NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 1 - Fall 2001

By Deborah Westmoreland, Digital Library Initiatives

For a second year, the NCSU Librarians Association (NCSULA) sponsored the I. T. Littleton Seminar. The event, held on April 18, 2001, was free and open to the NC State community and interested colleagues from across the state who work with information technologies. Association officers Deborah Westmoreland (president), Jennifer O'Brien Roper (vice chair/chair elect), Josh Boyer (secretary), and Tripp Reade (liaison to the Staff Association), together with Karen Grigg (NCSULA Food Committee) planned the seminar and following reception.

Herbert Van de Sompel, a visiting professor with the computer science department at Cornell University and cofounder of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), was guest speaker. He outlined the efforts of the OAI project (http://www.openarchives.org), which is a collaborative initiative to adopt and promote interoperability standards to facilitate efficient dissemination of content via metadata harvesting. He also discussed his latest work on content-sensitive reference linking (SFX), which permits context-sensitive linking between Web-based resources. The SFX project (http://www.sfxit.com/) allows librarians to define the library's electronic collection, including licensed and freely available resources, and to determine the manner in which the component resources can be linked to meet the needs of library users.

The I. T. Littleton Seminar Endowment, established in March 1987 to mark the retirement of I. T. Littleton as library director at NC State, provided funding for the seminar. The seminar series addresses major issues that affect libraries across the nation and explores diverse perspectives. Individuals interested in making a contribution to the Littleton endowment should write a check to "Friends of the Library" and specify the endowment name. Send contributions to Friends of the Library, NCSU Libraries, Campus Box 7111, Raleigh, NC 27695-7111.