Digital Libraries: For Whom? For What?

by Deanna B. Marcum

Research libraries have been

distinguished by their

collections. Digital technology

has dramatically changed the

way in which research libraries

function. This article explores

the changes that are apparent

in digital libraries and asks how

the best features of research

libraries can be maintained in a

digital environment.

Deanna B. Marcum is President, The

Commission on Preservation and Access and

Council on Library Resources, 1400 16th St.,

Nbi( Washington, D.C. 20036-2217.

B y any measure, the research library in the United States is a remarkable enterprise. Although

research libraries have been individualis- tic, local institutions, in that they serve the immediate needs of their faculty and stu- dents, they attempt to provide national and international publications and other information resources that support curric- ula comprehensively and offer suffi- ciently deep research resources to satisfy a wide range of specialized interests. In the aggregate, they comprise a national asset that is unsurpassed.

Technology, with its dual edge of promise and threat, has changed forever the way research libraries function. National and local newspaper headlines, along with announcements in the profes- sional literature, presage a world in which information of every imaginable kind is freely and readily available through the home or office computer. The much her- alded digital library will exist in cyber- space, providing the riches of information repositories to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

This trend is being reinforced by the rising cost of acquisitions. From an eco- nomic perspective, the current system of making information available through research libraries is hopelessly inefficient. The cost of assembling the great research libraries on U. S. campuses has been enor- mous, but when one considers the cost of continuing to build comprehensive research collections, to house and preserve them, that cost becomes almost unthink- able. The facts about spiraling costs of journals are well known; yet, surprisingly few university faculty make the connec- tion between those runaway costs and the stresses and strains on library budgets. Even with considerable talk about the prospects of providing access to content rather than acquiring it, many faculty insist that the same quantity and types of

library materials be physically collected. Developing strong on-site collections, a hallmark of research universities, can strangle those same institutions unless sig- nificant new economic models are devel- oped to take advantage of digital technology.

With federal subsidies in science and technology fields dwindling rapidly, uni- versities are compelled to take stock of their real costs and to find ways to curb them, or to eliminate them all together. The library resources’ model that empha- sizes access instead of ownership holds great promise for reducing costs, but little is yet known about operating costs of this model. Also, while it may be less expen- sive to operate today, it carries the risk of failing to provide enduring access to the information that may be needed by subse- quent generations of scholars and stu- dents. In amassing their collections, research libraries have traditionally assumed responsibility for making the materials available for as long into the future as possible.

The concept of the digital library is fun- damentally different from any notion we have held about research libraries. Librar- ians, as society’s agents for serving the public interest in access to information, must carefully examine this concept. As Ross Atkinson so artfully noted, “Tech- nology will provide libraries with the abil- ity to exchange scholarly publications much more effectively-but.. .if institu- tions, led by libraries, do not use such advances in information technology to achieve that reappropriation, then that same technology may well be used to restrict access in the interests of a very dif- ferent service ethic.“’ Since a digital library creates many new forms of library service-both not-for-profit and for- profit-it seems urgently important to consider the characteristics of the research library and to assure that the best features

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of our remarkable information infrastruc- Eli Noam, in an article in Science, libraries that are, today, the single largest ture are not lost in the digital environment. observed that the system of higher educa- asset of most university campuses?

NATURE OF THE RESEARCH LIBRARY

Research libraries are distinguished by their collections. Bibliographers, selec- tors, and curators have monitored the scholarly output, purchased those vol- umes that best complement the previously required materials, and bargained for pri- mary resources that fortified the intellec- tual integrity of what had been acquired or bequeathed in previous days. The edu- cational infrastructure provided by research libraries up until now has been well served by librarians, or information professionals, as they have come to be called. The processes of selecting, acquir- ing, preserving, and making available the output of international scholarship have been the defining activities of U. S. research libraries.

Collection development librarians proudly point to their anticipatory model of acquiring materials. They consider it their responsibility to think about the pos- sible future needs of scholars and build collections that will support those even- tual demands. The beauty of the research library collections is that several dedicated individuals worked hard to anticipate needs and to build comprehensive collec- tions. By and large, we must judge their efforts successful. What librarians have provided over the ages is a bibliographic continuity and a context for the array of materials that have been acquired by the institution.

“Even though many libraries are actively engaged in ‘digital library” projects, it is not clear what is meant by the phrase.’

How is the concept of the research library modified and influenced by the digital environment? Ostensibly, the tradi- tional research library has become so costly that there is an economic mandate to find new ways of providing access to research products. In addition, the allure of technology for solving problems-cur- ricular, access, and societal-is an impor- tant factor in encouraging the development of digital libraries. What changes as a result of the digital environ- ment is that we can hardly describe a col- lection any longer.

tion that has been remarkably stable for more than 2500 years (Noam traces today’s information system back to the Great Library of Alexandria) is now breaking down-not because of technol- ogy, but because “today’s production and distribution of information are undermin- ing the traditional flow of information and with it the university structure.“2 Noam believes that the inevitable result of this shift is that universities will not continue to serve the role of selecting and storing information resources that students and faculty use to do their work. Information will flow from individuals, wherever they happen to be.

Is a “Digital Library” Possible? With this new electronic information

infrastructure in place, are libraries still needed? Even though many libraries are actively engaged in “digital library” projects, it is not clear what is meant by the phrase. It may be the case, in fact, that “digital library” is an oxymoron, if we consider a library something more than a random selection of documents and objects.

The research library, as it has been embodied on American campuses, is both a place and a service. The convening and social functions of the library building are important contributions, but the intellec- tual integrity of collections built and nur- tured by knowledgeable individuals is a lasting tribute to the scholarly community. This is the function that may not be readily accommodated in a digital library.

As librarians try to adapt their contribu- tions to a new role in the digital world, many have described the new library not as a unified, quasi-comprehensive collec- tion of information resources, but rather as a “gateway” to the many information resources that are available electronically.

Richard Rockwell, in addressing a con- ference on “Gateways to Knowledge: The Role of Academic Libraries in Teaching, Learning and Research” at Harvard Uni- versity, defined the gateway library as “an integrated and organized means of elec- tronic access to dispersed information resources.” The gateway library is not a place. but a process that delivers services to the user.3 The digital library, then, is a step toward a gateway library, but lacks the organization and retrieval mechanisms that would ultimately be available.

As appealing as the concept is, what does this mean for traditional research

Digital library projects, sometimes mistakenly called digital libraries, are heavily biased toward the public service model. The work underway in most research libraries is geared toward estab- lishing linking and pointing mechanisms that direct the users to the vast array of electronic resources that are available through the Internet. The preponderant concerns have been with user-centered search and retrieval mechanisms. Many campuses are espousing the language used by the University of Michigan to describe digital initiatives: “As the.. .computing environment has become more distrib- uted, the development of systems to facil- itate the location and retrieval of digital collections.. .has become a priority. The underlying goal is to recognize the rich array of individual or unit created digital resources as part of the evolving, broad notion of a campus digital information environment. “4 In other words, the gate- way function of leading to other resources not held by the traditional research library has been emphasized, but there has been relatively little concentrated attention, thus far, on what would be required if libraries tried to create a digital version of itself that emphasizes coherent content.

Implications of a Digital Library Since it is unlikely that librarians will

conclude that they are obsolete in a digital environment, the number of digital projects and digital library creations will simply accelerate. If for no other reason, the financial incentives for undertaking digital projects are too great to ignore. In addition, the prospects for making little known primary resource materials avail- able to entirely new audiences are an attractive motivation to think about digital libraries.

What, then, should librarians consider? What are the implications of a digital library?

STARTING OVER

The research libraries of the U.S. sit on a vast quantity of published and primary source material. The systems put in place to make bibliographic information about those resources generally and widely available have been the object of much attention, time, and money for nearly a century. The efforts of the Library of Con- gress to develop standards for machine- readable cataloging in the late 196Os, fol- lowed by the creation of bibliographic net- works-OCLC and RLIN-to facilitate

82 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

the use of bibliographic records by all libraries, resulted in a massive and com- plex national bibliographic system that is envied by librarians the world over. Con- tent, the very essence of each research library’s contribution to the national sys- tem, is a local asset; access to this content is possible through a national web of bib- liographic information, interlibrary loan procedures, and physical visitation arrangements. Bibliographically, the focus has been on making locations and collection strengths known in standard ways so that physical access to content would be possible.

The digital library must be built from scratch. While structures are now in place to provide access, digital content is highly variable and difficult to locate. With con- tent lacking context, the user of digital resources is limited by his or her knowl- edge of what exists electronically. Librar- ians have an opportunity, consequently, to reconceive not only local collections, but to contribute to a coherent national digital collection. Several questions arise, how- ever. What should be available to anyone in the world in electronic form? Should the great books of every country be digi- tized and made accessible? Should we begin with original research products? Or, should we let the question of content take care of i&self by simply watching as indi- viduals and organizations proceed to pop- ulate the World Wide Web (WWW) with their favorite materials?

Yielding to Chaos The distributed nature of electronic

information, and the rapid rate at which it is growing on the Internet, make it very difficult for librarians to do anything more than bemoan the chaos, however creative it is. The bibliographic structure that guided researchers to the location of infor- mation in the print world simply has no analogy in the digital realm. Information does not remain in a fixed location, and information, though retrieved once, will not necessarily be found the second time.

The quality control processes supplied by the publishers of monographs and seri- als and that produced an intellectual audit trail have no analogy in the digital envi- ronment, either. Information comes from multiple sources, and the user of the infor- mation, especially the inexperienced user, may not be able to distinguish the authen- tic from the bogus, the well-researched from pure opinion. The research process, then, is more often than not a complicated job of sifting through massive amounts of

information to find the few valuable nug- gets.

The value-added services of research librarians who considered value before making acquisitions decisions are no longer available to information seekers, unless librarians make a conscious effort to redirect their work. To do so would require new skills and new ways of work- ing with scholars and faculty.

port of instruction and research. The Fed- eration aimed to integrate the unique characteristics and capabilities of digital technologies with the existing strengths of the nation’s research libraries and institu- tions of higher education to provide con- venient and affordable access to our intellectual and cultural heritage.

Recognizing the changes that have been wrought by digital technology, at least a few of the former schools of library and information science have transformed themselves into schools that emphasize information and the management of it. Interestingly, these information manage- ment programs stress the retrieval of infor- mation by individuals or by software to meet user needs. The emphasis is on dis- covery and retrieval of information; rela- tively little emphasis is given to content or collection building. The new-style schools seem to think that content is a given. The information that the user wants must, nec- essarily, be on the WWW. The informa- tion manager must devise the various ways of ferreting out that information.

“If research librarians are to be effective players in this arena,

they must become familiar with digital product development and bring to that process the

values normally associated with libraries in providing the research community with

access to information.”

Even though there is a generally accepted need for the organization and synthesis of the chaotic information found on the Internet, the educational programs are stressing systems design that accepts free-form searching as the best way of get- ting to the desired information.

The Federation, after meeting for a year and discussing the many elements of digi- tal libraries of concern to the group, con- cluded that the emphasis of the work must be on the locally-driven decisions at each institution. Moreover, it was agreed that these institutions must simultaneously identify and reinforce the processes and standards that are the prerequisites for a coherent network of scholarly information resources and services.

Since digital libraries are, by their very nature, distributed, there is an opportunity to create a new form of national library, with each library taking responsibility for putting into digital form a portion of what all have agreed upon as “the national dis- tributed collection.” While the very notions seems wildly optimistic, there is a possibility for libraries to reconceptualize a national collection and work actively toward achieving it.

Research Libraries Contemplate the Digital Environment In an effort to address some of the com-

plications and problems of digital librar- ies, one group of research libraries, working with the Commission on Preser- vation and Access and the Council on Library Resources, has formed a federa- tion, with the explicit purpose of tackling some of the problems of greatest impor- tance to the research library community.

The group was formed in 1995 to estab- lish the governance structure and technical infrastructure for a collaboratively man- aged, physically distributed, not-for-profit repository of digital information in sup-

The Federation’s Planning Task Force, in drafting recommendations to be consid- ered by the entire body, acknowledged that much of the technology needed to advance a national digital library is either already available or in advanced stages of development. Consequently, the Federa- tion turned its attention to matters other than technology. The Planning Task Force recommended that the group concentrate on three areas where the research library community can and should exert leader- ship:

l Discovery and retrieval mechanisms;

l Intellectual property rights and eco- nomic models; and

l Archiving of digital information.

The Planning Task Force noted that the Federation must move quickly in all three areas, as the appetite for digital informa- tion is increasing rapidly in the university community. The increased demand is encouraging commercial information pro- viders and the computer science commu- nity to look enviously at the opportunities

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for starting businesses. If research librari- ans are to be effective players in this arena, they must become familiar with digital product development and bring to that process the values normally associated with libraries in providing the research community with access to information.

In the three areas of work to be done, the Federation recognizes that it will not be acting unilaterally. Many partnerships must be formed to achieve desirable results in developing discovery and retrieval mechanisms. But participants in the Federation also recognize that only the research library community is going to place a high value on information in con- text and on maintaining connections between the information itself and infor- mation about the information. The Feder- ation has pledged to work together to agree on a minimal set of metadata ele- ments in a portable form so that cross-col- lection searching can be achieved more effectively.

The Federation participants also under- stand that digital libraries raise many questions about intellectual property rights. Converting primary resources to digital form carries with it the obligation to cover costs for the creation, accessibil- ity, and maintenance of content in digital form. The institutions that make this eco- nomic commitment are justifiably inter- ested in controlling the rights they have to

intellectual property. Librarians have little experience with combining the manage- ment of intellectual property rights and economic structures for recapturing costs. Most libraries understand that external funds for digital conversion are scarce, and that revenue streams must be devel- oped in order to recoup costs of conver- sion. Finding ways to manage this process responsibly is a high priority for the Fed- eration.

Finally, the Federation recognizes that the one activity that is solely in the library domain is preservation. While the com- mercial interests in digital libraries are high, there is essentially no interest in investing in a structure that assures endur- ing access to digital information. The research library community, though it understands that migrating digital infor- mation from one system to another is com- plex and costly, also understands that the research library has an obligation to assess the research value of information, no mat- ter what its format, and do everything pos- sible to make sure that the information is available to the generations that follow. The Federation participants have pledged to make digital archiving a central feature of any of its digital library initiatives.

CONCLUSION

The initial projects of the National Dig- ital Library Federation will be designed to

test the assumptions and to learn more about currently unknown factors associ- ated with digital libraries. Our expectation is that what is learned will be beneficial to the broader library community. Ulti- mately, the Federation is interested in developing a digital library capacity that can be utilized by any institution willing to adhere to common standards and best practices. Once the digital library capacity is in place, research librarians will be able to concentrate on their fundamental pur- pose: selecting, organizing, and making accessible for the digital library and con- necting the electronic content to the vast print literature that also serves scholarly and research purposes.

NOTES

1. Ross Atkinson, “Laying Claim to the Control Zone: Library Functions, Scholarly Communication, and the Foundation of the Digital Library,” Librav Quarferly 66 (July 1996): 249. 2. Eli Noam, “Electronics and the Dim Future of the University,” Science 20 (October. 13, 1995): 247. 3. Richard Rockwell, “The Concept of the Gateway Library: A View from the Periphery,” in Gateways fo Knowledge: The Role of Academic Libraries in Teaching, Learning, md Research, edited by Larry Dowler (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), p. 112. 4. University of Michigan, Digit& Libraq Initiatives (unpublished brochure, 1996).

84 The Journal of Academic Librarianship