Peter Burnhill

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The Virtual Library What does it mean?
Fiesole Collection Development Retreat Series
Oxford 2000

• Peter Burnhill
• Director, EDINA
• (Edinburgh University Data Library)
• http//edina.ac.uk

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(Auto-)Biographical perspective

• Full-time worker in the Knowledge
  Industry Research Council then University
• BA (Econ), MSc (Stat)
• Research Fellow, Snr. Lecturer, Consultant
• schooling survey methodology
• statistics information methodology
• University Support Services Manager/Director
• Edinburgh University Data Library (1984 - )
• computing support to libraries (1987 - 1992)
• EDINA, a JISC National Datacentre (1995 - )
• President, IASSIST (1997 - )
• international assoc. for data librarians, etc
• putting data in the digital library

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Organisational perspective - University Data
Library, then JISC National Datacentre

• Edinburgh University Data Library set up in 1984
• as library of large-scale research data
• designated by JISC as UK National Datacentre in
  1995
• Joint Information Systems Committee
• of UK higher education ( now further education)
  funding councils
• http//www.jisc.ac.uk
• to co-operate/compete with BIDS and MIDAS/COPAC
• eLib (electronic libraries) Programme (1995/99)
• MODELS workshops - http//ukoln.bath.ac.uk/service
  s/elib/
• EDINA national services launched on 25 January
  1996
• 100th Centenary Burns Night

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EDINAs Mission as JISC National Datacentre

• to enhance the productivity of research, learning
  teaching in UK higher further education
• through provision of specialist data services
• Aims
• to provide staff and students with access to key
  information resources, as part of the Distributed
  National Electronic Resource (DNER).
• to ensure EDINA is a well-regarded and
  cost-effective University-based UK datacentre
• appropriate resources for support, collaborative
  inter-working required technical
  inter-operability with other service providers.

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... key online services

• key Abstract Indexing (AI) Databases
• key Geographic mapping Databases
• available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• 9 - 5 weekday Helpdesk
• Active outreach programme
• listening, learning promoting
• used by staff students from 130 UK universities
• preparing to serve further education
• life-long learning, vocational needs
• more information at http//edina.ed.ac.uk

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Geographic information Digimap digital map
data Ordnance Survey aerial photography historic
mapping UKBORDERS digital boundary
data Census historical record Geo-Reference Gaz
etteers Geo-cross-walk data
Bibliographic information

• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Art Abstracts, Art Index Retrospective
• EconLit, MLA, PAIS, Palmers Index
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
• Social Services Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts
  
• Agriculture, Environment Life Sciences
• AGDEX, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, ESPMD
• Engineering Physical Sciences
• Ei Compendex/Page One, INSPEC
• General Reference
• SALSER, Ulrichs International

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Digimap

• JISC service for Ordnance Survey Map Data
• Launched in January 2000
• Data covered
• Land-Line.Plus large-scale, showing manmade
  and natural features
• MeridianTM medium-scale, with boundaries
  and transport features
• Strategi small-scale, depicting
  land-use and settlement
• Land-Form PANORAMATM contours and terrain model
  data 150,000
• 150,000 place name gazetteer 258,000 names and
  grid references
• Two access options simple and advanced (Carto)
• Catering for novice and sophisticated users

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Digimap generated maps
Strategi
Meridian
Land-Line.Plus
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bricks in the wall of the UK Virtual Library

• JISC is promoting own version of the Virtual
  Library
• Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER)
• JISC Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI)
• a national system of JISC-funded facilities
• National Datacentres and related
• BIDS, EDINA MIMAS
• Arts Humanities Data Service (Oxford Text
  Archive, History Data Service, etc), Data Archive
• Resource Discovery Network (RDN)
• a set of faculty-based hubs
• with subject portals/ gateways to the DNER and
  beyond
• eg BIOME, EEVL, SOSIG

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Policy Practice for the DNER Virtual Library

• Service Delivery
• Collection Development
• Infrastructure

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Role of national datacentres?

• Role in what?
• - in the JISC DNER Strategy
• - in the (UK/global) digital/virtual library
• - in services that university libraries offer
• - in the information landscape
• - in the (global?) information economy

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Virtual Library What does it mean?

• 3 approaches to this exam question ..
• 1. Semantic
• what are the meanings of the two words, thence
  phrase?
• 2. Empirical
• how is the phrase used?
• 3. Analytical
• what are the key questions/issues?
• with quasi-historical-cum-autobiographical asides
• on a recurrent, periodic question
• a recurrent issue, with title changes, the new
  seriality

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ltALTERNATIVE TITLE(S) for examgt

• Virtual Libraries arent real discuss
• Whats the Meta ( ) for?
• role of Metadata, role of Metaphor
• Library, A Collective Verb not Noun discuss
• information as object now debate the subject
• Not Surfing, but Diving!
• outline a SCUBA guide to the Internet
• Where would you really be - Norways fijords

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Virtual Library What does it mean?

• I was asked a related question during a job
  interview in 1984 ..
• Q How would I define a data library?
• A A bit like inter-galactic library loan
• having been reading Phillip K.Dick
• They laughed I got the job!
• Next day, off to Brewers to look up data
  library

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data library

• The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by E. Cobham
  Brewer (The new and enlarged edition) 1894
• data was not there (too modern?)
• but as a statistician, I thought I knew something
  about
• data as evidence
• data as collective noun for electronic stuff
• data not being information
• library was there ..

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library

• One of the most approved materials for writing
  on, before invention of paper, was thin rind
  between the solid wood and the outside bark of
  certain trees. This substance is in Latin called
  liber, which came in time also to signify a
  book. Hence our library, the place for books.
• NB media not message created an enduring
  institution no reference to data-, nor virtual-
  library, but
• A circulating library. A library from which the
  books may be borrowed and taken by readers to
  their homes under certain restrictions. A living
  or walking library. Longinus, the philosopher and
  rhetorician, was so called. (213-273.) Public
  Libraries. The first public library known was
  founded at Athens (B.C. 540) by Pisistratos. That
  of Alexandria, founded (B.C. 47) by the
  Ptolemies, contained 400,000 books. It was burnt
  by order of the Calif Omar, A.D. 641.
• (The First Hypertext Edition of The Dictionary of
  Phrase and Fable) http//www.bibliomania.com)

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virtual

• Virgins The eleven thousand virgins of Cologne,
  according to the legend, were born at Baoza in
  Spain, which contained only 12,000 families.
• Virginal An instrument used in convents to lead
  the virginals or hymns to the Virgin.
• ltgt
• Virtuoso A man fond of virtu or skilled therein
  a dilettantë.
• Vis Inertiae That property of matter which makes
  it resist any change. Thus it is hard to set in
  motion what is still, or to stop what is in
  motion.
• Vishnu Indian . The Preserver, who forms with
  Brahma and Siva the divine triad of the system of
  Hinduism.

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empirical approach

• Google.com yielded 504,992 references
• first 150 mostly WWW virtual library facilities
  that were themselves annotated indexes of
  web-accessible resources on a particular subject
  or theme.
• EEVL (the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library)
• UK-based guide to engineering information on the
  Internet.
• Webhoo
• a well organized virtual library
  (yahoo-style)..hundreds of links to web
  design/building/maintaing related sites.
• www.vl.org is the oldest catalog of the Web
• started by Tim Berners-Lee.

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a more modern online sourcehttp//foldoc.doc.ic
.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html

• Virtual. Via virtual memory, probably from
  "virtual image" in optics)
• 1. Common alternative to logical often used to
  refer to artificial objects (like addressable
  virtual memory larger than physical memory)
  created by a computer system to help the system
  control access to shared resources.
• 2. Simulated performing the functions of
  something that isn't really there, eg an
  imaginative child's doll may be a virtual
  playmate.
• Opposite of real or physical.
• Library ltprogramming, librarygt A collection of
  subroutines and functions stored in one or more
  files, usually in compiled form, for linking with
  other programs. One of the earliest forms of
  organised code reuse. ... The linking may be
  static linking or, in some systems, dynamic
  linking.

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Attempt at analytic approach

• What have others been saying?
• Whats different about digital?
• Whats special about the scholarly?

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Cutting the keys to the virtual library

• Virtual Librarya network of connections to
  information resources worldwide, unlimited by
  distance, or opening hours, or well-intentioned
  gatekeepers much due to activities of
  Coalition of Networked Information (CNI) ..
  Representing professional interests of university
  computing centres, libraries and administrations
• Peter Stone (Deputy Librarian, Sussex Univ.)
  IUSC Workshop on Specialist Bibliographic
  Datasets, Manchester, 7-8 July, 1992
• associated with early move to access, rather
  than holdings
• he put focus on services in the virtual library

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Information Science

• Michael Buckland, Presidential Address, American
  Society for Information Science, on JASISs 50th
  (1998)
• 2 traditions or mentalities co-exist in
  Information Science
• document, signifying records
• various uses of formal techniques, mechanical
  mathematical
• admixture of these complementary, non-convergent
  mentalities in the ambiguous digital library
• (i) modernisation of library services
• (ii) infrastructure to access complex databases
• want to identify a 3rd tradition
• data as evidence, library as facility for re-use
• (IASSIST now in it 26th year data librarians
  been worrying about this)

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Whats different about digital?

• Digital objects can be manipulated in v.wide
  variety of ways
• copied, reformated, modified, combined with
  another, etc
• Use, per se, does not diminish the object
• Focus on availability for re-use
• Digital telecom, means disregard to distance
• remote non-territorial access, (WWW/Internet),
  etc
• and yet, we really do need to have international
  gatherings such as this in nice places!

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Whats special about Scholarly? (Our Business)

• Nothing sacred, its an industry and we have to
  be business-like
• that industry is Knowledge manufacture
  dissemination
• peer communication client enlightenment
• teaching as form of client enlightenment
• it has an internal and and external economy
• universities businesses which co-operate
  compete
• invisible college but visible career-paths

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research, library publication

• peer communication is driven by search for
  recognition and revenue to support future
  research activity
• library publication are part of research
  production process
• digital/virtual library electronic publication
  as part of search for productivity gains
• put data and other scholarly resources in
  digital library
• publications are not science, they are
  information objects that contain the results of
  such
• there is an economy for (digital) information
  objects

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issues

• what will endure in the knowledge industry
• role of universities other enduring
  institutions
• ?? Separate the economics business needed to
  support peer communication from that of client
  enlightenment
• how to deal with externalities
• infrastructure must be funded somehow
• timeframe/perspective
• SF History
• no time like the present

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Searching for analytic framework

• the information-for-academics economy
• within higher education
• within the global economy
• the economy of information objects of desire
• researchers search for evidence for
  recognition

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should end here, but ..
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DNER
Discover
AI Database
AI Database
AI Database
AI Database
Datacentre
Datacentre
Datacentre
Union List
OPAC
Locate
Libraries
Aggregators
Publishers
Request
Other Information Organisations
Printed Volume Local/Remote
Electronic Versions
Document Delivery
Access
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The Joined-Up View of Discover - Locate - Request
- Access
Discover
Portals
Z
Z
Z
Proposals
DOCUSEND
ZBLSA
ETOC
X-Grain
Rights
Subscriber
Non-Subscriber
Medium
Print
Print
Electronic
Electronic
Geography
Local
Local
Remote
Remote
Aggregator/Publisher
Document Delivery Service
Union List
Text Sources
OPAC
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CASA Cooperative Action on Serials Articles

• Funded by the European Union 4th Framework
  Telematics for Libraries Programme
• 2nd phase began January 1998
• led by University of Bologna, with ISSN-IC
  (Paris), NOSP, EDINA (SALSER), ICCU
• how to exploit the telematic opportunity
• to enhance ISSN world serials database
• to provide network access to ISSN database
  (Z39.50, HTTP)
• to link union catalogues through Serials Services
  Directory
• regard serial as well-described, complex
  information object
• role of ISSN-based identifiers (eg SICI, DOI)
• combines user-view with electronic commerce

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four useful user verbs

• discover information object of interest
• eg an article found in bibliographic citation or
  Abstract Index databases (eg BIOSIS, WoS, etc)
• locate organisation offering service
• eg serial via library catalogues - union
  catalogues
• request use of service
• via payment or privilege from membership (of
  university, etc)
• access object of interest
• consult article via personal visit, document
  delivery, online access
• based on MODELS workshops (UKOLN/JISC eLib)

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provider or supply-side verbs
discover
make
article of interest
right(s)
locate
offer
article service
request
agree
use of service e.g. visit, I.L.L., eDoc
access
deliver
article of interest
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Serial Services Directory
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can digital libraries electronic commerce
co-exist in this information economy?

• size of serials economy is very large and costly
• publishers are becoming online vendors, seeking
  direct sales from end users (our staff
  students)
• universities are
• content creators - via researcher/authors
• and also customers - via libraries
• authors make bad publishers
• authors may write, but ...
• publishers package and find market thats a
  commercial business
• value of the serial as an arena of discourse

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whose virtual library a virtual library for whom?