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About CENDI — Highlights from FY 2001

CENDI CONTINUED TO PROVIDE COORDINATION AND LEADERSHIP FOR INFORMATION EXCHANGE ON IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION (STI) ISSUES

In a year that highlighted the importance of information to the Nation's welfare and defense, CENDI continued to enhance its leadership and coordination on STI policy issues. It focused in the areas of government information dissemination; the transition to the new Administration; Web metrics and evaluation; copyright and intellectual property; and digital preservation.

CENDI kept its members aware of the significant legal and policy issues including:

• digital copyright
• data quality
• information security
• E-government

CENDI collaborated with "information communities" outside the federal STI community including libraries, the telecommunications and technology industries, the scientific data community, and Federal information policy makers. CENDI members met for technical discussions with staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Affairs, key staff of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the OMB's Associate Director for Information Technology, who directs the activities of the CIO Council. It developed a relationship with the federal Chief Information Officers Council. CENDI collected comments on data quality guidelines drafted by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in support of OIRA's request for comment.

As part of the development of the document, Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright, the Copyright Task Group collaborated with agency general counsel staff that specialize in intellectual property and copyright issues. Through extensive discussions, the staff and counsel gained new insights into the issues facing both groups, particularly as more information moves into the digital environment.

CENDI CONTINUED EFFORTS TO ENVISION AND DEFINE AN ARCHITECTURAL FRAMEWORK FOR A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR THE FEDERAL STI COMMUNITY.

CENDI, the Department of Energy, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and the University of Maryland sponsored a workshop on a Public Information Infrastructure for Science. Based on that meeting, CENDI joined other science agencies to create the Science.gov Alliance to integrate access to Federal physical and life science information. Science.gov will be part of FirstGov, a public gateway to federal information resources.

CENDI is supporting the phase-one development of Science.gov. A Core Team began work on the site in May 2001. As part of the CIO Council's Cross-Agency Portal Initiative, Science.gov-related projects for cataloging agency Web sites and providing searching of multiple Web-based bibliographic and full-text databases received funding. The initial version of the Science.gov Web site is expected to be made public in early 2002.

As background for its Science.gov efforts and with an eye to moving beyond the current model for information organizations, CENDI conducted joint investigations of several key architectural components:

• CENDI discussed the requirements for a federated STI infrastructure with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. CNRI emphasized the need for some level of standardized metadata. Based on previous work by the CENDI Cataloging Working Group, the metadata information from the CENDI agencies was updated.
• The subject categorization schemes of the various CENDI agencies were analyzed. A broad scheme based on combining the NTIS Subject Categories and those of the specific agencies was developed as a browse structure. A modified version of this scheme is the basis for indexing and browsing web sites for Science.gov.
• The Reference/Citation Linking Task Group produced a white paper addressing the issues of reference linking in the federal environment.
• CENDI and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) sponsored a symposium on digital signatures and public key infrastructures. There were presentations on the concepts and technologies, federal policy issues, the status of federal efforts in this area, and implementing digital signatures in document management. A panel of scientific and technical information experts, including CENDI member representatives, discussed the impact and application of the technologies on the architectural model for STI in the future. These symposia also provided significant learning opportunities in relatively new areas for agency staff and information professionals.
• The CENDI Secretariat and Working Groups continued to follow emerging standards and best practices related to the development of an STI framework (Open Archive Initiative, OpenURL, Dublin Core, and digital object identification).

CENDI CONTINUED TO PROMOTE AN UNDERSTANDING OF STI AND STI MANAGEMENT

CENDI addressed this goal through its Web site, by sponsoring symposia and workshop activities for CENDI staff and the broader information community, and by publishing reports and conference proceedings.

A key tool, the STI Manager available from the CENDI Web site, now has approximately 330 evaluated and fully cataloged links related to STI policy, information life-cycle management, standards, etc.

To provide educational opportunities for agency staff, the User Education Working Group sponsored tours of the NASA Center for AeroSpace Information, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine (NLM). At NLM, the Subject Analysis and Retrieval Working Group members had a special demonstration of NLM's new Web-based indexing system.

CENDI's publishing activities continued with the following documents released to the public or provided to staff as drafts during FY 2001.

• CENDI/2001-2 "Evaluating Our Web Presence: Challenges, Metrics, Results"
• CENDI/2001-3 "License Agreements for Electronic Products and Services: Frequently Asked Questions in the Federal Environment"
• CENDI/2000-3 "Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright: A Template for the Promotion of Awareness Among CENDI Agency Staff" [draft]

In addition, the CENDI Chair and the Secretariat wrote an article on CENDI for the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, published by Marcel Dekker, Inc.