Digital Libraries
Collaborative Electronic Reviews
Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology
Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven CT

LSC 551-70
Fall 1999

Reviews by:
Karen Ball
Gayle Bogel
Lisa Brenner
Deborah Coretto
Sue Crego
Marilyn Geiger
Mark Gore
Dawn Higginson
Eric Jones
Dianne Lyons
Kathleen Marszycki
Robert Murphy
Kris Piecyk
Jodi Stacy
Amanda Timolat

Spink, A. & Cool, C (1999), Education for Digital Libraries, D-lib Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 5, May 1999.

Available at http://dlib.org/dlib/may99/05spink.html

Reviewed by Sue Crego

Two professors who have taught courses on digital libraries report on the state of education in, and for, digital libraries. They report findings from an international survey of the faculties of library and information science schools and computer science faculty and they report the findings of their own survey. They conclude that although there is an urgent need to educate digital librarians, little of the needed education is being offered. Finally, they propose a model curriculum for digital library education.

Spink and Cool note that research efforts in the field of digital libraries is growing. The National Science Foundation funding of more than $90 million for primarily computer-science-oriented digital library projects and projects to create digitized collections such as the Library of Congress¹s American Memory project, are just two of the many research projects underway. D-Lib Magazine and other journals publish digital library research. Several publishers, associations, and other groups are also pursuing digital library projects.

There is little support for developing digital library courses and curricula, however. Moreover, there is no coordinated effort to bring together such disciplines as library and information science, computer science, psychology, law, and policy studies. The restructuring of library and information science schools may be needed, Spink and Cool speculate.

The authors collected data on 20 institutions offering digital library courses (including SCSU). Among their findings was that the primary emphasis in the courses was on system building, with little attention paid to the study of digital library users and usability. Not surprisingly [to students in LSC 551, at least], they found that there is no single agreed upon definition of what constitutes a digital library. The lack of such a definition leads the authors to conclude that advancement in the area of digital libraries requires the development of a sound conceptual foundation.

Spink and Cool suggest a model of digital library education which involves a hybrid, multi-disciplinary curriculum, with an emphasis on the fact that digital libraries are first, and foremost, libraries. They conclude that we need to develop educational programs and courses involving digital libraries and a greater synergy between research and education.

Threaded discussion question:

Do you believe that additional courses in digital libraries should be offered in MLS programs? What should those courses include in their syllabus? Do you feel that at the end of this semester you will be an effective digital librarian?

Batty, D. (1998). WWW‹Wealth, Weariness or Waste. D-Lib, Nov. 1998. Available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november98/11batty.html

Reviewed by Sue Crego

Finding anything on the World Wide Web or in an online full-text database, is not easy. The difficulty lies in the fact that for database producers or web authors, precision in communication, is not a high priority. Using consistent terms or categorizing the information presented costs money. Free- or full-text provision of material is much easier. So, the costs are borne by the searcher, who must spend a great deal of time looking for relevant information.

David Batty, the president of a consulting firm that specializes in library information system design and an adjunct professor at Catholic University¹s School of Library and Information Science, believes that there is a solution to the problem of access to online information. The solution is to provide the searcher with indexing information, using a controlled vocabulary or a thesaurus.

Batty acknowledges that in the past, online database producers were reluctant to create and use a thesaurus because of its expense. He points to the use of controlled index language during the discovery phases of litigation, however, as evidence of the realization by some that whole text searching is not as effective as using a controlled index. Litigation support companies hired by law firms to gather documents in large cases have long used controlled language when labeling documents because the cost of indexing is less than the cost of having paralegals or attorneys search for them repeatedly.

Full text databases are cheaper for producers to produce and are more likely to allow the searcher a greater range of topics and the chance to be more specific in his or her search terms. The searcher, however, assumes that the author has included all of the terms necessary to describe the topic. Batty notes that the Washington Post had a thesaurus created for its system because it did not want someone who was searching for stories on "murder" to turn up an article pronouncing the Summer weather "murder." A thesaurus would also alleviate the problems that arise when the working language of a discipline changes over the years and new terms are now used to explain old concepts.

A thesaurus, or a controlled set of terms used to index information in a database, provides a hierarchical structure in which clusters of concepts that share a common characteristic are grouped together. These families (or facets) are organized in smaller, related groups, which can be examined more easily for consistency. Each facet can stand alone so that changes can be made in one without disturbing the others. A searcher will find it much easier to understand a set of hierarchically organized facts.

Alternatives to the development of thesauri are (1) hypertext, with links from one word or phrase in a document to a related document; and (2) a transparent search thesaurus in which a search entered would assemble all of the potential synonyms together and a long string search would be entered without the searcher seeing the search terms.

Questions:

Batty makes the case for the creation of thesauri and the use of controlled language in online databases and web pages. The burden of creating thesauri in the future, he believes, will be borne, in part, by the authors of the information because they will want to disseminate the information. If it is not organized, fewer people will find it.

Batty does not mention the role of the library or the librarian. In a digital library, if an author of a particular work does not provide an index, a thesaurus, hyperlinks, or some other method of organization, should the librarian provide one? If the librarian does so, does that not alter the author¹s work?

Since a library will most likely contain works by many authors, should the librarian attempt to create a thesaurus that can be used to access all of the works? Does a librarian have the knowledge and the financial ability to create such a thesaurus?

O¹Rourke, M. (1998). Legal Issues on the Internet: Hyperlinking and Framing. D-Lib, April 1998. Available at www.dlib.org/dlib/april98/04orourke.html

Reviewed by Sue Crego

[Story is abstracted from Maureen A. O¹Rourke, Fencing Cyberspace: Drawing Borders in a Virtual World, 82 Minn. L. Rev. 609 (1998).]

Digital libraries and the law. Will digital libraries be big consumers of legal services?

As we have discussed in this class, hyperlinking and framing on web sites pose potential copyright problems. The two practices also pose trademark problems, unfair competition problems, and other potential legal problems. A law review article by Maureen O¹Rourke, abstracted in D-Lib Magazine, explains these legal problems.

Rarely have web site owners brought legal actions against other web site owners based on hyperlinking. Hyperlinking increases traffic to a web site, which, in turn, increases the site¹s potential advertising revenue. In one case, however, Ticketmaster Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., Ticketmaster brought an action against Microsoft because Microsoft linked to a page within the Ticketmaster site (deep linking), bypassing any advertising on Ticketmaster¹s site [CV97-3055 RAP (C.D. Cal. Filed Apr. 28, 1997), complaint available, Nat¹l L.J., May 12, 1997 at B2, settled, Jan. 22, 1999]. O¹Rourke argues that under the copyright law, the act of linking is unlikely to constitute copyright infringement because it is probably protected by an implied license or under the doctrine of fair use.

Trademark law may place limits on linking. A link implies an association between the two sites, and if visitors to the site assume that the two are affiliated, and the linked site trademark is used, there may be trademark infringement. Since visitors must leave the one site and then enter the new site, however, linking is unlikely to result in trademark infringement.

Framing is another story. Trademark liability is more likely for sites that frame since the visitor may be unaware that the content in the frame comes from another site. There have been a few cases brought involving framing, including one by a group including the Washington Post against Total News, Inc. In that case, the plaintiffs objected to framing, arguing that Total News had infringed their copyrights and trademarks, diluted their trademarks, and engaged in unfair competition under the Lanham Act and at common law.

O¹Rourke notes that framing may implicate a copyright owner¹s exclusive right to prepare derivative works. Even under that argument, however, the user¹s conduct is likely to be protected under the copyright doctrine of fair use. Framing may violate trademark law because the continuing display of the address of the framing site may confuse users (traditional evidence of a trademark violation).

In the future, O¹Rourke predicts that plaintiffs objecting to hyperlinking and framing will be more likely to bring actions based on common law torts. Although a 1997 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision in NBA v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997) may limit the cause of action for the tort of unfair competition and may result in the preemption of some common law claims, plaintiffs may attempt to bring other common law claims, such as claims for trespass. In addition, if parties begin to enter into contracts to regulate the use of hyperlinks and frames, breach of contract claims may result.

THREADED DISCUSSION Question:

Creating a digital library with hyperlinks or frames may give rise to more legal concerns than possible copyright infringement or trademark infringement actions. Not only are there common law and contract claims on the horizon, one look at a collection of hyperlink and framing information www.jura.uni.tuebingen.de/~s-bes1/lcp.html, demonstrates that these legal problems are international in scope. Should libraries consider engaging legal assistance before placing their digital libraries on the Internet? Should the U.S. Government consider legislation that would exempt libraries from legal action based on their collection of digital information?