How is it organized?

• What are its standards for inclusion of material?

• Who pays for it?

• What kinds of collaboration does it engage in?

• Where does it obtain its expertise?

• How does it develop an exchange policy?

The ideal electronic museum should provide a prestigious locale for refereed publications. It should not be restricted to the Pacific Rim. And, where appropriate, it should be commercialized.

In developing his own image server system, he begins with video photographs to a computer frame grabber, or, for slides, a slide copier to an archiving device and then scales the images to allow both full screen views and GIF thumbnails. As a display medium, he uses analog laser discs.

One of the most challenging tasks is the need to organize images appropriately for a web server. He uses a device made for him to order image sequences for web presentation. One of the essentials is the provision of viewing parameters that will provide flexible adaptation. Also, it should be kept firmly in mind that images are not useful without accompanying instructional material. It is also necessary to have the capacity to reformat and reorganize the material for different purposes

What should we do for the future? His current approach is built on video technology, but he thinks we need to look to ways of improving the quality of digitization. His approach uses a digital camera with a capacity of 1.3 megapixels. He then sends this in video format to a laser recorder. He can also simultaneously produce high resolution images, commenting that he thought it essential to produce images that will be respectable at least 5 years from now.

For a museum of the Pacific, he proposes that a pilot study be done with a modest number of images donated by each institution. He thought this should be done in multiple locations and offered to put them on his server as a beginning.

Following lunch, a presentation was made by Steve Cisler of Apple Computer of Apple's new quick-time technology allowing rapid viewing of objects in an effective three dimensional mode. He illustrated the technology with a videotape of a visit to a museum, indicating how a person viewing items with this technology simulated an actual journey into a museum, including close views and the ability to walk around an object on display and view it from all sides

At 2:00 pm, the meeting reconvened with a panel discussion following the Michael Greenhalgh tutorial. The opening panelist was Professor Lewis Lancaster from the University of California, Berkeley, who began by stating that he was, as were many others, concerned about content--what our content should be and what should be our product.. He felt there was much to be gained from advancing a museum project, particularly one covering cultural patterns. This would be of general interest and be useful in primary and secondary education as a new source of history about a culture. However, once we select the material for our museum, we must be prepared to help people develop specialized uses for it and to develop ways to use it in a variety of curricula. At the same time, the material must be usable at the university level with provisions for use in both classroom settings and research. Finally, it is important to do something soon with contributions from all PNC members. As a last item, we should remember that we need clear copyrights for what we show and we must be comfortable with the idea that we are operating in the public domain.

The second panelist, Professor John Huntington of The Ohio State University, stated that he was in full agreement with Lewis Lancaster's approach and views about forming an electronic museum and that he thought Michael Greenhalgh's proposal to begin with 100 image collections was an excellent way to begin. For the Pacific museum, we should have an initial survey, while keeping in mind that surveys are often superficial. To be effective, we need to review the entire potential resource pool of the Pacific Rim and plan for systematic increases in museum collections. We need to be concerned about the depth of a collection, otherwise it will be of little or no use to scholars. Finally, we should remember that technology is 5% of the process while content is 95%. What we do has to look good and be outstanding.

The third panelist, Professor Kenzo Takahashi of the Asian Institute of Technology also stated that he was in agreement with the position that a museum should have contributions from all possible sources and that it was essential that a museum be a good resource for scholars pursuing a variety of goals. He supplemented his talk with an extensive slide and transparency presentation of his own work on the study of the ancient cities of Thailand, done through air photos and the examination of artifacts, showing how developments of a city can be systematically related to geographic and climatic changes. He illustrated his views with multiple views of how some of the ancient cities of Thailand changed in response to changes in the shoreline of the sea.

The final panelist, Professor Thomas Duncan of the University of California, Berkeley said that he thought the earlier discussion had focused on what a PNC virtual museum would look like and that we need to think about a larger vision. He sees the role of PNC to either facilitate, coordinate the work at member institutions, or to carry out work itself. Depending on this choice, very different concerns emerge. In many ways, the discussion here is similar to the USA discussions about founding a national biodiversity institute in that PNC will have to cope with a very wide ranging audience. Individual institutions will have their own priorities and projects. For PNC to succeed, it will need staff and the ability to coordinate and maintain a long term vision.

Following discussion, the meeting was adjourned until 7:30 pm, when the PNC banquet began. The banquet speaker was Mr. Ian Buchanan, vice president of Booz, Allen and Hanilton PTE, based in Singapore. Mr. Buchanan spoke on the topic “Information Sharing in the Pacific Rim: Economic and Political Consequences”.

As an introduction to his topic, Ian cited two recent items on cultural reactions to greater and greater information dissemination in the Pacific Rim.

1. Cartoons and other material featuring Porky Pig have been banned in Muslim countries in Southeast Asia.

2. Singapore has agreed to accept Star TV for 8 hours per week, but with no nudity, no rap music and no grunge. Singaporeans can now be treated to Madonna's singing, but without her more revealing costumes.

These two examples of cultural sensitivity are illustrations of the phenomenal growth of both information availability and mass marketing via television. The concern we may have is how this rapid growth took place and what it has to do with information sharing. To illustrate, a quotation from Vassily Leontif to the effect that past experience has shown that societies and economies, even moral standards, adapt to technology changes. Thus, with information as a driving force, what will be the economic and political consequences on consumption functions, production functions and governance functions.

Production of goods, which has stimulated Southeast Asian Growth, comes from existing technology aided by a variety of enabling technologies driving costs down. Asia began to develop in 1949, when the cold war first surfaced in Asia. This allowed the US to use economic growth in Asia as part of its Asian coldwar strategy, creating independent countries and opening new markets. Technology developed and, with cheap labor, wealth developed and this continued until the collapse of the Berlin wall led to a global diversification of labor, with cheap labor no longer limited to Asia.

What happens in a region when the gross national product (GNP) per capita increases steadily? In Asia, there has been 7-8% growth for many years now. When the average GNP growth is 7% per year, with a corresponding increase in per capita income, a substantial change occurs when the per capita income reaches $1000 per year. At that level, people become consumers of brand name consumer goods and a nation's purchasing capacity develops at a rapid rate. Approximately 1 billion people in China will reach this level in the next 10 years, making China's consumer market very desirable. These dramatic increases in disposable income produces a strong desire on the part of branded product vendors to want to reach the Chinese population. At present there are limited ways to reach this population. The advent of Star TV has had a substantial effect on the Chinese populace--in fact the People's Republic will soon put up its own satellite.

In effect, this means that we are finally reaching the McLuhan variety global village with its consequent homogenization of culture and values. The effect will be noted when you consider than many of these new information consumers are also voters. Approximately 2 years ago, the 50% point was reached when over half the world's nations became democracies. This is happening in Asia where the information available in democracies is coming into conflict with totalitarian states. If you are a top-down totalitarian state, you need to control access to the minds of your populace and in several states in southeast Asia where you have technical development and economic democracy, but media control, these conflicts are developing.

A final concern is regional development. Growth in Asia is not driven by local government, but by regional developments. However, he sees no force that will make southeast Asia come together and believes it will stay diverse, especially since technology allows you to desegregate your production, but putting your factories where it is most advantageous to you. As an illustration, we now have underway plans to put a specialized facility in Malaysia for the multilingual handling of 800 number calls, since you can obtain qualified mulilinguals there much more cheaply than in other regions.

A serious problem in the Asian region is that it also leads the world in the growth of military spending. There are dangers of ethnic and cultural conflicts and these tensions may increase as economic growth continues. The variety of social changes have been wrenching to many societies and the lack of government control over media will probably continue to increase. At present the only constant is change.

Friday, January 20

The final day of the conference began with a tutorial on library sharing done by George Soete, University of California, San Diego. George began his tutorial by stating that since he has had the opportunity to listen to the themes of the conference, he should clarify his position by stating at the outset that he is not concerned with either technology or content, but with process development. In his tutorial, we wishes to outline ways to design and facilitate planning processes and the means by which decisions are made. He said he wishes to deal with people issues and the environmental factors that keep people from accomplishing what they want. He will focus on vision formulation and try to help people develop missions, goals and actions with the primary intent of keeping the planning process moving smoothly. Since George Soete's talk made extensive use of visual aids, and was duplicated to a larger degree in his conference paper (included as Attachment 4), a detailed presentation will not be done here, since doing so would duplicate his paper to substantial extent. In his closing comments, he stated that he considered the following items of primary importance:

• Establish visible benefits to the PNC program as soon as possible

• Do not expect universal participation, but do provide benefits to all members

• Do not ignore the older media collections

• Pay attention to incentives to participate

The Library Panel Discussion was opened by Dr. Lai-bing Kan of the University of Hong Kong, who introduced the panelists and commented that library sharing had existed for a long time with a great many kinds of consortia agreements over the years. Perhaps the new technology available over the Internet will produce new developments and improvements in library sharing.

The first panelist was Michael Keller of Stanford University, who stated that he was concerned with practical steps that could be initiated as soon as possible. In his view, multi-type library cooperation is rather difficult and PNC is exactly that kind of organization--a variety of institutions with differing missions. Cooperation can be done if you can offer a variety of services and collection products for every member institute with unique or special products. He cited as illustrative of the collections available :

The Academic Sinica (Taiwan) collection of historical Chinese language documents

The University of Hong Kong collection on Hong Kong history

The University of California, Berkeley's collection on California history

The Stanford University curriculum development laboratory collection

The University of Washington museum using hypertext directions

WWW tool kits and multimedia databases available in several locations

It is necessary to develop bilateral relationships between similar institutions since cooperative arrangements work best when the key personnel have intimate knowledge of each others institutional settings. PNC has helped facilitate these arrangements and could develop additional host arrangements

Projects work best among institutions when the focus is on product development with specific goals. One possibility to consider is a cross-publication arrangement.

Among the immediate projects PNC should consider are:

PNC home pages with links to libraries and lists of unique resources, catalog collections, scanned images, finding aids for unique collections, catalogues, slide collections, and museum specimen collections. PNC needs to explore partnerships between institutions for licensed access collections. We need improved inter-library loan development and we need to explore scanning systems. We should consider PNC curriculum courses between faculty, research collaborations, and distance conferencing, where PNC could provide regional host services.

The next panelist was Professor Robert Steuart of the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, who said that he saw numerous problems in developing cooperative agreements in Asia. He said there are legal barriers, cost barriers and organizational barriers, as well as physical access difficulties. One example of the difficulties of trans-Pacific cooperation is that American maintained databases shut down for maintenance in their early morning hours, which is the peak use time in Bangkok. There are also problems of censorship and, frequently, the attitude that information should not be shared

Maureen Donovan of The Ohio State University reported on a project in which she participates using the WWW to promote library cooperation. This is a pilot project between Ohio State, Berkeley, Duke, and Columbia universities, organized to share information on Japanese holdings, journals and catalogue collections. There is another project with Ohio State, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota on the sharing of east Asian materials. Common goals among these projects are to make all library collections more accessible locally and to make librarians aware of other collections. She said that she did not understand why PNC seemed to be defined geographically, when the new technologies remove geography.

The final panelist was Professor Hyo-Guen Park from Seoul National University. He commented that the panelists each represented institutions in a different state of development. Seoul National University has recently received a World Bank loan to automate their library and are now developing the software they need. Although he is interested in working together, he fears that Seoul National's needs may be so different that it may be difficult to work together. Korean universities have been poor for so long it is difficult for them to consider giving things to others and sharing resources. He is interested in collaborating within PNC, but feels that the knowledge of each others approaches and ways of doing things is still too limited to make cooperation easy

The closing session was devoted to the report of the advisory board and an open discussion of future directions by the participants. Curtis Hardyck reviewed the advisory board meeting discussion, which focused around the following issues:

1. The wish of the director to spend more time fund raising and less time on the day to day administrative requirements of PNC

2. The need to deliver a product to show that PNC is a functioning organization. Producing a product will also sway institutions who are currently considering joining, but are hesitant until there is some evidence that PNC will actually accomplish something.

3. The need to set up regional servers and the questions of the most appropriate locations

4. The need to develop cooperative agreements to deal with institutional priorities.

5. The necessity to settle on an initial demonstration project.

Following the review of the advisory board minutes, David Wasley commented on the practice used by a group in which he participates, in which the group reviews problems and possible solutions and picks what is referred to as an 80% solution. He suggested that PNC should adopt this as a problem solving mode, since it is frequently easy to reach an 80% solution, but extremely difficult to reach 100%.

An offer was made to supply the PNC server to all members with the agreement that it be maintained and updated. Enrique Riveros-Schäfer suggested that we issue invitation to other institutions to join. Curtis Hardyck responded with the comment that we need something to show people before we can offer any incentive to join. Michael Greenhalgh spoke in support of Riveros-Schäfer, stating that PNC needed to invite South America, Cambodia, Burma, Viet Nam, the Philippines and Indonesia. Hardyck reviewed the current status of the countries mentioned, pointing out that (1) we had visitors at this meeting from Chile and from Russia (2) that Viet Nam and the Philippines had been invited and that representatives were expected from those countries, but did not attend and (3) that he had no success in establishing contacts with Burma, Cambodia or Indonesia. Lewis Lancaster argued that we should work first within our existing membership and was supported by Hardyck, who said that without an example, it was extremely difficult to get people to participate, since there tended to be considerable confusion about what kinds of contributions were wanted.

Dennis Smith suggested that the Division of Library Automation could provide an additional PNC access mode by listing PNC libraries as a menu item on the DLA server and on the Melvyl system of the University of California, Michael Keller and Min-Min Chang supported this, stated that all PNC libraries should do this, and requested that all librarians in attendance meet immediately following the current meeting to discuss how this could be implemented. Tan Tin Wee offered to install a web page at National University of Singapore for all Asia Pacific libraries, update it on a regular basis, and mail it to everyone. He also volunteered two gigabytes of disc space to mirror PNC material and to serve as a regional director for biotechnology material. His offer was enthusiastically approved.

The recording form for the Asia-Pacific on line library Web database is attached as the final pages of this report, prior to the PNC review paper and the tutorial papers. If you have information to contribute to this database, please send it to Professor Tan Tin Wee at the address shown on the form.

Discussion then began on the 100 images proposal offered by Michael Greenhalgh. Michael argued that it should be a cultural museum and not specimen collections. John Huntington responded that the image collection should represent strengths and not be limited. Lewis Lancaster offered a formal motion that we proceed with a museum project where we solicit 100 images from each institution. Michael Greenhalgh argued in response that the image collections should not be a ragbag but should be cultural.

The motion to do a collection that represents institutional strengths was approved by voice vote. All PNC institutions will be requested to prepare an annotated and scripted collection of 100 images for digitization , chosen , organized , annotated and scripted by the institutions to represent itself. This image collection is to be made available to all PNC institutions with the hope that all participating institutions will display the multi-institution collections on a WWW server.

Michael Greenhalgh offered to carry out the organization and develop the collection for PNC if the institutions could send him their 100 digitized images. No action was taken on this matter but thanks were expressed to Michael for his generous offer. At present, the issues of digitization and organization of the image collections remain undecided. Given that some institutions may not have the facilities for digitization, it will be necessary to develop support and assistance arrangements where necessary.

Abayeva Lyubov L. from Russia spoke briefly to the group, thanking PNC for inviting participation and commenting briefly on the programs and interests of the Buryat State Pedagogical Institute that were appropriate to PNC. Curtis Hardyck announced that the next meeting of the PNC would be held in January 1996 in Mexico City, with the National Autonomous University of Mexico as the host institution and the meeting was formally adjourned.

This meeting benefited substantially from the enthusiastic cooperation and assistance of a great many people. In Thailand, special thanks are due to Chulalongkorn University for hosting the conference, and to Dr. Prachak Poomvises, Director of the Centers for Academic Excellence and Mrs. Nonglak Sukvarnich, head of Audiovisual Center. From the University of California, Berkeley, Gordon Adams, Howie Lan, and Cavarlee Cary gave generously of their time . For PNC staff, Cecilia Chang should be thanked for an excellent job of managing all the many details that go into managing an international meeting. Jason Cofer volunteered his expertise with the network systems providing mail links from the conference center. The three tutors, Michael Greenhalgh, George Soete, and David Wasley deserve special recognition for their efforts in preparing tutorials on the conference topics. The meeting would not have been possible without the support provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Report prepared by Curtis Hardyck, with assistance from Dennis Smith and Hui-lan Huang

Asia-Pacific On-Line Library WebDatabase

A Pacific Neighbourhood Consortium project

_____________________________________________________

We are building a web database of Asia-Pacific On-line libraries and would appreciate it very much if you could oblige us with the following information. Thank you.

Dr. Tan Tin Wee. 20 Jan 1995

Questionnaire

(Please use a separate form if you have more than one on-line library)

Name of Member Institution:

Name of Library:

Abbreviation:

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

[e.g. http://www.technet.sg]

URL of Institution :

URL of Library :

Gopher site:

[e.g. gopher.nus.sg]

Telnet address of OnLine Library

IP Number :

Domain Name :

Type of Library system :

Login userid :

Description of how to login :

Please attach more information describing your online resources.

Non-Online Resources

If your resources are stand-alone and not yet available online on Internet,

could you please attach more information describing them.

Contact Person

If we have more questions, could you supply a contact person please:

Contact Person:

Contact Address:

Contact Phone:

Contact Fax:

Email address:

URL:

Institutional Logo:

Please send us a high quality full color picture of your

library /Institution logo or crest to be used to head

your web page with the appropriate description.

If you have a gif or jpeg file available, please send us the URL.

Please mail this form duly completed, plus your artwork to :

Dr Tan Tin Wee

PNC Online Library Web Coordinator

Head, Technet Unit

Computer Centre

National University of Singapore

Kent Ridge Crescent

Singapore 0511

(Tel: +65-772-6490)

(Fax: +65-773-6812)

(Email: tinwee@technet.sg)