Editor's page

Citation

Raitt, D. (2007), "Editor's page", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2007.26325caa.001

Editor's page

What burning issue could I write on in this number I asked myself – I had a good lead in to document delivery, but there are no papers on that in this issue. However, at a pinch, the same lead in could be used to point out that the electronic library is not a new concept at all – they had it at least 13 years ago! In fact the same story I am going to relate highlights another topical subject (also not included in this issue!) and that is copyright. Let us take that latter point first. Copyright, as we all know, is an interesting question of who owns what. Now this little article I am going to quote appeared in the magazine issued by the staff association of the headquarters of an international organisation. The magazine failed after a few issues due to lack of support (my own literary contributions were not enough to sustain it – you will see why in a moment!) and the organisation itself became defunct a few years later. So neither publication nor publisher exists any more. Indeed, the fact that I probably possess the only extant copy of any issue of this magazine could mean that I am the copyright holder! The article was adapted by me from an article written by one A. Gilchrist and appearing in the Library Journal in April 1970:

A space research study is being carried out at the cramped headquarters of the European Space Research Organisation, to create better living conditions for ever increasing numbers of ESRO reports, Administrative instructions, communiqués, etc. A few years ago bottlenecks of reports and official papers along the narrow corridors and staircases of OICU, the well-known international organisation in Hong Kong, led to a similar experiment. On the advice of experts, several offices were knocked into one, doorways were enlarged, and staircases adapted so that a conveyor belt could be installed to move documents around the building in half the time. This meant a great increase in the amount of reports and papers and a demand for further modifications, including the removal of desks, cupboards, filing cabinets and other office equipment to accommodate bigger, faster and more efficient conveyor belts for yet more documents. The process went on until nothing remained of the original building except the outer walls and roof. These have now been replaced, on expert advice, with a plain, concrete, bombproof structure for housing the conveyor-belt system. This year the number of reports and official papers is expected to be an all-time record (Liens, 6 October 1970, p. 6).

My modest rendering was entitled “The paper age” – but, you see, what the article does not make clear is that the conveyor belt was electronically driven. Thus it is seen that I, obviously a visionary (or maybe it was A. Gilchrist – I have no idea now what his article was about!), was talking about electronic forms of document delivery way back in 1970. And I ask you rhetorically – how far have we come since then?

We are still not yet out of the paper age and into the electronic age – and it seems to me that the more electronics we install in our libraries, the more paper we want to go with it – documentation and user manuals (instead of online documentation), hard copies of loan transactions (customers do not trust the computer), printed catalogue cards (more flexible and easier to look through than on a terminal), hard copies of articles (to read on the train) and so on. Much of the paper is needed because people have forgotten to use their memories effectively – they cannot remember something they read on the screen, they need to write it down instead or take the catalogue card with them to the shelf. (Actually, if you liked my brief story before, then in the next issue I could give you an even better one on how, in the electronic age, people have forgotten how to speak and write! It also appeared in the long dead Liens, so no problems of copyright!)

What it comes down to is that for the electronic library to succeed – for it not to be just a gigantic building housing a conveyor belt – there must be a sufficiently broad and motivated customer base able and willing to use it. The concerns, worries, weaknesses, frailties even – call them needs, requirements, demands if you like – of the users must be taken into account. Not only that, though – the users themselves must be (re)educated and (re)trained to use these libraries sensibly, intelligently and economically.

Liens, the HQ staff association magazine, failed through lack of support – we must endeavour to ensure that our electronic libraries do not fail through lack of support, too.

AcknowledgementsThis article was first published in The Electronic Library, Vol. 1 No. 3, July 1983, pp. 159-60. It has been included in this issue as part of a series of articles celebrating 25 years of the journal. It illustrates how the concerns of 25 years ago are as relevant now as they were then. Meeting user needs is a major issue in the digital libraries of today; electronic document delivery is still making advances in 2007.

David Raitt