Sigcat Software Showcase 1993

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CD-ROM APPLICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY CURRENT ISSUES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIGCAT '92 NATIONAL CONFERENCE & EDUCATIONAL SYMPOSIUM APRIL 27-29, 1992 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST) GAITHERSBURG MD Edited by Paul Nicholls and Karen Ronald Pelican Island Information Box 24004, London Canada N6H 5C4 CD Preparation by dataDisc CD-ROM Service Bureau Route 3, Box 1108 Gainesville, VA 22065 800-328-2347 This CD-ROM was produced by dataDisc. To get additional copies, you can reach dataDisc at: phone: 800-DATADISC 800-328-2347 703-347-2111 fax: 703-347-9085 compuserve: mail: Route 3, Box 1108 Gainesville, VA 22065 SIGCAT'92 SIGCAT'92 was a natural outgrowth of the regional SIGCAT meetings which have been held on a monthly or bimonthly basis for the past five years. The regional meetings, which have typically taken place at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston VA, have provided a forum for government and industry to present and discuss new developments in CD-ROM applications and technology. SIGCAT'92 expanded the scope of the forum to include three full days of presentations and discussions to further educate the attenders with respect to the power and potential of CD- ROM technology CONFERENCE CONVENOR E.J. "Jerry" McFaul United States Geological Survey USGS CONFERENCE CHAIR Mike Rubinfeld United States Geological Survey TECHNICAL PROGRAM CHAIR Susan David Library of Congress APPLICATIONS PROGRAM CHAIR Maureen Prettyman National Library of Medicine EXHIBITS COORDINATORS Tom Dennison Dennison Associates John Oster Oster Associates TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD E.J. "Jerry" McFaul. KEYNOTE SPEAKER Hon. Charlie Rose (D-NC), Chair, Committee on House Administration, U.S. House of Representatives. 1. CD-ROM SOFTWARE: THE BURNING ISSUES Denise M. Davis. Do we need a consistent user interface? CD-ROM Consistent Interface Committee (CD- CINC). CD-ROM Consistent Interface Guidelines. 2. CD-ROM AS AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE LIBRARY Ruth Hennessy. CD-ROM at the United States Naval Academy. Joyce Demmitt. CD-ROM Local Area Network at Howard County Library. John Kimball. CD-ROM Applications at the Library of Congress. 3. THE APPLICATION OF CD-ROM IN EDUCATION Sheldon Fisher. Promise versus performance. 4. THE STANDARDS OF CD-ROM Peter Ciuffetti. Data Exchange Standard (DXS) Overview. Don M. Goldman and Neil R. Shapiro. CD-ROM standards in the aerospace industry: progress and promise. Information Handling Committee, Director of Central Intelligence. Standard for the exchange of digital information on CD-ROM: CD- ROM read-only data exchange standard (CD-RDx). Mike Rubinfeld. CD-ROM standards. Neil R. Shapiro. SFQL structured full-text query language. Andrew Young. The CD-ROM standards frontier: Rock Ridge. 5. CD-ROM PRODUCTION ISSUES Nicholas Beser. CD-ROM data compression. Roger Hutchison. ISO 9660 standards: a layman's interpretation. Michael Sandifer. A CD-ROM maintenance information system for the general aviation industry. William Thornburg. Data capture: the ins and outs, do's and don'ts. Judith Zidar. Data conversion: moving from paper to plastic. 6. CD-ROM IN THE GIS ENVIRONMENT Ken Shain(?) The Digital Chart of the World (DCW): an R&D project in the digital MC&G environment. 7. CD-ROM AS ACCOMMODATION TECHNOLOGY John Churchill. CD-ROM publishing for the visually impaired: an incredible opportunity. Judith Dixon. Opening doors for blind users via CD-ROM. Rex Hancock. What the Rehabilitation Act implies for the computer industry. Robert Jacquiss. CD-ROM as accommodation technology. 8. CD-ROM IN THE CLASSIFIED SENSITIVE COMMUNITY David S. Jernigan. CD-ROM security issues. John Politis. Data encryption: one possible answer. 9. DEVELOPING AN SGML DATABASE FOR CD-ROM Walter Klaus and Ronald Hawkins. SGML proof- of-concept prototype Defense Mapping Agency Digital Sailing Directions. Michael Sandifer. A CD-ROM maintenance information system for the general aviation industry. 10. THE RELIABILITY AND INTEGRITY OF CD-ROM MEDIA Ron Kushnier. Factors affecting CD-ROM reliability. Akio "Alex" Iida. What is the expected longevity of recordable CD-ROM media? Denis Oudard. Archival versus quality control CD-ROM testing. Bob Schoonover. Archival life expectancy of 3M CD-ROM media. 11. SELECTED LIST OF RESOURCES ABOUT CD-ROM 12. CONTACT INFORMATION INTRODUCTION E.J. "Jerry" McFaul United States Geological Survey Reston VA KEYNOTE ADDRESS Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC) Chair, Committee on House Administration U.S. House of Representatives I will begin by congratulating all of you for successfully transforming progress in the laboratory into affordable useful products in a short period of time. Information is the lifeblood of the economy. Making information affordable and accessible is fundamental to American business. Two good examples are the Census and the Federal Register, both of which are now available in CD-ROM format. These two databases provide businesses valuable information about where their potential markets are and what they have to do to get along with the Federal Government. Most of you have probably seen multimedia maintenance manuals and parts catalogs on CD-ROM. These are great applications where the payoff in worker efficiency is quite obvious. It takes only a little imagination to see how this technology can make the work place more efficient and have a very positive influence on the business decision making process. We are looking at putting the House files on President Kennedy's assassination on CD-ROM as the files are a mixture of text, film, photographs, and audio. CD-ROM technology will change the way our children are taught. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that, if you can use CD-ROM technology to show an auto mechanic how to replace a brake shoe, you can use it to teach a child geography, physics or anything else. Most schools don't have much money for technology, but, as you in the industry work to improve the software and drive prices down, I am convinced that the most profound impact CD-ROM technology will have is on the way our children learn. Information is also the lifeblood of a free society. Citizens have the right to know what their government is doing. They have the right to access the information that government has amassed using their tax dollars. Back when the Congress passed the 1985 Printing Act and the Freedom of Information Act, the intent was to make govemment information easily available to the ordinary citizen. As most of us know, in most cases it hasn't happened. CD-ROM provides a record-keeping and publication technology that can make the concept of freedom of information a reality. I see so many potential CD-ROM applications in the Congress, it's hard to decide where to start. I'll tell you two areas where we are active now. First, the House Law Revision Counsel is supervising the Government Printing Office (GPO) in publishing the U.S. Code on CD-ROM. This is no small task. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Code, it contains all the laws passed by Congress but organized by topic. A second area we are exploring now is storing committee proceedings on CD-ROM. A committee with jurisdiction over a large part of Federal activities is very much limited by its ability to identify, locate, and access information when all its records are on paper and there is no search engine available. CD-ROM is going to make dramatic improvements in the Congress's ability to legislate and provide oversight. A major concern that I have, which was reflected in my first hearing by the Joint Committee on Printing on April 25, 1991, is that government information should remain equally available to all. Technological and policy barriers to access must be virtually eliminated. Individual citizens and information corporations shall receive the same government information to use as each wishes. Current and future technologies will dramatically change the role that government plays in the dissemination of the public's information. The Joint Committee explored the role that technology will play in equipping the Government Printing Office to better serve government agencies and the public in hearings held in June and July of 1991. The founder of SIGCAT, Jerry McFaul, was one of our witnesses. Along with the hearings, the Joint Committee took several other steps designed to move GPO along a path of modernization. The Joint Commitee directed the General Accounting Office to conduct the first complete audit of GPO in eight years and the first comprehensive evaluation of GPO management. As a result of these actions and others, efforts are underway to produce a long-term plan, long sought by the Joint Committee, for the future of GPO. As a first step, GPO has recently published GPO 2001: Vision for a New Millennium. GPO, at the direction of the Joint Committee, has completed five pilot projects for the electronic distribution of government information to depository libraries. These include the Census on CD-ROM; the Toxic Release Inventory of the Environmental Protection Agency on CD-ROM; the Congressional Record Acts as of 1985 on CD-ROM; the Economic Bulletin Board online to a selected 120 libraries; and the abstracts of the Department of Energy technical reports online to 18 selected libraries. Final evaluations of these projects have not as yet been completed by the Government Printing Office/General Accounting Office. Preliminary data show that the users are happy with the idea of having large statistical databases on CD-ROM; in fact, much of the Census data is being provided on CD-ROM, including the TIGER map files. The users have also indicated that they would like the final Congressional Record on CD-ROM but would prefer a more friendly software retrieval package. Returning to the April 25, 1991, oversight hearing of the Joint Committee, it is evident that concern continues to exist that a great deal of information gathered at public expense is not reaching the public through the Congressional depository library system. This occurs for a number of reasons, including poor management of publishing programs by Federal departments and agencies, the trend toward computerization of information, and simple budgetary constraints. Seeking enhancement of the role of GPO as a Federal Government information disseminator and information access agent, I have introduced H.R. 2772, the GPO Wide Information Network for Data Online (WINDO) Act. The bill has been referred to the Committee on House Administration, which I also chair. It seeks to establish in GPO a single point of online public access to a wide range of Federal databases containing public information stored electronically. While public hearings on this measure are being planned to obtain a broad range of views, I will also be receiving expert views from the Joint Committee staff regarding this policy innovation. I hope that many of you here today will have an opportunity to examine this proposal and share your views about it with me by writing to me in care of the Joint Committee or the Committee on House Administraton. It is not my intention to harm the private sector information industry. In fact, just the opposite, the proposed WINDO bill will encourage true value added activity in the private sector. However, the need for more and better systems for the public to access its information is fundamental to the concepts of a free society. In this day of high-speed microcomputers and the crashing cost of memory, the rationale for limited access dissipates. Finally, what of the future? You know that Congressional committees, such as the ones that I chair, are problem solvers with little opportunity to look very far into the decades ahead. For that kind of vision and foresight, we turn to practitioners and planners in a variety of institutions and organizations. In that regard, the views and advice of SIGCAT are welcomed and respected by me. You and I share a common objective. Thomas Jefferson put it this way long ago: "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." The ready availability of governent information is, I believe you will agree, vital to that education. This transcript was recorded and compiled by Jane A. Inge, editor of Computer Digest Magazine.