Graphics Content in Digital Libraries: Old Problems, Recent Solutions, Future Demands Dieter W. Fellner Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany d.fellner@tu-bs.de Abstract: Working with the ubiquitous ’Web’ we immediately realize its limitations when it comes to the delivery or exchange of non-textual, particularly graphical, information. Graphical information is still predominantly represented by raster images, either in a fairly low resolution to warrant acceptable transmission times or in high resolutions to please the reader’s perception thereby challenging his or her patience (as these large data sets take their time to travel over congested internet highways). Comparing the current situation with efforts and developments of the past, e.g. the Videotex systems developed in the time period from 1977 to 1985, we see that a proper integration of graphics from the very beginning has, once again, been overlooked. The situation is even worse going from two-dimensional images to three-dimensional models or scenes. VRML, originally designed to address this very demand has failed to establish itself as a reliable tool for the time window given and recent advances in graphics technology as well as digital library technology demand new approaches which VRML, at least in its current form, won’t be able to deliver. After summarizing the situation for 2D graphics in digital documents or digital libraries this paper concentrates on the 3D graphics aspects of recent digital library developments and tries to identify the future challenges the community needs to master. Category: I.3.5, H.3.7 1 Introduction Digital Libraries have gained much attention over the past years. The interest – not only in the area of Computer Science – is caused by the enormous growth of all kinds of (electronic) publications as well as by the widespread availability of advanced desktop computing technology and network connectivity. Electronic documents – particularly those consisting of many different media types like text, diagrams, images, 3D scenes, animations, and audio, all of them being first class citizens – are beginning to change the entire publication process in all scientific fields. With the new technologies at hand, authors and educators can now utilize ani- mations and simulations together with a rich blend of multimedia data to explain com- plicated phenomena and distribute them in an unprecedented way. Of course, in the context of Digital Libraries also the term publication process needs to be seen with a wider focus ranging from the classical production of a scientific paper to, for example, the modeling of a (virtual) 3D environment explaining the effects of different BRDF’s on global illumination. Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 7, no. 5 (2001), 400-409 submitted: 14/4/01, accepted: 18/5/01, appeared: 28/5/01  Springer Pub. Co.