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Is This the Renaissance or the Dark Ages?
Head of Systems, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh. Column for January 2006 To be honest, I’m not usually a glass-half-full kind of guy. More often than not, I have trouble finding the glass at all. But I have to admit to being optimistic when it comes to the future of libraries, especially digital libraries. I remain more impressed with the consensus of librarian expertise and the experience of library vendors than with grandiose announcements from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft—companies that have too much self-assured respect for their technology and their ability to sell. What distinguishes libraries from the pack is not only a more altruistic outlook toward serving patrons, but ultimately a deep respect for valuable content. Déjà viewIt’s ironic that libraries’ history of the digital library looks a lot like the one Amazon and Google are racing to create now—digitize everything in sight and sort out the problems later. Libraries weren’t going to let nascent technology or fledgling standards get in the way of mass digitization efforts. Many of these early projects have borne great fruit—Project Gutenberg and the Etext Center at the University of Virginia, just to name two. Many others can be counted among the dozens of first-generation digital libraries, marked more by their early creation than the quality of their content. Other digital library initiatives focused primarily on patron services. These efforts led to the proliferation and eventual vendor development of new metasearch engines, patron self-service modules, library portals, personalization features, and online document delivery. This was a time probably not unlike the proliferation of microforms and the first automated library systems: cutting-edge technology that often left librarians feeling about in the dark, waiting for signs from standards bodies, technology experts, and even patrons themselves. As automated systems and services approached the state of the art (with room for improvement), we continued to mature in our thinking about building digital libraries. Technology and standards improved as well—the more widely adopted XML replaced SGML; JPEG2000 arrived on the scene; and scanning, character recognition, and file compression techniques improved dramatically. Reinventing retrievalThen came the digitization efforts of commercial enterprises—Amazon, Google, and even Microsoft. Google made instant e-book believers out of skeptics even though 10 years of e-book evangelism among librarians had barely made progress. If Google says it can do something, then it must be both possible and right, or so the thinking seems to go. As for me, I’m happy to let Google raise the bar on technology and raise the issues on mass digitization, but I’ll stick with libraries and content providers when it comes to digitizing and organizing electronic content. In the wake of Google Book Search (previously known as Google Print) comes the Open Content Alliance, which proclaims its mission as “building a digital archive of global content for universal access.” OCA will partner with Yahoo to make content searchable. Many prestigious and powerful groups are jumping on the bandwagon, including the Research Libraries Group, Microsoft, and the New York Times; more nonprofits and government entities are sure to follow. The move appears to be not only a slap against Google, but also against the somewhat exclusive and secretive dealings that organizations have made for inclusion in the indexes of Google Book Search and Google Scholar. Vendor efforts continue as well. EBSCO, named again to EContent magazine’s list of companies that matter most in the digital-content industry, has expanded the content of MetaPress to nearly 3,000 titles from 60 publishers. Xrefer, a serious up-and-comer in the digital-reference space, was also named to the EContent list. ProQuest continues to plunge into the past, digitizing dizzying spans of historical newspapers. And hundreds of libraries themselves are expanding the scope of digitized cultural heritage and special collections. The library elixirEven the e-book market seems energized rather than deflated by the attention devoted to freely available online content. Overdrive and Netlibrary have added audio books to their growing collection of content. EBL from Ebooks.com has added its content to Blackwell’s Collection Manager to support library workflow. YBP has made similar arrangements in GOBI for Netlibrary and other e-book providers. Equally interesting is the move among content providers to make their technology platforms available for custom collection building. Ebrary has expanded its Isaac project as OnDemand, a hosted platform for digitized content that includes the firm’s Ebrary reader and InfoTools software. OnDemand is even posited as a cost-effective alternative to freely available (yet resource-intensive) institutional repository software. Auto-Graphics has launched AGent Digital Collections, a similar product geared toward small and medium-sized libraries for rapid deployment of digital collections. A-G is even offering free data storage with its ASP-hosted solution. Some library prognosticators do see the glass half-empty—a virtual Dark Ages in which the prolific nature of our digital creativity is essentially hidden from future generations or doomed by a lack of good metadata or long-term preservation. I remain optimistic that librarians are the curators of a digital renaissance that has already begun. We are an essential part of, not superfluous to, the digital library of the future. Contracts and agreements
The Alzheimer’s Association, replacing EOS Q-Series.
The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries, replacing several systems in the 28-library collection of over 3 million rare books.
Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, including SingleSearch and Resolver OpenURL, replacing Geac Advance. Announcements
Alliances and acquisitions
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