O n l i n e . L e a r n i n g . S u p p o r t
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Major concepts and principles of digital libraries (continuted)

WHAT CAN DIGITAL LIBRARIES ADD TO TRADITIONAL LIBRARIES?

Some writers, such as Levy and Marshall (1995) recognize that application of digital coherence to libraries is not simply moving text from a paper format to a digital format, though much of the text found on the web is precisely that. However, discussion of the web as a media for transfer of and access to paper-based information is often obscured by readers who hold a radical allegiance to their books. The journal, especially the research journal is not so rigidly held sacred in print, this may be largely due to the perceived reduced access to many journals which do not circulate in the collection.

Printing on demand

Digitalization offers new opportunities for libraries, such as replacing photocopying with publishing-on-demand. An interesting innovation of this is a proposed joint project between Yale University Libraries and Yale University Press. The library's head preservationist, Paul Conway, is planning to pilot a publishing-on-demand service which will be offered through Yale's library network to Yale students and faculty. Out-of-print books from Yale University Press will be available for viewing on the Yale Library network. After determining their need for a copy, the student or faculty member can order [as page images] the item online, selecting the desired paper quality and size and binding method. Ordered books will be printed and bound on campus and charged to the patron's account (Paul Conway, personal communication, January 1997). This pilot will have great significance in planning how libraries can deliver information to patrons using regulatory and economic models that will satisfy patrons, library services, and copyright holders. (See later discussion on copyright and licensing agreements.)

Open Journal Project

The most innovative online journals are maturing rapidly with distinctive new features emerging, foremost the hypertext link, which forms the basis and hope for a new, highly integrated scholarly literature which will exploit relationships at the level of journal content (both in categorization by topic and reference to other articles on the same or similar topics).

Currently many journals are appearing on the web as direct replications of their print form rather than breaking new grounds in evolution of the journal. There is a rich body of resources, including primary and secondary resources, and forward (works that cite the current document) and backward (works cited in the current document) citations and references, which can enhance the value of access for the user. It is expected that by 1998 the need for electronic journals will stabilize (Hitchcock, Harris, Hey &. Hall, 1997). Once the market has stabilized, the focus will concentrate on the new services within existing markets.

Access to journal articles has become increasingly difficult for many library users. The cost of journals has continued to rise as library budgets have continued to fall. As a result, many individuals and libraries have limited their subscriptions to journals. More to the point, with rising costs individuals are relying more and more on their academic libraries for the articles they need while at the same time, the academic libraries are concentrating on reducing their journal collections--due to a combination of higher subscription costs and lowered overall budgets.

Current document delivery services are limited in the articles they can actually deliver to users and the costs of single articles with do not compare well with, for example, a hardback book. Three randomly chosen articles of 17, 14, and 16 pages available from Open Access are available for a charge of $24.00, $20.75, and $27.00, respectively. There is no abstract or review of these articles so that the user may assess, prior to purchase, fit between the article's content and their information need. (One sampled article listed for $11 but there was no indication of the number of pages, which could be as low as one page.) By contrast, one new 773 page hardback book from a noted author listed for $27.50 but costs less than $20 with the 30% new hardback book discount at a notable large bookstore. (And the book can be perused prior to the decision to purchase, even if this particular bookstore special ordered the book for the customer.)

The book

The book as symbol of the library has evolved over many centuries to its current flexible, portable, and inexpensive [paper-based] form. Besides affording the qualities of flexibility, portability and economy, paper-based books offer the reader the ease of annotation--in the margins, on endsheets, between lines, within figures. While some software products permit the addition of some forms of marginalia to digital-based books, readers generally do not know how to take notes in a digital format (OUHara & Sellen, 1997). Marginalia, currently an affordance enjoyed only in print-based book, have been found helpful to readers (Andries Van Dam T87 Hypertext, address, Catherine Marshall, ACM, July, 1997).

Marshall, 1997 looked at the form, function, and importance of annotation for readers, particularly subsequent readers of a textbook. Marshall found annotation to be an unexpected valuable source of metadata. Through her observations, which included noting highlighting of user-added annotation as well as printed text by subsequent book owners, Marshall concluded that readers want to annotate and want annotation. Given this and the assumed prohibition to annotate books in shared collections, such as in a library, the availability of a digital version of a text affords the ability of a collection to archive a pristine copy of a text while at the same time making it available (at least in RAM) for annotation.

Just as Marshall (1997) found some students valued an annotated [used] textbook over a new copy, we could well understand that a text annotated by certain readers could possess value far greater than the original work. In the case of a difficult text required in a college course, annotations of faculty and top students could be quite useful to others struggling to read and understand the material. Digitization makes possible the ability to display a portion of the text for reading with links to an annotation or layers of annotation (e.g. annotations of annotations) for passages that need further explanation, giving a type of online companion to a text. [We should not overlook the fact that not all annotation is valued or valuable to subsequent readers and that some annotation may be taken as valuable when in fact it is inaccurate or misleading to understanding. The matter of authority of annotation is not addressed by Marshall.]

Various annotation tools are currently available. Some are based on a model of personal annotation (e.g., ForComment, Acrobat, LotusNotes); others on a model of public or work group commentary (e.g. CoNoter and NCSAUs HyperNews). Others permit interpretive notes, ratings and paths (e.g. ComMentor), annotation by the text author (IntermediaUs InterNote), and side-by-side viewing by the text author of multiple text-anchored annotations (PREP editor). Annotations may also include drawings. One product, Electronic Cocktail Napkin, is a pen-based sketching mechanism which tries to facilitate informal, unconstrained notations (Marshall, 1997).

Annotation has been observed to be a seamless activity with reading. However, annotation in an electronic environment has not achieved this flow and it is suggested that digital annotation may be a distractor in reading, much as a color-coded highlighting system or highligher combined with an underlining tool is a distractor in annotating paper-based text, as opposed to underlining and noting with a single tool--a pen or pencil. (Marshall, 1997). Development of satisfactory annotation systems, combined with adequate mechanisms for preserving unmarked and annotated versions, could provide a strong incentive to publish certain book electronically. This could be universally attractive if the potential reader had the option to examine various versions and then order a paper-based copy of the text with selected versions of annotation applied.

Digital delivery of film, sound and images

Film is still favored over digital media for its exceptional resolution, its stability, and its inexpensive cost (Jim Reimer, Keynote Address, 2nd ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries, July 1997). Film is stable over a hundred-year period while the magnetic tape used to store electronic versions has suffered from problems with the glue used to adhere oxides to tape and has left oxides falling away from their tapes. Preservation initiatives have been undertaken by baking the tapes in order to remount oxides to their tapes. Each frame of film requires 20-30 Megabytes of digital storage, making both film and tape media more efficient storage media than computer disk. In terms of universality, film is preferred: Around the world, a 35 mm film projector can be found in almost any location and can be repaired for film viewing with only a screw driver.

However, retrieval of images stored on film is so difficult that images are photographed over and over again, for example, advertising agencies, in the absence of a method for locating previously photographed images, re-photograph the image when it is needed. Vaults of film are more like garbage dumps:Stories are told of rare and unreleased film (for example, a lost BBC recording of the Beatles) that have been found by accident when someone walking through a value literally tripped over cartons whose contents spilled, revealing the location of lost material. Data management is a major problem and a new pioneering frontier in image retrieval. Digital libraries can offer search support to aid reuse of material and transfer of content without loss. Some problems still need to be solved: In order to retrieve the few best answers to a search query, heterogenous and federated searching need to be developed. Effective and efficient methods are also needed for indexing and abstracting images.

Digital libraries are a function of economics, that is, digital libraries are the economic engine that drive the reorganization of work flow and management. Digital libraries change the flow of cash and the reason people do work (for example, consider the ATM machine and banking). Digital libraries are still an emerging market: They are sufficiently difficult to do and are expensive. Issues and problems include scalability, security up and down stream, readability, openness (content independent storage--interoperability among interfaces and vendor hardware and software), rights management (need for flexible alternatives), stream support (browse grade and a broadcast grade), complex search support, data modeling, and how do we form metaphors to form searches. In terms of digital delivery of film, a rich data description is needed: frame by frame, whoUs in the frame, whatUs going on in the frame (Jim Reimer, Keynote Address, 2nd ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries, July 1997). This is certainly an area that will see exciting breakthroughs in research and development.

REFERENCES

Adam, N. R., Bhargava, B. K., & Yesha, Y. (Eds.). (1995). Digital libraries: Current issues. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Benton Foundaton. (1996). Buildings, books, and bytes: Libraries and communities in the digital age. Washington, DC: Benton Foundation. www.benton.org; gopher.benton.org; benton@benton.org; ftp.benton.org

Bush, V. (1945): http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~duchier/misc/vbush/.

Hitchcock, S., Carr, L., Harris, S., Hey, . M. N., & Hall, W. (1997). Citation linking: Improving access to online journals. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries, 115-122.

Levy, D. M. & Marshall, C. C. (1995.) Going digital: A look at assumptions underlying digital libraries. Communications of the ACM, 38(4), 77-84.

Marshall, C. (1997) Annotation: From paper books to the digital library. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries, 131-140.

Saffady, W. (1995). Digital library concepts and technologies for the management of library collections: An analysis of methods and costs. Library Technology Reports, May-June 1995, 221-380.

Sloane, A. (1995). The digital library and the home-based user. In N. R. Adam, B. K. Bhargava, & Y. Yesha (Eds.), Digital libraries: Current issues, pp. 203-208. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Tulip Project: http://www.elsevier.nl/info/projects/trmenu.htm.

Wiederhold, G. (1995.) Digital libraries, value, and productivity. Communications of the ACM, 38(4), 85-96.