Social, Cultural and Economic Issues

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Social, Cultural and Economic Issues

• in Digital Libraries

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• The development and use of digital libraries
  brings about a number of social, cultural and
  economic changes.

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Digital libraries as social institutions

• Digital libraries have tremendous potential to
  enhance access to knowledge, to support learning
  and education, to promote progress in the
  sciences and useful arts and to inform the
  citizenry Borgman (2000)

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IT and social transformation

• Transforms the ways in which we
• communicate
• Seek and use information
• teach and learn
• Carry out commerce
• Govern
• Conduct research
• Provide healthcare
• Design and develop things

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Scholarly communication

• Research
• Publications
• E-prints and open archives
• The citing and cited
• Credibility, authenticity and integrity
• The concept of Authorship

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Digital divide

• The 'digital divide' is the term used to
  describe the growing gap, or social exclusion,
  between those who have access to the new services
  of the information society, and those who do not.
  

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Factors affecting digital divide

• Access to technology (hardware, software,
  communication infrastructure)
• Skills to use the technology
• Relevant content
• Information literacy

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Internet World Statistics http//www.internetworl
dstats.com/stats2.htm
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Digital divide UK

• 51 (24 million adults) of the adult population
  of Britain is currently digitally excluded
• Two main obstacles to digital inclusion
• problems of access often associated with income
  and ability to pay for technology (home computing
  and internet access)
• problems of engagement whereby people do not see
  the need to engage with new technology and do not
  perceive the benefits of the online world.

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Digital divide Canada

• 53 of Canadians over 15 years of age used the
  Internet  
• 50 of women used the Internet, compared with 56
  of men  
• usage declined with age, with 90 of teens 15 to
  19 online, compared with 13 of those 65 to 69  
• 61 of people in Alberta and British Columbia
  used the net, while only 44 of those in
  Newfoundland and New Brunswick do
• 55 of urban dwellers used the Internet, compared
  with 45 in rural areas
• 79 of those with university education were
  online, but only 13 of people with less than a
  high school diploma
• 30 of individuals in households with income less
  than 20,000 had used the Internet, compared
  with 81 of individuals in households with an
  annual income of 80,000.

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Household penetration by income, Statistics
Canada
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What is the role of Information literacy?

• School libraries
• Public libraries
• Academic libraries
• Institutional libraries
• Governmental libraries

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Digital Libraries as Cultural Ambassadors (Caidi
and Komoldi, 2004)

• Individuals, institutions, and communities create
  and disseminate digital representations of their
  cultural heritage in the form of digital
  libraries (DLs).
• These DLs play the role of 'cultural ambassadors'
  by serving users from other cultures.
• New and challenging issues, such as the
  definition of the targeted end users, biases in
  content selection, how and why certain materials
  constitute "shared" knowledge and user interface
  design.
• Cultural and historical heritage of different
  countries.

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Cross-cultural usability of digital libraries
(Komlodi et al., 2004)
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Economic issues Exchange of roles

• Libraries and publishers had a well defined
  relation - now it is blurring
• publishers have libraries
• libraries started publishing
• publishers provide server (shelf) space
• licensing rather than ownership becomes
  predominant transaction mode
• Newspapers discovered a new model
• based on their strength of editorial processes

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Economic models

• Traditional model the revenues shared among the
  author, publisher and distributor
• Cost-benefit analysis costs associated with
  providing digital library services vs.
  traditional library services
• Alternative economic models to access remote
  information services

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New economic models

• Annual fees
• Fee per use
• Fee based on the size of the population
• Advertising
• Paid search and sponsored links
• In 2006 paid search was an 14 billion industry

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Received 99 of its 3.1 billion revenue from
paid search in 2004
Received 12 of its 1 billion
Received 84 of its 3 billion
ASIST bulletin, December/January 2006, Vol32, No.
2
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Future

• Social computing
• Web 2.0 and cloud computing
• Google Docs,
• Amazaon Elastic Computing cloud,
• Google App engine,
• Zoho,
• Salesforce)
• Cyberinfrastucture
• Web mashups (Yahoo! Pipes)
• The idea of world brain

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Cloud computing (NSDL)
Source http//www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,23282
99,00.asp
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Source Dion Hinchcliffe http//web2.wsj2.com/