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11th National Library Technicians ConferenceAligning opportunities and technology, the challenge for librariesLloyd Sokvitne State Library of Tasmania
Abstract
Introduction The inability to provide new services has often been curtailed because of the pressures on libraries to deliver existing services with shrinking resources. But it is also partly due to a lack of vision and the failure by libraries to recognise that the best reason to change and develop new library services is self-preservation. The future, in whatever specific shape and format it takes, will be one that is radically different from the current environment. Clients' needs and expectations will be different, new delivery methods will be widespread, and new skills will be needed to deliver services. It is not an overstatement to suggest that libraries that don't embrace change will, in twenty years time, become quaint mausoleums that meet the declining needs of a declining segment of the population. There is no simple or clear roadmap to guide libraries and library workers as they prepare for the future, and uncertainty over possible outcomes and developments can be used as rationale for doing nothing, for waiting until directions and needs become clear. This however, fails to meet one key characteristic of change-we can't understand what is going on, or position ourselves, or even influence it unless we are involved in that change. It is much like wanting to participate in a sport like swimming: observing people swimming does not really help us in learning how to swim ourselves. To swim we must actually get in the water and get wet. So it is with the new electronic frontier. Having made the bold, if not illuminating prediction, that we have to participate in the new world of electronic and networked resources if we are to survive in the future, what should we be doing now? A useful way to address this question is to re-ask four basic questions that relate to any information environment.
The answers to these four questions in relation to the printing-press environment have determined the nature and shape of current library services. The answers that emerge by asking these questions against the new networked electronic environment should shape our new services.
How is information being produced? The major impact that this has is in terms of retrieval and assessment. The networked electronic environment does not contain the quality assurance processes and other measures that provided some order to the printed environment. A major challenge for the user has become separating the true from the false, fact from opinion, objective content from commercial or biased content. If the web were a small place, this might be manageable. But the web is huge and continuing to grow. Something new in the electronic landscape is the introduction of electronic resources that are not static blocks of information, but that are interactive entities that allow the user to actually do things. These range from sending e-mail to participating in interactive discussions, and can now include the online applications and purchases. Network users are no longer provided with just information entities, but with service entities as well. The information landscape is now very rich, with a wider range of content than the traditional physical collections offered by libraries. User behaviour is changing to reflect this. Finally, let us turn to the opposite side and ask what happens to electronic resources once they are superseded. The current situation is that these resources are removed and deleted from the home system and are effectively lost forever. It is an unfortunate fact that the first five years of the web has left almost no trace for the future.
How is information being used? The ability of the network to deliver resources to the desktop is incredibly convenient and powerful. Although we know that much of the information is questionable, we should not feel secure and snug in our library environments because our information has been through 'proper' quality control processes. The user of the future will not care what happens in libraries, and will expect the network itself to offers ways and services that help them to separate the dross from the gold. The user of the future may wish that everything on the web was free, but they will also accept that some are only available for a fee. And many will be happy to pay for immediate and easy access to that information. Libraries have always seen freedom of access to information as a basic democratic right, but how many users in the future will accept that they have to physically leave their normal environment and travel to a 'free' service provider such as the library.
Who are the users? This is radically different to library services, where we often had captive clients, sometimes even motivated ones, who could be taught how to use our systems. And they had few choices if they didn't.
How is the information being found? Searching for information by clicking on hyperlinks is not the limited type of browsing possible in library systems. Browsing in the OPAC does not go beyond the process of randomly and haphazardly looking for material that may of potential interest. There are no visual or other clues on an OPAC to guide the user. Browsing on the shelf, for example, provides lots of immediate feedback and is a preferred retrieval strategies for many of our users. On the web, browsing and feedback concepts can be introduced to allow the user to start with a general concept and a small list of relevant choices, but which then offer intelligible and manageable lists of choices or options as they work towards the specific resource they are seeking. The ability to evaluate an identified resource online immediately means that browsing again becomes an important process. Discovery on the web is affected by the presentation and visuals of the screen, with good retrieval becoming a clever mix of visual design and information architecture. Compare this with the traditional library subject approach, where LCSH offers thousands if not millions of initial entry points, where subsequent choices could go down five or six levels, and where if a wrong choice is made the user has to go back to the top and start again. The other major retrieval approach on the web is based on free text searching, using search engines that automatically harvest the actual text of documents. This is an efficient if haphazard approach marred by its reliance on the actual occurrence of words within those documents and the huge number of query results that are produced from such a large resource base. As a result these searches do not effectively meet the traditional library retrieval requirements of precision and recall. Another aspect of web retrieval comes from users who want to locate not just static information resources, but other types of service entities: application forms, payment services, chat rooms, e-mail forms, etc. These are the sorts of things you do not find on a library shelf, but something the user of the future will expect to find on the virtual library shelf. The web offers the opportunity to retrieve resources by aspects other than what the resource is about. For example we could offer searches based on the target audience of the resource, how it will be used, what events it relates to, the format or type of resource, what region it covers, etc. Very few of these relate to traditional library access points in OPACs. Wouldn't it be nice for example, if you were a student and you could start your library search around the concept of 'homework materials', or to start your search for material designed for 'matric students', or material that was in 'exam paper' format, or material relevant to 'NSW'. In the library world, these are aspects only available once you have gone down a subject hierarchy, a process that the user embarks on with no knowledge of what they may find down that hierarchy that is relevant. As a result, they may have to search down many hierarchies before they find something of value. The web does not have this limitation.
Potential library responses
State Library of Tasmania responses
Tasmania Online This new service initially replicated for the electronic world what the Tasmaniana Library had traditionally been doing for the print based world. It was also a recognition, even then, that the web was a big place and there were few ways to effectively search for and retrieve specific information. These difficulties were seen as particularly important for Tasmanian material. In Feb 1996 the Tasmania Online service was officially launched and contained an alphabetical and subject index to about 250 Tasmanian websites. Later that year we introduced a search engine that allowed the public to search within the content of Tasmanian web pages, and this offered access to approximately 20 000 pages. This search service was, and remains, the only instance of its kind, both in Australia and overseas. The value and scope of the Tasmania Online service was recognised by the State Government and in 1997 we were given responsibility for the main government portal itself: www.tas.gov.au. In 1998 we replaced our earlier search engine software and introduced the first search engine software that we are of that had the ability to utilise Dublin Core metadata as an option in its searching. Tasmania Online currently indexes over 3000 main websites in Tasmania, and our search engine provides access to over 150 000 web pages. The strength of this service has been its use of appropriate technology and the use of library principles and skills to provide accurate and effective access for the average web user. Our alphabetical and subject indexes are not based on an automatic harvesting program, but on the actual evaluation of content by library professionals. We also developed and continue to develop knowledge as to how best to design web services that deliver results, and we were pleased to win the Australasian Society of Indexers Prize in 1998. The early development of Tasmania Online staked our place in the information management landscape and was the reason why the State Government chose us to provide and manage the state portal in 1997. This has in turn led to the further opportunities such as Service Tasmania Online.
Service Tasmania Online The key objective of Service Tasmania Online is to enable the Tasmanian community to locate government services and information without the need to know which level of government or which department/agency provides the information or service they seek, and without knowing the format of the resource that best meets their need. This means that the site must include and integrate government resources from all three tiers of government (local, state, and commonwealth). The challenge to the State Library was to develop a retrieval service that addressed the real needs of the community. This was achieved by the adoption of a wide range of retrieval options, including alphabetical listings, topical navigation hierarchies, free-text searching, and special content groupings. A prime example of this flexibility is the ability of the client to search via subject categories (eg health, education, transport, etc), via task-orientated options (eg make a payment, contact government, etc) , or by customer-orientated classes (eg the aged, farmers, etc). These three approaches are not mutually exclusive and the sites employs a system whereby options are cross-referenced and available at all relevant levels down a hierarchy. This provides a forgiving and flexible retrieval system where the user does not have to continually re-enter hierarchies from the top. The Service Tasmania Online website and supporting information architecture was created from scratch by the State Library, and involved clever programming and systems development by local IT company Dytech Solutions. There were no external models to copy for this type of information service but basic professional concepts formed a solid base for developing the new service. Service Tasmania Online is managed and provided via the use of metadata contained in XML files. All navigation and subject choices made on the website are real-time searches against the information in XML metadata records. The separation of metadata records from the resources they describe allows Service Tasmania Online to index services as well as static information, and to cover jurisdictions and government departments independent of the quality or existence of locally produced metadata. The results provided on the Service Tasmania Online website can be augmented, changed, or removed by simply modifying the appropriate content field within the XML metadata records. The metadata that forms the core of Service Tasmania Online is created and managed by the State Library of Tasmania. The use of professional information workers is seen as vital in order to achieve the necessary standards of metadata needed to deliver high precision and low recall to the average web user. These innovations has enabled Service Tasmania Online to win the 2000 VALA award for innovation in information systems, and a silver award in the 2001 Government Technology Productivity Awards
Our digital island The approach taken by the State Library has been based on the use of very simple technology, and relies heavily on the skills of the people involved in the process. It is anticipated that the State Library will shortly adopt the National Library of Australia's Pandora/Pandas collecting system. This should simplify a number of difficult processes, but it is likely that web preservation will always require significant and special skills on the part of the library workers involved.
Conclusion Clear cut and antiquated definitions of duties for library workers are likely to become a serious impediment to the library of the future. We all live in the same changing world and will have to develop new industrial relationships and responsibilities as time goes on. I see library technicians as adopting new roles in the library of the future, becoming complete metadata indexers rather than copy-cataloguers, becoming web service administrators rather than acquisition clerks, becoming preservation technologists rather than shelvers in a stack. This will be a challenge to library technicians, and to the library profession and the libraries they manage. None of this will happen without effort. Library technicians, like the rest of the knowledge sector, will have to adapt and retrain again and again over the years. I hope this is a positive and exciting prospect. For those who do not want to change, or who are not prepared to learn new skills, whether a librarian, library technician, or whatever, I fear they have chosen the wrong career path.
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