Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President, Alexander Street Press, L.L.C

Developments: New forms of Digital Content

Presented to the Council on Library and Information Resources2005 Sponsor’s Symposium

April 18th, 2005

Overview

• Google – positive or negative?

• A potential response for publishers (and libraries)

• Specific examples

• Indexing

• Linking

• Comprehensiveness

Google

“Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

(Google Corporate Information Web page: February, 2005)

How to view Google?

“those who succumb to the commercial

influence are building a monster who, like

Frankenstein, will slay his creator…”

A siren calling usto wreck ourselves

on the rocks of mediocrity

A superman to rescue scholarship and put it firmly in the public domain

The cautionary tale of radio…

1912 - Local, active, independent, “free,” chaotic, amateur1920 – Some commercial, some non-profit, passive1940 – Network domination (RCA, NBC), 98% commercial

• From 1921 to 1936, 202 licenses were issued to non-profit stations.

• By 1937, only 38 were still operating.

(Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934, Susan Smulyan, Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994.)

The challenge

By 2010, the web will contain

• 90% of published works prior to 1923

• Majority of works published to 2010

• > 20 billion pages of e-mail, phone logs, databases, blogs, and Web sites (currently 8 billion)

• > 1 billion photographs

• > 20 million facsimile pages of manuscripts

• > 10 million audio files

• > 1 million video files

Objections to Google Print 1. Operational

Will they be able to digitize all this material?What quality will it have? When will it be available?

2. Technical / legalWith so many hits won’t content get lost?OCR will never get beyond 98% or so…(i.e. several errors per page)Will they allow others to index, copy, and crawl the material?

3. Philosophical Won’t commercial priorities conflict with scholarly ones?As a de facto monopoly they’ll become too powerful. What happens to quality when search supplants content?Secrecy and commercialism will hurt scholarship

4. Experiential What about NlightN, Knowledge Network, Questia, NetLibrary…?

But…

Rather than trying to work out why it won’t work…let’s assume that it (or something like it) will work out and see what the world looks like…

If it works, Google will deliver 30 times the content delivered by EEBO, ECO, Evans, Shaw-Shoemaker and similar initiatives at no charge to end-users…

Another perspective

• Netscape

• Microsoft

• Google

• Yahoo

• Amazon

• Many others…

Have helped and will help

• It will all be available in digital form• It will not cost too much• Many more people will use it • It will be enriched through better display, better

integration, better links, better context, etc., etc…

Good for publishers Good for librarians

Good for “society”

Where we’re headed

Evolution of publisher tasks

Fading Growing

Typesetting Printing

Print Monograph Print Directory

Public Domain ReprintsSimple, One database Search

Rare and unpublished material

Linking

Licensing

Free materials

Semantic indexing

Process integration

Unified Search software

Workflow tools

Warehousing

Community BuildingAsset Management

Evolution of publisher tasks

Fading Growing

Typesetting Printing

Print monograph Print directory

Public domain reprintsSimple, one database search

Rare and unpublished material

Linking

Licensing

Free materials

Semantic indexing

Process integration

Unified search software

Workflow tools

Warehousing

Community buildingAsset management

Commissioning?

Editorial?

Quality?Selection?

With literally billions of pages…

What tools will we need ?

• Beyond paper

• Higher quality

• More comprehensive

• Discipline specific

• High functionality links

• Community-centric

• Semantically organized

Where we’re headed

After Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom, Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills. http://www.systems-thinking.org/

Who, What, When, Where?

Therefore

Why?

What tools will we need?

• Discipline specific

• Selection and quality

• Interactive

• Community centric

• More comprehensive (in copyright, rare, unpublished)

• High-functionality links

• Semantically organized

“Semantic” indexing

• Tim Berners-Lee and James Hendler in Scientific American, May 2001

• “…an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

• Represents a quantum shift in the functionality of the web

The strain on keyword search

Question: “Martin Luther King”

• Google:– 8.3m hits

• Google Scholar: 7.8kFirst hit: Development of a research strategy for assessing the ecological risk of endocrine disruptors. GT Ankley, RD Johnson, G Toth, LC Folmar, NE …US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Division 26 W Martin Luther King Dr Cincinnati, OH 45288.

• Yahoo: 7.4m hits

• Alta Vista: 7.3m hits

“Semantic” indexing

Collection

Series

Book or Volume

Chapter

Page

Word

Where ?When ?What ?Who ?Traditio

nal indexing >

“Semantic” indexing >

Increases in utility

Access Keyword Search

Fielded Search

Semantic Search

Do youhave the booktitled…

All mentions of “Star Wars”

All mentions of “Star Wars” in texts about Reagan published in 1985

All mentions of “Star Wars” by Reagan in speeches he delivered in 1985

North American Theatre Online

• 40,000 pages of reference works for American and Canadian Theatre

• Detailed information and links on – 25,000 plays and screenplays– 20,000+ authors– 15,000+ productions– 2,500+ production companies– 2,800+ theatres – Over 5,000 resources (playbills, posters,

ephemera)– 15,000 characters within plays

• Integrates all ASP databases and material freely available on the Web

The “real” world

Play

Author

Production Stills

Playbills

ProductionVenueDirector

Lighting Set Designers

Theater

PerformanceLocation

Production Company

Producer

Texts

Criticism

Cast List

Performers

Posters

Ephemera

Scenes

ActsCharacters

Dramatis Personae

The virtual world

AuthorBirth dateDeath dateBirth PlaceDeath PlaceNationalityOccupationAwards(38 fields)

TheaterDistrictLocationCapacityStyleEtc…(18 fields)

Company

NameProductionsPerformersEtc…(14 fields)

ProductionDirectorTheaterCast# of Perfs.LightingCostumesEtc…(47 fields)

Characters

PlaysAgeAuthorPerformerEtc…(30 fields)

Scenes

WhereWhenSettingSubjectEtc…(41 fields)

Resources

PlayDirectorTheaterProduction Co.CharacterSceneEtc…(45 fields)

Texts

KeywordAuthorDate WrittenDate PublishedProduction(67 fields)

“All scenes performed in South Africa discussing AIDS from 1980 to 1990”

AuthorBirth dateDeath dateBirth PlaceDeath PlaceNationalityOccupationAwards(38 fields)

TheaterDistrictLocationCapacityStyleEtc…(18 fields)

Company

NameProductionsPerformersEtc…(14 fields)

ProductionDirectorTheaterCast# of Perfs.LightingCostumesEtc…(47 fields)

Characters

PlaysAgeAuthorPerformerEtc…(30 fields)

Scenes

WhereWhenSettingSubjectEtc…(41 fields)

Resources

PlayDirectorTheaterProduction Co.CharacterSceneEtc…(45 fields)

Texts

KeywordAuthorDate WrittenDate PublishedProduction(67 fields)

Alexander Street Databases

Materials free on the WebOPAC

Context

Higher value linkages

Loosely Held Tightly Held

Free Websites

Loosely integrated

Tightlyintegrated

Refuse to License

License widely

License widelyand be a Licensor

• Higher value links• Semantic indexing and keyword searching

of more than 3,000 oral history collections• Represents the personal histories of some

300,000 people• Value:

– Context– Selection– Search power– Licensed material– Integration

Higher value linkages

Context and selection

Search Power

Organized Results

Copyright and comprehensiveness

Public Domain

Films

PlaysStills rightsResiduals

Story rightsMusic rights

Foreign rightsSong rights

Screenplay rightsPrint rights

Electronic rightsSoundtrack rights

Performance rights

Books

Music

No rights reserved

MechanicalsGeographic restrictions

ComposerLabel

Library and publisher opportunity

1. Understand: View conceptual relationships (mapping terms to concepts)

2. Explore: Move from one concept to another with ease (browse tables of contents)

3. Discover: Answer questions you’ve never been able to (never before published content + Semantic indexing)

4. Learn: Test hypotheses and see if they’re correct

Libraries, publishers and technologists

New form of publishingPublishingTechnologyLibrarianship

For more information: www.alexanderstreet.com