robertj@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM (Robert Jaquiss) (01/24/91)
I read the following item with an OCR. I tried to catch the spelling errors but I may have missed some. If you have any questions please call or write. Robert S. Jaquiss Jr. Phone: (503) 627-4444 Internet: robertj@tekgen.bv.tek.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special Interest Group on CD-ROM Applications& Technology January 17,1991 Meeting Season's greeting from SIGCAT. As the Big Day approaches and we all begin scurrying about acquiring the necessary trappings -of "the American Christmas," we can at least take a little solace in the fact that our purchases, in addition to their intended gleeful purpose, are also helping to stimulate our somewhat sluggish economy. Wouldn't a CDROM player look enticing under the tree this Christmas moming? Apparently, some people are beginning to think so. This is the first year that I've had people tell me that they're looking to buy a CD-ROM player (with audio capability, of course) for their homes. Confirming this trend, those of you who receive the DAK consumer electronic catalogs might have noticed about 25 percent of the latest issue (Winter '91) devoted to CD and CD-ROM products. Montgomery Ward recently offered (and sold out of) a complete CD-ROM-based computer system from Headstart (a Philips subsidiary), which included several thousand dollars worth of CD-ROM titles, for a total price of $800! This type of pricing, even though it didn't include a monitor, begins to make CD-ROM very accessible to the average consumer. For these sorts of reasons, I believe we're finally on the brink of a tremendous expansion in the sales of CD-ROM players, including a significant number of "crossover" purchases from the home market. SIGCAT has recently encouraged the manufacturers of CD-ROM readers to lower their prices. The first to respond was none other than the company that co-founded the entire CD-ROM industry--the SONY Corporation. By now, you may have received an announcement offering the latest intemal CD-ROM reader, complete with card, cable, and software, for $399 (see the SIGCAT Recap for the November 8, 1990, meeting for more details) to SIGCAT members for a limited time. We applaud the SONY Corporation for taking such a significant step and hope that this an- nouncement is only the first of many from a variety of manufacturers that will begin to make CD-ROM a true mass-market technology. Ours is a phased existence. Practically everything and everybody goes through phases. Whether it's our teenagers or our careers or our technologies, things tend to follow an evolutionary pattern of change over the course of their respective life cycles. So it is with CD-ROM. The first phase of CD-ROM applications were monolithic; i.e., they generally embraced only a single type of data. Discs were either dedicated to text (e.g., the original Grolier's En- cyclopedia) or to graphics (e.g., clip art discs) or to imagery (e.g., the NASA series of Voyager discs), but rarely were two or more data types combined or integrated on the same disc. Now, some 5 years or so into the technology, we are seeing the second phase unfold in which text and graphics are being combined and linked in very sophisticated and synergistic ways. This capability has fostered the growth of one of CD-ROM's most powerful applications--technical documentation. During this phase of CD-ROM, we are seeing company after company, spurred on by the early successes at Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Computer, and Mack Truck, transform their technical documentation from paper to plastic. These transitions from hardcopy to softcopy in private-sector organizations underscore the inherent cost savings of such undertakings. Companies are not embracing CD-ROM simply because they're fascinated with the technology. They're doing it because it's saving them time and money. But the interesfing thing is that, beyond proving its worth on the bottom line, CD-ROM is beginning to provide a whole new dimension of functionality by allowing users to access and manipulate their technical information in ways that were simply impossible in the printed medium. To help organizations better understand the enormous potential of using CD-ROM to manage technical documentation (or "tech doc" as it's becoming known), the January 17,1991, SIGCAT meeting will be devoted enfirely to this topic. The meeting will take place in the main auditorium of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, beginning at 9:00 a.m. The first half of the meeting will consist of an in-depth tutorial on the issues associated with tehnical documentation on a digital medium such as CD-ROM. The afternoon will consist of presentations from three of the industry's leading developers of authoring tools used in tech-doc projects, followed by presentations from three organizations that are actually using opfical technology to manage their technical documentation. To successfully convert an organization's hardcopy documentation to softcopy on a digital medium, a basic understanding of the underlying technical issues is a must. There are also several strategic issues to address, such as how to sell upper management on the concept and how to establish a realistic set of project goals. These and other key elements will be the topics of discussion during the morning tutorial. Providing this tutorial will be a team of people from one of the most experienced companies in the CDROM industry--the TMS Corporation. Art Crotzer, vice president of product development and services, will lead off the discussions on the basics of softcopy technical documentation. Art will be joined by members of his staff to explore other issues, including project goals, value-added functionality, and future planning. There are only three reasons why an organization would want to consider a techdoc project: (1) to make money, (2) to save money, or (3) to improve productivity. After the tutorial by TMS, you should have a good understanding of which motivator is most appropriate for your organization. After the lunch break, the meeting will focus on some of the tools available from the CD-ROM industry to get the job done. Three companies will present updates on their individual software and hardware capabilities relative to techdoc applications. Each update will be followed by an end-user overview on the actual use of that particular tool. Leading off the afternoon will be the vice president of marketing for TMS, Ashok Mathur, who will provide a general overview on the latest capabilities of TMS authoring tools. Ashok will then turn the podium over to Leon Niller from the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics for an end-user perspective on a project that uses TMS products. Leon heads a key research project involving digi- tal delivery of an entire technical library to a broad, diverse base of submarine community activities and personnel. Recently, the Submarine Directorate decided to suspend independent development and become a participant in a larger Navy initiative to automate and standardize tech-doc research, creation, approval, management, and delivery at major shipyards and intermediate maintenance sites and aboard ships. Leon's project is being evaluated as a key element in the development of an integrated set of information handling tools. The next vendor update will come from Reference Technology, Inc., and will be presented by Bill Thomburg, marketing programs manager at RTI. Bill will discuss the ReferenceSet modular CD-ROM development toolkit from RTI and how these tools are being applied to a variety of tech-doc applications. Following Bill will be Ron Kercheval, printing manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Ron is no stranger to the SIGCAT forum; he addressed the membership over a year and a half ago when his CD-ROM project was just getting underway. Ron is back to provide an update on this project and share with us some insight as to what he has learned over the past 18 months about using CD-ROM to disseminate technical manuals and forms. Because Ron comes from the hardcopy world of printing and publishing, his observations should be very valuable to anyone involved with assessing the new softcopy approach to tech doc. We'll also get to hear firsthand about how CD-ROM saved the day after the Corps suffered a catastrophic fire at its headquarters building. For our third vendor update, we will hear from Chris Bowman, director of markering at the Knowledgeset Corporation. KnowledgeSet has been particularly active in the area of tech doc for the airline industry. Chris will provide an overview on these activities as well as on the latest features and functions of their multiplatform (DOS, UNIX, and Macintosh) Knowledge Retrieval System known as KRS. For an end-user perspective on the KRS tools, we are delighted to welcome the IBM Corporation to the SIGCAT podium. Discussing the IBM AIX version of KRS, called InfoExplorer, will be Ron Reischl, a design and development manager at IBM. IBM is fast becoming a major force in the highly competitive workstation marketplace with its RISC System/6000 computers. It is significant, then, that IBM chose to incorporate the 16,000 pages of documentation for this new family of workstations into a single CDROM disc. Accessed through a built-in CD-ROM drive, InfoExplorer goes beyond simply providing online access to the pages of the manual and allows the user to interactively explore the information (thus the name) through a sophisticated yet intuitive linkage of text and graphics. Be sure to stay for Ron's presentation--it clearly represents the wave of the ftiture for CD-ROM-based technical documentation. JEDI To update our Joint Educational Initiative (JEdI), I'm including the wrap-up article written by Jim Sproull, the teacher coordinator and now project manager of JEDI. Jim's comment sum up the purpose and accomplishments of the first phase of JEDI. A TEACHER'S VIEW OF THE JOINT EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVE by Jim Sproull JW Teacher Coordinator The JEDI project is designed to empower teachers and students with real and current scientific data. Databases, made available from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), have been given to the schools. These data sets, through the medium of CD-ROM technology and powerful desktop computers, have the potential to change our way of teaching. Using what scientists use on a daily basis--i.e., image enhancement techniques--teachers in the summer JEdi workshop have developed classroom activities that will utilize the power of these technological features and enable teachers to bring scientific research data sets to the classroom. Project History During the early part of 1990, the USGS initiated a feasibility study of the JEDI project . With the cooperationof NASA and NOAA, approximately 30 Washington, D.C., area teachers were given opportunities to become familiar with many databases from these agencies. After these "test drives," teachers, scientists, and project leaders met to decide two issues: (1) should JEDI continue, and (2) if it con- tinues, what databases should be made available to teachers? At this meeting, participating teachers expressed their overwhelming approval of the project and suggested a range of databases to be included on the JEDI discs. On the basis of this response, Nimbus Information Systems agreed to press three discs instead of the one initially agreed upon. The project now had the capability of accessing 2100 megabytes of scientific information. These databases are varied, broad, and deep. Planetary images can be accessed, processed, and displayed, and even captured to other output devices such as a hard disk or a printer. The powerful access software used with the Geophysics of North America (GNA) disc can be used to study topics such as satellite vegetation indices and the relationship between gravity, magnetic anomalies, and crustal stress. Other areas covered are ocean bathymetry, temperature and salinity, Antarctic ice fluctuation, seismographic information, ozone levels, comet spectral analysis, and Voyager images. The JEDI data sets have opened a new era in what science means to the student. The JEdI Workshop From the initial stages of the JEDI project, teachers have been actively involved. During the February and March test drives, teachers worked along with scientists to develop and enhance the available data sets. Teachers were involved in selecting the data sets, in determining their depth and scope, and in designing the 1990 JEDI Teachers Summer Workshop. Twenty Workshop participants were selected from a national pool of interested candidates. These teachers were given the task of designing classroom activities around the data sets. Some of the unique aspects of the workshop for the teachers were: *Three graduate credits in remote-sensing applications from George Mason University. *Experience in using a powerful desktop computer equipped with state-of-the-art image display software. *Access to the same extensive databases actually used by scientists. *Opportunity to work directly with scientists, develop activities, discuss the scientists' research, and engage in a pupil-mentor relationship. *Publication, through the USGS, of the activities that have been developed. The workshop, for the most part, was unfunded. Most teachers traveled at their own expense, project people opened their homes to out-of-town participants, and computers were borrowed from Tandy Corporation. Contributions from industry and the Virginia State Department of Education supported field trips and some meals. Current JEDI Status Ten teacher activities have been created and written. These activities are currently being edited, reviewed for scientific accuracy, and worked up into what will be released as a "preliminary" USGS open-file report. When the report is released, sometime in the next few months, workshop teachers and other teachers yet to be chosen for beta testing will field check the activities, submit changes, and critique the activities' effectiveness in the classroom. After this input is incorporated, the activities will be released as a "formal" open-file report in the third quarter of the school year. After field trials during this school year, the activities will be issued as a USGS circular. To maintain the momentum generated by the project, the following continuing activities are planned: *Follow-up with teachers to provide classroom assistance for computers, software, and activities. *Outreach to national, State and local school organizations with workshops and short courses. *Continued interaction with mentor scientists to further enhance the activities. *Project computer bulletin board sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. JEDI targets *Implementation on a national basis. *Parallel alignment to Project 2061 goals. *Increased industry support. *Cross-disciplinary and multigrade approach in designing JEDI activities. Hurdles to overcome *Nonavailability of computers in classrooms. *Lack of knowledge in the use of computer resources in the classroom. *Need for teacher preparation in using computers as a scientific tool. JEDI Future A successful JEDI project will enable students and teachers to augment the school learning envirorunent. This enrichment of the learning process will have far-reaching effects. It is conceivable that in the future, students will be able to access JEDI information in the classroom, in libraries, and even in the home. This democratization of scientific databases will impact how science is viewed--that it is something that is knowable by all but is still mysterious and unpredictable. Anyone interested in getting involved with JEDI as an evaluation site or in simply being placed on the mailing list for additional information should write Jim Sproull (U.S. Geological Survey, 912 National Center, Reston, VA 22092-9998) or contact him via phone at (703) 648-6636 or fax at (703) 648-6683. GIS Working Group Meeting The technology of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is finding application in a wide variety of fields, from logistics to resource management In most of these apphcations, large amounts of data are required to generate meaningful output. Since CD-ROM is able to provide this type of large data storage, a marriage of these two technologies seems only natural. The GIS Working Group explores this combination of CD-ROM and GIS and serves as a focal point for information and applications. There will be a meeting of this working group following the January SIGCAT meeting in Room BA-102A beginning at 3:30 p.m. Please contact Dan Costanzo (Army Engineer Topographic Labs, (202) 355-3451 for further information. That's about it for the January meeting, except for a few "belated" Christmas gifts for the SIGCAT audience. The CD-ROM mastering plants from around the country have a few stocking stuffers left over and have promised to make available a few of these discs for the January attendees. Be sure and get to the meeting on time, or Santa might leave you out. For directions, please call the SIGCAT Info Line at (703) 648- 4452. For any other questions, I can be reached at (703) 648-7126 or FIS 959-7126. EJ. (jerry) McFaul Computer Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey SIGCAT - January 17,1991 - AGENDA USGS Main Auditorium 9:00 a.m.- 9:15 a.m. Intmductory Remarks 9:15 a.m.- 10:30 a.m. Tech Doc Tutorial - Part 1 Art Crotzer, Vice President of Product Development and Services TMS Corporation - (405) 377-0880 10:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Morning Break 10:45 a.m.- 12:00 p.m. Tech Doc Tutorial - Part 2 Art Crotzer, Vice President of Product Development and services TMS Corporation - (405) 377-0880 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch Break 1:00 p.m. - 1:20 p.m. Ashok Mathur, Vice President of marketing TMS Corporation - (405) 377-0880 1:20 p.m. - 1:40 p.m. Leon Miller, Project Manager General Dynamics - (203) 433-0292 1:40 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Bill Thomburg, Marketing Prograrm Manager Reference Technology, Inc. - (303) 449-4157 2:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Afternoon Break 2:15 p.m. - 2:35 p.m. Ron Kercheval, Printing Manager U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - (202) 475-9033 2:35 p.m. - 2:55 p.m. Chris Bowman, Director of marketing KnowledgeSet Corporation - (415) 968-9888 2:55 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Ron Reischl, Design and Developnwnt Manager IBM Coqxration - (512) 823-5140 3:30 p.m. Adjournment