ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH LIBRARIES 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W, Washington, DC. 20026 (202) 232-2466 FAX (202) 462-7849 Statement of the Association of Research Libraries to the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for the Hearing Record of March 5, 1991 on S. 272 - The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 The Association of Research Libraries is a non-profit Association of 119 research libraries in North America. The membership of ARL is actively involved in the provision of information resources - including those that are unique, to the research and education communities of North America. Research libraries also are key participants in numerous experiments and pilot programs that demonstrate the utility of high capacity networks for the exchange and use of information. ARL supports the passage of legislation that will promote the development and use of expanded networking capacities and capabilities to advance education and research. The need for a high-speed computer communications network is a reflection of a number of changes underway in the academic and library communities. Three of these changes include the need to connect researchers with facilities such as supercomputers, databases, and library resources; the changing manner in which scholars and researchers communicate; and finally, the ability of these researchers to manipulate and combine large data sets or files in new ways only possible through connecting users with high-speed, high-capacity networks. The NREN, the vision of the next generation network designed to support -the work of the education and research communities - must reflect the changes noted above as well as those efforts already underway that address the new uses of information, while at the same time, address the national goals of improving our Nation's productivity and international competitive position. To realize these goals and to build upon existing efforts, ARL with others in the education community support the inclusion of the following points in NREN legislation. These points build upon existing successful federal, state, and local programs that facilitate access to information resources. NREN authorizing legislation should provide for: - Recognition of education in its broadest sense as a reason for development of the NREN; - Eligibility of all types of libraries to link to the NREN as resource providers and as access points for users; - A voice for involved constituencies, including libraries, in development of network policy and technical standards. NREN legislation should authorize support for: - High capacity network connections with all 50 states; - A percentage of network development funds should be allocated for education and training; - Direct connections to the NREN for at least 200 key libraries and library organizations and dial-up access for multi-type libraries within each state to those key libraries. Prime candidates for direct connections include: *The three national libraries (Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library, National Library of Medicine) and other federal agency libraries and information centers; *51 regional depository libraries (generally one per state) which have a responsibility to provide free public access to all publications (including in electronic formats) of U.S. government agencies; *51 state library agencies (or their designated resource libraries or library networks) which have responsibility for statewide library development and which administer federal funds; *Libraries in geographic areas which have a scarcity of NREN connections; *Libraries with specialized or unique resources of national or international significance; *Library networks and bibliographic utilities which act on behalf of libraries. The National Science Foundation, through its various programs, including science education, should provide for: - The inclusion of libraries both within and outside of higher education and elementary/secondary education as part of the research and education support structure; - Education and training in network use at all levels of education; Experimentation and demonstrations in network applications. The information infrastructure of the United States is a complex conglomeration of public and private networks, institutions, information resources, and users from educational, research, library, and industrial communities with extensive ties to international networks and infrastructures. Research libraries and the resources that they acquire, organize, maintain, and/or provide access to, are critical elements of this infrastructure. In support of their mission to advance scholarship and research, these same libraries have been at the forefront of the technological revolution that has made this robust and evolving information infrastructure possible. One of the most exciting and unanticipated results of the NSFNET has been the explosive growth of the network as a communications link. The enhanced connectivity permits scholars and researchers to communicate in new and different ways and stimulates innovation. Approximately one-quarter of the use of NSFNET is for E-mail, one-quarter for file exchange, 20% for interactive applications, and 30% for associated services. It is this latter category that is growing at an extraordinary rate and includes new and innovative library uses of networks. This growth rate demonstrates the value that researchers place on access to library and information resources in support of education and research. The following examples demonstrate the types of activities underway in academic and research libraries that utilize networks. In the past year, the number of library online catalogs available on the Internet has jumped from thirty to over 160, including those in Canada, Australia, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Israel, and the United Kingdom. A single point of access to 100 online public access catalogs is possible today through a midwestern university. Access to resources identified in online public access catalogs are of increasing importance to researchers as they can access a greatly expanded array of information resources and in a more timely and efficient fashion. Needed information can be located at another institution, and depending upon the nature and format of the information, downloaded directly, and/or requested via interlibrary loan. Over time, this practice will likely change to the researcher obtaining the information directly online versus "ordering the information online." Typical use of an online catalog at a major research institution is that of LIAS at the Pennsylvania State University Library - there are approximately 33,000 searches each day of the LIAS system. The National Agricultural Library, NAL, is supporting a project with the North Carolina State University Libraries to provide Internet-based document delivery for library materials. Scanned images of documents generate machine readable texts which are transmitted via the NSFNET/Internet to libraries, researchers work stations, and agricultural research extension offices. Images of documents can be delivered directly to the researchers computer, placed on diskette, or printed. This program will be extended to the entire land- grant community of over 100 institutions as well as to other federal agencies and to the international agricultural research community. Another example of new library services that are possible with the use of the information technologies and networks, that meet a growing demand in the research community, and represent a network growth area are the licensing of commercial journal databases by libraries. Four of the last five years of the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database is accessible to the University of California community and there are approximately 50,000 searches of the system each week. There are numerous benefits to researchers and libraries including enhanced access to journal literature, there are lower costs to the library than from use of commercial systems, and the lower costs encourages greater use of the files by researchers thus promoting innovation. As other research libraries mount files, similar use patterns have occurred. Although Internet access to proprietary files is not permitted, there are other services available such as UNCOVER that are more widely accessible. UNCOVER is a database with the tables of contents for approximately 10,000 multi-disciplinary journals developed by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. The increasing demand for UNCOVER demonstrates the need for such services in the academic community and one that is available at a low cost for those institutions unable to locally mount proprietary files. One area of networked services forecast to present new opportunities for dissemination and exchange of information in the scholarly and research communities and where a significant amount of experimentation and "rethinking" is anticipated, is in electronic publishing. Publishing electronically is in its infancy. Today, there are ten refereed journals on the Internet and it is anticipated that there will be many times this number in a short while. These journals, available via the Internet, range from Postmodern Culture, (North Carolina State University) to New Horizons in Adult Education, (Syracuse University) to PSYCOLOQUY, (American Psychological Association and Princeton University). The nature and format of the electronic journal is evolving. To some, the electronic journal is a substitute to the "printed" journal. There are an increasing number of "paper- replicating electronic journals" and the growing number of titles on CD-ROM and the rapid rate of acceptance of this format, is a testament to the value of the electronic format. It is anticipated that many of the paper publishers will offer an electronic version of their journals via intermediaries such as DIALOG and CARL as the use of and capabilities of networks expand. This model also presents new dissemination choices to government agencies. The National Agricultural Library has begun to negotiate agreements with scholarly societies for the optical scanning of agricultural titles and information. Another view of the electronic journal is one more of process, than product. Information or an idea is disseminated on the network for open critique, comment, dialog, and exchange. In this instance, publishing is an ongoing, interactive, non-static function, and one that encourages creativity, connectivity, and interactivity. Researchers experimenting in this camp are referred to as "skywriters" or "trailblazers." In fact, publishing in this arena takes on a new meaning due to the network's capabilities. The use of multi-media including sound, text, and graphics, the significantly expanded collaborative nature of the scholarly exchange not possible with a printed scholarly publication, and finally, the potential for a continuously changing information source, distinguishes this electronic journal from its counterpart, the paper-replicating electronic journal. An online publishing program on the Genome Project at the Welch Library at Johns Hopkins University is an example of this type of electronic publishing. Text is mounted on a database, accessed by geneticists, students, and critics who respond directly via electronic mail to the author. In this case, a computerized textbook is the end result but one which constantly changes to reflect new advances in the field. Funding from the National Library of Medicine has supported this project. A final area where electronic publishing activities are underway is in the academic publishing community. Two examples of activities include efforts in the high energy physics and mathematics communities. A preprint database in high energy physics has been maintained for fifteen years by a university research facility with approximately 200 preprints added each week to the database of over 200,000 article citations. Instant Math Preprints (IMP), a new initiative that will maintain a searchable database of abstracts, will permit electronic file transfer of the full text of preprints. The project will be accessible via ten universities and "e-math," the American Mathematical Society's electronic service. The value to the research community of timely and effective exchange of research results will be enormous. There are two predominant reasons that pilot projects and experiments such as these have been possible, have flourished, and been successful. First, a high value has been placed and a significant investment has been made in carefully constructed cooperative programs in the library community to advance research through the sharing of resources. The creation and support of bibliographic utilities such as the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) has resulted in access by scholars to enormous databases of bibliographic records and information. Cooperative programs have been supported and encouraged by federal programs such as the Library Services and Construction Act of 1964 and the Higher Education Act of 1965. The Higher Education Act and in particular Title II-C and Title II-D programs have emphasized the sharing of resources between all types of libraries and users, and provided needed funds for support of technological innovations and developments. These programs have also promoted equality of access to information, ensuring that those collections housed in major research institutions, be broadly accessible. The second reason that libraries have succeeded in advancing the exchange of information resources is the effective use of technologies to promote access. Most, if not all of these cooperative programs, are dependent upon networks in part, as the means to identify and share information resources. What will be required as more resources become available through the Internet will be the development of network directories. These directories will assist users in learning of what resources are available and how to access them. Provision of these electronic resources and the development of the ensuing access tools such as directories are already presenting many challenges to library and information science professionals and will require continuing attention if the NREN is to succeed. As a consequence, the needed infrastructure to connect a diversity of users to a wide array of information resources is in place today. Networks interconnecting information resources and users throughout all parts of the United States and internationally, have been operational and effective for a number of years. A key factor that will permit the NREN to be a success is that much of the infrastructure is already in place. There are networks that interconnect academic institutions - public and private, industrial users, and state consortiums, that include library networks and that do not distinguish between rural and urban, academic and K-12. The NREN vision must continue to encourage and demand enhanced interconnectivity between all users and all types of institutions. As Congress considers how to best design the NREN to meet the needs of the research and academic communities, it will be important more than ever to include the goals and objectives of ongoing programs. In a time when there are 1,000 books published internationally each day, 9,600 different journals are published annually in the United States, the total of all printed knowledge is doubling every eight years, electronic information is just beginning to be exploited, and financial and funding resources are shrinking, it is critical that the research and education communities with continued federal support, strive for increased connectivity between all types of libraries and users. This connectivity will result in improved productivity and a strengthening of U.S. position in the international marketplace. S. 272 should provide the necessary framework to achieve this enhanced connectivity. S.272 should build upon existing programs and identify new means to permit information resources to be broadly available to the education and research communities. Ensuring connectivity through multiple types of libraries, throughout the United States, is a critical component to several existing statutes and should be included in NREN legislation. By so doing, the legislation would leverage existing federal, state, and local programs. As libraries and users alike employ information technologies to access information resources, new opportunities and applications will develop that exploit the wealth of information and knowledge available in research libraries. Network applications today primarily focus on the provision of access to resources such as books, journals, and online files. Electronic publishing ventures are just beginning. In the years ahead, scholars and researchers will be able to access and use those research materials and collections generally unaccessible but of extreme research value including photographs, satellite data, archival data, videos and movies, sound recordings, slides of paintings and other artifacts, and more. Access to and manipulation of these information resources advances scholarship and research, and scholars will expect a network with the capacity and capabilities to achieve effective access. Clearly, to be successful, effective, and of use to the academic and research communities, the NREN must be designed to nurture and accommodate both the current as well as future yet unknown uses of these valuable information resources.