Topics (in alphabetical order):

A Post Digital Library Research Agenda
The National Science Foundation has fostered much of the development of digital library technologies, services, and collections, both in the US and in collaboration with international partners. The Digital Library Initiative (DLI), followed by DLI-2 paved the way for the remarkable progress made over the past decade. Each of these initiatives developed and evolved through the collective wisdom and insight of the research community in open discussion. As DLI-2 approaches its conclusion, NSF is, once again, engaging the international community of scholars, practitioners, and users to advise it on future research needs and opportunities. As part of that effort, in June 2003, the NSF organized an invitational workshop on "post digital library futures," or "ubiquitous knowledge environments". The presentation will give an insight in the major themes that emerged from the workshop.

Information Content Industry Outlook
This top-level briefing on highlights and insights into issues and trends that drive the industry and impact content buyers and sellers is base on up-to-the-minute research and analysis by Outsell, Inc, the only research and advisory firm providing decision-support for and about the world of Information Content. This session will focus on data about content deploying functions in the corporate and government sectors.

Quantum Computing Shifting the Computational Paradigm
An important effort is under way to develop a new technology that could have an important impact in the way we store, transmit and process information. Building a quantum computer would not simply represent one more step in the process of creating more powerful computational devices. In fact, quantum information processing is a new paradigm for computation based on the use of the most counter-intuitive aspects of atomic and sub-atomic physics. This talk will focus on the main ideas behind quantum computation and review the status of the currents attempts to build such devices.

Self-Preserving Digital Objects
Current digital preservation strategies assume a level of centralized control that will likely not scale to large collections. Similarly, digital objects should be able to "out-live" the entities (people or organizations) charged with their preservation. Intelligent objects can be imbued with the capability to self-preserve. Through simulation and algorithmic study, we will demonstrate that self-preserving intelligent objects can be more effective than (or at least no less effective than) traditional digital preservation strategies.

Synthesizing New Directions for Digital Library Development
Foreseeing a phase-shift requires insight and creative thinking. Acting on its implications requires ingenuity, risk taking and perseverance. The fast pace of technological growth mandates new ways of synthesizing the myriad of new tools and possibilities for digital libraries, and adapting methodologies that guarantee a transformation into day to day practical applications. This presentation will focus on what some of the latest trends and developments in the information industry might portend and its associated impact on current digital library practices.

Teenagers point the way: How natural behaviors shape new industries
The information industries seem to be restructuring by the day, engaging new technologies and business models even as older ones are showing some tenacity. This joint presentation will paint a picture of what is in store over the next few years and address the possible consequences for those in charge of obtaining and deploying those industries' products and services. For example, the Internet has moved through several stages of growth: novelty, static brochureware, dynamic information, and is now a communications environment. The focus is expanding to embrace one on one discussions, individualized publishing in real time, text and multimedia messaging from a range of net-centric devices, and agent based alerting services that put one or more people into direct, real time contact. The behavior of the individuals in this communications environment is often called "hive" or "swarm" behavior.

The Evolution and Future of the Alexandria Digital Library
The processes of managing information by attributes such as author, title, and date have been widely accepted. ADL research is expanding those information management elements to include a spatial component. Although the initial project focused on geospatial data, ongoing research will attempt to geo-reference text, music, video and other formats based on metadata contained in traditional library cataloging. An overview, current research, and demonstration will be part of this presentation.

Visually Intuitive Interfaces for Scientists
As the information space behind the interface becomes larger and more complex, the problem of how to design intuitive interfaces also becomes larger and more complex. How can we represent hundreds or thousands of digital objects on a single interface? One answer is to represent digital objects in the most abstract way possible, using the smallest number of pixels possible: in other words, to represent digital objects as nodes or even dots on the interface. Using this kind of information visualization, it is possible to represent large numbers of digital objects on a single interface and to facilitate pattern recognition in users, particularly users who are accustomed to looking for patterns in abstract representations of data: scientists. Creating these kinds of interfaces is the focus of the Human-Computer Interaction Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library.