A paper presented by Peter Haddad, Director Technical Services Branch, National Library of Australia, at the Conference on New Information Technologies "Virtual Information: The Dawn of a New Era", 23-25th July 2001, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei.
The emergence of the World Wide Web has heralded an era of unprecedented change for libraries. Can libraries respond to the many challenges presented by this new technology, or will they become increasingly irrelevant in the new digital age?
This paper examines the pressures for change in several key areas: offering digital services, preservation of cultural and documentary heritage, good management and quality assurance mechanisms in the digital arena, and equity of access to online information. In an emerging area where change is rapid and many questions remain unanswered, it is important that libraries and information services draw from the experiences of others in a cooperative and collaborative way. A number of digital programmes underway in Australia and elsewhere are presented as possible responses to the challenges facing libraries. In the final analysis, the answer to the question will be determined by the decisions libraries are making now.
The last eight years, which have witnessed the emergence and the first stage of development of the World Wide Web, have subjected libraries, educational institutions, commercial activities and even leisure pursuits to an unprecedented era of change. It has been claimed that this change is so fundamental that only the emergence of the mass-produced printed book, as it supplanted hand-produced manuscripts, can compare with this upheaval.
The World Wide Web is now thought to contain about 7.1 million unique sites. An estimated 41% of these sites offer content that is freely accessible to the general public, and the Web continues to expand at a rapid pace, tripling in size over the last two years, even though its rate of growth seems to be diminishing over time. The appearance of this new form of publishing and new source of informational content presents libraries and collecting institutions with enormous challenges.
Being in the midst of this change, much of what has been written about what the digital future holds is speculative. There have been dire predictions that the users immediate access to information through search engines will render the librarys role as an information broker obsolete, and that libraries will become mere custodians of a dwindling stock of printed and physical format resources consulted by a minority.
Others maintain the view that the role of the library as an organisation and a quality controller over the vast amount of information on the Internet will make its role pivotal in the information age.
Certainly it looks as though print and other formats of library materials will remain important, but there is an increasing trend for users to prefer online access to digital materials. It is immediate, fast, and available from anywhere, twenty-four hours a day. Libraries will need to cater for this demand, because if they wont, others will. The success of Internet online reference services are indicative of services evolving to meet the new user expectations.
However, as we approach the end of the first decade of the World Wide Webs existence, it is becoming possible to articulate the key issues more clearly, and to discern many different ways of working to ensure that libraries rise to meet the challenges of digital publishing and digital information delivery. I will talk about some key areas for libraries, and some of the solutions that are being applied.
Providing digital services
Libraries have generally been highly successful in sharing their resources through union catalogues, indexing and abstracting services and inter-library loan. A fully developed, functional and stable infrastructure has evolved to carry out resource discovery and delivery for printed and other physical-format items. The advent of the Internet with its opportunities for unmediated access to distributed resources has caused libraries to think again about service provision and providing users with a coherent view of all the resources available.
As well as items held in the collections, there are now resources freely available on the Internet, CD-ROMs and commercial online services to which the library has subscribed on behalf of its users. Many libraries strive to provide the user with access to both electronic and traditional information resources. This integrated approach is popular with library users, as a single interface is preferable to a multiplicity of different systems to master. Libraries taking this approach are therefore hybrid libraries in the sense of offering services that combine the functions of the traditional library with those of the electronic, digital or virtual library.
In addition, many libraries have their own online collections acquired through digitisation programs, or because they have a role as a deposit library collecting online publications. These digital resources also need to be catalogued and made available for the library user.
The potential value to the library in successfully achieving this integrated model of service delivery is enormous. It offers the library user a chance to have, wherever he or she may be, direct, seamless access to an increasing body of print and electronic sources of information. It opens up the library collections, both those items held by the Library (if it is digitising) and those online resources to which it subscribes or provides access. It can extend the reach of the library far beyond its traditional user base. For libraries in educational institutions, it offers the library a chance to participate in virtual distance learning or e-learning programs.
A number of barriers to the realisation of direct seamless access remain. Firstly, not all of every librarys collection will be digitised and available online. The resources required are simply too great, and the problems of making copyright material freely available too intractable. While the proportion of the resource base available in digital form continues to increase it is in addition to, not in place of, the non-electronic component. Online access to this non-electronic material will continue to be the catalogue record. While this will not provide direct access to the article, most systems will allow the user to request or reserve it.
Secondly, online subscriber services will continue to stipulate restrictions to widespread access. While this may not trouble a library with a closely defined and easily identified clientele, consider the position of national and public libraries whose constituents are the general population. The present models do not easily lend themselves to providing wide access to all. However, it is important to extend the availability of digital resources so that there does not develop an electronic information elite as opposed to an electronic information deprived group. Some state wide public library systems have successfully negotiated access to a range of electronic materials for their citizens. Several states in the United States have succeeded in negotiating state-wide licences that provide all their citizens with access to a range of digital resources through their public library system, the best known being the Kentucky Virtual Library (KVL). In Australia the Council of State Libraries (CASL) and the National Library have implemented a national site licensing trial to acquire a selection of full text electronic resources and make them available to all Australians regardless of location. In a later stage of the work, public libraries will be included in the consortium. Work in Australia is based on three prerequisites for citizen access to online information: equity of access to technology; equity of access to information literacy; and equity of access to content.
Thirdly, quality of Web delivered content remains a concern for libraries and educators. There is a role for libraries as trusted gatekeepers to develop services comprising quality online resources as opposed to the unevaluated mass of data generated by search engines. Many libraries have begun to do this through online reference guides, subject information pages and subject gateways. There is an exciting opportunity for libraries to collaborate with other non-library partners to develop and host information and directory services that include electronic resources. This thinking is based on the very reasonable assumption that users in the digital world do not care who holds the information, and is an emerging issue of great importance for libraries.
Some practical responses to this convergence that the Internet brings can be seen in the development of the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts (RAAM) and PictureAustralia. RAAM is a directory service to collections of Australian personal papers and manuscript collections in libraries, archives, small societies and private hands. PictureAustralia demonstrates some of the possibilities of web content delivery. It is a resource discovery service that provides access to over 500,000 images held in a variety of Australian libraries, galleries, archives and museums. Resource discovery is integrated by means of a central metadata repository supporting the search facility. Metadata is harvested from the partner institutions on a regular basis. The result of a search for a picture of something is a series of thumbnail images which are retrieved from the web sites of the partner institution. The common metadata standard used is Dublin Core. The tremendous advantage of a service like PictureAustralia is that the user wanting an image can use this service without having to know which institution might be most likely to have the answer to their need. In this way, it is a model of the integrated, cross-sectoral services that become possible in the virtual world.
Preservation of cultural heritage
Libraries have a role in keeping, preserving and transmitting historical, scientific and cultural heritage to future generations. For many libraries this has always been one of the most challenging areas, involving the provision of adequate storage environments, and the conservation of documentary heritage materials. The advent of electronic publishing has brought even greater challenges to libraries in fulfilling this role.
Electronic publications and particularly online resources that exist only in digital form are increasingly taking their place as a common medium of publication. Online electronic journals are the best-known examples, but there are many other types of online publication. In a number of countries government information and publishing is increasingly available on Web sites, and may or may not be replicated in hard copy form. These electronic publications are as much part of a nations documentary heritage material as its printed material, and as such need to be collected and preserved. Unfortunately they are also among the most transitory. Ironically, while stone tablets may be expected to last for thousands of years, and paper for hundreds of years, a floppy disk or magnetic tape may last only ten years, while the average life of a Web page is about 70 days. Those who care, librarians and archivists, are often not well placed to take action, while those in the computer industry with the technical expertise to do something are immersed in a digital culture of planned obsolescence to maintain a cash flow based on the newest and the latest.
The danger of a digital gap was recognised quite early (1995) at the National Library of Australia, but the dilemma was the same as that facing collecting and deposit libraries everywhere how would we go about collecting something non-physical, and how would we preserve it? In addition, should we, or indeed could we, collect it all? We knew that already some of the very earliest online Australian publications were no longer accessible and had disappeared forever.
Our particular solution was to begin, in a small and selective way, to collect Australian online publications and to archive them. Several decisions had to be made. Firstly, would we try to collect and archive the Australian domain in its entirety? This was rejected as being beyond the available resources, and it was also questionable whether everything was appropriate for the Librarys collection. Guidelines were written concentrating largely on the fact that the item had to be in online form only, and placing emphasis on its informational content and future research value. The emphasis from the very beginning was on public access wherever possible. As online publications are regarded as part of the nations documentary heritage, the National Library did not want to collect online publications that could not then be used by the public. To achieve this, each title that is identified as eligible for archiving in the Librarys PANDORA archive involves seeking the permission of the creator or owner of that resource to make the publication available online. To date the response has been largely positive. If permission is not granted, the Library may still archive the publication, but not make it available, rather than risk its permanent loss. In the case of commercial publications, an embargo period may be agreed before the publication is available through the PANDORA archive, to protect the commercial return expected by the creator. From the beginning the PANDORA project has been adventurous in experimenting with many new and different online formats to try and preserve the look and feel of the original site.
This approach is not the only one that can be taken. The National Library of Canada has built an electronic archive, concentrating mainly on plain text files, particularly government information. In Sweden, the approach of taking the whole of the Swedish domain has been followed. This will enable a more complete picture of use of the Internet to be preserved for the future, but presents immediate problems of access, quality control, copyright clearance issues and requires large amounts of storage. The Internet Archive in the United States takes a similar approach. At present the National Library of Australia is investigating supplementing its selective approach with occasional snapshots of the whole of the Australian domain.
Digitisation and preservation
As well as born digital publications, libraries together with other collecting institutions are digitising collection material. This is certainly a blessing from the access perspective. Once issues of legibility, successful delivery of digital files, ways to search the text, ways of organising and describing digitised material, ownership, rights of access and sometimes issues of cultural sensitivity are sorted out, digitisation extends and enhances access wonderfully.
From a preservation perspective, though, it raises a number of questions. Sometimes having a digitised version can assist preservation as the fragile originals can be put away and protected while the digital copies are used. There is also some sense in having digital copies made in case anything happens to the originals. More worrying is the question of the long-term maintenance of the digital files themselves. The instability of the carriers we use to store digital files, the changing standards and equipment needed to access them means that preservation in the digital world will cost much more than before. A good example of this is the American Memory program of the Library of Congress.
Management and infrastructure
Because sensible management, sound infrastructure and future vision are essential if the digital revolution is to work for libraries rather than against them, this may prove to be the most critical area of all.
At the most basic level, every library should have a carefully thought out and publicly stated policy on its electronic or digital collections, just as it usually has for its other materials. Because the choices for digital resources are many and the costs considerable, a clear policy aligned with the librarys goals is a pre-requisite for good management. Within the library consideration needs to be given to whether traditional and electronic services will be offered separately or whether an integrated approach will be taken. While an integrated approach is better for the user, many libraries have perceived this as too resource intensive and have turned to in-house web lists and other mechanisms to provide access to digital resources.
One important issue for individual libraries, and for library educators is the need for new skills in the new environment, and new approaches to working and delivering services.
It would be a pity if the resource-sharing model that is used by libraries to provide access to physical resources was not extended to electronic resources. In the digital world, there is still a need for combined searching of print and electronic resources, and libraries need to develop services to share metadata describing electronic information. The old models of MARC records and library cataloguing will not necessarily suffice. For digital resources a combination of libraries, other organisations and the creators of Web resources themselves must be involved in the creation of the metadata for describing electronic resources. To try and extend the concept of resource sharing the National Library in Australia is undertaking a proof-of-concept project to test the business and technical issues associated with involving a wider range of players. This project will include consideration of centralised versus distributed metadata services, data creation and maintenance, link checking and reporting functions and the services that may be offered.
Standards are an essential component of the management framework. In the digital arena there are a number of standards, de facto standards and developing standards that need to be taken into account. Earlier, I mentioned how the use of the Dublin Core metadata set as a standard enabled PictureAustralia to offer a resource discovery service among a group of widely divergent collecting institutions. Another structural markup standard that is widely used to mark up finding aids or collection descriptions is the Encoded Archival Description (EAD).
It has been widely remarked in connection with digital resources that there is a lack of any stable and reliable means of identification. The Web addresses or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that are used for access, and widely cited in bibliographies, library catalogues and in bookmarks within browsers are often rendered unusable by a change of location of the electronic resource. There is a great need for identifying web resources in a form that will persist. This points to the need for other standards, a naming system not based on current location; resolution services that will automatically change the address into the current URL and processes to ensure that changes of location are always incorporated into the resolution services. There is an International Taskforce on Persistent Identifiers formed in 1999, looking into a program of action. Because this problem is so widespread, it is hoped that solutions for persistent identifiers can be widely adopted.
Conclusions
In moving from digitisation to virtual reality, what can we learn from the first ten years? Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion is that libraries can no longer be considered in isolation. The Internet, the worlds largest library, is a new competitor. But it is largely without the principles of collection development, a targeted audience and support services such as reference tools and reference librarians. If libraries can understand the values of users, and offer alternative, relevant and value added services, their future will be assured.
References
Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan. Online. Available: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/draftplan.html
Cathro, Warwick. Smashing the Silos: Towards Convergence in Information Management and Resource Discovery. Paper presented to the Information Orienteering Conference, Canberra 5 April 2001. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2001/cathro2.html
Cathro, Warwick. Visions for Fundamental Change in Libraries and Librarianship for Asia Pacific. Paper presented at the Emerging Trends in Library and Archival Services Conference, Singapore, April 2001. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2001/cathro1.html
Dack, Diana. Persistence is a Virtue. Paper presented to the Online Information Conference, Sydney, January, 2001. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2001/dack.html
National Library of Australia. PANDORA Project: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/pandora/
Pearce, Judith. The Challenge of Integrated Access: the Hybrid Library System of the Future. Paper presented by Judith Pearce, Warwick Cathro, and Tony Boston to the 10th VALA Biennial Conference and Exhibition, Melbourne, Victoria, 16-18 February, 2000. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/jpearce1.html
Phillips, Margaret. Moving Towards Public Access to Online Information Resources in Australia. Paper presented to the Online Information Conference, Sydney, January, 2001. Online. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/staffpaper/2001/mphillips_online2001.html
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