This planning grant issued to Rockefeller University is for the purpose of convening a workshop to help develop a national research agenda in the area of collaboration technology in support of scientific research. The NSF's Information Technology and Organizations Program has recently established the first federal government program explicitly designed to support research on "computer supported cooperative work" and on related issues of coordination theory and technology. This workshop will help to further develop this program and also will define collatoral research needs in technology development, development of group interfaces, needed research on networks to enable these activities, and other research requirements. Of special interest for this workshop is a research and development program leading to an electronic "collaboratory", a "center without walls," in which the nation's researchers can perform their research--interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, using data and computational resources, accessing information in digital libraries--without regard to geographical location. The workshop will bring to bear on this assignment thirty of the nation's best minds on the subjects of concern. Rockefeller University hosts this workshop on March 12, 13 and 14, 1989, in New York City. The workshop results in a report containing the research agenda and recommendations for organizing to accomplish the research.
