ERCIM News No.36 - January 1999

ERCIM DELOS - User Interfaces for All Joint Workshop

by Constantine Stephanidis and Preben Hansen

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On the occasion of the co-location of the 4th Annual ERCIM Workshop on ‘User Interfaces for All’, and the 8th ERCIM DELOS Workshop on ‘User Interfaces for Digital Libraries’, which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, 19-21 October and 21-23 October 1998 respectively, a joint meeting (mini-workshop) was organised. The objective of this meeting was to discuss and elaborate an R&D agenda for HCI activities in the field of Digital Libraries.

The main issues that were discussed during the meeting include the characterisation of the current situation concerning the area of interaction design for Digital Libraries (particularly in the context of R&D activities of the two working groups), the opportunities for the submission of proposals for joint project work in the context of the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission, and the drafting of a White Paper to articulate the vision and scope of the common R&D directions.

During this workshop, critical R&D themes of common interest emerged pertaining to the contributions from information retrieval, co-operation and collaboration, interaction metaphors, visualisation, ubiquitous access, customisation and individualisation, interoperability, etc, to facilitate both the informational and situational (eg social) aspects of Digital Library systems. In addition, non-technological aspects such as ethics, intellectual property rights and the role of the end-users were deemed as crucial elements of success in constructing and deploying Digital Library systems.

In the course of this workshop, the opportunity to compile a White Paper to reflect the common ground and provide a joint R&D roadmap for future actions in this area was received very favourably. The White Paper is expected to give an account of the state of the art internationally, to identify existing gaps in current R&D efforts, and to synthesise the range of critical issues that need to be addressed in the context of new co-operative R&D activities.

Please contact:

Constantine Stephanidis - FORTH
Tel: +30 81 391741
E-mail: cs@ics.forth.gr

Preben Hansen - SICS
Tel: + 46 8 6331554
E-mail: preben@sics.se