Staff Papers
Libraries, Networks and Democracy: Government and the People in an Electronic Age
Paper presented by Eric Wainwright, Deputy Director-General, at the Annual New Norcia Library Lecture, St. Ildephonsus College Building, Benedictine Community of New Norcia, Western Australia, 26 September 1995.
CONTENTS
- Introduction
- Role of Libraries
- The Electronic Library
- Information and Communication Channels
- Information and Government
- Recent Progress in Australia
- Conclusion
Introduction
In this paper, I aim to examine the role of libraries as a public good and how that role is being influenced by technological and economic changes, and the potential role of libraries and similar organisations as a strong democratising influence and as an instrument within the relationships of people to their governments. I will then relate these broad constructs to current developments in Australia and speculate on how we might go forward in this area.
Role of Libraries
Libraries have existed for many centuries, and certainly well before the invention of the printing press. But before that time, the number of libraries, as institutions recognisable to us today, was heavily constrained by the difficulties of creating books in the codex form and its predecessors such as the parchment roll and clay tablet. The time consuming nature of the task of writing each copy by hand meant that the number of copies of works extant before the printing press would have been extremely small, notwithstanding the efforts of thousands of monks and others as part of their religious lives.
It is hard for us today, with an over-abundance of information, not only in textual form but in an array of other formats, to imagine life at a time before copies could be made of any information object, either symbolic (as text) or representational (as a picture), other than by hand. The effect of the introduction of the printing press was truly revolutionary in its effect on the societies of the time, in changing the relationships between individuals and institutions. We need perhaps to look back to that revolution of print to gauge some of the possible effects of the electronic revolution which is only just starting to impact upon us.
With the spread of the printing press came the spread of libraries. For the first time, books became available in sufficient quantities that many people, at least in the classes that could read, could expect to own books themselves. The manuscript libraries of the monasteries themselves grew rapidly and were joined by those of other, secular organisations engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and truth, such as the early universities. The development since that time has been one of essentially linear growth, as :
- The types of institutions engaged in pursuits which required a flow of information for their activities became greater - universities, research institutes, government agencies and finally commercial organisations.
- The cost of printed works continued to fall.
- New physical formats for communication information became available for collection.
- The proportion of the population able to read increased through improved educational opportunities.
As printed works became abundant and ubiquitous, the very business of social interaction became based on print, - from monetary transactions to the laws of nations. Slowly, our societies moved from an oral tradition to having collective memories primarily based on print. Developments in government, in business, in education and in the professions became ever more heavily dependent on the written and printed word. With this abundance of text has come a vast range of libraries and archives, striving to cope with the complexity of organising large and growing collections, and the ever more complex requirements of greater numbers of users, in buildings which are often too small by the time that they are built.
But because libraries are so common in this 20th century, it is very easy to mistake their underlying purpose with their form. Any satisfactory process for transmitting knowledge and information must enable the creator of that knowledge to distribute it widely in a form which is convenient and relatively cheap for others to acquire. Hence the printed book. But the process must also allow potential users to search out and retrieve the information years, or perhaps even centuries, after it was originally created. That is, the total information system must have effective components for knowledge creation, distribution, location, retrieval and preservation. Libraries have been a major integration mechanism for providing these functions for printed materials and, more recently, for a wide range of other information objects such as films and sound recordings. Because it has been based very largely around the printed book, the form of the library, ie, a building, usually of some considerable size, has been considered to be its most important characteristic - that is, as a place to which people must go to obtain their information. Indeed the very word library is a derivative from the Latin word for a book - "liber". The concentration on the library as a place derives, however, directly from the technology of the printed book. Printed books have a number of inherent characteristics :
- They are relatively bulky, which means :
- they cannot easily be transported by a person and therefore places for study have to be provided nearby a collection;
- they require substantial amounts of space for storage and because of this libraries tend to be large and therefore relatively remote from people's home and work spaces. - They are relatively expensive, which means :
- they require security in the form of tracking systems for use, and physical security around the perimeter of their storage areas;
- they require that costs be shared amongst users. - They may be used by only one person at a time and in a focussed
way, which means :
- places for study with a relatively large allocation of space for each individual to prevent disturbance;
- a need for duplication of any item in reasonable demand. - They can be stored only in a linear sequence, which means that they can relate physically only to the two items immediately adjacent, and also leads to very complicated organisational schemes aimed at showing more complex relationships.
- They decay very slowly, which is excellent if items are needed over a long period, but leads to considerable expense if items needs to be disposed of.
I need not go on - suffice to say that the traditional library is beholden to the technology of the printed book. But the library is not a place. It is a mechanism - its function is to link potential users with the information they need. Why do we have libraries? The library has provided the societal purpose of filling three major gaps between information and its potential users :
- Time, that is the delay between the time at which an item is produced and the time at which it may be later needed by a user.
- Distance, that is the distance between the place at which an item is produced and the place at which it may later be used.
- Cost, that is the gap between the total price of materials needed by individuals and their available financial resources.
Thus the traditional library functions, and has had to, because of its technology, as a public good. Its outlays of resources on the acquisition, organisation and preservation of printed materials have been shared by those funding the library. This is equally true of commercial, government, university or public libraries - individuals using printed materials in the library benefit from services for which they do not pay directly and which they use to varying extents, ie, the costs of information dissemination have been met through shared funding.
The traditional library could not operate without most of its costs being shared by its potential user community, because its very service is dependent upon materials being purchased and organised ahead of the demands of individuals. Meeting such demands is dependent on a system for long term access and preservation, since for some materials, there may be many years between their publication and their later use. The library therefore provides a range of important services to its collective community of individuals serviced :
- Materials are purchased ahead of demand.
- Materials are organised to illustrate relationships.
- Materials are retained and preserved for long periods.
- The library provides a standard interface (catalogue) for users.
- Guidance and access points are provided for materials not held.
- Cooperative arrangements are made with other libraries for provision of materials not held.
- The library provides the necessary technology for use of materials (study spaces, equipment).
It is noteworthy that the spread of public libraries, ie, libraries open to the public, whether local, state or national, has been very closely correlated with the spread of representative democracy. Libraries and democracies are mutually supportive - democracies believe on balance that exposing their people to a wide range of ideas is beneficial, while the existence of public libraries contributes heavily to the development of diverse views in the community, undirected by government or other potentially coercive institutions. The major initial growth of libraries for the public was in North America, and it was there that the first open access arrangements occurred (ie, where users were allowed direct access to shelves of material without the intervening control of some intermediary).
These traditional libraries thus serve their public in a spirit of genuine community. While one can argue that they have sometimes been unsuccessful in serving subsets of their potential clientele, in practice this has been generally because of the inability of libraries to attract staff who are representative and knowledgeable about the needs of the community as a whole, so that services to some ethnic groups and indigenous people, or people with reading disabilities, have sometimes been inadequate. Nevertheless, I consider that the intent has been there, even if the realisation has been less.
The Electronic Library
I have given this rather long exposition about the nature of libraries because I believe that it is necessary in order to understand the possibilities regarding the future role of libraries in our society in an electronic age. The traditional library has a number of significant weaknesses :
- It is dependent on publishers for materials.
- Its role is as a secondary distributor.
- Its traditional strength has been the speed of local supply as against alternatives.
- Users have to visit the library.
Given the apparent advantages of electronic works, there are many reasons to suppose that the electronic replacement of print will occur very rapidly :
- Text in different locations can appear as if in a single location.
- Text can be searched quickly.
- Text can be available simultaneously to many users.
- Text can be manipulated, changed and updated very easily.
- Text can be easily created collaboratively.
- Electronic publications can integrate text, sound and images.
- Text is accessible from any location.
- Access to text is free to many users, and at low cost for all.
- Speed of access to text is independent of distance from its location.
- Users can superimpose their own view of search structure and information sources.
- Storage and transmission costs are tending to zero.
Print replacement has of course been predicted for at least four decades and has not occurred. This is not the place to go into details of why electronic information has not yet taken hold - suffice to say that print replication cannot be expected to occur until :
- Authors are all producing information in electronic form.
- The electronic information produced can be accessed globally, regardless of the particular way the information is stored.
- Communication networks have sufficient bandwidth and protocol standardisation for transmission of text and visual images at the rate required by users.
- Potential users of the information have the ability to access it effectively.
- Potential users of the information have the capacity to continue to store and manipulate the information locally.
- Electronic information can be preserved over a long period.
- Electronic text can be read over an extended period as easily as print.
Clearly we are some way from these conditions being achieved. But because no extensive replacement of print has taken place to date, it is tempting for sceptics to suggest that print is safe from electronic predators. In my view this would be unwise - the six critical technologies needed for widespread use of electronic information are reaching the stage at which they are now becoming available to a significant number of people :
- Multi-level user interfaces (including graphics).
- Substantial work station capability at user level.
- Fast retrieval from massive data stores.
- National and global inter-operability.
- Standard search and retrieve protocols.
- Transaction capabilities.
While most librarians probably feel the more obvious technological changes most keenly, the underlying economic changes in our society are probably of greater significance over the longer term. These include :
- Information as a major economic driver.
The increasing importance of information for commercial success, government policy is leading to the 'mainstreaming' of libraries and other information services as commercially important, with the associated struggles over issues such as intellectual property rights and control of standards.
- Leisure activities as a major marketplace.
This magnifies the importance for information services of ease of use, convenience and home delivery, and leads to entertainment-related applications driving communications/information infrastructure investments.
- Personal perceptions regarding use of time vs. cost.
Increasing incomes and pressures on time are leading to demands for 'one-stop' services and self-service ease of use.
- Rise of consumer choice.
Consumer expectations are rising and the mass customization potential of modern technologies are leading to niche products and services, and customers being regarded as essential feedback partners in the development of services.
- Global networking.
This spells the demise of local monopolies, the rise of virtual organisations, greater empowerment of more junior staff, and role blurring for all organisations in the information chain.
In my view, this combination of technological and economic pressures is likely to lead to a very significant change in all information handling organisations, from publishers to libraries and archives, over the next ten years.
I think we can now reasonably assume that for Australia in 10 years time, anyone who is in a position which involves any significant use of information on a day to day basis will have convenient access to a global network which provides information access, messaging and electronic publishing facilities - students, researchers, public servants, professional workers (eg, pharmacists, therapists) and a significant range of small business.
For those not in this category there are significant issues of public policy.
Information and Communication Channels
I want to look briefly now at the mass media. Most of us have led our lives in times in which we have been subjected to a very limited number of mass media channels. Many Australians read no newspapers at all, and of those that do, very few read more than the same newspaper each day. Until recently, no Australians had access to more than five television channels, and many still have access to only three or four channels. In few places are there more than about six acceptable quality radio stations, and in many country areas people are restricted to one or two stations. It is arguable in any case whether any sizable audience uses these broadcast media for more than pure entertainment plus, possibly, keeping in touch with happenings of major news interest (which is not the same as being of major significance nationally or globally!)
Until recently, libraries (and other information oriented services) have operated quite separately from the major communication services used by the majority of people - the mass media of radio, TV and newspapers delivered directly to homes (including home extensions such as cars).
These channels have been considered as in a quite different category, as being under very limited individual control, and being broadcast. The economics of the mass media have been such that very few channels could be supported by a given population - hence the tendency to entertainment and lowest common denominator programming.
But we are in the early stages of moving from an era in which we have had only a relatively small number of broadcast channels controlled by a small number of organisations, to one in which people will be able to choose amongst a very wide range of sources of entertainment and information - sports channels, news channels, weather channels, talk show channels, etc, etc. While a small number of major media interests will attempt to continue to control the content across all channels, the move from broadcasting to narrow-casting is based on a continuing reduction in the costs of communication, a trend which is inexorable, as it rests on continuing advances in the efficiency of use of increasing cable capacity, and the ability for the radio spectrum to be split up digitally into many more non-interfering channels. Given that this development is also just another example of the move to mass customisation and niche marketing for all products and services, ie, a steady rise in consumer choice expectations, and given that content can now be created much more cheaply by small organisations and even individuals, I doubt whether the fragmentation of broadcast industries can be prevented in the longer run. Nevertheless, this issue remains a significant area for public policy decision in Australia, if an undesirable concentration of media ownership and therefore policy influence is to be avoided.
The move from broadcasting to narrow-casting can also be seen as resulting from one of the many convergences currently going on as a result of the spread of communication and information technologies. The previous separation of mass media communications from information channels such as libraries rested on the fact that the entry capital required for running television and radio stations, newspapers and mass circulation journals was very high, thus limiting the number of publishers and broadcasters. The significance of information networking, now that we have tools such as the World Wide Web, is not that it improves access to information (although it has a huge potential to do just that) but that it makes everyone a potential publisher. For a cost of about $A3,000, I can now personally transmit not only text, but hypertext documents containing images and sound (and soon, with Hot Java, animation and other programmed actions) to anyone on the Internet, a community of around 25 million people, doubling about every nine months. As television and radio stations start to use the same physical distribution channels as voice and data transmission, as long as there is a separation of ownership, or at the very least, influence, between carriers and content providers, current network developments will inevitably result in a massive proliferation of individuals and small organisations acting to provide information as well as share it. The rapid moves by small groups in the pop music industry to articulate their music over the Internet, thus by-passing the major distribution organisations presently controlling the industry, is an example of what will happen in many other areas.
As the means of communication converge, the role of libraries in this process starts to become unclear. When the same work station in a library is capable of beaming in a "broadcast" over the Internet MBone, providing a mail, and soon a phone, service to colleagues around the world, enabling the library to distribute a virtual exhibition of a selection of its materials, or receive the same from a library on the other side of the world, providing information about its local community, and surfing the Internet for any of the massive amount of information it contains, what is it that makes a library different from any other organisation? As all information-related objects become digitised representations, do the functions of a gallery, or a museum differ from those of a library? Why do we need intermediaries at all if everyone can publish direct?
Information and Government
Before dealing with this general issue, I also want to raise the issue of government. In any society where a government has neither the will nor the power to act in an authoritarian and arbitrary way, the existence of that government rests on acceptance of its validity and utility by its people. But what is government for? Here I make a number of assumptions, which some may wish to question :
- The purpose of a Government is to add value to the lives of the people it serves.
- Government policy and services will be better if those making
decisions are better informed about :
- best practices;
- effects on those served. - Information is a public good : the more people have it the greater the social benefit.
- Government should behave as if all information is open to the public unless restricted for specific reasons of privacy or security.
While we in Australia regard ourselves as living in a democracy, even arguably, one of the most open democracies in the world, I do not believe that we can reasonably argue that most ongoing public policy has significant input to it from outside the relatively few active members of the governing political parties, senior business people and organised lobby groups and the bureaucracy. The feedback that Government obtains through the mass media has significant bias, and an ad hoc nature to it, as mass media inevitably tread a careful line between communication and entertainment, with a penchant for the sensational. The lobbying process is also generally unsatisfactory and biased.
I contrast this process with my experience on the Internet, where ideas and policy proposals can be posted at an early stage to a wide range of people, and through cross- posting to an open cross-section of interested individuals. Feedback is invariably sensible and helpful in building on the initial ideas, and if the nature of the process also attracts occasional diatribes or replies that are simply silly, this seems a small price to pay, and reflects the nature of the human condition.
It seems to me that for the first time we are beginning to have the technology available to link effectively governments and the people they serve. In the Internet, we have an open two-way interactive user-driven technology. This may mean we can move beyond primarily representative government, to forms of government in which individual policies are more directly based on feedback and input from a significant (and valid) cross-section of the public. Interaction can be initiated not only by the Government, simply as a provider of information, policy or educational opportunity to a passive public, but also by anyone with access to a networked work station and sufficient skill to be able to use it.
Interactive networks of the Internet type have the potential to make a significant improvement in the quality of life of many people. At present that statement must regarded as an assertion only. But I believe that we shall come to regard the network as the information source for all up-to-date material in a wide variety of subject fields and for many public purposes (but not of course as the 'Library' which is more than an information source alone). Networks, of course, provide much more than information. They enable access to :
- People
- Equipment
- Software
- Data
- Texts
- Multimedia objects
- Retrieval devices
And as I have said earlier, an interactive network is crucial in giving voice to everyone connected to it. It not only provides the power of the telephone to reach friends and colleagues anywhere in the world on a one-to-one basis, but it provides all of us with a narrow-cast publishing capability.
Why should our governments want this to happen? There are a number of possible reasons, which include :
- National competitiveness.
- Export and industry building opportunities.
- Rural stimulation.
- Employment stimulation.
- Quality of life, eg, physically disabled, tele-working.
- Efficiency of government.
- Improved / more participative government policy making.
- Equity.
- Key infrastructure (cf. roads, utilities, telephones).
In practice, of course, government has several roles :
- As a collector and provider of information.
- As a provider and funder of public services.
- As a regulator of the marketplace in the public interest (equity / social justice / competitiveness).
- As a stimulator of developments in the public interest (industry building, education, health, employment).
However, in almost all the western democracies, there is a strong move towards a reduction in the scope of direct government activity. In part, this results from a belief in the merits of capitalist system contrasted with the apparent failures of various communist and socialist models, in part it reflects the rise of a significant number of post-Keynesian trained economists to the higher levels of government bureaucracies, in part it results from the reaction of middle and upper-income sectors to the higher levels of taxation usually levied in systems of progressive income tax, and it also represents a realisation by governments of the long-term effects of deferred maintenance of infrastructure and generous unfunded superannuation schemes for government workers. The result is considerable pressure on all governments' ability to invest in infrastructure developments, and the sell off of utilities and other natural monopolies such as telecommunications.
It may therefore be difficult to persuade governments in Australia, of any political persuasion, to invest in the kind of communications and information infrastructures which are likely to be necessary to deliver the capacity of our people as a whole to participate fully in society and to have a real say in its directions. But can we afford not to have public objectives in this area, as with roads, electricity and water? Are telecommunications developments really to be left to market forces to determine? Are we to have two or even three companies' cables laid down city streets? To have three incompatible pieces of home equipment to view the various pay TV offerings - with none of them also providing Internet access without extra equipment?
We can, I think, set two reasonable public objectives :
- The ability of all our people to know about, and use conveniently, a range of services provided by governments, and publicly accessible information generally.
- The ability of all our people to communicate with each other over a distance to gain the benefits of group interaction.
If this is to be achieved, then a key issue is the telecommunications architecture we develop over the next decade, what has been defined in the United States as the "National Information Infrastructure" ie, the combination of public and private networks that connects people with people, and people with information. The challenge for the country is to shape the architecture of these networks so that it meets not just short-term commercial objectives but also long-term societal needs.
In practice, if effective interaction between government and the community is to be achieved, I believe that there are three key considerations :
- Coordination of government provider strategy.
- A balance of public and private sector interests in the development of communication channels.
- Effective delivery mechanisms at community level.
Recent Progress in Australia
So how well are we doing in Australia? If I had asked that question a year ago, the answer could only have been "very badly". There was no realisation in the federal Government of the importance of interactive networking and its potential for providing real benefits to the community, there were no government policies regarding telecommunications development other than of a regulatory nature and commitment to an undefined "deregulation" in 1997, but there were no government objectives regarding community or educational uses of networking, and no mechanisms in place to coordinate government developments as a whole.
Since then much has changed, or rather perhaps, there is now much potential for change. There have been a plethora of government enquiries in this area over the past year, and several are still in progress. Undoubtedly, the major catalyst was the report of the Broadband Services Expert Group released in January 1995, which was accepted almost as a whole by the Commonwealth Government. This had the effect of convincing the Government that policies were needed in this area, and fortuitously came soon after the Government's "Creative Nation" Cultural Policy Statement in October 1994, which projected multimedia as a potential major industry of the future. Shortly afterwards the Government also received the report of its Information Technology Review Group, which recommended much improved collaboration across the Government in the development of IT-based services.
The result has been the establishment of a whole wave of policy-making bodies for the Commonwealth Government. It also resulted in a government commitment to two major networking developments :
- The Community Information Network (CIN)
- Education Network Australia (EdNA).
As I write, the initial proposals for these two developments have been significantly modified in the light of feedback from the networking community. Indeed, these two developments have been amongst the first uses by the Commonwealth Government of network feedback techniques, in that both of proposals were made available over the Internet on World Wide Web sites established by the two government departments concerned. It is expected that these developments, which will also encompass a government commitment made in the 1994 Cultural Policy Statement to link all public libraries to network services, and combined with State Government initiatives, will result in a very wide range of public access points to the Internet and other network services over the next two or three years. In the same way that libraries have been in the vanguard of networking developments in the universities, we may confidently expect that public, school and TAFE libraries will be significant access points for network services in their own communities. Before the year 2000 we can expect that at least 10,000 points of public presence across Australia will exist. Access from Australian homes is harder to predict. While most personal computers sold to the public from now on will be network and multimedia capable, and while the introduction of the Microsoft / Telstra consortium "On Australia" is forcing down the cost of home network use, it remains to be seen how quickly Australians as a whole will embrace networking. Much depends on government telecommunications policy, which has yet to be determined in detail. The Optus / Telstra duopoly period has not yet resulted in reasonable pricing of data transmission, and in particular the ISDN capability needed for effective use of network services such as the World Wide Web. There is little sign at present of sensible arrangements regarding the introduction of broadband services such as Pay-TV and compatible participation technology in the home. This may change from 1997 onwards, as competition intensifies in both cable and wireless areas.
But how much will the technical availability of reasonably priced network access really result in the change in the way in which democratic governments interact with the public? There are likely to remain many barriers to the achievement of reasonable public objectives such as :
- Open and equitable access to carriers for all content providers (this includes individuals).
- Equitable two-way interactive access for all Australians (this assumes reasonably priced local call fee access to data services throughout Australia).
- The requirement for all carriers to meet reasonable standards of inter- connectivity and inter-operability.
- Fair competition between different delivery technologies (such as cable, microwave, satellite).
The battles over issues such as privacy, community standards and intellectual property rights are likely to be intense, and the outcomes could well reduce rather than increase community participation and access.
There are also few signs that Parliamentarians are treating networking as an opportunity to interact more effectively with their constituents and a wider range of interests. In contrast to the United States, almost no Australian member of Parliament has a World Wide Web page and automated mechanisms for receiving network feedback.
Conclusion
Reaching the goal of an Australia which is more educated, more competitive, more informed, more supportive of diversity and those in need, and simply more democratic through improved use of network services will not be easy. Libraries, and in particular public libraries, have a historic opportunity to seize the opportunities presented by the new technologies to become both gateways to the world and centres for community information and interaction. Libraries at this moment, are in a very strong position. Governments and the commercial sector are in the very early stages of discovering the problems of information access and desperately need the input of librarians with the retrieval skills required to design effective systems. They are also generally visible organisations with a high degree of community use and have the goodwill even of non-users. It will be many years before there is widespread availability of the technology and skills in the home to enable most people to use networked public services directly. Public libraries can be effective channels for the delivery of government information, community information and promotion, recreation support, education and access to information sources throughout the world. They are no longer tied or limited by the accidents of their location.
There is a real chance that governments will provide at least the necessary initial capital developments for networking. If libraries are to seize the opportunities, they must promote themselves much more effectively amongst their administrators, demonstrating their electronic capabilities to provide services for better government and their communities. They need to involve themselves in network navigation, guidance and training in the use of electronic sources, for which there is likely to be a tremendous demand. It is up to all of us to ensure that the chance is not missed.
I leave you with two quotations - about mission, and about belief :
If we are going to have an information superhighway librarians are going to have to become its road warriors
(Howard Rheingold).
It's all ones and zeros folks - and acts of faith!
(Mitch Kapor).
Eric Wainwright, Deputy Director-General, September 1995. Last updated 2 May 1997
