LAUC-B Fall Assembly
November 30, 1995
8:30-10:00 a.m., Morrison Library
By Patricia Vanderberg
I. Call to Order.
II. CAPA Report.
Ivan Arguelles, Chair of CAPA reported that in 1995 51
cases were up for review: 41 cases for the Library and 10 cases
for the affiliated libraries. CAPA recommended on 49 of these
cases. Two cases remain outstanding from last year.
CAPA reviewed 26 merit increases for Library cases and 6 for
afflilated libraries. One merit increase was in fact for an
accelerated review which resulted in a promotion.
CAPA reviewed 10 promotion cases: 6 cases for the Library and 4
for the affiliated libraries. CAPA recommended promotion in 7 of
these cases.
CAPA reviewed 4 special review cases, all for the Library.
To date two cases have not yet been reviewed by CAPA, and one
case, though a recommendation was sent on, has not had a final
decision.
The University Librarian and the Vice-Chancellor, to date, have
agreed with CAPA's recommendations in all cases that have been
finalized.
Last year CAPA participated in only 3 interviews, 2 affiliated
positions, both for Law, and 1 temporary part time position for
the Business Library.
III. Research and Professional Development Committee
Debbie Jan, Chair of the Research and Professional
Development Committee announced two workshops sponsored by the
committee: December 6, 1995 Peer Review for Review Initiators
December 13, 1995 Changing Criteria for Promotion
IV. LAUC-B Executive Committee Chair Report
K. Vanden Heuvel, Chair of the LAUC-B Executive
Committee summarized committee activities. CAPA is streamlining
the peer review process and limiting the self-evaluation to two
pages in length and recommending that its organization follow the
requirements of the APM more closely. K. Vanden Heuvel is
drafting a letter to the Chancellor concerning the status of
librarians on the Berkeley campus. LAUC-B is co-sponsoring a
conference on copyright with the Townsend Center and others
scheduled for spring 1996. All of the proposed revisions of the
bylaws passed in the recent election. The Cultural Diversity
Committee is establishing a website on affirmative action issues.
V. Minutes of Spring Assembly
Minutes of the Spring Assembly were approved as
submitted.
VI. Address by Professor Robert Wilensky, Chair of Computer
Science Department and Principal Investigator for the
NSF/NASA/ARPA Digital Libraries Project: " The UC Berkeley
Digital Library Project"
The UC Berkeley Digital Library is a four million dollar three
year research project sponsored by NSF/NASA/ARPA to build a work
centered digital testbed library on the California environment.
Participants include researchers from UC departments of Computer
Science, School of Information Management and Systems, Electrical
and Electronics Engineering, Civil Engineering, etc. Corporate
participants include Xerox Parc, Rico California Research and
IBM.
The Digital Library testbed is a collection of environmental
information designed to meet a wide variety of technical needs by
users in state agencies, public and private corporations,
regulatory bodies, and educational institutions. The data
consists of computer science technical reports, numeric data,
environmental impact reports, tables, pictures, maps, three
dimensional models, aerial and ground photography, and video
information.
Professor Wilensky introduced a model for the digital library of
the future and contrasted it with a model for a traditional
library. The digital library will be a large depository for the
provision, storage, organization, and indexing of information,
and attendant services. It will not be in one physical location,
but will reside in multiple copies in several repositories.
Authoring documents will be closer to the user, with the system's
ability to integrate and support annotations, working in groups
and other functions.
Three specific UC Berkeley research components of the UC Berkeley
Digital Library Project were discussed. The work centered
scenario group is examining the needs for report writing and
sharing data to meet multiple needs of users for information in
various formats. The user needs group is developing methods to
analyze user needs, so as to extend functionality of documents
and improve access to information. The strategic systems planning
group is developing data base management tools for data access
and service delivery.
Professor Wilensky demonstrated various methods for access to
multivarient documents, which are documents constructed as
multiple layers of information that might include text,
photographic, numeric or other information. He showed examples
of access via an access matrix, tile bar, and scanning colors and
shapes.
Accomplishments of the UC Berkeley Digital Library project
include advances in the areas of natural language processing for
automatic categorization and lexical disambiguation, of computer
vision for object recognition, and subelement indexing to improve
precision and recall. The goals of the project are to further
expand the functionality and access to multivarient documents
which would enable table sorting, distribution of annotations and
enhanced geographic access. The overall plan is to develop a
large scale database with multiple formats of information
designed to meet multiple needs and that could be distributed
across many computer systems.