Even before the events of September 11, fingers were increasingly pointing at campus-based computers and networks as a disproportionate source of Internet abuse. Since September 11, computer security has figured heavily in anti-terrorism legislation, and new requirements from Federal funding agencies aim directly at securing computers bought and operated under research grants. We can expect society's interest in how we run our campus networks only to expand.

In July, 2000 EDUCAUSE formed a System Security Task Force to help colleges and universities focus on their computer security problems by identifying a variety of approaches which, while not perfect solutions, nonetheless provide cost-effective improvement. This session will report on the current activities and plans of the Task Force, and will highlight our biggest problems and most promising solutions.

The Connexions Project is a new approach to authoring, organizing, and delivering educational materials that fully exploits modern information technology. In contrast to the traditional process of textbook writing and publishing, Connexions fosters communities of authors, instructors, and students, who together fashion continually updated "modules" from which courses are constructed. Preliminary trials with Rice University faculty and students over the past year have been so successful that our electrical and computer engineering department has resolved to implement a holistic new Connexions-based curriculum. The ideas and philosophy embodied by Connexions have the potential to change the very nature of textbook writing and publishing, producing a dynamic, interconnected educational environment that is pedagogically sound, both time and cost efficient, and fun.

Connexions exploits the flexible information organization and rapid communication capabilities of the Internet, World Wide Web, and XML. The Connexions environment rests on the unique combination of four fundamental concepts:

1. Modules of information that are topic or "concept" based and encoded in XML, with MathML used for mathematics content.
   
2. Web-based navigational aids to explore the "connexions" between topics.
   
3. Course Composition tools for instructors to weave modules together into customized textbooks.
   
4. Collaborative development of modules by a large community of authors.
   

The result is a coherent system for course development, organization, and delivery that mutually benefits students, instructors, and authors.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with OnSat Network Communications to provide an innovative, cost-effective combination of satellite and local loop wireless solution for connectivity for Native American tribes in the Four Corners area. Many of the 165 sites receiving public access computers through the grant program had no access to basic wire service, and in some cases no power was available. The current program is providing high-speed connections through satellite to each of these sites, using solar power donated by the Solar Electric Light Fund for off- grid locations. The briefing will include a description of the Native American grant program and technical details of the satellite and wireless solution. Also included will be a discussion of issues and solutions related to the technology, social context, and long-term sustainability of the project.

Funded under DLI2 as collaborative research project to explore the full range of issues involved in making spoken word resources available and useful over the web, the NGSW has made substantial progress on a number of fronts. This project briefing will discuss our implementation of OAIS and adaptation of METS in designing a large-scale interoperable open-source multimedia digital archive. We will also provide an update on strategies for searching audio resources and demonstrate both tools for linking audio to text and interfaces for effective delivery of aural resources.

This presentation will introduce the recently released manual of statistics and measures describing network use, users, and services. The manual was developed by a study team at Florida State University, Information Institute for the Association of Research Libraries E-metrics project. The session will also discuss key issues and preliminary findings regarding work currently in progress related to models for describing the academic library's role in contributing to institutional outcomes. The session will conclude with a discussion of the final activities in this project and possible next steps.

In December 2000 Congress directed the Library of Congress, working jointly with the Department of Commerce, NARA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in cooperation with a number of other entities such as CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, and RLG, to develop a National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. This briefing will bring the audience up to date on progress in creation of this national program.

With the addition of digital resources, libraries are faced with the significant challenge of providing users with a comprehensive catalog of their collections. Integrated library systems can be a clumsy tool for managing both electronic and traditional resources, leading many libraries to maintain separate databases to support web interfaces to electronic resources. This program describes a project at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library to create a virtually integrated catalog implemented as a multi-agent system. The integrated catalog simultaneously searches the online catalog (via Z39.50) and the electronic resources database (in XML/RDF), delivering a properly collated and customizable result set to the user. The electronic resources database is structured on the IFLA-recommended work/expression/manifestation data model and uses Dublin Core plus locally defined descriptive and administrative metadata elements. The agent model system is comprised of four components: user interface, expert, data source, and profile agents. The agents communicate with each other using http-transmitted messages. The model provides an open framework to create a single virtual catalog from distributed data sources.