LC21 A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (2000) / Chapter Skim
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1. Digital Revolution, Library Evolution
1. Digital Revolution, Library Evolution
Pages 23-49
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From page 23... ...
In every age, these creations have been conveyed by the media of the time: handmade tablets, leaves, scrolls, codices, and then, with the advent of printing, books and journals. The technology of printing enabled rapid production and copying and thereby wide dissemination of information and learning and led to the large-scale institutionalization and popularization of libraries.
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From page 24... ...
From the earliest days, they housed and facilitated access to information, Trough the selection, aggregation, organization, service, and ongoing care of their materi~In particular, Section 109 of the copyright law (contained in Title 17 of the United States Code) , under the so-called first-sale doctrine, permits libraries to lend materials, even outside Heir premises, and Section 108 exempts certain reproductions and distributions of copyrighted works conducted by libraries under specific conditions.
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6some articles that describe the Ohiolink interlibrary loan concept include "How the Virtual Library Transforms Interlibrary Loans- the OhioLINK Experience,,, by David F Kohl, in Interlending ~ Document Supply, Vol.
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From page 26... ...
For example, Corbis offers a huge collection of digital images derived from traditional photo archives, and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation collects thousands of videotaped memoirs from Holocaust survivors and integrates them with related materials. Both projects (see Box 1.1)
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From page 27... ...
at the University of Virginia,l° challenge traditional expectations by virtue of their constant state of flux. The institute's Web site contains no single stable artifact to "collect" it is very much a work in progress.
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It is entirely reasonable to imagine that, particularly in scientific and technological i4The National Human Genome Database's home page is located at |
From page 30... ...
Online Electronic Journals There is no truly reliable or single source of information on the grown of electronic journals. A careful study of the World Wide Web archives of the ejoumal and magazine electronic announcement list NewTourl~ reveals that in 1989, fewer than 10 ejournals were available.
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From page 31... ...
DIGITAL REVOLUTION, LIBRARY EVOLLrrION 31 chunks, lest they crash the mailboxes of subscribers. Today, many large publishers around the world, both for-profit and not-for-profit, maintain Web sites that make available their full collections of print journals (with only limited back-file runs, so far)
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From page 32... ...
have had to survive on the Internet for even one decade. While some experts say that long-term sustainability is a trivial matter, studies suggest high costs and tremendous uncertainties.2i Fundamental to these uncertainties is the matter of ownership, which libraries rarely have, given that electronic information produces no fixed artifact for libraries to possess and cherish (see the section '/Digital Materials, Ownership Rights, and Libraries" below)
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From page 33... ...
Maybe these questions are moot, for it seems, as one publisher said of his company's participation in the Barnes & Noble/Microsoft e-book alliance, that we might be able to skip the chicken and egg and go directly to the omelet.22 The vision now being articulated by many players in the book publishing indushry and its partners (in printing, distribution, and software) is that the full text of all published books, at least from mainstream publishers, will exist on vast electronic information servers, there to be channeled to the output of the reader's choice: traditional print formats or digital formats (by accessing a local copy on a PC or portable device or by viewing a remote copy through the Web)
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From page 34... ...
If you were to visit a superstore in the springtime and see the customers sitting on the floor of the travel section or surrounded by travel books in the cappuccino bar, with no intention of buying but taking careful notes, you might think you were in a well-appointed public library. The book superstore comes closer to the kind of service for readers that hitherto only libraries could aspire to and added some of the congenial atmosphere that libraries provide (comfortable reading spaces, for example)
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From page 35... ...
Most significantly, the rise of the book superstore has implicitly changed the overall economics of access to books and information. Where once a good public library was the best and most accessible source of materials for many, if not most, communities, bookstores of similar size may be a few doors down the block, open longer hours, and with enough copies of popular titles to satisfy almost all comers.
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From page 36... ...
1h this type of service, the vendors will make available toolkits and services so that an author may self-publish, at a cost of somewhere between $99 and $500, malting his or her own materials available online. Given the 27See "Barnes & Noble Buys Stake in On-Demand Press," Publishers Weekly, November 8, 1999, p.
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From page 37... ...
As of July 2000, Barnes & Noble was offering a limited assortment of e-books for download from its Web site free of charge.32 These e-books can be read with devices using the Microsoft Reader software and accompanying ClearType technology. It was also reported that Amazon will eventually enter the e-book market, but for now it is proceeding cautiously.
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From page 38... ...
In 1999, the American Historical Association announced an electronic book prize to be awarded annually for several years to half a dozen brilliant dissertations in various fields of history, dissertations that take full advantage of the converging multimedia capabilities that computers and networks can offer and books cannot. The results will enliven the books, attract readers, promote the new medium as a viable one for serious scholarship, and give young scholars a leg up.
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From page 39... ...
The technical convergence of data, voice, and video technologies, coming to the desktop (or palmtop) through a single network connection, will encourage consumers to think first of data and only secondarily of media.
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From page 40... ...
High Initial Cost of the Electronic Environment Formally published online information resources are expensive to license, often costing more than one would expect to pay for print. Startup costs for both sellers and purchasers of information are higher than the costs of maintaining traditional print information: (1)
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From page 41... ...
User Demand for Electronic Resources Although librarians and publishers have, as yet, little quantitative data or user analysis to show how much or even how electronic information resources are used, there is no question that usage, to the extent it can be measured, is shoohng up with every passing month35 Readers regularly demand more and more such resources and protest loudly if online 34The "largest system-level" is the highest level of aggregation or cooperation possible among libraries (from "The Unsustainability of Traditional Libraries," by Brian Hawkins, in Executive Strategies, a publication of NACUBO and the Stanford Forum for Higher Education Futures, Vol.
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From page 42... ...
More importantly, when libraries or other entities do not have contractual rights to archive and preserve electronic content, can Hey develop adequate archival and preservation mechanisms for elec~onic materials? And, finally, will we develop Be types of institutions and agreements that can carry electronically communicated knowledge into the far distant future, just as today's libraries have effectively stewpages will be delivered in 2000 (private e-mail correspondence from luck Lowe, project manager, dated January 26, 2000)
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From page 43... ...
While all other libraries in the United States must find willing sellers and must have the financial wherewithal to become willing buyers in a freely made commercial transaction, the requirement of legal deposit with the Copyright Office gives LC a presumptive right to full ownership of a copy of each and every artifact published in the United States.36 The publisher in this particular relationship with LC is not a willing seller but a law-abiding citizen paying a kind of "public good" tax on his output. The two questions that arise here are the following: Can LC gain parallel rights for digital information formats?
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From page 44... ...
Another factor is what may be called linguistic pride.37 A great deal of information exists about the emerging practices of the largest research libraries in the United States and Canada, particularly in the publications and data gathered by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) .38 In particular, about 25 of these libraries are also members of an initiative named the Digital Library Federation, under the auspices of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
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From page 45... ...
· Reallocating an increasing and visible portion of collections budgets to the electronic resources needed by their readers. For example, ARL Supplementary Statistics indicate that in FY98/99, 29 ARL member libraries spent more than $1 million of their collections budgets for licensing electronic databases,4i representing anywhere from 6 to 22 percent of their library materials budgets.
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From page 46... ...
, 1 · Subscribing to online services that provide statistical data. Libraries would help readers learn to manipulate services containing anything from historical census data to financial market data.
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From page 47... ...
Librarians are increasingly engaged in entrepreneurial efforts, whether soliciting research and development funding from granting agencies, developing partnerships with other entities in the library sector, or participating in cost-recovery projects with the commercial sector that serves and interacts with the library community. And libraries do more.
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From page 48... ...
What is the place of libraries, particularly LC, with its unique copyright role, in such an informationcommunications system? · If librarianship is increasingly a matter of public service and LC retains its core mission of collection rather than service, how and where will it differentiate itself from the rest of the library community, and how will it cooperate and collaborate with that community to bring about the greatest societal good?
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From page 49... ...
Key operational issues surrounding the information technology infrastructure are addressed in Chapter 8. The revolution in information technology raises a host of questions with regard to networks, databases, computer and communications security, and how LC should manage its development projects through internal development, the purchase of off-theshelf software, or contracts with integrated systems vendors.
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