Computer Technology and Library Information Systems Copyright 1990 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 1990. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARY INFORMATION SYSTEMS by James H. May ************************************************************************ James H. May is Vice Provost for Information Resources at the California State University, Chico, responsible for the Meriam Library, Instructional Media Center, Computer Center, institutional research, and communications (including voice, microwave, and satellite TV). ************************************************************************ ABSTRACT: New technology is paving the way for radical changes in the way libraries fulfill their mission. To what extent will the convergence of computing and library information systems result in an electronic library? Are we facing the demise of publishing as we have known it -- and with it, the print-filled library? Several authors writing for CAUSE/EFFECT and EDUCOM Bulletin have addressed the convergence of library information systems and computing services: [1] "Libraries and computing deal with the same commodity -- information and delivering information to the academic community. For the sake of scholarship and research, the two must devise an integrated approach to delivering the common commodity." [2] To what extent, however, will this convergence result in an electronic library in the coming decade? Electronic library -- coming soon? In many specialized ways, new technology has created new formats of information which surpass the capabilities of printed material and pave the way for its partial replacement. Print has no capabilities nor potential for animation. It is also two-dimensional. A computerized animated "article" on internal combustion engines can clarify processes in ways that printed material can't. Graphics can't be zoomed in or out of print. As neat as the scanning of print is, it is no match for rapid random electronic retrieval, especially when a whole collection of books is involved. Interaction that contributes to the content is also not possible with printed materials. Electronic media offer a number of other advantages -- fast shuffling of materials, multiple ways of organizing, on-line access to other collections, sharing of resources, savings in printing costs, and rapid updating. The electronic library is developing in stages. At the elementary stage, automation supports the print collection by providing simple inventory control through acquisition, cataloging, and circulation systems. Bibliographic information retrieval, the next stage, provides signposts to full text through on-line searching and on-line catalogs. We now aspire to actual text. The next generation is forecast to be multimedia with hypermedia access. Seiler's recent article on the future of the scholarly journal predicts the merger of all types of information into a single digital electronic form using five technologies: computers, communications, databases, sensing devices, and computer software. He sees print moving toward extinction.[3] An even more exotic scenario is envisioned by Nicholas Negroponte, Director of MIT's Media Laboratory, who sees development of electronic "agents" performing specialized search and other duties for the user[4] Back to earth: where are we currently? Most libraries today have some sort of automated inventory control. But in bibliographic control, we have major libraries still without access to the entire book collection. Bibliographic access to journal articles remains a hodgepodge of incompatible systems with few unified links. Electronic text remains sparse even for new materials, and yes, even for scholarly journals. Although much publishing today involves electronic capture of text, it remains largely unavailable for a variety of non-technological reasons (copyright, compensation, lack of standards for representation, publisher name recognition, etc.). Information retrieval in the library is still largely of a secondary nature. That is, databases point to printed material rather than provide actual primary information. Researchers need access tools to logical units of relevant information within books, reports, and articles rather than to the physical units. In the early days of computing one had to be consciously aware of data locations on physical tapes and disks. In some of my early programming, I had to address specific tracks and sectors to retrieve data. Much of that is still true for print materials in libraries. Computers allow us the long-range opportunity of being freed from such tasks; where the material is becomes less relevant. Shelf-list call numbers will be replaced by various forms of subject and date groupings. This capability will have to go much beyond the simple subject access currently available; it is more akin to virtual sub-libraries which change to meet a user's inquiry. Libraries as publishers The new technology provides the potential but not the assurance of access to organized, accurate, retrievable, concise, and precise information. Historically, libraries have woven tight partnerships with publishers. These publishers have been few in number and acted as quality screeners between authors and readers. Publishers, with their editors and scholarly referees, continue to act as filters to ensure quality and relevance. They also provide many access tools: a book has a table of contents and an index. Secondary publishers fill in access gaps with abstracts, book reviews, and the like. The close relationship between publishing and libraries is fast changing. Publishing/printing no longer requires the huge capital investment of former times. Aside from other reasons, book publishing has been in larger cities, particularly New York in this country because Mergenthaler and other print factories were there. The electronic revolution, especially photocomposition and then desktop publishing, has obviated the need for this centralization. The economics now give new freedom to local information resource units such as libraries. They can fill informational gaps by becoming publishers or inputters of information themselves. Anne Woodsworth's recent CAUSE/EFFECT article describes how networks of libraries and database providers can act as gateways to new sources of information.[5] Ties with university presses can be forged. Regional interests can be represented. Data from national databases can be extracted to generate locally tailored packets of information. Need for controls With the new freedom to add to the pool of information comes breakdowns in bibliographic control, and access can suffer severely because we haven't developed controls very well yet for electronic information. Seiler notes that the new medium opens questions of rigor and integrity. Ensuring quality of information and preserving information over time are issues yet to be addressed[6] Large textual databases need to be organized into sub-databases of increasing detail. Libraries do this naturally. Thus, the card catalog provides some information on each book. It is supported with visual clues, shelf-list order, indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, and other condensed information forms. Empirical evidence indicates that users need to have these sub-databases of information hierarchically arranged with specific size relationships to each other.[7] Today, much machine- readable information is useless because this is not done. Data often exist in huge dump heaps without any thought to providing users with a path to the database composed of manageable sub-clusters of information at each step of the way. Traditional catalogs primarily provide inventory control and secondary subject access. On-line catalogs are often merely extensions of these. Several years ago it was noted that the Library of Congress cataloging assigned an average of only 1.6 subject headings per book. This may have slightly improved with automation, but is probably still less than two per book. There is considerable empirical evidence that the physical representation of information in increasing detail involves discrete levels separated from each other by ratios of approximately 1:30.[8] For example, the title of a book, the table of contents, the index in the back of the book, and the text ofthe book are increasingly about 30 times each other in number of characters. Library catalog cards to file guides, to drawers, to cabinet follow a similar pattern of separation spacing. We need approximately 30 times more information in on-line catalogs than in traditional catalogs if we are to have full access to the contents of the book, rather than just to the physical book itself. An access-level gap exists between the catalog and the book collection, which is compensated for by browsing or through use of indexing and abstracting tools. Cost considerations There is also a subtle but important difference between print and electronic data services in potential for future funding that ought not to be overlooked. The book is a physical unit that is on display and can be seen be anyone coming into the library and the size of this collection in a college or university is imposing. Largely because of this library book budgets are often protected from budget cuts that frequently seem to come up in the academic environment. In contrast, databases aren't packaged for the eye to see; they form no arty displays or monuments to scholarly achievement. Therefore, they, their maintenance, and their related retrieval services may be less insulated from budgetary cycles. The difference between how costs are covered for printed materials and computerized services is quite marked. Books and other printed matter are usually provided free. Even with interlibrary loan, cost is limited to materials actually wanted. On-line services cost per transaction; often that transaction yields little or no useful material. On the other hand, the cost, in user time, to find and copy printed material can be considerable. Automation can reduce that significantly. Books won't disappear in the decade ahead Physical advantages exist for printed material. Laptops to the contrary, we have not yet equalled the book's portability. Megapixel displays and 24-bit color graphics aside, we can't yet economically approach the book's photo quality illustrations. Nor do those displays provide large enough screens to see the book spread out so one can scan. Carrying that further, we lack a wide-window type display that equals scanning of a shelf where one can glean content from varying colors, size, age, and/or other visual clues to age of material and implied quality. Adobe and Apple notwithstanding, multiple typefaces with full ranges of character sets including symbols are available, but not so universal that commercial databases provide them. Mass storage is inadequate at the individual computer level for any sizeable collection independent of networking. CD-ROMs, however, have lessened this obstacle considerably. An irony is that the reference materials first made available to the general public seem to be those for which the book is still ideally suited. Shakespeare, NeXT notwithstanding, will continue to be enjoyed in convenient book form. You can take it out on the grass or on the sailboat, secure that it will be readable whether or not power or equipment is available. The _World Almanac_ is quite satisfactory in book form and what a fountain of information it is! The electronic Grolier's _American Academic Encyclopedia_ serves a valuable purpose for at-the-workstation, on-the-spot immediate reference. But its brevity of articles (which, by the way, the print version shares) and lack of special symbols and essential illustrations limit its use. Try reading articles on French art without accent marks or color pictures, or read about math without any symbols in the text. You will then readily see that the electronic version is no substitute for a printed encyclopedia. Despite the promises of interactive CD and other formats, universal conversion of readers to the multimedia forms is not trivial. Books may well flourish for non-time-sensitive writings in the decade ahead. Indeed, print in varying forms will escalate as desktop publishing facilitates its generation. Printed material will also flourish in the Computer Center! One clue to this was brought home to me this summer as our campus moved into an IBM mainframe environment. Suddenly manuals (manual derives from the Latin word for hand; a manual is something you handle) were arriving by the truckload. I went to a meeting and learned that we should plan for a full-time librarian to organize and update these. Also, we bought software to aid in this endeavor. I wondered why IBM still delivers manuals in print form; there must be a good reason. Is it because many are needed when the system is down or otherwise tied up and on-line help is unavailable? Do they need to be taken from the machine room to some place where they can be spread out? Are some of these the same reasons other material continues in book form? These factors need to be carefully assessed before print replacement is assumed, even where technology is rampant. An interesting report, University Libraries in Transition, published two years ago by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), identified three major influences driving college and university libraries to accelerated use of computer technology: the technology revolution, the information explosion, and escalating library costs matched by a corresponding decrease in computer hardware cost.[9] The information explosion, new technology, and shifting economics are, in fact, rapidly changing the library and campus environment. However, none of these factors portends the eminent demise of the print-filled library, but rather collectively they provide a horizon to library growth. The new mix of computer-supported and print resources can provide better access to information, but we must remember to pay attention to the pre-automation experience gained in the organization of knowledge and access to those resources. To eliminate books totally would require equivalents that would be economically and universally available. I don't see that happening in the next decade. So, for the present at least, we must talk about co- existence of books and the newer media. To describe the potential for multimedia even superficially would require another article. It's safe to assume, however, that sometime in the future video, audio, graphics, and data output will merge for most information systems, and that readers won't just read but will have the benefit of tactile and voice interaction. We have a long way to go, and first must address mundane, too often ignored, problems of knowledge organization. ======================================================================== Footnotes 1 Patricia Battin, "The Electronic Library -- A Vision for the Future," EDUCOM Bulletin, Summer 1984, pp. 12-17; C. Lee Jones, "Academic Libraries and Computing: A Time of Change," EDUCOM Bulletin, Spring 1985, pp. 9-12; James H. May, "The Integrated University Information Center," CAUSE/EFFECT, July 1986, pp. 15-17; Richard W. McCoy and Wayne E. Davison, "Building Networks for Scholarly Information," EDUCOM Bulletin, Spring 1985, pp. 2-5, 8; and Raymond K. Neff, "Merging Libraries and Computer Centers: Manifest Destiny or Manifestly Deranged?," EDUCOM Bulletin, Winter 1985, pp. 8-10. 2 C. Lee Jones, p. 10. 3 Lauren H. Seiler, "The Future of the Scholarly Journal," Academic Computing, September 1989, pp. 14-16, 66-68. 4 Nicholas Negroponte, "Information Technology in the 1990's," a talk sponsored by CSLI, Inc., January 8, 1990, Fairmont Hotel, Chicago, Ill. 5 Anne Woodsworth, "The Impact of Globalizing a Campus Library," CAUSE/EFFECT, Summer 1989, pp.3-5. 6 Seiler, pp. 67-68. 7 Howard L. Resnikoff and James L. Dolby, Access: A Study of Information Storage and Retrieval with Emphasis on Library Information Systems, ERIC Document Reproduction Service, #ED 060 921, 1972. See also James H. May, "Structural Characteristics of Knowledge-Based Information Systems," in Proceedings of the European Simulation Multiconference, Vol. 2 (Nice, France: 1988), pp. 217-222. 8 Dolby hypothesized this ratio more precisely as1 to (2e)2, or 1:29.55. 9 James A. Hyatt and Aurora A. Santiago, University Libraries in Transition (Washington, D.C.: National Association of College and University Business Officers, 1987), 112 pp. A review of this book by James H. May appeared in the November 1987 issue of CAUSE/EFFECT, p. 19. ========================================================================