Libraries, digital libraries and digital library research Lorcan Dempsey

Libraries, digital libraries and digital library research

• Lorcan Dempsey

• OCLC

• Keynote presentation at

• European Conference on Digital Libraries 2004

• University of Bath

• September 12 – 17 2004

Overview

Holes

Digital libraries and holes …

• ‘Digital library’ has no precise or agreed referent

• Different communities of practice

• Different incentives

• Serve
• Build
• Research

A library as institution

Libraries

A library as institution

A library as institution

Libraries and digital libraries

• Support research and learning.

• Discover position of others and form one’s own position.

• In order to uphold their mission and values…

• … they must renovate their practices.

“Search engine mindshare” John Regazzi

• Scientists:

• Google
• Yahoo
• PubMed

• Librarians:

• Science Direct
• ISI Web of Science
• MedLine

Pattern recognition – libraries now

• The ‘Amazoogle’ effect

• Value

Impact of digital library research?

• User studies

• How much do we know about changing patterns of research, learning and engagement?

• Federation and metasearch

• FDI, IndexData, Cheshire, iPort, …
• OAI/OpenURL
• NISO metasearch – issues still to be addressed

• Repositories/digital library systems

• Multiple communities
• Dspace, Fedora, CONTENTdm, DLXS, ..

• Metadata

• Growing acronymic density
• Collections, rights, policies, services, …
• Complex objects, relations

• Identifiers/citation

• Preservation

Collections grid

Collections grid

The world is changing …

• Why is it difficult?

Scope, scale, diversity

• Systemic issues

• No single system is the sole focus of a user’s attention
• How do systems and services work across the four quadrants of the collections grid
• How do they fit into wider enterprise systems

• Structure of costs does not reflect users’ value perception

• Reallocation of resources difficult
• Little substitution – ‘and’ not ‘or’

A new world

• Co-evolution with research and learning behaviors which are themselves changing

• Unsure about appropriate “economy of presence”

• Place, network hub, channel, …
• Web services, portlets, channels, …
• Ambience, diffusion, ubiquity, recombinance, …

• E.g. Trajectory of search

• Search system
• Search system, machine interface, metasearch
• Provide data, externalize search
• Google, OAI

Webulation …

• Monolithic applications resistant to

• Webulation
• Service oriented architectures

• Massive legacy investment in knowledge structure unconnected to the web

• How to release its value in a network environment

• Content does not easily flow into user space for manipulation, packaging, aggregation

Vendor environment

• Many libraries have outsourced development effort

• Library vendors do not have large R&D budgets

• Poor out-of-the-box support for ‘below-the-line’ materials in digital form

• Interesting tension between commodity (standards) and added value

• OSS environment very unsophisticated

• Limited support for logistics/supply chain/integration services

Limited application platforms

• Consider

• Google
• Amazon
• E-bay
• MapQuest

• Massively central applications platforms working in loosely coupled webby world

• Software as a service

• APIs
• GMAIL
• Paypal
• search

Architecture? Theory?

• Do we need a big picture?

• Allows the articulation of technical and business discussion?

• An unnecessary constraint?

Without it we are susceptible to ….

• Marchitecture

• Techeology

• Portal envy

• Gratuitous acronym requests in RFPs

• Beauty contests

• Dspace, Fedora, ….

A history of consumption means that we are unprepared for contribution

• Standards

• Open source software

• Common services

• Limited structures to capture contribution and support.

And finally ..

• Libraries need to think about libraries not digital libraries

• And they need help from wherever they can get it!