Re: discovery systems need to do more

 Eric Lease Morgan asked :  

> What can we do to make these things come
> to fruition?

( To stick with his metaphor : )  I'm not all that crazy 
about lemonade, myself.

When I read this non-rhetorical question, the question 
that leapt to my own mind was :  Are *these* the things 
that ought, necessarily, to come to fruition ?

And the answer I can't get away from is :  This is, in 
any case, really not  what it's all about.

Increased librarian expertise ?

Librarians better able to control their own destiny ?

The overall advancement of their profession ?

I have trouble seeing these as meaningful ultimate 
objectives. Except if one considers the profession to 
be it's own raison d'être, self-legitimizing as it were. 

( Reminds me of the distinguished LIS researcher, 
who shall here remain nameless, who suggested off-
hand but quite seriously, in a keynote at the last 
international library conference I attended, that LIS'
prime objective must remain :  to ensure its own 
survival. )

And :  

> a subtle change in the current direction of librarianship 

?

Hmm. Didn't the train pass by that station already quite 
some time ago ? 

A *radical* change, anyone ?

And it seems to me that the last thing the world needs, 
even in principle, is librarians who are able to control 
their own destiny -- or in fact do so.


- Laval Hunsucker





----- Original Message ----
From: Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Tue, August 31, 2010 2:01:51 PM
Subject: [NGC4LIB] discovery systems need to do more

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