Introduction

The rapid development of information infrastructures makes the accessibility of large networked information repositories increasingly feasible. However, before the efficient and cost-effective deployment of large scale applications, such as digital library systems, which exploit these information infrastructures is possible further advances are needed in several research areas if the appropriate technologies are to be developed. Significant progress must be achieved in fields like semantic interoperability between different digital library systems, metadata models for the description of networked multimedia resources, models for charging mechanisms, new multimedia information retrieval models, retrieval across languages, protocols for accessing and transferring information, etc. In addition, a number of pilot projects should be promoted to permit testing and experimentation. Indeed, an understanding of digital library issues requires operational experience which can only be gained by large-scale deployment of digital library systems.

The European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) has recognised the importance of the digital library sector and has promoted activities addressing both research and development aspects in this field.  

The DELOS working group is funded by the ESPRIT Long Term Research Programme and has been promoted by ERCIM with the objective of supporting research in digital library related areas. In particular, the DELOS objectives are (i) to stimulate research activities in areas which are relevant for the efficient and cost-effective development of digital library systems, (ii) to encourage collaboration between research teams working in the field of digital libraries and (iii) to establish links with on-going projects and activities in the field of digital libraries in industry and other public and private institutions. 

The workshop held in Sophia Antipolis, France, 4-6 March 1996, was the first meeting of the DELOS working group and concentrated mainly on giving an overview of on-going research in the digital library field, focusing particularly on the activities and experiences of some of the US Digital Library Initiative projects already in progress and on digital library-related research activities under way in ERCIM institutes. It thus provided a useful forum for discussion and an exchange of ideas between European and US scientists and, in particular, gave the European researchers the chance to hear first hand reports of the results obtained so far by the Digital Library applications in the United States.

This report contains only extended abstracts of the presentations made by ERCIM researchers. The presentations of the invited speakers who described some of the US Digital Library Initiative projects are not included as they are widely available in the literature. For interested readers we suggest they consult IEEE Computer, vol. 29. number 5 (May 1996).

The presentations addressed the following topics: multilingual and multimedia information retrieval (P. Schäuble and P. Sheridan, C. Meghini, P. Hansen and J. Karlgren, R. Ferber); pricing and charging mechanisms (J. Sairamesh, C. Nikolaou, D. Ferguson and Y. Yemini); architectural aspects of digital library systems (L. Kovacs and A. Micsik); enriched thesauri (M. Hazewinkel); exploitation of the SGML standard for digital document collections (J. Ducloy); conversion from conventional to digital libraries (O. Husby); and library services (J. Lay).

Successive workshops in the DELOS series will focus on particular aspects of the Digital library paradigm, such as metadata and interoperability, and cross-language and multimedia information retrieval. For full information on DELOS activities, see our Web site: http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/ErcimDL/delos.html.

Before concluding, I should like to thank the ERCIM Office and INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, for all their hard work in organising the DELOS Kick-off Workshop and contributing greatly to its success.

							Costantino Thanos
							Coordinator
							DELOS Working Group