click to edit master title style oclc online computer library center a local habitation and a name:...
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OCLC Online Computer Library CenterA local habitation and a name:libraries, places, and networks
Presentation to Cornell University Library Academic Assembly, 3 April
2003
Lorcan Dempsey, VP Research, OCLChttp://www.oclc.org/research/
Overview
Some pictures and text – Virginia Woolf and the library in the space of places
Some issues in the space of flows
!!
© R. Alston
When, early in this century, Virginia Woolf needed to find out the truth about women, she headed to the Round Reading Room of the British Museum, for ''if truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where,'' she asked, ''is truth?'' Truth, it pains me to report, decamped last month to a new library near St. Pancras Station, loosed from its moorings in the British Museum after an intermittently happy marriage of nearly two and a half centuries. …
Among divorces, it was perhaps one of the more easily predictable, but nonetheless painful to those of us whose inner landscape has been irreversibly redrawn.
Angeline Goreau. New York Times, Nov 9 1997
I have only to reach my hand up to the bookshelves above my desk and pick out a book, and open it, and plunge my nose between its pages, to retrieve that smell. The book is The Captain’s Death Bed and other essays, by Virginia Woolf, published in 1950, which I bought a couple of years ago at the Belfast Public Libraries’ annual sale. When I inhale, I am transported back to the 1950s and the Falls Road Library, where I get the allied aroma of polished linoleum and varnished shelving. I detect a gleam of brass here, too, coming from the handles of the big doors, but also from the little pulls of the filing-cabinet drawers, and I wonder are they implicated in the overall smell.
Ciaran Carson. This is what libraries are for’. The Dublin Review, Autumn 2001
… the growing explosion of information … creates a reactionary tendency on the part of readers to stress the familiarity and relative immutability of static texts, such as paper books. This impulse is particularly strong with respect to literature which, as an important repository of a society's identity, is a domain to which overwhelmed members of the society will turn for security, and which is consequently seen as most threatened by the information explosion. In our fin-de-siècle world, typified by informational and societal variety and indeterminacy, people's needs for dependable institutions are reinforced….
Centripetal Textuality. C. Aaron Potter. Victorian Studies Volume 41, Number 4
Libraries in the space of places have …
…been vertically organised around the management of places – multiple redundant repositories.
… facilitated particular economies of presence and patterns of experience – ‘inner landscape’/‘a house I grew up in’
… manifested the institutional role of libraries– authoritative, well-understood and persistent agency.– Card catalog, book, “people’s need for dependable
institutions”
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OCLC Online Computer Library Center
Organization and architecture
user environmentsresource environment
lab books
exhibitions
PDAs
learning management systems
campus portal
course materialtext book
new scholarly resources
readinglists
Institutional repository
Digital collections
E-reserveCatalog Licensed
collections
Aggregations
Virtual reference
CatalogingILL
Library serviceLibrary serviceenvironmentenvironmentLibrary serviceLibrary serviceenvironmentenvironment
Collections grid
high low
low
high
stewardship
uni
que
ne
ssBooksJournalsNewspapersGov. docsCD, DVDMapsScores
Special collectionsRare booksLocal/Historical newspapersLocal history materialsArchives & Manuscripts, Theses & dissertations
Research and learning materials •ePrints/tech reports•Learning objects•Courseware•E-portfolios•Research data
Freely-accessible web resourcesOpen source softwareNewsgroup archives
uni
que
ne
ss
Manage commodity materials and services - cost.
Streamline discovery to delivery for print (bought) and digital (licensed) materials
Portalization and resource sharing
Management intelligence – collection management and analysis (print collections)
Incentive to preserve?
Institutional digital content management
Immature (diverse metadata creation practice -- hierarchical description, multiple standards and practices, diverse content management approaches)
Disclose metadata for harvest?
Extend knowledge organization approaches?
Incentive to preserve
Within and across institutions
Services built across institutions
How will we support this (NSDL)
Directions
Z39.50, OpenURL,custom
Z39.50, OpenURL,custom
Links,
…
Links,
…
Catalog revisited,Appropriate copy
Catalog revisited,Appropriate copy
Emerging interest in harvesting
Emerging interest in harvesting
Services?Access and content
Services?Access and content
Below the line
There is growing appreciation among libraries that unique or rare materials – are valuable research and
learning resources– have been underutilized.
There is a growing interest in digitizing cultural heritage materials – as it offers opportunities for
releasing their value in new ways
– as a way of disclosing the memory and identity of communities.
Research and learning behavior is increasingly entering the network space– Library resources need to be
available at the appropriate stage within the learning or research environment
– New forms of engagement and support.
– Research and learning outputs will present major management and curatorial issues
– Institutions and faculty are interested in ‘disclosing’ research and learning materials as part of the scholarly enterprise (OAI)
The Archival Research Center is a direct outgrowth of the belief that primary resource materials should be a major focal point of instruction and research. …. However, traditional access to these materials is cumbersome and labor-intensive and most institutions do not allow copying. …Digitizing these materials keeps them alive and relevent for modern users … (ARL report)
Knowledge bank – OSU – in planning
April 26 2002. A proposal for the development of an OSU knowledge bank
Centralization and decentralization
Cataloging/metadata
Archiving
Harvesting
Virtual reference
Consort at what level?
Incentives?
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OCLC Online Computer Library Center
The economy of presence
Presence
We will, I believe, plot our actions and allocate ourresources within the framework of a new economyof presence. In conducting our daily transactionswe will find ourselves constantly consulting the benefits of the different grades of presence thatare now available to us, and weighing these againstthe costs.
William J Mitchell. E-topia. 2000.
Hubs
All networks produced privileged places at theirjunctions and access points.
William J Mitchell. e-topia. 2000.
… the web pages to which we prefer to link are not ordinary nodes. They are hubs. The better known they are, the more links point to them. … We prefer hubs.
Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked. 2002.
lab books
exhibitions
PDAs
learning management systems
campus portal
course materialtext book
new scholarly resources
readinglists
Hub
Create hub?
Project services into other hubs
Reconfigureservices –fine-grained
“Creative knowledge you can put in your pocket”
Presence
The dialecticof place and network
Analysis, linking, comparing, manipulation, ..
AgoraAgora
ServicesServices
ArchiveArchive
Presences
Agora– The monumental,
spectacular and special
– Third place – social fabric
– Social exchange and learning
– Commons - commonwealth
– Trust – the ties that bind
Service– Fine grained– Engage with research
and learning– Recombinant
Archive– Distributed collection
requiring different forms of attention
Supporting scholarly behavior in humanities
…contextual mass. (not the canon and top scholarly journals)
Iterative reading?
– personal, full-text collections
Wide reading and chaining?
– federated collections anchored by bibliographies
Collaborating?
– collection communities
Searching and browsing?
– “rich” finding aids that cross institutions and fields of study
Tracking of reading, searching, and writing
Carole Palmer, various
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OCLC Online Computer Library Center
Institutions
Persistant patterns of social organization with understood goals.
Roles in flux
Learning management
Computing
Digital scholarship
Library
Press
Repositories
Portal envy
Support
Promise of ICT greater than fragmented organization can deliver
U W digital scholarship (IMHO)
Library touches all staff
Library is already funded
Library is integral to research and scholarship and needs to extend that role
Institutional repository services vital
Role as technology and research partner as well as support
Digital concierge
Brand in a network age
Library as a partner in the scholarly endeavour
Understanding and supporting research and learning behaviors
Responsible to the scholarly record
Creator of social places.
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OCLC Online Computer Library Center
Sometimes we will use networks to avoid going places. But sometimes, still, we will go places to
network.
W.J.Mitchell