PROCEEDINGS OF RIKEN BNL RESEARCH CENTER WORKSHOP ENTITLED 'GLOBAL ANALYSIS OF POLARIZED PARTON DESTRIBUTIONS IN THE RHIC ERA' (VOLUME 86)

The determination of the polarized gluon distribution is a central goal of the RHIC spin program. Recent achievements in polarization and luminosity of the proton beams in RHIC, has enabled the RHIC experiments to acquire substantial amounts of high quality data with polarized proton beams at 200 and 62.4 GeV center of mass energy, allowing a first glimpse of the polarized gluon distribution at RHIC. Short test operation at 500 GeV center of mass energy has also been successful, indicating absence of any fundamental roadblocks for measurements of polarized quark and anti-quark distributions planned at that energy in a couple of years. With this background, it has now become high time to consider how all these data sets may be employed most effectively to determine the polarized parton distributions in the nucleon, in general, and the polarized gluon distribution, in particular. A global analysis of the polarized DIS data from the past and present fixed target experiments jointly with the present and anticipated RHIC Spin data is needed.