Institutions have for some time been putting their archives online. Now, Academia Sinica, Taiwan's leading research institute, has kicked off the National Digital Archives Program to combine collections into an electronic archive of grand proportions.
One problem with doing research has always been the legwork. Records are kept in so many different places--libraries, museums, archives, institutes, councils, and so on--that conducting research can be a time-consuming, frustrating endeavor. Just finding out where records relevant to your subject of research are stored is often the first stumbling block. Imagine then if all those archives could be entered through a single portal, and better yet, that portal could be entered with a click of the mouse.
In Taiwan, an already remarkably well-wired island, a government-sponsored program is trying to create just such a one-stop shop for information through the National Digital Archives Program (NDAP). The campaign relies on digital collection, which will replicate archival materials online. "Digital collection serves to ensure long-term data storage and usability, and more and more people are aware of its importance for the conservation and promotion of culture," says Ho Jan-ming, deputy director of Academia Sinica's Institute of Information Science.
Commissioned by the National Science Council, the digital-archiving program is under the direction of Academia Sinica, Taiwan's most visible brain trust. In January 2002, the first phase of the NDAP, scheduled to be completed in 2006, was officially launched, with an initial budget of NT$38 million (US$1.1 million). The corresponding spending for this five-year plan is projected to grow 20 percent a year.
Even before the NDAP was initiated, Ho points out, Academia Sinica had spent several years studying the impact of information technology on social and cultural exchanges, as well as doing experimental projects to study the feasibility of digitizing national cultural holdings. "We feel proud to say that compared with other countries we're in the frontlines of development," says Ho.
In 1998, a project called the Digital Museum began to catalogue online artwork in Taiwan's museums. As individual institutions digitized their archives, they discovered they could facilitate research by linking their archives with others. The result was the Open Digital Archive Environment in 1999, which attempted to develop cooperation mechanisms, implement technical standards for system development, and establish guidelines for presenting the content of computerized documents. It was as if the institutions, which all had their own languages, had to learn a common tongue to communicate in the digital world.
These two pioneering projects, in which dozens of universities and research organizations participated, became the predecessors of the NDAP. "The NDAP hopes to accommodate the complicated needs of various collection units and provide more efficient, reliable, and convenient interface for information searches," Ho explains. "And we intend to build a centralized database by integrating materials from libraries, museums, and archives through digitalization."
The objectives of the NDAP, according to Ho, are manifold. They include preserving and popularizing national cultural holdings, enhancing education and learning, improving information sharing and quality of life, bootstrapping cultural and value-added industries, as well as promoting international cooperation and resource sharing.
Technically speaking, digitalization serves two purposes, he continues. One is to apply computational capacity and network bandwidth to manage a huge volume of complex data and transform it into accessible information. The other is to bring accessibility and usability to serve existing and new-user communities for varied educational levels.
The ultimate goal is to build a content-oriented and network-based scalable multimedia information management infrastructure. In other words, a single entry site for information found in the nation's archives. So far, nine major content holders have taken part in this large-scale project: Academia Historica, Academia Sinica, Council for Cultural Affairs, National History Museum, National Library, National Museum of Natural Sciences, National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, and Office of Taiwan Provincial Archives.
An archive combining the resources of these institutions would provide access to topics from ancient calligraphy, botany, and bronze rubbings to zoology. "Digital collection commands unlimited potential for diverse content presentation and extension," Ho says. "It's closely related to our cultural and educational development in the near future because it brings new opportunities as well as new challenges."
The digitalization of national archives could also have a democratizing effect, since it will be easier to access the collections. Students can fish around in the archives learning about things outside their classroom studies, and teachers will have a wider range of teaching materials to utilize, in addition to standard textbooks. The project, it is hoped, will make learning more interesting and more accessible.
"Hopefully, the diverse digital collections will enrich people's lives and allow them to enjoy lifelong learning and build a global perspective," Ho says. "And it can also encourage the development of the domestic multimedia and Internet content industry, helping accelerate Taiwan's transformation into an e-society."
Wired Education
Rapid changes in technology bring demand for new skills, and traditional methods of education are proving to be too cumbersome to meet the needs of those who want to learn on the go. National Taiwan University and three others are now offering their expertise through online learning.
Tang Ming-je--"Although so far we've only achieved modest success, we believe that e-learning has the potential to become the primary mode of lifelong learning."
The Internet was created to speed the transfer of information and, hopefully, make life a little more convenient. But universities, traditional bastions of the book, are just starting to accept online learning as a substitute for classes on campus. "The development of Internet technology provides numerous opportunities," says Tang Ming-je, director of National Taiwan University's (NTU) Division of Continuing Education and Professional Development (DCEPD), which has recently started offering online programs. "And we're still figuring out how we can best make use of the Internet to promote knowledge on a wider scale."
Universities are responding to the needs of busy professionals and others who just cannot fit in formal class schedules, but want to keep learning. Through online courses, Tang says, these people can absorb new knowledge anytime, anywhere. And it is just that flexibility that is drawing people to the online classroom.
In light of the potential market demand and growing maturity of the island's Internet infrastructure, Tang's lifelong-learning division took the initiative to launch an online education program in 2000 on an experimental basis. The program revealed a real demand for online learning, and as a result of the one-year trial plan's success, the DCEPD opened online courses at the beginning of May 2001.
The classes that have proven the most popular and most suited to online learning have been business courses, which focus on specific, practical skills needed in a modern business environment. Today, students are enrolled in classes such as Internet Database Marketing Research, Customer Relation Management, and Knowledge Management. The Internet itself has proven to be an ideal subject for online study. Internet-related classes include E-Commerce Law, E-Finance, E-Commerce Strategy and Business, and E-Commerce Technology and Applications. Tang points out that many of these new business practices are made possible because of the introduction of Internet, and the Internet can be employed to study them.
Online education, nevertheless, calls for an adjustment of study habits, as well as a good dose of self-motivation, Tang notes. Online students are not ushered into class by the sound of a bell and do not have a teacher asking them questions face-to-face in a classroom. The lack of structure in online learning has, in fact, proven to be one of its weakest points. According to DCEPD estimates, only around half of the students complete the courses they sign up for.
The lack of persistence from online students might stem partly from the fact that online courses generally do not give out grades and degrees. "It's very difficult to identify who is learning and who is taking an examination online," notes Tang. "Hence, we remain very cautious in giving out credits or awarding academic degrees. We don't want to end up being a certification institution."
What worries Tang, whose own university is Taiwan's most prestigious, is that other schools that provide online teaching are too lenient in giving out credits. That practice, in his view, erodes the credibility of e-learning, which is still struggling for acceptance as part of university education.
That lack of credibility has slowed the development of online education. In Taiwan, online education has gotten off to a slow start in comparison with some other countries. In the United States, for instance, there are some 150 schools offering thousands of e-learning programs. In Taiwan, there are but four universities, including NTU, that offer such services. But the demand is growing.
Since it launched online courses one-and-a-half years ago, NTU has seen the number of registered students enrolled in online courses grow to approximately one thousand. Tang is upbeat about the market potential, and he is pressing forward with improvements to the program's facilities. "We'll strive to promote e-learning by consolidating our software and hard ware facilities," he says. "Although so far we've only achieved modest success, we believe that e-learning has the potential to become the primary mode of lifelong learning, given the continued expansion of Internet usage on the island."
Tang points out that NTU has ten colleges, offers eighty graduate programs, and employs 1,500 professors. By offering a wide variety of courses, NTU stands out as Taiwan's most comprehensive research-oriented university. And to further expand its research potential, the school is currently in talks with several prominent universities in China to launch cooperative projects. Tang hopes that NTU's impressive scholarship can someday be shared through online learning.
"Our mission is to create and transfer new knowledge. In the past, we did so by writing books--a costly, time-consuming process," Tang says. "But now we can do it overnight and distribute it to the world simultaneously. The Internet is indeed a powerful approach for the promotion of lifelong learning."
Cyberdoctor on Call
It is never much fun to go to the hospital, wait in long lines, and be asked personal questions in a public waiting room. Yet thanks to Taiwan's first online medical website and those that followed, patients can now simply go online and, voila, an instant house call.
Celia Liu--"Thanks to the Internet, we've able to put together abundant medical materials from various sources and provide net surfers with comprehensive information to suffice their basic needs."
When it comes to medical questions, it seems that no amount of information is ever enough. An entire industry has arisen to inform the public of breakthroughs in medicine, alternative therapies to chronic illnesses, and publish simple first-aid guides and other health manuals. And when symptoms appear, no one can get the information fast enough.
The Internet is helping to shorten the time it takes to track down medical information and even to get first-hand medical advice. "We hope to provide the general pubic with another channel for obtaining professional medical and health care information and consultations, in addition to hospital visits," says Celia Liu, manager of KingNet WebHospital, Taiwan's first website offering medical consultations.
KingNet, established in 1998, has since been joined by some twenty medical websites that are trying to expand their services into a virtual hospital. Being the first domestic website to offer medical consultancy, KingNet received a good deal of attention and was granted several awards by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
According to Liu, the Internet is ideally suited for collecting and disseminating medical information. "Thanks to the Internet, we're able to put together abundant medical materials from various sources and provide net surfers with comprehensive information to suffice their basic needs," Liu says. "Moreover, people don't have to put up with traffic jams, parking, and a lengthy wait in order to communicate with the doctor. They can now do it with ease over the Internet."
The ease with which information can be accessed online is seen by the comprehensive nature of sites such as KingNet, which offers material on diseases, nutrition, diet, nursing, sex, physical fitness, and so on. The site also offers a comprehensive database of information on Chinese and Western medicine, listing types of drug or herbal medicines and their ingredients, functions, usages, and side effects.
The site also functions as an online medical newsletter, with updates posted daily and one or two special reports on specific topics posted each month, as well as announcements for related lectures and other activities and listings of hospitals and medical foundations around Taiwan.
KingNet's most popular service, according to Liu, is the free medical consultancy. The website has recruited nearly four-hundred doctors who volunteer their time and expertise to answer the queries of Internet users. Online patients can even select the type of consultation--Western or Chinese medicine--and have access to specialists from sixty clinical departments.
Liu, however, believes that information and consultations on the Internet are only supplementary to visiting a doctor in person. But one advantage of online medical consultation, as Liu points out, is privacy. Patients can ask sensitive questions about, for example, reproduction, psychological conditions, intimate relationships, and AIDS prevention and treatment, that they might not be comfortable asking in person. And she emphasizes that the website keeps its member's queries strictly confidential.
Recently, three more services have been added to KingNet. One service, "My Health Management," allows users to collect and manage their own medical records--including transcripts of their online consultations. Another service allows users to conduct a self-examination, guided by questions provided by the program and obtain suggestions based on the evaluation's results. A third new service allows patients with similar medical problems to contact people with the same problems to gather and exchange information, compare their treatments, and get some emotional support.
Currently, there are about 180,000 members registered with KingNet and around 290,000 pages are viewed per day. The membership ratio of males and females is 4:6. And more than 70 percent are aged between twenty-one and forty.
Liu believes that the online medical service fills a void in the present medical community, and gives people faster access to the information they are seeking, especially if they live far from a hospital. "Hopefully, our website can become a driving force that promotes national health and disease prevention, while serving to shorten the existing information gap between urban and rural districts on the island."