THE REALITY OF COLLABORATORIES

Advances in data acquisition and dissemination technologies, together with several other computer science technologies, provide an opportuni ty to define new environments for remote access to scientific instrume nts and collaboration between researchers at remote sites. These envir onments, called ''collaboratories'' (V.G. Cerf, National Collaboratori es: Applying Information Technologies for Scientific Research (Nationa l Academy Press, D.C. Washington, 1993)), are intended to provide comp lete location-independent collaborative access to instruments, data ac quisition and analysis resources, as well as to collaborating research ers. Over the past two years we have built a prototype collaboratory a t the Spectro-Microscopy Facility of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) B eamline 7.0 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The scientists w ho use the Beamline are based at different cities around the world. Be fore the introduction of the collaboratory, experiments at the Beamlin e required that multiple researchers travel to Berkeley, CA. With the collaboratory, scientists can now discuss experiments with other scien tists around the world and at the Beamline, ''walk'' around the Beamli ne using remotely controlled cameras, access data as it is taken, moni tor instrument parameters, and do limited control of the experiment fr om their offices. This paper presents the design of the prototype Spec tro-Microscopy Collaboratory, and the lessons learned in providing rem ote access to the facility. It also presents the software architecture and components that are being developed to provide a toolkit for brin ging future experimental equipment on-line. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.