Eric said:
"The amount of full text content available to libraries has never been greater than it is today. Millions of books have been collectively digitized through Project Gutenberg, the Open Content Alliance, and the Google Books Project. There are thousands of open access journals with thousands upon thousands of freely available scholarly articles. There are an ever-growing number of institutional repositories both subject-based as well as institutional-based. These too are rich with full text content. None of this even considers the myriad of grey literature sites like blogs and mailing list archives. Library 'discovery systems' and/or catalogs are designed to organize and provide access to the materials outlined above, but they need to do more."
I don't mean to be a contrarian, but are library catalogs REALLY designed to organize and provide access to the types of materials Eric mentions? I've always thought that library catalogs primarily were designed to organize and provide access to collections of physical materials within the walls of a physical library.
I know there are exceptions to what I just said, but I'm thinking that the core design principles of library catalogs are based on the need to manage physical collections?
Bernie Sloan
--- On Tue, 8/31/10, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU> wrote:
> From: Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>
> Subject: [NGC4LIB] discovery systems need to do more
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 8:01 AM
> I think library "discovery systems"
> and/or catalogs need to do more, and here's why. [1]
>
> The amount of full text content available to libraries has
> never been greater than it is today. Millions of books have
> been collectively digitized through Project Gutenberg, the
> Open Content Alliance, and the Google Books Project. There
> are thousands of open access journals with thousands upon
> thousands of freely available scholarly articles. There are
> an ever-growing number of institutional repositories both
> subject-based as well as institutional-based. These too are
> rich with full text content. None of this even considers the
> myriad of grey literature sites like blogs and mailing list
> archives.
>
> Library "discovery systems" and/or catalogs are designed to
> organize and provide access to the materials outlined above,
> but they need to do more. First of all, the majority of the
> profession's acquisitions processes assume collections need
> to be paid for. With the increasing availability of truly
> free content on the Web, greater emphasis needs to be placed
> on harvesting content as opposed to purchasing or licensing
> it. Libraries are expected to build collections designed to
> stand the test of time. Brokering access to content through
> licensing agreements — one of the current trends in
> librarianship — will only last as long as the money lasts.
> Licensing content makes libraries look like cost centers and
> negates the definition of "collections".
>
> Second, library "discovery systems" and/or catalogs assume
> an environment of sacristy. They assume the amount of
> accessible, relevant data and information needed by
> students, teachers, and researchers is relatively small.
> Thus, a great deal of the profession's efforts go into
> enabling people to find their particular needle in one
> particular haystack. In reality, current indexing technology
> makes the process of finding relavent materials trivial,
> almost intelligent. Implemented correctly, indexers return
> more content than most people need, and consequently they
> continue to drink from the proverbial fire hose.
>
> Let's turn these lemons into lemonade. Let's redirect some
> of the time and money spent on purchasing licenses towards
> the creation of full text collections by systematic
> harvesting. Let's figure out how to apply "distant reading"
> techniques to the resulting collections thus making them,
> literally, more useful and more understandable. These
> redirections represent a subtle change in the current
> direction of librarianship. At the same time, they retain
> the core principles of the profession, namely: collection,
> organization, preservation, and dissemination. The result of
> such a shift will result in an increased expertise on our
> part, the ability to better control our own destiny, and
> contribute to the overall advancement of our profession
>
> What can we do to make these things come to fruition?
>
> [1] from the original blog posting - http://tinyurl.com/37nfc2o
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University of Notre Dame
>
Received on Tue Aug 31 2010 - 13:15:07 EDT