electronic course reserves and digital libraries: progenitor and prognosis

Electronic Course Reserves and Digital Libraries: Progenitor and Prognosis

by Brett Butler

Disintermediation resolves the

difficulty in obtaining use rights

from publishers, and

distributed computing enables

the library to convert part of its

collection to digital form to

make material more usable.

Course reserves are a prototype

application for digital library

collections linked through

virtual library networking.

Brett Butler, is Managing Director,

Contec North America, Suite 127,

I730 S. Amphlett Boulevard,

San Mateo, California 94402.

R ecently the automation of course reserves or the “electronic reserve book room” has become

a major discussion topic among American academic libraries. An Internet discussion group’ has been in existence for a while-by Internet standards a long while. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the National Associ- ation of College Stores co-sponsored a series of three seminars about course reserves during 1994-199s. Dick Goodram* and Don Bosseau3 pioneers of this digital library application from San Diego State University (SDSU), have reported their development experience. The papers noted are the only ones in the general literature-as with most pioneers, SDSU was busier doing than reporting. Now electronic course reserves is seen as a leading-edge application in the creation of real digital library collection services in America and worldwide.

Electronic course reserves capture materials that many libraries have not pre- viously considered as part of their primary collections-faculty curriculum support materials, often unpublished or without cataloging data available. For the student, these materials are the “first line” of course information-the material they are told to read. It is no surprise that a recent National Association of College Stores survey4 found “coursepak” products- reading materials like those in library reserves, but bundled for bookstore pur- chase-the fastest-growing part of the bookstore textbook industry.

Why is this single application develop- ing as a progenitor of broader digital library applications? The course reserves digital library application fulfills several criteria for a digital library established several years ago in a multi-client study,” done as part of a pioneering effort to develop a truly network-based library at a

new university in Australia.6 These criteria are easy to state, if difficult to select and implement in a working institution:

High demand and item transaction activity (so the system could justify its investment);

Technically feasible to manage (no color maps);

Limited collection size (not even everything in a single discipline); and

Definable scope (staff and users could understand the digital collection).

When a digital system includes publishers’ existing works, another element is added to these criteria that is a condition of the nature of most information of value and high demand-recognition of the demands of copyright (or, more broadly, of intellectual property management).

To achieve wide use, a truly innovative application such as electronic course reserves would have to include copyrighted materials (journal articles, book excerpts, etc.) commonly used by faculty for course readings. So, in contrast with many ‘reserve book’ projects which rely on “fair use” traditions, the SDSU strategy and design7 include digital intellectual property management as an integral part of the software system and the library’s service.

The system supports rights and permission acquisition, tracking of actual use, and reporting, including fee payment if required, to intellectual property rights- holders. From this strategy the library gets a contained, manageable upgrade of past service as well as a step into a digital collection future.

What is it that the “electronic reserve book room” application can mean to library service generally? At the very start, it can break down conceptual barriers. Reserves? A digital course reserves system is no longer about “reserves”-any-

124 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

one can use it without waiting for a paper copy to be returned. Books? Once in digital form, it does not matter whether materials are course notes, books, or journal articles. Room? Digital reserve service is all about getting readings to students without necessarily coming into the library, much less finding a specific “reserve” room.

THE FLOW OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Our firm has participated in the pioneering initial SDSU application, and is now the distributor for the second-genera- tion software system8 in use at SDSU. This article, however, is not about that system-but about what an initial digital library application can mean to libraries struggling with new information technolo- gies and unexpected competition. Can libraries regain control over the massive collections they hold when other, totally unconnected parties, are busy informing the public that all they need is the Internet?

“Can libraries regain control over the massive collections they hold when other, totally

unconnected parties, are busy informing the public that all they need is the Internet?”

For an answer-and the connection to course reserves-we have to look at the broader trends of technology. Set aside the dropping costs of computer storage, the confusion of networking and the media focus on the latest release of Microsoft’s operating system.

Two major trends that illustrate the importance of these very early “reserve book room” applications are:

l Disintermediation; and

l Distributed Computing.

The first, an economic term, is perhaps the most important and less evident. Put simply, digital library systems will enable publishers and libraries to deal directly together in decisions involving electronic information service to libraries’ patrons. While the term disintermediation is awk- ward, it is self-defining. It means the removal of intermediaries from a business process. In the past, libraries could not afford to deal with many publishers, nor publishers with many customers, so

library wholesalers and periodical jobbers flourished. In the next 20 years, those firms will change radically or disappear.

Today there is no easy way for libraries to obtain use rights for the materials they want to put in the SDSU or other first-gen- eration electronic reserve book rooms. However, within three years there will be more than one ‘commodity’ server-a low-cost virtual warehouse’-connecting libraries and publishers to provide online clearance of rights for digital editions of existing published works. The Copyright Clearance Center provides an organiza- tional, if not a technical and information- based, model. This is a new process, in which the intermediary will be reduced to the role of the telephone company switch.

The second trend is more obvious, but perhaps also not well understood. Infor- mation technology has proceeded in two directions simultaneously-out, over net- works (not just “the network’), and down- ward, from large centers of computing to smaller ones. Just like what we used to accomplish on mainframes is now done on desktops, libraries are less dependent on large, central repositories of information. The most obvious example of this is the migration of large index and reference databases from central, online services onto libraries’ own OPAC s stems a trend identified a decade ago tXwhich is now becoming a standard for library information service.” Interestingly, the original spread of this reference data into libraries in CD-ROM format is now seen as a solution only for very specialized, little-used material, because computing technology ’ 2 can now handle these large index databases.

Local system reference is now a distributed information technology that has matured and is widely accepted. Local conversion of components of the library’s collection is the next major trend, of which the “RBR” application is the first visible component. The reason is that the electronic document platforms on which products such as C3 are built are mature, robust, and sufficiently standardized (there are still 60+ image storage formats) to provide a good base from which to build future applications of digital library service.

The course-reserves applications is just a way to convert a particular part of the library’s collection to digital form in order to make it more usable. Many other useful local collections can be created on a local basis as well. This means that we are going to see libraries turn int-not original

publishers-but digital reprint publishers of their special collections. The recent news announcement that Microsoft’s founder had bought the Bettman Archives was imposing until one reflects that much larger, better organized, and widely used collections of photographic and other information exist in many American academic libraries. The libraries, of course, are not for sale, but they are ripe for recy- cling.

The great libraries’ collections-even their catalogs-have long been repub- lished in cooperative ventures with private publishers, making available those rare and specialized works which otherwise would never be widely seen. Today, however, the technology for extending access+lec- tronically, worldwide-is available to libraries. And, as we learned from the first decades of OCLC interlibrary loan, many valuable holdings are found in libraries not often thought of as “great.”

“Within three years there will be more than one ‘commodity’

server-a low-cost virtual warehouse-connecting

libraries and publishers to provide online clearance of rights for digital editions of existing published works.”

Digital Library Collections Creating a collection of digital docu-

ments is fundamentally different from acquiring one in a package from an information vendor. Bundled packages like IAC’s fnfoTruc and UMI’s popular Pro- Quest document collections were created in a technology era when central capture of these holdings was more feasible than local digital collection development.

These commercial ventures, however, are becoming obsolete on two counts. First, they are virtual collections repre- senting holdings of no particular library. Second, publishers’ packages perpetuate the failings of microfilm backfiles: they scan, store, and deliver the unimportant equally with the critical.‘” We now know much about what literature is important, valuable, and more widely read. A wide variety of analytical information is available to us, starting with the unique citation indexing of the Institute for Scientific Information. Libraries can and should use this information to select the highest-qual-

March 1996 125

ity information for digital conversion. Let’s digitize the well-used 20% of the collection first.

What the modest “course reserves” system establishes is a technical platform within the library enabling RECON for the collection. Digital collections are the much-more-daunting 1990s version of the 1960s pioneering conversion of the card catalog. Now we are converting the shelves themselves.

In many libraries there has been a natu- ral tendency to focus digital collection development on a limited set of materials, recognizing the benefit of starting with a limited subset of the library’s collections. Unfortunately, these efforts have often focused on very little used materials, either from a desire to preserve digitally truly rare collections, or from a fear of approaching the digital use of copyrighted materials.

The advantage of the “RBR” application is that, while the materials are often common or widely available, they are nei- ther obsolete nor rare. They are the materials students use most. As. a result, building a broadly based course reserves application including copyrighted materials gives the library valuable experience in the realities of digital library service in a way not possible were the collection converted used only by the occasional scholar.

Other applications including local materials, if widely established and used, could provide the same advantages of learning about digital collection use. The “RBR” application has the advantage of being a basic, fairly standardized function, which operates in a similar manner in most libraries. This has made it possible for NouSoft to develop the C3 product, for instance, while a similar consensus on functionality is lacking in other library- related applications such as archives.

Extending Course Reserves The Release 1.0 system Contec pres-

ently distributes provides a basic service supporting present-day reserve-book functions. There are a number of functions which will be in future course reserves facilities. An abbreviated ‘wish list’ our clients have compiled includes:

l Remote access for distance education;

l Downloading of reading lists and/or documents;

l Support of SGML and HTMP document input;

l Remote faculty scanning input;

126 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

Enhanced multimedia document edit- ing and support;

Advanced information serching facilities; and

Extended applications for local photo, art, and other colections.

Many of these capabilities also form an extended base and platform for more advanced and enhanced digital library applications.

“. . . building a broadly based course reserves application

including copyrighted materials gives the library

valuable experience in the realities of digital library

service in a way not possible were the collection converted used only by the

occasional scholar.”

BEYONDCOURSERESERVES

Once we have a good pilot or prototype application for digital library collections, what lies beyond? First, definitions are needed since terminology is confused:

A digital library collection combina- tion of bibliographic description and fulltext or image representations of published works (combinations of unpublished data or other information can be called files); and

A virtual library network is an operating system which links two or more digital library collections not within the same library or institution.

Digital libraries and virtual libraries will not exist until there are digital students and virtual buildings-which some believe is on the way. But digital collections can capitalize on patrons’ consider- able familiarity with computer-based searching and reference, thus energizing library service by moving beyond “information about information” to the live, net- worked delivery of the documents most patrons want.

Ray Bradbury was quoted recently (at the age of 75, the science-fiction author is making a CD-ROM of his famous Martian Chronicles), saying, “You use these things (CD-ROMs, information technology); they don’t use you. A library is no better than the person who walks into it.“14 As it

has always been, our goal in building library collections is to obtain and organize useful information-good enough, in Bradbury’s phrase, for the people who walk in. In today’s flood of digital information services, a more lofty if less prag- matic role is to continue to stimulate people to walk into the library (or to log on to it), so that the library and its mix of print and digital resources becomes more rele- vant, not increasingly irrelevant to society.

Where library service might develop in the next decade by emphasizing digital library collection and virtual library networking is illustrated by the following scenarios:

The California History Network. History is always local, often regional or national in potential interest. Many local history collections exist at individual libraries in, for instance, the state of Cali- fornia. It is practical today to digitize (scan) these combinations of photographs, clippings, papers, manuscripts, and publi- cations. The result, for any individual library, would be a special collection which could be preserved, distributed widely, printed from, and used in many ways not possible with the single copies of the print originals.

If done in a standardized manner (a single image format or a set of compatible formats, a MARC-based indexing and classification scheme), these collections could be linked to provide a statewide information resource which would be res- ident in and available to patrons of all par- ticipating libraries.

The Community Information Collec- tion. Every local library has a continuing demand for local personal and profes- sional information patrons require. Such material can be diffuse and unorganized, not formally published, governmental and private, and hard to obtain and identify. By using the acquisition, organization, and distribution skills of the library, a digital information collection can be created to fill this need. These applications are particularly easy to handle with the “course reserves” image platform, because contributed materials can just be scanned (rather than converted from a source file, or created using a central system maintained by the library).

In the process the public library could enhance its potential role as “chief information officer” of the city or agency of which it is part, and the patron would remember to come to the library for an increasingly broad range of information.

The Local Business Information Cen- ter. As with community information, the local library receives consistent demand for local business information. Converting this information to an easily used digital format is useful not only to the local business community, but to those seeking local businesses from outside the area. This is a classic example of a local data-

base with regional, national, or even inter-

national value. The Black Cultural Archive. A num-

ber of libraries around the United States, academic and public, have significant collections of Black American history (the same is true of other ethnic, religious, and cultural groups). At present, a widely dis- persed set of independent efforts are underway to capture those collections and make them available to a wider reader- ship. A shared set of digital collection databases, employing common standards, would achieve this goal.

The Pacific Rim Economic Libraty. The most rapidly growing part of the world economy is the Asia Pacific region. Yet, its economic and business literature is the least available of any to American businesses. A project to scan key information onsite in Asia Pacific countries, to index it according to common standards in the local language and English simultaneously, and to maintain it in a set of fed- erated databases, would remove this obstacle to economic growth.

All of the above scenarios can be achieved with software Contec is deliver- ing today. Their development depends on the ability of libraries with valuable collections to organize local and cooperative efforts to build these digital collections and virtual library network systems.

Intellectual Property Management The defining characteristic which sets

apart digital library applications from traditional library automation is the ability to manage intellectual property rights dynamically, at the document (or sub-document) level, and under a variety of license or permission conditions. This requirement will not ‘go away’ in any foreseeable technical or economic future. It is quite possible that the paper-based “fair use” rules will be superseded by others (such as those proposed by ARL” for course reserves), but it is simply not in the cards that private rights in intellectual property will disappear in the American economy.

Therefore, at the end of this discussion of futures, we must observe the serious obstacles to rapid and successful develop-

ment of openly available digital library collections that are evidenced by the historic inability of publishers and librarians to design and support economic models which are satisfying to each. This historic difficulty is exacerbated by the rapid information-technology change which is threatening the traditional business of textbook and scholarly journal publishers. Yet, we cannot allow the knowledge and value of published works to disappear into cyberspace, any more than we are willing to allow print pages to crumble because of acid paper.

Therefore, libraries need to engage in a creative, positive dialogue with these owners (publishers, but also authors regarding reasonable ways of acquiring, storing, and distributing these works in the future. We hope that the tracking abilities of our systems and others will allow the compilation of useful statistical data which can serve as a baseline of real experience for these discussions-and that with real (if modest) digital library systems such as course reserves, both libraries and publishers will gain an improved understanding of information technology’s capability to support the accumula- tion of knowledge and information which libraries represent.

NOTES ANDREFERENCES

1. Internet address: [email protected]. 2. Richard Goodram, “The E-RBR: Confirming the Technology and Exploring the Law of ‘Electronic Reserves; Two Generations of Digital Library System at the SDSU Library,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 22 (March 1996): 118-123. 3. Don L. Bosseau, “Anatomy of a Small Step Forward:The Electronic Reserve Book Room at San Diego State University,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 18 (1992): 366-368. 4. Private study, citation avalable from Nousoft. 5. Brett Butler & Richard Goodram The E- Library: A Strategic Plan for Electronic Libraries, 2nd ed. (Infour, 1992). 6. Richard Goodram & Brett Butler “The Electronc Library, a Working Solution,” in Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Conference, Victoria1 Association for Library Automation, Melbourne, Austrialia (1989). 7. The C3 Course Reserves System. 8. C3 Course Reserves, built under contract by Nousoft, Monterey, CA. 9. George Sidman & Brett Butler, “Protecting Intellectual Property in Cyberspace,” in Annual Meeting, Association of American Publishers, Higher Education Division, May 8, 199.5, San Francisco, p. 4. 10. Brett Butler, Online Catalogs, Online Reference: Converging Trends (Chicago: American Library Association, 1983).

I 1. “Online Site Licensing Increases”, Information Today (October 1995). 12. . ..if not the software and architecture of some system vendors. 13. The author is entitled to the critique, having been responsible for the origional Magazine Collection. 14. “Sci-Fi for Your D: Drive,” Newsweek, November 13, 1995. 15. Mary Jackson, E-mail communication, Association of Research Libraries, etc. 1995.

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electronic course reserves and digital libraries: progenitor and prognosis

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