Panels

• Digital Libraries over the GRID: Heaven or Hell?
• Does eScience need digital libraries?

Panel 1: Digital Libraries over the GRID:  Heaven or Hell?

The last decade has seen unprecedented advances in network and distributed-system technologies, which have opened up the way for the construction of global-scale systems based on completely new conceptions of computation and sharing of resources.  The dream of integrating unlimited levels of processing power, unlimited amounts of information, and an unlimited variety of services, and offering the entire package in a reliable and seamless fashion to widely distributed users is quickly becoming reality.  As Digital Libraries move towards more user-centric, pro-active, collaborative functionality and application diversity, they should be among the first to take advantage of such environments.  The long-term vision of the field for creating Dynamic Universal Knowledge Environments calls for intensive computation and processing of very large amounts of information, hence, the needs for the appropriate distributed architecture are pressing.

Grid technologies are at the forefront of these developments.  While much has been written about computation in the Grid environment, information and service management of the kind required by Digital Libraries has received very limited attention in the literature.  Nevertheless, the Grid offers tremendous opportunities in that direction and at the same time poses major technical challenges in the area as well.  The goal of this panel discussion is to identify these opportunities and challenges and examine whether the positive aspects of the Grid outweigh the negative ones or vice versa.  In this direction, the panelists are called to answer some of the following questions:

• Is there any benefit in using the Grid technologies for supporting Digital Libraries? Are there new key Digital Library functionalities that can be enabled by the use of these technologies? Are there application areas that may profit from Digital Libraries on the Grid?
• Is there new research to be done for Digital Libraries over the Grid?  Are there any new problems that arise from managing general documents over the Grid?  For example, are there new problems with respect to security, heterogeneous information integration, document search, or workflow management?
• Do classical problems require new solutions or do conventional approaches work well in the Grid environment?  For example, how does one address issues of document indexing, information retrieval, or document composition?
• How does the Grid compare with other architectures, e.g., peer-to-peer or service-oriented architectures for Digital Libraries?
• Is the existing distributed computing infrastructure already developed or under development for the Grid, e.g., Condor, Globus, Unicore, EGEE, adequate for supporting the required Digital Library functionality?
• Are there any particular difficulties when dealing with management of any particular information form expected to be found in Digital Libraries over the Grid, e.g., differences between relational and XML data or free text, or differences between cultural information and health information?

Panel 2: Does eScience need digital libraries?

There are an increasing number of initiatives in several countries targeted at supporting research into new forms of computational infrastructure intended to transform the conduct of scientific research in areas such as chemistry, atmospheric science, and earth science. These initiatives, which go under a variety of names including eScience, eResearch, and cyberinfrastructure, are a response to the changing nature of scientific research, particularly in the natural and physical sciences, which is increasingly dependent upon large data sets and high-end analysis and visualization tools. Research issues being addressed in these initiatives include information retrieval, information modeling, ontologies, systems interoperability, and policy issues associated with providing transparent access to complex data sets. As such,  these initiatives are concerned with many of the same research issues that the international digital library community has been grappling with for the past decade.

It is timely to seriously consider the role that digital libraries can and should play in this emerging eScience computational infrastructure. Bringing the digital library and the emerging scientific infrastructure worlds together can lay the foundation for providing truly integrated support for the entire process of science, from formulation of research questions to the publication of the outcomes. Specifically, the eScience and digital libraries research communities need to work together to identify the potential contributions of each of these communities for supporting the conduct of science and to articulate a shared research agenda. Critical questions to consider include:

• What will the ‘knowledge of science’ look like in 20 years? Will publications still be the coin of the realm or will annotated data sets, scientific models, visualizations, and other new forms of intellectual product, become the predominant mode of knowledge sharing? What is the future role of digital libraries in the support of science? What are the success stories we want tell about the influence of digital libraries on the conduct of science in 20 years?

• What are the critical areas – theoretical, methodological, social or technical – where collaboration across the two communities (Digital Libraries and eScience) is needed to support the entire process of science from inception, to implementation, and publication? What are the core elements of a long-term shared research agenda across digital libraries and eScience? What are the roadblocks, or core differences between these two communities’ approaches, that may hinder progress and collaboration? How will having digital library collections and services integrated with advanced real-time collaborative systems, such as those being created in eScience initiatives, change the scientific process?

• Can we really build significant international, sustained collaborations around a shared agenda? After years of international workshops, conferences, etc., we still can’t even agree what to call it (eScience, Cyberinfrastructure, eResearch), much less work together effectively. What should we do, can we name specific activities, to promote the necessary international dialog between researchers? 

• What are the broader impacts of this agenda for science educators, learners, and the public? How can eScience and digital libraries transform teaching and learning? How can the needs and desires of science education and public science literacy inform this research agenda?