Brian R Gaines
Knowledge Science Institute, University of Calgary
(from Katz, L., Mayo, M. & Richardson, B., Eds. Canadian Multimedia
Conference Proceedings. pp.8-63. Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary,
August 1994)
Increasing ease of access to the Internet is making it feasible for
geographically dispersed communities to work closely together, coordinating
their activities through electronic mail, digital document archives, and access
to remote computing facilities. The support of the collaboration through
digital discourse also makes it feasible to disseminate the results of the
collaboration to others through the same media, for example through World-Wide
Web or CD-ROM. This presentation reports on practical experience of supporting
a number of communities and projects through the use of the Internet and
CD-ROM. It gives an overview of the technologies available, their
accessibility, ease of use and impact on collaborative activities. It focuses
on the practical problems that arise, the limitations of existing technologies,
and how these may be overcome. Examples are given of projects encompassing a
range of multimedia digital technologies from list servers, through World-Wide
Web document archives, to production in a few days of CD-ROMs containing movies
and digitized foils and documents giving a complete account of working meetings.