Hi Eric - As I read your email, I can only think about how Summon has
answered all of these questions and has brought true resource discovery to
fruition. Since you raise these questions, you must think that Summon is
missing something. What is Summon missing that is not allowing it to
resolve these struggles?
Andrew
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu> wrote:
> 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 - 15:05:22 EDT