Common challenges, common issues

Common challenges, common issues

Lorcan DempseySchool for scanning

The Hague, 16 October 2002

Lorcan DempseySchool for scanning

The Hague, 16 October 2002

OverviewOverview

• Part 1• Part 2• Part 3

I do not know an awful lot about archival institutions ….

I do not know an awful lot about archival institutions ….

… or museums … … or museums …

Part onePart one

“The words of things entangle and confuse …”“The words of things entangle and confuse …”

Goals which encourage shared activityGoals which encourage shared activity

• To release the value of Europe's scientific, industrial and cultural heritage in creative use by its citizens.

• To engage with the cultural identities and aspirations of Europe and its peoples.

• To develop practices appropriate to upholding the values and purposes of the library, archival and museum traditions in a digital environment.

• To explore what it means to develop virtual civic presence.

• To explore sustainable economic models which support both development and continued equitable access to the cultural heritage.

“

..”

It challenges libraries to assert their public service role, to make the links with education, with cultural institutions, with public service broadcasting, and to demonstrate their real value as physical and virtual assembly places. A life-long learning agenda cannot be realised without public institutions that support equitable access to the ‘stuff’ of learning. This case needs to be made and supported by visible services, print and digital. Library values make them such institutions; they need to ensure that their practices do also.

“

..”

Finally, and critically, people spend large parts of their lives in the converging network spaces of broadcasting and the Internet. Are we really saying that such spaces should lack the civilising presence of libraries, archives, museums? That libraries should not try to enrich such spaces with learning opportunity, should not disclose the history of communities there, should not support reading and access to cultural resources?

“

..”

Part 2Part 2

“… the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changedTo something else. Its past was a souvenir.”

“… the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changedTo something else. Its past was a souvenir.”

GridGrid

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

uene

ssBooksJournalsNewspapersAlbumsMapsScores

Special collectionsRare booksLocal/Historical newspapersLocal history materialsArchives & manuscriptsTheses & dissertations

Institutional repositories •ePrints•Learning objects/materials•Research data

Freely-accessible web resourcesOpen source softwareNewsgroup archives

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

ue

“Special collections”

Disclosure, Licensing

Scholarly communication

high low

low

high

stewardship

uniq

ueLibraries becoming like ….Libraries becoming like ….

• Selective exposure– Exhibition– Narrative– Pedagogy

• Unique– Processing model– Routine for discovery and

request

• Content management

• Woods and trees– Provenance and context– Evidential and informational– Descriptive practices

• Preservation and archiving

• Repurposing content• High acronymic density

Part 3Part 3

“It must give pleasure”“It must give pleasure”

The recombinant library

user environments

lab books

exhibitions

PDAs

learning management systems

campus portal

course materialtext book

new scholarly resources

resource environment librarylibrary

shared cataloging, ILL

licensed collections

archivingvirtualreference Content

aggregation

Resolution

Harvest

The ‘recombinant’ libraryThe ‘recombinant’ library

– Distributed– Heterogeneous– Recombinant– Interoperability becomes

very real– New organizational

patterns

• Resource environment– Distributed– Heterogeneous– Recombinant– Interoperability becomes

very real– New organizational

patterns

User environmentUser environment Resource environmentResource environment

Interoperability as recombinant potentialInteroperability as recombinant potential

• Disaggregating scholarly publishing– Linking, Identifiers

• ‘Play’ learning objects– Packaged

• Federated searching– Fusing metadata

• Processing content• Ingesting content• ‘Plugging in’ services• Collectible?

• Examples– Can I add a document to

a repository?– Can I add a repository to

a distributed query?– Can I fuse metadata from

one repository with another?

– Can I aggregate these resources into a learning package?

Libraries, archives and museums ….Libraries, archives and museums ….

• User environment– A distributed approach

• Z, OAI

– An aggregated approach

• SCRAN, ArtStor, Amico, Cultural Materials Initiative, OCLC, …

• Proquest, Gale, …

• Resource environment– No economies of scale– The expense of learning– E.g. object

management; preservation services; disclosure; …

• Cannot achieve the big picture on a one by one basis

And …And …

• Need to move from single initiative– Nsdl– JISC Information

environment– NOF– IMLS– COLIS– Memory of the

Netherlands

• Recombinant organization

• Fragmented by– Initiative– Domain– Country– Funding regime

• E.g UK higher education

So …So …

Thank you …

Discovery

Archiving

QueryHarvesterResolution

Auth&Auth

Collection description

Terminology

InteroperabilityInteroperability