Information Online 2001

Citation

Millett, T. (2001), "Information Online 2001", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918dac.004

Information Online 2001

Tony Millett

The Information Online Conference (Sydney, 16-18 January 2001) is a very large one ­ over 1,300 attendees from 15 countries, and 75 exhibitors. The pattern each day was a plenary speaker, followed by concurrent sessions. Unfortunately, two of the plenary speakers addressed issues that seemed much more relevant to industries and large businesses (and their libraries) than to academic, public and state librarians who were by far the largest groups of attendees; and one was too specialized, telling us far more than most of us wanted to know about search engines (it should have been a concurrent session). Only one of the plenary sessions (Steve Harnad's on self-archiving) was both inspirational and relevant to the majority of attendees.

Mary Ellen Bates (Bates Information Services, Washington DC) led off with a plenary paper on "Librarians, informationists, wizards and sorcerers: the role of the information professional in the new international economy". Her argument is that the Web has created, in her term, an "information bazaar", in which the library is just one booth among many. Librarians need to take off the white gloves and put on boxing gloves in order to compete in this environment. Information is now a commodity, which anyone can supply, and anyone can find by using any search engine. Librarians have to set themselves apart by indicating clearly to our clients and potential clients what value we add to the basic information. We have to market ourselves, not the physical (or virtual) library. Rather than just helping people find information, we need to add intelligence to research.

Who are our competitors, according to Bates? First, search engines, because anyone can type in a question, and will always find something. Second, the developing "ask-an-expert" sites, though there is no vetting of their qualifications or experience, or of the correctness of the information they provide. Third, significantly, it's the kid in the next cubicle who thinks s/he knows everything there is to know about the Web and its resources.

In the environment in which we work, it is sadly often the case that presentation trumps content. This means that we must improve the way in which we present information to our clients, in order to compete.

Librarians have a number of blind spots, which need more work. It is necessary to ask basic questions, such as who are the library's competitors, and what do our clients want?:

How do we define ourselves ­ by what we do, or by what we know (i.e. the skills that we have)?

What are the core strengths of our libraries/information centres ­ what do we do best for our clients?

Taboos about what we can and cannot do, often determined by past (historical) practices.

What our clients' expertise is.

In the rapidly-changing environment in which we operate, we have to continually redefine ourselves and our profession:

In our clients' eyes, we are just one source among many.

We are information counsellors ­ we know instinctively, born of our long experience, how to think about information in ways that our clients cannot (needs assessment, knowledge audits, etc.).

We are not data managers or information repositories ­ we are rather information facilitators and analysts.

We have to push ourselves well past the point of comfort.

Bates presented every library manager in the audience with a challenge. Every six months the manager should add a new service, though that may well require the re-working or elimination of an existing one. We need to develop customer addiction ­ clients who will howl with pain if library resources or services are reduced. We need new survival tactics ­ to think like entrepreneurs: start with the client (what s/he wants) and work backwards (how to meet those needs). Be first on the market ­ meet client needs before they find any other source of information. Achieve market penetration ­ what proportion of our potential client base actually are our users? Create customer relationships. Focus on services and a brand, rather than on facilities. Be like amazon.com ­ a warehouse with value-added services (such as what titles other purchasers of this book have liked). Build a visible track record of achievements (what are five amazing things we have done this year?). Bates summed up this part of her presentation by saying that libraries are about providing answers, not about delivering information.

Bates gave the audience five trends to watch:

1. 1.

   The continuing churn of new information sources ­ they come, they change, they go.

2. 2.

   The continuing fragmentation of information sources ­ e.g. publishers now delivering directly to end users; sources of information popping up everywhere.

3. 3.

   The need to market ourselves and our skills.

4. 4.

   The need to package content for our users, providing added value.

5. 5.

   The greater demand for high-end research and analytical skills.

Edward Lim (Monash University Librarian) spoke on "From bricks and mortar to click and mortar: leveraging e-commerce technologies for flexible learning support". Flexible learning provides students with learning opportunities that are independent of time and place. Developments in technologies have changed the way that flexible and distance learning can be made available. This presents many challenges for libraries, such as the higher cost of off-campus services. There are also difficulties of differentiating between on- and off-campus students ­ the traditional dichotomy is no longer valid.

A new library model has to be constructed ­ one which takes into account user preferences. The new model provides customization, to meet the specific needs of each individual customer. It uses e-commerce technologies, while not neglecting the "bricks and mortar" model. Also, it moves from the concept of "acquire ­ catalogue ­ store ­ lend" to "discover ­ locate ­ request and deliver". The key e-commerce technology is the portal. Its three advantages lie in, first, the integration of analogue and digital resources; the way it "knows" its customers individually, and therefore is able to tailor its services to each user (as amazon.com does); and that it allows customers to "pull" the services they require, not just what is "pushed" to them. In good e-commerce sites, customers can customize their own portal pages. For a portal to work, it needs search engines that are able to undertake a single search over a variety of sources (since research shows that users usually undertake only one search), databases that can be tailored to the user's specific courses, the home online catalogue, other online catalogues, major sources of information on the Web, and so forth. Using an analogy from retail, Lim said that libraries were originally closed-access (the small shop model, with everything behind the counter and served by a shopkeeper). Then they became open-stack (the supermarket model). Now they must change to the "click and mortar" model. Libraries now serve a new generation of students ­ the e-generation. These students have different needs from traditional students, and we ignore their needs at our peril.

Shirley Sullivan (University of Melbourne Library) was joined by colleagues in a presentation on "Innovations in electronic delivery of scholarly information: will the e-print replace the scholarly journal?" An e-print is an electronic preprint, held in an e-print archive and accessed via the Internet. E-print archives are becoming more important because of the ever-increasing cost of scholarly journals (a cost made worse in some countries by currency depreciation), and delays in publishing in print journals, which can be up to three years. Some of the advantages of e-prints archives are: speed of dissemination; provision of rapid feed-back to the author, allowing ongoing revision of the paper; it can handle very large datasets; low costs, compared to the cost of print journals; environment-friendly ­ less paper being used; it provides an e-mail alert system; it enables open and public peer review; access is not restricted to those on preprint mailing lists; it allows cross-linking to other e-prints on this or other servers. Existing difficulties include: inclusion of articles in e-print archives are seen by some publishers as prior publication, precluding later publication in print journals (but 90 per cent of e-prints are in fact subsequently published); security issues ­ plagiarism, corruption of text, lack of back-up; poor visual appearance (perhaps being improved); poor search functionality; a pressure for work to be added to the archive before it is ready for release to the scholarly community; no scholarly peer review before release into the archive.

In their research, Monash University Library used focus groups of academic staff, research staff, library staff and postgraduate students to survey reactions to e-print archives. Some of the findings are that the wide variety of e-print archives are not well-known to these groups; and that there are concerns about the prior publication issue, copyright, confidentiality, the competitive environment, search limitations, difficulties in judging quality, and lack of listing in published lists of publications such as are derived from ISI databases. E-print archives are now being created in disciplines where there has been no tradition of preprint distribution. Because of their importance, they need to be promoted more widely by library staff to academic staff and researchers.

Elaine Lally (Institute for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney) chose as her title "Five things librarians and publishers don't know about electronic scholarly publishing: a researcher's perspective". She took as her starting-point the position that research is about communication, rather than about scholarly output or article production. Researchers are writers as well as readers. Research is communication within a community. The Internet enables the establishment of new forms of community ­ more informed, transient, often based around specific Web sites.

Research is increasingly interdisciplinary. Researchers access a wider range of resources in the digital environment than they do in print format. In the humanities and social sciences, retro-digitisation is an important issue. Scholarly information is "gift" ­ an on-going social relationship between the transactors, the members of the community. But scholarly information is also a "product" ­ a commercially valuable and tradable commodity. She asked if there is still a need for intermediaries such as publishers and librarians? Her answer was Yes, they form a partnership with researchers, but intermediaries will continue only if they add value. Library managers need to maintain cooperative rather than competitive relationships.

Richard Rowe (RoweCom Inc., Westwood, MA) spoke on "The new knowledge world: the impact of the digital revolution on the century of the mind". The Internet is the second of three digital revolutions ­ the computer revolution, the communication revolution, and the convenience revolution. At present the third of these ­ the user interface ­ is poor (which is why many people still prefer printed materials). But this, he predicted, will change very quickly.

Some trends he identified are: a global transfer of power from the provider to the user; work rapidly, moving from being primarily manual to being primarily mental; e-commerce will dominate within two years ­ because it is faster, more reliable, and cheaper (less than 2 percent of the cost of paper transactions); the convergence of learning, information and entertainment; value-added services will become ubiquitous. The convenience revolution is driven by customer requirements ­ they want information that is fast, ubiquitous, comprehensive, personalized, interactive, community-based, and trusted.

The layers of the pyramid (from bottom to top) are: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Machines can and should undertake the lower levels, with people undertaking the upper levels. He saw current trends as: electronic resources challenging the roles of publishers and librarians; future technologies enabling ubiquitous access to information; digital rights management being the key to the expansion of knowledge; personal libraries being the preferred method of knowledge management, and an enhancement of the roles of those librarians who make the changes.

A paper by Nick Smith (Australian Digital Alliance) presented a review and analysis of the changes and developments in Australian digital copyright, and the implications for Australian libraries. In "Digital copyright for libraries: an update" he described one major change in that, in the electronic environment, copyright law controls not only the content but also the medium. Smith pointed out that what is still unclear is the extent to which contracts supersede copyright law.

Margaret Philips (National Library of Australia) presented "Moving towards public access to online information resources in Australia". The paper described the work of a working group set up by CASL (Council of Australian State Librarians) to investigate the feasibility of establishing a consortium of national, state and territory libraries to make a core list of electronic resources more widely available to all Australians. The trial, which begins in February, will for the first 12 months be limited to walk-in users of state, territory and national libraries, but it is intended to extend the project to all public libraries that wish to join. Licence agreements are currently being reached with providers of four electronic databases, three of which are Australian in content.

Claire Hart (Factiva CEO) gave a plenary paper on "Internal and external information, knowledge sharing and opportunities for the enterprise". This paper stressed the importance of knowledge management in every type of organisation (although the paper's emphasis was towards commercial institutions) ­ organizations must invest in knowledge management if they are to remain competitive. Particularly important are the knowledge and experience stored in staff-members' heads: ways must be found to ensure that these are not lost when employees leave the organisation to go to another position or when they retire. Knowledge management is about people and their needs; the process; and the content, both internal and external. There are (at least) five core competencies required in staff, which should be taken into account when making new appointments:

1. 1.

   Ability to learn ­ curious, seeks new opportunities.

2. 2.

   Self-initiation ­ acts like a business of one, does not need to be told.

3. 3.

   Collaborative ­ a team player, with a positive regard for other people.

4. 4.

   Intellectual linking ­ sees the big picture, and the patterns within it.

5. 5.

   Humility ­ recognises other people's expertise.

Another plenary paper was "Search engine show-down: the current state" by Greg Notess (Montana State University Library). After e-mail, searching is the most popular Web activity, and searching not just the Web, but also product catalogues, multi-media resources, and specific sites. Search engines are expanding in content size very rapidly, although this is slowing. In late 1999 the largest search engine had 200 million pages (AltaVista, Northern Light, FAST). In June 2000 Google and others had 500 million pages. At the end of 2000 Google and FAST had 600 million pages.

The establishment and maintenance of search engines are very expensive, and over time there have been many changes in who pays. Many search engines grew either from research projects, or from trial demonstrations of hardware products. But most were supported by banner advertisements ­ a major income stream that is now drying up. Some search engines have shopping partnerships, while others make available their engines for sale for local loading. Some charge for inclusion of the site in the search engine's directory; some charge for spidering or higher ranking. All this has implications for what gets included, refreshed most frequently, ranked most highly, or excluded. Some search engines are now offering personalization, for example, the ability to customize search forms and results, or to specify the required language(s). Many are expanding into multimedia and other specialized areas.

There are continuing limitations: Web crawling is always a picture of the past; computer power is not yet infinite; unlinked sites are not normally found. The future is one of constant change: in database size and scope; in search features; in the technologies used; in the relevance-ranking algorithms used; and in new companies appearing and disappearing. To keep up-to-date, the reader can refer to http://searchenginesshowdown.com

"Linking: the state of play today" was the topic for Bette Brunelle (OVID Technologies). Linking is the 2001 buzzword. It is not possible (or desirable) to license all full-text resources from a single source, but there are disadvantages in having full-text residing on hundreds of different sites: different licences; different interfaces and search processes; the need to train users in disparate systems; costs; updating of catalogue records, etc. Linking from bibliographic databases to full-text is designed to deal with these sorts of issues.

Aggregated full-text databases are easier for librarians and their customers to handle, but at best they include only a small range of the titles each library needs. So linking is also required. The customer's experience of linking is reliant on the target server, and may vary from day-to-day and through the day, from publisher to publisher.

There is no universally-accepted standard for linking ­ rather, there are several systems: the Web; DOI (= digital object identifier, which can be applied at the article level); SLINKS (= scholarly link specification framework); and SFX (= Context-Sensitive Reference Linking). There are two types of links: pre-processed, and live or dynamic. Both have advantages and disadvantages. CrossRef is a system that uses both types of links. It is still in the early stages of development: it will have 3 million links by the end of this year (compared with Journals@ Ovid, which currently has nine million links). Links do not happen by magic. Providing linkages requires complex partnerships between all the different and disparate parties involved.

Kerrie Talmacs (Metadata Co-ordinator, University of New South Wales Library) presented a paper called "Tantalising the palate: testing CORC, an alternative search engine". CORC is OCLC's Cooperative Online Resource Catalogue, and is an attempt to extend WorldCat cooperative cataloguing to Web resources. It currently includes 400,000 records, with access by field searching. Authority control uses the familiar LCSH and LCNA. Resources are selected by subject specialists. Records can be imported to library online catalogues and Web pages in MARC or Dublin Core format. A total of 200 libraries participate in the project world-wide ­ it is a cooperative project to improve Web access.

The University of NSW Library participated with other libraries in a trial of the system, and have now decided to continue, at least for a while. There are difficulties: fees are charged by OCLC (from July 2000); it is expensive; considerable staff commitment is required; CORC is still evolving (for example, software is constantly changing). On the other hand, the CORC cataloguing system has potential. It is quick to create records, with easy cloning and harvesting, and it uses familiar authority tools. A Dublin Core version of a record is automatically created when a MARC record is entered, and vice versa. Searching is easy and fast. It is a large database of over 400,000 records, so searches find a lot of hits. But the quality of records varies. An intriguing question left by Talmacs' paper was: will new-generation search engines improve so much that they will make initiatives such as CORC obsolete?

Steven Harnad (Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Southampton) gave a very challenging plenary paper on "How and why to free the give-away research literature". His central theme, familiar to those who have read his work for some years, is that it is in the self-interest of scholars that they self-archive the papers that are currently published in refereed journals. To understand this self-evident, obvious and inevitable proposal, five essential post-Gutenberg distinctions must be made:

1. 1.

   Non-give-away and give-away literature. (The test: does the author seek a royalty/fee? Books: yes, so non-give-away; refereed journal papers: no, so give-away.)

2. 2.

   Income (from paper sale) and impact (from paper use) ­ i.e. between non-give-away author print income and give-away author impact income.

3. 3.

   Give-away author copyright protection, providing protection from theft of ownership (which is wanted) and theft of text (which is unwanted ­ because it is give-away literature).

4. 4.

   Self-publishing (vanity press) and self-archiving (of published refereed research).

5. 5.

   Unrefereed preprints and refereed postprints. (Note that e-prints include both preprints and postprints.)

The self-archiving of papers currently published in refereed journals is inevitable. The only question is, How soon? The end result will be that the entire full-text corpus will be online, on every researcher's desk-top, everywhere, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All papers will be citation-interlinked, fully searchable, and free to everyone, forever.

Harnad used three important acronyms:

1. 1.

   S/L/P = Subscription/Site licence/ Pay per view ­ all of which create access barriers.

2. 2.

   QC/C = Quality control and certification (i.e. peer editing/ review).

3. 3.

   OAI = Open Architecture Initiative.

The subversive proposal, which will free the entire refereed corpus for ever, immediately:

Universities install OAI-compliant e-print archives ­ see www.eprints.org

Authors self-archive both preprints and postprints.

Universities or libraries subsidize the first wave of self-archiving (to get it going, so that critical mass is achieved very quickly).

Result: the give-away corpus is freed.

The consequences could be that customers may prefer the free versions, publisher S/L/P revenues shrink, but library S/L/P savings grow, and publishers downsize to being QC/C service providers plus optional add-ons.

There are copyright considerations. We need to re-think copyright issues in this arena, for copyright is relevant to non-give-away literature only (protecting intellectual property, allowing fair use, preventing theft, i.e. piracy). It is also the right of the author to give away his/her scholarly output.

Harnad noted that 80 percent of publishers already allow, or are willing to allow, authors to self-archive. The other 20 percent (admittedly, many of the major journal publishers) do not. The simple strategies for dealing with this are:

1. 1.

   Self-archive your pre-refereeing preprint.

2. 2.

   Submit the preprint for refereeing.

3. 3.

   At acceptance for publication, try to fix the copyright transfer agreement, by preserving for yourself the right to self-archive.

4. 4.

   If 3) is successful, self-archive the refereed postprint.

5. 5.

   If 3) is unsuccessful, archive the "corrigenda" ­ the changes made as part of the refereeing process.

So what can we do now to free the refereed literature online?

Researchers: self-archive present, future (and past) papers.

Universities: mount e-print archives; mandate that all employees self-archive their papers; and assist with author start-up.

Libraries: administer e-print archives; help with author start-up; re-direct 10 percent of the eventual 100 percent S/L/P savings you will make to finance QC/C costs; give consortial support for e-print archives through SPARC and other means.

Students: continue what you are already doing ­ surf!

Publishers: concede on self-archiving.

Governments and society: mandate public archiving of public research worldwide (the give-away refereed journal literature).

Note that physicists have been doing this for years at http://www.arXiv.org

See also: http://www.eprints.org and http://www.openarchives.org

Steven Harnad's full paper is among his other papers at http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/harnad

Christine Mackenzie (Brisbane City Council Library Services) spoke on "Partnerships: when agendas mesh". Partnerships are about people, she said, and, if the chemistry is not right, and the required effort is not put in, they will not succeed. They are also about "win-win" opportunities for all parties. Her paper was an account of partnerships between Brisbane CC Library Services and some of its service-suppliers. These include:

EBSCO ­ to link EbscoHost full-text articles from the Library's Online Catalogue.

PowerPlus ­ to create a branch response management system (Brisbane has 32 branch libraries).

3M ­ to trial and test the DID (= Digital Identification System), including the Digital Library Assistant.

Peter Pal ­ outsourcing of book selection.

CIRSI ­ implementation and testing of new modules of their ILS; and introduction of e-books.

All these projects required sound business models and the development of relationships based on knowledge of each other's business and on trust.

"Partnerships: growth from projects to operations" was a combined paper from Steve O'Connor and Cathie Jilovsky (CAVAL). Steve posed the question, Are partnerships and service models incompatible? We have to balance proprietary systems and open systems architecture; and balance institutional library systems development and collaborative/national solutions. We also have to recognise the economics. The future is always uncertain. We lack real data to make good decisions. Others are in our "marketplace" ­ librarians have to watch their backs!

In the next ten years there will be major changes in the balance of print, digital and dynamic (i.e. Web) resources acquired by libraries. These changes must be planned for. But at present only 4 percent of journals are in electronic format. Library managers should undertake a full review of existing functionality, and ask themselves "Do we need to continue to do all that we currently do?" and "Do we need to provide all of our present services?"

Partnerships allow the sharing of our workloads. They may be with vendors (e.g. Blackwell's); library consortia (CAVAL, Unilinc); other libraries (LIDDAS, Kinetica); document suppliers (Infotrieve), etc. Use of partnerships does not mean loss of library identity: products can always be badged to our own library. Some key points to remember are that innovation and creativity are essential, inoperability is critical, and that links to commercial information providers will increase.

Cathie presented a service model diagram for document delivery. She stressed that the location of the different parts that make up the model is irrelevant to our users ­ it could be in-library, in-institution, externally provided, or a combination. All these involve partnerships: to make them a success, very carefully framed service level agreements must be drawn up that include key performance indicators.

Terry Morrow (Ingenta) spoke on "Dancing to the same tune: a UK perspective on portals, hubs and e-communities". Ingenta was established in 1998, to take over the BIDS initiatives based at Bath, and its focus is being a full-text portal. It is also working on creating portals for others, such as publishers, research societies and organizations like the OECD. Morrow also described some of the work of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). JISC sponsors UK services and developments, and is funded by the Government and the Universities (UK £80 million per annum!). Its current initiatives include:

DNER (= Distributed National Electronic Resource).

RDN (= Resource Discovery Network).

Resource Guide to the Social Sciences.

Gateways, portals and hubs are becoming increasingly important, to give authority to sources, and to organise the vast amount of information that is available on the Net.

Neil McLean (Macquarie University Librarian) spoke on "Partnerships for sustainable online information systems: myth or fact?" Neil summed up the main themes that were given expression by the different speakers at the Conference: first, that we are learning to live with uncertainty; second, that we are finding new partnerships. Third, he said that portals are becoming increasingly important, but raise many issues:

How do we scope and manage?

How do we incorporate the library content into the academic content?

Where do we fit in the give-away and the non-give-away?

In-house or external?

Local or collaborative?

How important is the search engine?

How important is linking?

How much should we rely on aggregators?

What customisation/personalisation should be done?

Is it all sustainable?

Have we really solved the authentication issues?

Who should our partners be?

Neil noted that there was almost no mention of e-learning at the Conference, but predicted that this was a major theme that would be picked up at future conferences.

Tony Millett is Administration Services Manager at the University of Waikato Library, Hamilton, New Zealand (amillett@waikato.ac.nz).