1. 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

2. Overview

3. ‘There was once a man who aspired to be the author of the
general theory of holes.
When asked “What kind of hole – holes dug by children in the
sand for amusement, holes dug by gardeners to plant lettuce
seedlings, tank traps, holes made by roadmakers?” he would
reply indignantly that he wished for a general theory that
would explain all of these.
This man’s achievement has
passed totally unnoticed except by me.’
Holes

4. Digital libraries and holes …
 ‘Digital library’ has no
precise or agreed referent
 Different communities of
practice
 Different incentives
• Serve
• Build
• Research
 Compare ‘archive’
• Archival institution
• Archival materials
• OAI
• A promise of
preservation?

5. Digital
library
Research
Digital
libraries
Library
Digital
library

6. Digital
library
Research
Digital
libraries
‘Business’
Digital
library
Internet archive
Anthropology/ethnography/
social science
Economics
Libraries …
Inst Rep
Industrial R&D
Amazon
HCI
Library and
Information science
Computer science
Grid
Semantic web
Library
arXiv
BBC archive
E-research
E-learning
Cultural
heritage
Banks
Entertainment Jorum
W3C
Artstor

7. Digital
library
Research
Digital
libraries
Library
Digital
library
Emphasis:
Library

8. A library as institution

9. Libraries
‘So why have I written
this? I can’t show it if it’s
going to contradict or
undermine my case.
There are a number of
reasons. First and
foremost, I am a
librarian. I live for
records and documents.’

10. A library as institution
Because the purpose and result of absorbing information
is always finally to produce further information, i.e., to
continue the conversation,
the function of the library must be understood as one
that assists members of the community both in taking
particular positions and in recognizing and assessing the
positions taken by others.
Ross Atkinson. Contingency and contradiction: The place(s) of the
library at the dawn of the new millennium
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, Volume 52, Issue 1, Pages 3-11. Published Online:
2001.

11. A library as institution
We often hear it said that libraries (and librarians) select,
organize, retrieve, and transmit information or knowledge. That
is true.
But those are the activities, not the mission, of the library.
… the important question is: "To what purpose?" We do not do
those things by and for themselves.
We do them in order to address an important and continuing
need of the society we seek to serve. In short, we do it to
support learning.
Robert Martin. Libraries and Learners in the Twenty-first Century.
http://www.imls.gov/scripts/text.cgi?/whatsnew/current/sp040503.htm

12. 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.

13. “Search engine mindshare”
John Regazzi
 Scientists:
• Google
• Yahoo
• PubMed
 Librarians:
• Science Direct
• ISI Web of Science
• MedLine
Source: John Regazzi,
The Battle for Mindshare: A battle beyond access and retrieval
http://www.nfais.org/publications/mc_lecture_2004.htm
“In a survey for this lecture,
librarians and scientists were
asked to name the top scientific
and medical search resources
that they use or are aware
of. The difference is startling.”

14. Pattern recognition – libraries now
 The ‘Amazoogle’ effect
 Value  User behavior
opaque
 Uncertainty about
digital directions
‘The future is
here. It's just
not evenly
distributed yet’
William Gibson

15. The difficulty in creating a digital management strategy stems in
part from the bewildering convergence of technological
developments.
Developing a digital management strategy is further
complicated by the fact that there are no recognized patterns or
models for managing digital assets.
Some managers seek to develop fully distributed institutional
repositories but still must choose between open-source
solutions or commercial providers. Others prefer to place their
material in one of a limited number of dedicated storage
institutions. While best practices may exist for given technical
processes, library managers do not have a single paradigm to
use as the basis for developing operational plans and policies to
capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute the intellectual
output in digital formats.
Managing Digital Assets, CLIR primer
program, 2005

16. 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
Local
successes …
… but we
have many
open
questions.

17. Collections grid
high low
lowhigh
Stewardship
Uniqueness
Books
Journals
•Newspapers
•Gov. docs
•CD, DVD
•Maps
•Scores
Special
collections
Archives
•Rare books
•Local history materials
•Archives & Manuscripts
•Theses & dissertations
Freely-accessible
web resources
Research and learning
materials
•ePrints/tech reports
•Learning objects
•Courseware
•E-portfolios
•Research data
Untransferred records

18. Collections grid
high low
lowhigh
E-learning
E-research
Publishing
Cultural
heritage
disclosure
Reformatting
Digital asset
management
Amazoogle
D2D

19. lab books
exhibitions
PDAs
learning management systems
campus portal
course material
text book
personal collections
reading
lists
Institutional repository
Digital collections
E-reserve
Catalog
Licensed
collections
Aggregations
Virtual
reference
Cataloging
ILL
libraryuser environments
resource environment

20. The world is changing …
 Why is it difficult?

21. 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’

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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
 Library world
• Fragmented systems and
development effort
• Does not benefit from
scale
• Unsustainable local
development agendas
 Organizational rearticulation
difficult.
 Application platforms?
• CDL
• JISC
• DEF
• OCLC/RLG

26. Architecture? Theory?
 Do we need a big picture?
 Allows the articulation of technical and business discussion?
 An unnecessary constraint?

27. Without it we are susceptible to ….
 Marchitecture
 Techeology
 Portal envy
 Gratuitous acronym requests in RFPs
 Beauty contests
• Dspace, Fedora, ….

28. A history of consumption means that we are
unprepared for contribution
 Standards
 Open source software
 Common services
 Limited structures to capture contribution and support.

29. And finally ..
 Libraries need to think about libraries not digital libraries
 And they need help from wherever they can get it!