In order to provide basis material for electronic archiving and publication, AUB is establishing a digital documentation center as a half year evaluation project. The center's main objectives will be:

• Methods and routines for digital documentation
• Publishing guidelines and copyright issues
• Digital archiving
• Electronic publication

The center will be an autonomous entity, initially operating under the initiative of the Office of the Vice President as a cooperative effort between PCNS and the CS-department of Østfold University College, Norway.

Invitation to provide material for digitizing

In it's first 6 months startup phase, the center aims to complete a small selection of projects to illustrate its capabilities and potential. The subjects of the initial projects will be chosen from submitted proposals and separate initiatives.

Departments and individuals are therefore urged to submit proposals for documentation projects they wish to archive or publish electronically. It would be an advantage if the submitted material were representative and of special interest within both the aims of the center and the mission of AUB.

Examples of material of interest might be:

• research results
• historical material
• archived material
• administrative information
• material of general interest

The target audience of digitized material in archival form are librarians and archivists at AUB and in the academic community elsewhere. That part of the material which is selected for publishing will be aimed at reseachers, the academic community and others who are normally perceived as readers of AUB publications. The nature of publication employed by the center would give the added advantages characterized by digital media, such as permanent and economical recording, facilitated reproduction, inclusion in other documentation and of course, disemmination over local and wide area communications networks.

The establishment phase of the Digital Documentation Center is initially the six months ending December 31, 1997. There is therefore, limited time in which to complete all the material that might be submitted. However, all submissions are welcome in order to gauge the quantity of material involved, to estimate the future resource needs of the center and to build up a bank of future projects.

The center is temporarily housed in room 114 on the ground floor of the Old Pharmacy building just inside the Medical Gate. Paper mail goes to PCNS (Personal Computing and Networking Services). The telephone number is 2278 and messages can be left at 2260. Email is appreciated and the address is ddc@aub.edu.lb.

Barre Ludvigsen, professor of information architecture on sabattical from Østfold University College is assisting PCNS in starting the DDC.

June 26, 1997