The Workshop was valuable because it brought together partisans from various groups and provided an occasion to compare goals and methods. The more committed partisans frequently communicate with others in their groups, but less often across group boundaries. The Workshop was also valuable to attendees--including those involved with American Memory--who came less committed to particular approaches or concepts. These attendees learned a great deal, and plan to select and employ elements of imaging, text-coding, and networked distribution that suit their respective projects and purposes. Still, reality rears its ugly head: no breakthrough has been achieved. On the imaging side, one confronts a proliferation of competing data-interchange standards and a lack of consensus on the role of digital facsimiles in preservation. In the realm of machine-readable texts, one encounters a reasonably mature standard but methodological difficulties and high costs. These latter problems, of course, represent a special impediment to the desire, as it is sometimes expressed in the popular press, "to put the [contents of the] Library of Congress on line." In the words of one participant, there was "no solution to the economic problems--the projects that are out there are surviving, but it is going to be a lot of work to transform the information industry, and so far the investment to do that is not forthcoming" (LESK, per litteras). *** *** *** ****** *** *** *** PROCEEDINGS WELCOME +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GIFFORD * Origin of Workshop in current Librarian's desire to make LC's collections more widely available * Desiderata arising from the prospect of greater interconnectedness * +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++