(owen@hum.uva.nl)
Department of Information Science
University of Amsterdam
The library traditionally has performed a role within the information chain, where publishers and libraries act as clearing houses between authors and users. In this model various institutional parties perform specialized functions. Publishers are especially oriented towards authors, for whom they perform, in the case of science, a dissemination role, manage quality control, produce the ‘canonical archive’ (i.e. the global archive of scientific knowledge) and offer authors recognition through publication of their ideas and findings (Rowland 1997). Libraries are especially oriented towards the end user, for whom they provide selective filtering of information, storage of information resources, a variety of services (such as cataloguing and indexing, document delivery etc.) and support. The interrelationships between authors, publishers, libraries and users (including other parties as well, such as bookshops and subscription agents) have resulted in a highly efficient logistical system for the distribution of knowledge in printed form.
This system now seems to be changing under the influence of the transformation from print to digital information. In this paper I shall examine the main issues underlying this transformation, and the impact of these on the future of libraries.
First, then, what are the main issues underlying the transformation from print to digital information? The key technological driving force is the combination of digital information as such and the network as a distribution medium. It is now quite clear that more and more information which used to be printed on paper, is now being published in digital form. Currently most publishers, especially the main scientific publishers, prefer a dual mode: journals are published both in print and in digital form. In many cases, the digital version is derived from the printed form (e.g. through scanning), and at least there is a tendency to ensure that the digital version is an exact copy of the printed journal. It is highly likely that within a number of years most major scientific and professional journals will be available primarily in digital form. By that time, the formats of these journals will move ahead from the characteristics of print, and begin to make more use of the possibilities offered by the digital form, e.g. flexible publishing schedules, interactivity, multimedia etc.
The off-line distribution of digital information, e.g. via cdrom, only seems to have a future as a distribution format between systems and for specialized information products, e.g. products of which small numbers of users make heavy usage. In general, it is the network, not off-line media, which holds the future as a distribution medium. We are therefore now moving towards a digital information chain where traditional institutions such as publishers and libraries will have to redefine their roles.
The network now means: the Internet. In future we shall see a larger number of networks, trading off speed and quality against price: fast advanced networks for power users in industry and universities, cheaper but slower and less reliable networks (such as the current Internet) for household use. That will not necessarily lead to fragmentation of the available information. Any information site could be accessed through any of the networks; the only difference will be quality and price of the delivery mechanism, not of content.
The significance of digitizing and networks is well known: global accessibility. Any information, wherever it is located, can be accessed from any other location, usually at an acceptably high speed. One consequence of this is information overload: how to choose if everything is available? Here the library can contribute significantly by ofering advanced search and selction mechanisms, tailored to individual or group information needs. Another consequence is of also significance to libraries. Traditionally the library acts as a store or memory, ensuring that important information is available locally, as near as possible to the user. In the digital world location and speed of delivery are not an issue any more. Libraries will therefore have to ask themselves whether their storage function needs to be maintained, and more specifically whether it makes sense to develop new storage facilities for digital information. That is an issue I shall come back to.
The Internet has stimulated many developments which influence the distribution of information through the digital information chain. I would like to mention five of these:
Although we have had multimedia (the integration of text, sound, still images, moving images and embedded software applications) for at least a decade, the real significance of multimedia comes into the open through the network. The result is interactive multimedia: a far richer variety of media types and media uses (e.g. networked radio and tv, music clips, games etc.), and the use of multimedia in the communication process as a component of both human-machine and human-to-human interaction. We can now add a comment to an article, send a media-rich reaction or a simulation to the author, speak to him or here, even look at each other, all through the network. Dissemination through the information chain is no longer confined to printing words on paper, but has become a media-rich interactive process.
This has a bearing on the nature of content (cf. the discussion between Zariski, 1997 and Hibbits, 1997) and on archiving issues, and by extension on the role of publishers and libraries. The combination of networks and multimedia leads to a far more expressive and therefore personal mode of communication than the traditional print information chain can offer.
New applications of IT are developing which enable interactive, multimedia communication via networks. The most significant of these is the browser. The browser is now becoming the key end-user application. The modern browser application serves as a local and external file directory, allowing users to access and manage information files. The browser provides hypertext links allowing an associative walk-through in information space. It offers the user access to search machines, it can be used to obtain documents, to view and to print them. It integrates a message system allowing one to send and receive multimedia e-mail. It acts as a document creator, employing the future global standard document format (i.e. HTML and its successor XML). It incorporates all the functions a user can perceive: navigating, browsing, viewing, filing, creating and communicating. It can also serve as the interface to more specialized applications, ranging from online catalogues and databases to administrative applications, office functions (such as wordprocessing and spreadsheets), simulation software etc. In fact, a browser embedded in an underlying operating system is all the technology you need at the level of a personal workstation linked to the network, as both Sun and Microsoft seem to understand extremely well.
Other applications of IT lead to search engines, information filtering, knowledge extraction and intelligent agents which perform user-related tasks automatically (one of the finest visions on agents is given by Negroponte, 1995). Finally, IT-developments offer virtual integration of geographically distributed systems, e.g. through the Z39.50 protocol. Through this mechanism, the user need not perceive the world as consisting of different organizations and services. Rather, users can create a personal service based on an individual combination (or ‘coalition’) of service providers, search engines, and intelligent agents, available as a coherent, integrated service through the browser on their personal computers.
Co-operation is another issue underlying the development of networked digital information services. It is long ago since the local library was the single source of information available to an individual user, and since information was not available if it was not available in the library. In the networked world all information can be available to everybody. Information technology, digitizing and networks lead inevitably to co-operative relationships between institutions within the information chain. In as far as users really will need library services in future, they will not be content with the service of a single library. Hence the increasing co-operation between libraries, as exemplified in the many co-operative digital library projects carried out within the framework of R&D programs (e.g. the European Libraries Program and the E-lib program in the UK, as well as many other national programs).
In addition to ‘horizontal’ co-operation between libraries (and, although as yet far less so, between publishers), there is increasing ‘vertical’ co-operation between institutional parties in the information chain. The prime example of this is the tightening relationship and increasing interdependence between publishers and libraries. There are many aspects to this. For publishers to succeed in moving users over to digital publications, they need the support of libraries, who for many reasons (especially administrative and financial) continue to provide the access point to published information for the end user. This means that publishers depend on the deployment of IT by libraries, the development of digital libraries, and the persuasive force of libraries with respect to users. It also leads to new contractual relationships, such as licensing as an alternative to the traditional subscription scheme, which entail a much more detailed regulation of rights and duties between the publisher and the library. And finally, libraries and publishers are competing for the same functions within the information chain - an issue I shall return to later on with respect to the stirage function.
Another area of co-operation which deserves mentioning is that between libraries and computer centres. Libraries need the information infrastructure provided by computer centres in order to make their services available to the user. Computer centres need libraries as content providers in order to justify their investments in networks, personal computers etc. Supporting information services through an IT-infrastructure, rather than traditional computing and data processing, is rapidly becoming the primary function of the computing department. Co-operation is in the interest of both parties. Experience from our consulting practice shows that both perform most successfully when they work together.
The communicative aspects of IT and the drive towards co-operation have a very specific effect on libraries, namely that their boundaries are becoming far less sharply defined. What is the library when its services are offered by a multitude of organizations, when its holdings are scattered over the globe, when it appears to be no more (or less) than an function on the desktop computer, called up by clicking on an icon with the label ‘library’? How can an outsider distinguish between what is done by the library and what by the computing department when looking at the screen? Is the library still a library when it does little more than pay the bills for materials accessed by its users on the computer of a publisher? Traditional concepts of the library appear to be no longer valid in the digital world. This is all the more true when we look at the new concept of knowledge management.
Knowledge management is an approach based on the central role of knowledge in organizations, with the objective to manage and support knowledge work and to maximize the added value of knowledge for the organization. Knowledge management aims at identifying and analysing knowledge and knowledge work, and at developing procedures and systems for generating, storing, distributing and using knowledge in the organization. Knowledge management is predominantly a new way of thinking about information in organizations. It focuses on the strategic importance to the organization of the quality of knowledge, its availability and use.
One of the main carriers and distributors of knowledge within an organization is the human being. Knowledge is contained ‘between the ears’ and is transferred from one person to another in a variety of ways. One aspect of knowledge management is therefore ‘human resource management’, ensuring that people within the organization have the right knowledge and that they communicate their knowledge effectively. The other carrier of knowledge is, of course, information. The advantage of information as a carrier of knowledge is that it is explicit, it can be stored, searched for, retrieved and processed. That is precisely what libraries traditionally have been doing, and they seem right in saying that they are and always have been ‘knowledge managers’.
But that is not entirely true in the context of our current understanding of knowledge management. Knowledge management is an integrated approach, encompassing both ‘human’ and ‘documented’ knowledge, both internal and external knowledge, covering content, behaviour and support systems. Knowledge management is primarily the responsibility of the top management level within an organization. Therefore, librarians can play a role in knowledge management as managers of ‘knowledge information’. But they have to understand that they then act as a component of an integrated knowledge management process, working together with others (e.g. in areas such as human resources and information systems) under control of higher management levels. They also have to understand that ‘knowledge information’ includes a far greater variety of information resources than traditionally found within a library, many of which are to be found in other areas of the organization (e.g. internal information on processes, products, projects and people).
So to summarize this issue, knowledge management is yet another example of libraries performing a valuable function for end users, rather than being identified with a precisely defined organizational entity. Library functions remain extremely useful and can be expanded to areas not found in the traditional library. But the library as an autonomous institution seems to be dissolving into a co-operative structure of ‘knowledge process supporters’.
In looking at developments and their impact on the information chain, one naturally tends to look at information technology as a driving force with a direct bearing on information institutions. However, there are also important indirect forces which have to be taken into account. The most important of these is the impact if IT on the people who constitute the human factor in the information chain: authors and end-users. The main difference between the two is that new generations become end users before they become authors, if at all.
Children are now becoming used to IT - personal computers, computer games, the Internet - at an increasingly young age (cf. Tapscott 1998). They regard these things as a source of information, as a medium for communication and as a tool for learning. Most students entering the universities are now highly proficient in using a computer, and often have more experience with the Internet than their tutors. Digital information and interactive multimedia are perfectly normal things to them. As the computer and the Internet become household goods and primary and secondary education joins the bandwagon of the Internet and computer-assisted instruction, digital information will be more normal for future generations than printed information. We will no longer need to teach them how to use the computer or browse the Internet; we may have to teach them how to browse a journal, how to look up something in a book, perhaps even how to read the printed word.
The future cybergeneration will certainly not accept the traditional, print-based library as the single (or even as an important) source of information. If we cannot offer them digital libraries and well organized access to networked resources, they indeed will begin to ask us questions.
These aspects, amongst many others, are the starting point from which to discuss the future of the library.
What, then, will the
library of the future look like? In general terms, the future library will have
three main characteristics, which can be summarized as digital, virtual and
distributed.
The library will be digital, i.e. it mainly will be based on
digital information resources. This is due to the inevitable move from print to
digital publishing. The print collection will therefore gradually become less
important. In view of the significant differences between the print and digital
medium (in terms of acquisition, handling, storage and delivery), one can also
expect an organizational division between the digital library and archival,
print-based libraries.
The digital library will
be virtual: it will be available on
the user’s desktop through the network infrastructure. ‘Going to the library’
will not mean going to a ‘physical’ library location, but accessing a function,
‘clicking on an icon’ on the computer screen. The ‘real’, physical library will
be invisible to the end user, except in its archival role as a collection of
print publications from the pre-digital era.
Finally, the digital,
virtual library will be distributed:
no single library can or should wish to offer a full range of services catering
for all the information needs of its users. Instead we shall see coalitions of
libraries, often within a specific subject domain, offering co-operative
services in a transparent way, i.e. without the end user ever noticing that the
various resources and services offered come from different locations and
different organizations.
Creating the digital,
virtual, distributed library (or networked
library as I prefer to call it), is a major challenge to libraries of the
present. In doing this, various issues have to be taken into account.
Perhaps the most
significant issue is that the traditional storage function of libraries, the collection – will disappear. Storing
print items locally in the library makes sense, since availability of print information
is directly related to the physical distance to information items. The drawback
is, of course, that items are duplicated in many locations, and that storage
costs have to be carried by the individual library. In the digital, networked
era physical distance is of no importance. Any document anywhere on the network
can be accessed from any location. Duplication of storage now becomes a matter
of network efficiency, and is no longer required at the user’s library, except
perhaps for very heavily used materials, and only for as long as usage exceeds
a certain level. From an organizational viewpoint, the best location for
storage and access of publications is with the originator, i.e. the publisher.
This is precisely what is happening with the large scientific publishers such
as Elsevier (Science Direct) and Springer Verlag (Link). An important
side-effect is that the whole area of cataloguing (or metadata as we call it nowadays) will also move from the library
world and even authors.
The shift from libraries
to publishers as storage collections leads to another significant change for
libraries. Instead of having a role in creating and maintaining collections,
libraries will act as contract managers,
managing license agreements with publishers. License agreements are rapidly
becoming a substitute for subscriptions. Subscriptions are agreements to
purchase materials (e.g. journals) under certain financial conditions. Licenses
are contracts which regulate access and usage rights for end users. They specify
who are allowed to access which materials, and what users are allowed to do
with them. The advantages of such contracts are that the publisher need not
deal with individual users, and that users can access a wide range of materials
through a single access point, using a single identification and without having
to pay for each individual transaction. It should be noted that a license can
cover both unlimited access (for a specified user group), or pay-per-view
(payment based on the volume of access). In this role, the library can be
regarded as a clearing house for
access rights to networked information.
A further issue for
libraries is related to the expanding range of digital information resources.
The range of digital resource types is far richer than in the world of print,
where one primarily has to deal with fairly well specified formats such as
books and journals. Digital information resources include such divers things as
electronic journals, websites, pre-print archives, individual multimedia objects,
software, databases, all kinds of services, etc. In addition, there is a wide
range of technical formats, and the underlying technology is changing
rapidly. The library therefore has to
manage a dynamic technical infrastructure in order to maintain access to
information resources for its users. This also requires new types of systems
within the library, including search engines, intelligent agents, information
filters and catalogue systems which can cope with the increasing diversity of
digital resources.
The role of the digital,
virtual library within organisations – e.g. the ‘corporate library’ – will have
to be defined in terms of knowledge management. Ultimately, the library will
have to take on the role of ‘content manager’ of the organizational Intranet,
ensuring that the wide range of knowledge resources required by the
organization is available in an easily accessible and cost-effective way.
A final issue which has
to be mentioned, is the changing information behaviour of users. I have already
pointed to the oncoming ‘cybergeneration’. But even existing users are changing
their information behaviour under the influence of networks and digital media.
Libraries will have to think hard about how to support these users, and how to
offer services which offer added value above direct access to the network.
In this paper I have
identified the underlying issues which libraries have to keep in mind when
thinking about their future. I have also discussed a number of characteristics
of the library of the future. The fundamental underlying issue is the shift
from print to digital information, and the use of networks for the access to
and distribution of information. Other issues include the increasing variety of
information media, especially interactive multimedia, the role of
IT-applications, the emerging concept of knowledge management, and the changing
attitudes of users (especially of the younger ‘cybergeneration’) towards
information and information technology.
The library of the
future will be digital, virtual and distributed. The library will no longer be
‘a place to go to for gathering information’, but have been transformed into a
co-operative service available at the user’s desktop. The storage function will
disappear from libraries, to be taken over by publishers. Cataloguing will be
done at the source, either by the author or the publisher. An important new
role for libraries will be in managing access rights, through licensing, for
end users. Within organisations, libraries will play an important role as
managers of the content available on the Intranet. Finally, the major challenge
for libraries will not just be to move from traditional models to the digital,
virtual, distributed model. The real challenge will be to do this in a way which
offers added value to the user. Otherwise, the Internet itself will become the
global library and libraries will disappear. I am convinced that that would not
be of benefit to the user.
References
Hibbitts, Bernard (1997) - E-Journals, Archives and Knowledge Networks: A Commentary on Archie Zariski’s Defense of Electronic Law Journals. - In: First Monday, issue 2-7, 1997. [http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_7/hibbitts/index.html]
Negroponte, Nicholas (1995) - Being digital. - Vintage Books, 1995.
Rowland, Fytton (1997) - Print journals: fit for the future? - In: Ariadne, issue 7. [http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue7/fytton/].
Tapscott, Don 91998) – Growing up digital: the rise of the Net Generation. – New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. (See also: www.growingupdigital.com)
Zariski, Archie (1997) – Never ending, still beginning: a defense of electronic law journals from the perspective of the E-law experience. - In: First Monday, issue 2-6, 1997. [http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_6/zariski/index.html]