Digital Libraries as a Tool Uniting Communities

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Digital Libraries as a Tool Uniting Communities

• Professor Derek Law
• University of Strathclyde

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The University of Strathclyde,founded in 1796 as
a place of useful learning
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University of Strathclyde

• 18th Century
• James Watt
• Steam Engine gt Industrial Revolution gt
  Environmental Pollution and Global Warming

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University of Strathclyde

• James Watt
• 19th Century gtDavid Livingstone gt Exploration of
  Africa gt British Empire gt Political chaos from
  Iraq to the Malvinas

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University of Strathclyde

• James Watt
• David Livingstone
• 20th Century gt John Logie Baird gt television gt
  Baywatch and Big Brother

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University of Strathclyde

• James Watt
• David Livingstone
• John Logie Baird
• 21st Century gt Arthur Van Hoff gt Javascript gt Pop
  up windows

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eIFL activities

• Content
• Consortia
• Infrastructure
• Co-operation
• www.eifl.net

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Activities 2003 Content

• Model licenses
• E-books report (Jan Nikisch)
• Russian content established
• CUP, Proquest, Bioone Elsevier for six countries
• APS, Highwire, IoP
• Survey of content required - inconclusive

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Report on activities 2003 New Consortia

• Macedonia
• Sudan
• Laos
• Cambodia
• China under negotiation
• 28 Training events/workshops

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Report on activities 2003 Cooperation

• Meetings with INASP, TIB, Biomed Central
• Stand at IFLA
• Link set up to ICOLC
• Proposals with Goethe Institute
• Bid with partners to develop Greenstone

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Why bother getting involved?

• Leave it to technology
• But we are user focussed
• Leave it to the market?
• But we want to change society
• Leave it to big countries?
• But one size doesnt fit all
• Not everyone wants to share
• Small is beautiful from Finland to Singapore
• Leave it to publishers?
• But they have no grandmothers

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Trust Me Im a Librarian

• People become librarians because they know too
  much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere
  categories. They cannot be confined to
  disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and
  all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring
  wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve
  every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule.
  And they will kick the crap out of anyone who
  says otherwise.
• (Olson, 2000)

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Underpinning philosophy

• The Vesalius Conundrum
• This is rocket science not a plug in the wall
• Ease of use the satisfied inept
• Public sector bodies are producers not just
  consumers of information
• The Internet is AT PRESENT very flawed as a
  teaching and learning tool

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A history of libraries 19th Century towards
the global community

• The development of the concept of public
  libraries and public good
• Panizzi, Dewey, Carnegie
• The Procrustean Bed

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A history of libraries early 20th Century
international co-operation

• Cooperation and the Russian Revolution
• Interlending to St Petersburg
• Latitude 59º26'N     
• Longitude 024º46'E

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A history of libraries late 20th century -
interoperability

• MARC
• AACR2
• OCLC
• UAP and UBC
• Dublin Core

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User not technology driven

• The Library as place
• Second most used public service
• University space has not grown
• Staff and students are library conservatives
• Communities share a history
• Librarians can collect and interpret that
• Returning their history to communities
• Collection focussed

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DLF Collection typology

• local digitization projects that produce
  surrogates for analogue information objects
• data creation projects that produce information
  resources that have no analogue equivalent and
  are in this respect "born digital"
• the selection of existing third-party data
  resources for inclusion in a collection either
  through their outright acquisition or by
  acquiring access under some licensing
  arrangement and
• the development of Internet gateways comprising
  locally maintained pages or databases of
  web-links to third-party networked information
• (Greenstein)

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Third Party Data and gateways

• The Virtual Human, mirroring and caching
  strategies
• Gateways The Indian diaspora and the Welsh in
  Patagonia

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Collection types

• Surrogates of rare items the British Library
• Surrogates for whole or part collections The
  Springburn Virtual Library
• Digitised surrogate collections assembled from
  multiple repositories the Valley of the Shadow,
  Red Clydeside
• Collections assembled specifically to be
  digitised ASPECT CAIN
• Born Digital Resources

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Display of treasures the British Library
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GLASGOW DIGITAL LIBRARY COLLECTIONS PEOPLE PLACES SUBJECTS DOCUMENTS
                                                
                                                  
                                                  
                                          Organise
d digital collections to support teaching,
learning and research
                             Aspect Access to Scottish Parliamentary Election Candidate Materials 1999                              Red Clydeside Political History of the Scottish Left 1910-1922
                             Springburn Virtual Museum Photographs from Springburn Community Museum 1880-1987                              Voyage of the Scotia Scottish National Antarctic Expedition 1902-04
                             GlasgowInfo Directory information for and about Glasgow 2002                              100 Glasgow Men Memoirs and Portraits of 100 Glasgow Men 1855-1885
                              Virtual Mitchell Images of Glasgow by area, street or subject 1860-1980                              Victorian Times Social, political, and economic conditions 1837-1901
Overview Contacts Reports Policies The
Glasgow Digital Library is based at the Centre
for Digital Library Research in the University of
Strathclyde. It was set up as part of the
Research Support Libraries Programme,
supplemented by funding from SCRAN for specific
digitisation projects.
GLASGOW DIGITAL LIBRARY COLLECTIONS PEOPLE PLACES SUBJECTS DOCUMENTS

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Glasgow Digital Library

• Identifying Resources for Digitisation
• Encouraging Electronic Content Creation
• Cost-cutting by City-wide Licences
• Mirroring heavily used content
• The Virtual Human
• Setting and Implementing Standards
• A distributed regional resource - ScoDiDiLi

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Springburn
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CAIN Conflict Archive on the Internet
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Red Clydeside Restoring a collection
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Information arbitrage

• Identifying products
• Identifying value for money
• Is the Pareto Principle relevant?
• Independent, authoritative and right

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Laws Laws

• 1. Good Information systems will drive out bad

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Laws Laws

• 1. Good Information systems will drive out bad
• 2. User Friendly systems arent

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Training

• The satisfied inept staff as well as students
• 13 get information from the Library
• But its also a
• cybersandpit
• dating agency
• learning space
• 7x24 chatroom
• Training ground

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Data preservation and trusted repositories

• Clearing the study
• Building research collections for the future
• EVERYBODY has something to contribute
• Digital Asset Management and Curation
• Repository standards

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Trusted Repositories the five Maori tests

• Receive the information with accuracy
• Store the information with integrity beyond doubt
• Retrieve the information without amendment
• Apply appropriate judgement in the use of the
  information
• Pass the information on appropriately

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Where we are now

• Hybrid libraries
• Google and the satisfied inept
• Struggling with redefinition of scholarly
  communication
• Big deals (ending?)
• E-books are toys
• Images the next frontier?

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The global village in 2003

• 30 annual income
• 90 unemployment
• 18hr a day power cuts
• Life expectancy declining
• Unlimited access to e-journals

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The future..?
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The Options

1. Stunned amazement the Homer Simpson approach
2. Cynicism the Rhett Butler approach
3. Aggression the Monty Python approach
4. Be ahead of the game the Road Runner approach

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Road Runners Rool, OK

• Grown up thinking
• Joined up networks
• Seamless Martini education
• Capitalism and communism according to Keynes
• A people at ease with a knowledge society having
  survived the information revolution

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Conclusion

• Digital libraries are a social phenomenon as much
  as a technical one
• Communities cut across geography as well as class
  and function
• There is a lot of money available for creating
  collections
• Every library has or should have a collection
  to contribute
• He who pays the piper may call the tune but may
  not get an audience

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The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902