The NSF Information and Data Management Program Workshop, held in Washington, D.C. on March 29-31, 1998, has the objective to bring together the researchers currently funded by the Information and Data Management Program (IDM) of the National Science Foundation, along with selected industry and government invitees in order to cooperatively (1) identify the problems that are fundamental in making progress towards the integrated management of data and information; (2) specify areas where major breakthroughs appear possible; and (3) identify research infrastructures needed to meet current and future challenges. This workshop aims at enabling communication and future collaboration among researchers from the different communities involved in the IDM, including database research, information retrieval, multi-modal information management, and distributed (networked or wireless) heterogeneous (palmtop through mass storage) systems. Further, the workshop provides an opportunity to examine the current research efforts and to learn more about successes of the researchers funded by the IDM program. The workshop proceedings will include reports on all projects funded by IDM during the fiscal year 1997. The findings of the workshop will be presented in a report that will help in formulating future directions of research in information and data management and will suggest promising modalities of research in academia and industry with an aim to foster innovation as well as technology transfer. The workshop material will be widely disseminated in both hard copy and electronic form on the IDM Web site, in order to inform wide audience about the IDM program successes and future research directions.
