Petr Sojka of the Department of Computer Graphics and Design of Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Czech Republic, organized the first conference, held at the University of Birmingham, entitled DML 2008 Towards a Digital Mathematics Library as part of the Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (CICM) and Mathematics Knowledge Management (MKM).
"Mathematicians dream of a digital archive containing all peer-reviewed mathematical literature ever published, properly linked and validated/verified. It is estimated that the entire corpus of mathematical knowledge published over the centuries does not exceed 100,000,000 pages, an amount easily manageable by current information technologies.
"The workshop's objectives are to formulate the strategy and goals of a global mathematical digital library and to summarize the current successes and failures of ongoing technologies and related projects, asking such questions as:
"* What technologies, standards, algorithms and formats should be used and what metadata should be shared?
"* What business models are suitable for publishers of mathematical literature, authors and funders of their projects and institutions?
"* Is there a model of sustainable, interoperable, and extensible mathematical library that mathematicians can use in their everyday work?
* What is the best practice for
"o retrodigitized mathematics (from images via OCR to MathML and/or TeX);
"o retro-born-digital mathematics (from existing electronic copy in DVI, PS or PDF to MathML and/or TeX);
"o born-digital mathematics (how to make needed metadata and file formats available as a side effect of publishing workflow [CEDRAM model])?"
