Thursday March 22, 2007
Thursday March 22, 2007 More provocative thoughts on the future of libraries
Peter Brantley shares some provocative thoughts on the future of libraries.
He quotes a friend: "discovery has moved to the network layer and libraries should stop allocating their time and money trying to build better end-user UI, and concentrate instead on delivery".
He goes on say as "discovery services move to the network there is less reason why libraries should maintain duplicative local data caches."
Please read the full post to put these quotes in context.
What I find interesting is that the library technology community now seems precisely focused on "trying to build better end-user UI" and trying to develop "local data caches" in response to the limitations of licensed access. I don't hear much about delivery and fulfillment services at digital library or library technology conferences. Thoughts?
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I think there are a few reasons why you don't hear much about delivery services at digital/library tech conferences.
1) At a general level, I believe the control of such services is normally outside the realm of developers and other library I.T. folk so many of the tech community just don't work on these problems because they aren't tasked with them.
2) More specifically, developers, like most people, want to do what they are good at, what they know how to do, and what they care about. Hence you have a focus on end-user UI. Career wise, does looking at content delivery have the same impact on a developer's career as doing interface work? I don't know; perhaps others do.
Having said all that, I do think, however, that some members of the tech community could be interesting contributors to discussions regarding delivery. All sorts of open questions exist as to most efficiently and effectively (those two things, just for starters, aren't necessarily the same) delivering and allocating content. What other tasks tasks lie solidly within the ILS edifice just waiting to be liberated the same way that discovery has recently been?
The tech community, to me, appears to be obsessed with discovery and Web 2.0 social networking features to the exclusion of more traditional and less sexy topics like delivery. What happens once something is discovered takes a very large backseat and that's a problem since in many cases discovery and access are two very different and distinct functions. Access, though, to users, has to be just as important as discovery. If you can't find it, it's no good to you. But if you can't get it delivered or get at it in some sort of reasonable (try defining reasonable!) time and fashion, its value at point of discovery markedly diminishes fast. A cynical take on all this might be to paraphrase Roy Tennant and say the library tech community loves interfaces, everyone else loves results (obviously that last statement isn't really true, at least for the people I know).
The notable exception to all this so-called disinterest of the tech community with delivery of content is the development of the OpenURL and commercial resolvers in the past few years. That tool has moved delivery/access of online journal article content vastly closer to the point at which it is discovered.
Posted by Scott Warren on March 26, 2007 at 04:20 PM EDT #