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Iain Brown
Assistant-Director Information Systems
Defence Library Service
Department of Defence
Canberra ACT Australia
iain.brown@defence.gov.au
The paper describes the current progress of the Defence Library Service (DLS) in developing an enterprise information portal in collaboration with a commercial partner. The Portal aims to address debilitating flaws in both legacy and Web-based library information systems by acknowledging the social character of work and providing multi-faceted support for collaborative information seeking and sharing. The portal application is based on Lotus Domino and uses its integrated support for messaging, workflow-enabled data management and collaboration to deliver a 'dynamic netspace' that extends library support beyond passive inventory management to encompass information value chain activities from information discovery, through information sharing, e-learning and electronic publishing. The Portal's core capabilities, search and retrieval, metadata, directory and content management are described. Selected, integrated government-to-customer (G2C), peer customer and government-to-employee (G2E) Portal services are reported and compared and contrasted to other library portals reported in the literature. Its projected future development as a knowledge portal is briefly described. The Portal is considered a highly apposite model platform for information services agencies in the corporate and government sectors.
Introduction
'We are in a fully communicating world now... [E]veryone will essentially always be connected. People...do their work in groups. Almost all work is group work and, in fact, what we see at the computational level is really a social revolution. What is the Internet about? It's really about people communicating.'[ii]
The Internet has '...driven through the plate glass window of traditional management'.[iii] Consistent with its origins as a groupware medium to support collegial work, it is transforming organisational collaboration, decision-making and innovation.[iv] Voluntarist decisions excepted[v], decision situations, project and business process management activities and allied 'knowledge capital' initiatives are all well-established forms of collective work. Yet, ten years after Davenport and Prusak's infamous and misunderstood call to 'blow up the corporate library'[vi], library service strategies and systems still perilously lag behind, oblivious to and remote from the now truly collaborative form of work organisation, professional information seeking and use. New service strategies and systems are demanded that deliver dynamic netspaces; integrated information management, collaboration and workflow environments that catalyse information sharing in the context of key business processes. Overdue solutions for Ojala's post-modernist, 'dynamic era', online generation that leverage customer working knowledge and peer networking as shared corporate information resources.[vii] Solutions that redefine 'access' by breaking the library's monopoly on content aggregation and support direct customer involvement in information creation, dissemination and use, that seed and shape customer information use behaviours. The time for libraries to play what Block calls the 'incrementalism game' is over.[viii]
The DLS has seized a major and transient opportunity to re-new its customer 'information capability' by developing an enterprise information portal (EIP).[ix] Built using Lotus Domino, the Portal integrates external and internal information resource discovery, customer and staff library services with peer-to-peer customer and business partner information exchange. The Domino platform combines strong information management capability, business process workflows and Internet standards compliance together with a rich, vendor-certified, applications marketplace to overcome a lack of flexibility found in so-called 'pure play' portal solutions. Progressively, the DLS Portal will provide continuous support for activities throughout an information value chain from creation through storage, query, analysis, learning and (re)use. The paper describes the Portal's origins. Its core capabilities, search and retrieval, metadata, directory and content management services are described. Selected government-to-customer (G2C), customer and government-to-employee (G2E) Portal services are discussed. The application is compared and contrasted to other library portals reported in the literature. Its projected future development as a knowledge portal is briefly described.
'Libraries can take the place of God', Umberto Eco once famously said.[x] Certainly, librarians have given a fulsome reception to the news that they have been '...suddenly reclassified as part of the information sector, and transformed into pioneers in the progressive and futuristic information society.'[xi] The prospect of this New Eden is greeted with a Panglossian optimism. Librarians' sense of professional entitlement is palpable. After all, librarianship is a 'fundamental...discipline...affecting...every dimension of human affairs...'[xii] Librarians are 'leaders in the information revolution'[xiii], '[boundary] riders on the new frontier of information science.'[xiv] They are '...the ultimate knowledge workers.'[xv] Membership of the information-elect is their 'birthright'.[xvi] A professional efflorescence is clearly in progress with the happy prospect of finally silencing all that bolshevik talk about the Internet obsoleting libraries.[xvii]
The reality is that this revivalist effusion is sinecurist and largely rhetorical in nature.[xviii] In an impetuous political rush to represent the technocratic society, librarians overlook confronting issues of definition, countervailing empirical evidence and a lack of critical, reflexive analysis. First, the shape-shifting terminology of the 'post-industrial society', 'information age', 'information economy' and, latterly, the much more ambitious 'knowledge society' is usually glossed over or else defined by proxy. [xix] Almost invariably, librarians use it prescriptively to signify practices and values that are, allegedly, both incontrovertible and morally uplifting. Second, the library literature pays scant attention to accumulated research indicating that the technocratic model '...crumbles at virtually every point when one can test it against the empirical evidence.'[xx] The mass of evidence reviewed by Collins leads him to conclude that while technology is an important aspect of organisations, its productiveness is very much determined by its subordinate place in the social and political fundamentals of organisational power politics.[xxi] He argues that '...[t]echnological change...does not raise the skill requirements of most jobs very much; the great majority of all jobs can be learned through practice by almost any literate person...What [it] does do...is increase the total wealth produced and lead to intense struggles over the...the distribution of the increased wealth.'[xxii] Pointedly, he argues that '...[t]he number of esoteric specialties 'requiring' unusually extensive training or skill is relatively small.'[xxiii] He concludes that the technocratic society is a 'facile modern ideology.'[xxiv] Finally, some librarians make some truly extravagant claims about the 'information society.' That it is, by definition, a sophisticated society.[xxv] That labour in an 'information society' and, perforce, society itself, is 'intellectualised'.[xxvi] These axe-grinding claims are highly dubious.[xxvii] The level of education in a society and its intellectualness are not synonymous. Zinoviev rightly argues that it is perfectly possible to have a highly educated society or organisation of low intellect. Intellectualness, he argues is '...very closely connected with considerations of morality, law, creativity [and] conscience...' - not information.[xxviii] Roszak agrees arguing that '...the master ideas - the great moral, religious, and metaphysical teachings which are the foundation of culture...are based on no information whatsoever.'[xxix] Further, librarians' common notion of reading as a catalyst of communality is also suspect. Reading and questioning has everything to do with acquiring and using an independent intellect and nothing to do with '...powdery notion[s] of communal uplift.'[xxx]
The faux revolutionary zeal of librarians' response to the 'information society' is a weak attempt to manufacture an aura of cutting-edge hipness that sits ill at ease with their workaday experience as cultural bureaucrats. It quite conveniently ignores the fact that these are crow-eating days for libraries and librarians, in particular, those in both government and the corporate sector. They are under threat from both without and within. From without, they are heavily exposed to a scholarly and trade book publishing industry in crisis[xxxi], a much-vaunted, peer-review mechanism fallen prey to lucre and celebrity[xxxii], an online industry in long-term decline[xxxiii], falling usage measures[xxxiv], professional associations in disarray[xxxv], a poor public image[xxxvi] and, of course, Internet-driven disintermediation.[xxxvii] From within libraries are threatened by a 'dissipating profession'[xxxviii] perversely notable for romanticising rodomontades on collections[xxxix] and reference services, a ludicrous posture of intellectual poseur vis-á-vis Internet content[xl] and a persistent strain of professional and personal Luddism.[xli]
Wired, Tired or Mired?
Librarians' push to become the standard-bearer for the 'information society' derives, in significant part, from a heroic, pioneering self-image of an early adopter of technology among the professions. This argument has 2 contiguous elements. First, that libraries have been early adopters of technology,[xlii] with a record of consistent achievement in the application of technology to new areas of operation.[xliii] There is considerable evidence to suggest this reassuring picture is a politic fiction. Williams indicates that, prior to World War II, '...special librarians...changed in a number of significant ways that made them less...open to new trends and, particularly, to the...scientific and technical information systems that were developing so rapidly.'[xliv] Overmyer claims that, in the same period, the push to 'modernise' was not an initiative of librarians but that they were '...encouraged, urged, and even pressured by [library] administrators...patrons, or the computer people...'[xlv] Salmon reports that '...computers were not used before about 1961, and in this respect library automation lagged behind business, industry, and science.'[xlvi] Mussman records that early library applications of technology were '...greeted with derision...'[xlvii] Lynch agrees arguing that '...[a]utomated retrieval systems...were initially viewed with apprehension by a sizeable component of librarians.'[xlviii] A correlate claim is that early library automation was '...built on a long tradition of shared cataloguing..., resource sharing and cooperation.'[xlix] Jesse Shera, writing closer to the actual events, reports this is untrue. Early work in library automation was characterised by '...frequent 're-invention of the wheel' [with] each library tend[ing] to start from the beginning without benefitting from the experiences...of other libraries...[C]o-operation among libraries was minimal.'[l]
The parallel argument is that as '...[i]nformation technology has grown more sophisticated...librarians...have grown more demanding, insisting that technology solutions have the flexibility to meet their libraries' unique needs.'[li] Again, significant counter evidence indicates otherwise. In 1985, DeGennaro berated the 'currently so prevalent notion' that minicomputer-based systems were adequate to the task of running integrated library management systems (ILMS). Rather, the 'complex integrated...systems' being implemented required '...the data storage and processing capabilities of powerful and highly reliable mainframes.'[lii] Alley agrees commenting that '...[l]ibrarians probably would have been content to stay with mainframe computer systems...almost indefinitely.'[liii] More recently, the adverse findings of a survey of library systems vendors in the United Kingdom indicate the unconvincing nature of this claim. Most respondents thought that '...librarians responsible for purchasing systems were 'limited in awareness of recent developments', 'unable to provide a precise specification of their requirements', and 'unclear about what they wanted from a...system'.' They were '...[unwilling] to embrace new technologies and practices...' and unable to focus on '...'radical workflow changes', 'efficiency features' and 'process improvements''[liv] Given this negative assessment, it is unsurprising that the very latest offering in library systems, what Cox and Yeates call 'library portal' solutions, show '...little evidence of consultation with libraries...about development...'[lv] Ominously, the same lack of critical analysis is evident in digital library development. From the outset, librarians have viewed digital libraries as being '...primarily...repositories or collections of relatively fixed, relatively permanent, digital documents to be browsed or searched by individuals.'[lvi] Worse, Lynch notes that many librarians consider a digital library to be '...any library that includes in its collection large amounts of digital material.'[lvii] This is TRS-80 thinking in the emerging age of the semantic Web; further evidence, if any were needed, that trades can, by dint of reassuring repetition alone, elevate insipidity to insight.
This decidedly qualified legacy is encompassed in two phenomena described by Brown and Duguid. The first of these is 'datafication' or '...the disaggregation of [shared] knowledge into data.'[lviii] This is seen in librarians' signature reliance on overly elaborate metadata schemas, specifically MARC and the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). MARC was the genesis of library automation.[lix] Practical inventory automation first took the form of MARC-based 'catalogue card systems' designed to produce printed cards. All subsequent developments notwithstanding, ILMS are still inventory-centric systems, based on file structures of MARC bibliographic and authority records with text-string indexes, just like headings on printed cards. Librarians seemingly '...cannot [move beyond this] mental model of catalogue cards organised in filing order by their headings'.[lx] Though its deficiencies for intellectual access to content were established in the late 1960s with Project Intrex, it remains a 'religious adherence' involving 'analytical overkill', a dangerous legacy from '...a time [past] when cataloging of printed stuff seemed possible and it seemed possible to document materials for the future.'[lxi] Increasingly invidious comparisons between corporate upstarts, notably Amazon.com and 'lame' library systems are commonplace.[lxii] In this context, Veaner's criticism is the most direct and penetrating. Librarians won't change because of a deep strain of bibliographic hubris, an 'overbearing sense of self-importance', based on a gross over-estimation of public admiration for their efforts in bibliographic control.[lxiii] This is the negative side of what Marshall McLuhan called 'rear-view mirror' thinking, an overly long, roseate fixation on the past.[lxiv] Apparently, librarians still hold to the 'wonderful wish' '...that...each Web page on the Internet had a 'card' that could be searched...'[lxv] Only when such morbid intellectual queuing at the mausoleum of the catalogue card ceases, will things change for the better.
Brown and Duguid's second phenomenon is 'infologic' or the condition where every problem is defined in terms of an 'information need'.[lxvi] This is seen in those twin pillars of professional librarianship: the formal hierarchy of information sources and the numerous, elaborate models of the information seeking process. It is evident in instances both documented in the literature and anecdotally where '...without asking any questions, the [librarian typed] into the online [library] catalogue...the key words of the user' statement... [He/she] routinely converted the user's request for 'information' on a topic into a request for a book and became fixated on the [online catalogue].'[lxvii] It is also evident in librarians' undinted enthusiasm for elaborate models of information seeking. Despite their major deficiencies having been known for more than thirty years, librarians persist with these static, overly rational and linear frameworks. Involving only '....an exceptionally smooth and systematic process...'[lxviii], predictably enough they quickly break down in real-work environments. For example, the much praised Eisenberg and Berkowitz's 'Big Six Skills' information seeking model was considered '...the [approach] which most closely describes the actual information search process...'[lxix] However, Cottrell and Eisenberg found that '...[n]early 90 percent of all [reference] encounters included only one stage of [the] model [i.e., giving location directions for library materials]...and...forty-four percent of all encounters included only [these] activities.' [lxx] They note that higher order activities including '...brainstorming...using, evaluating, and synthesizing information...' are simply not occurring in libraries.[lxxi] Presumably, librarians believe that, post 'access', all subsequent understanding is achieved transdermally. Procter et. al. characterise most reference interaction as spasmodic, low-value adding work involving only '...high volume, impersonal, uninformed, and short...[exchanges] of the 'help desk' kind, rather than subject searches.'[lxxii] Luke and Kapitzka argue 'industrial' era research models including the 'Big Six' are neither productive nor efficient in an information environment dominated by the Internet.[lxxiii] Cottrell and Eisenberg properly conclude with a call for a different kind of information system, one that supports '...all the information problem-solving steps.'[lxxiv]
'Datafication' and 'infologic' both contribute to triple axes of failure by libraries. First, is product failure. They impel librarians to operate on the basis of a key and false assumption about the fixity of disciplinary knowledge; that there are many more 'knowledge-based' subjects than 'argument based' subjects. For Anderson, Hughes and Shaddock 'knowledge subjects' are those where there is '...a received body of information about the subject-matter of the discipline which is passed on to the [inquirer]...'[lxxv] In contrast, an 'argument subject' consists of '...dissenting points of view...normally presented...through...the different ideas or schools of thought, often in the form of a history of the controversies which have brought the discipline to its present disagreements.'[lxxvi] Since the mid-1960s, the tandem growth in the size and output of the intelligentsia and the emergence of electronically-mediated communication has clearly revealed that many disciplines previously considered as stable 'knowledge subjects' are certainly not as free from disputation as librarians believe (and hope). Clearly, the authorial and textual fixates of a print dominant culture have given way to Ojala's networking dominant of '...a multiplicity of sources, various channels of communication, mutability of both information and of access to that information, and constantly changing definitions of even the most basic building blocks of information.'[lxxvii] Librarians are left holding fast to an acquiescent, anodyne, officious concept of disciplinary 'knowledge' that Shera argued was tightly bound to the 'graphic record.'[lxxviii] In this understanding, information is cumulative; increasing the available volume of published information is a necessary and sufficient platform for the further progress of 'knowledge'.[lxxix] This 'expert' definition of 'knowledge' forms the basis of annual appeals for funding to build and maintain large collections. The focus on 'knowledge subjects' is also self-serving in it involves a social cohesion, core competencies and civility well suited to librarians' conservative professional training and personal outlook.[lxxx] Yet, 'datafication' is now proving a costly liability in three respects. First, given declining levels of funding, less and less of total published output can be inventoried according to these complex metadata standards. Second, much to their chagrin, these proprietary standards are at the core of librarians' very own 'digital divide'. Segregation of library data under these standards '...underlies many difficulties: producing standard bibliographic citations from MARC data, automatically creating new materials lists (including new [W]eb resources) on a particular topic, exchanging data with...[business partners and] vendors, and even migrating from one [library system] to another.'[lxxxi] Finally, the complexities of these standards notwithstanding, they can barely cope with long established forms of electronic information resources, much less the emergent forms of rich, contextualising, predominately narrative, electronic 'working knowledge'. That new richness flows not from content accumulation and 'access' to fixed information stocks but from new network capabilities supporting information flow through associational and potentially boundaryless personal connectivity and peer collaboration.[lxxxii] 'Datafication' now appears as '...a Baroque balustrade on a Bauhaus balcony.'[lxxxiii] Product failure results.
Secondly, there is service failure. Traditionally, librarians have been defined by their work collecting, organising, storing and preserving books. Latterly, and rather reluctantly, this was extended to include, first, content jejunely tagged as 'non-book materials', then digital content. Customer service was an afterthought, the boundaries of librarians' 'proper' involvement with their customers keenly debated[lxxxiv] and then only ever-delivered in truncated, detached form. Increasingly strident protestations of 'customer focus' notwithstanding, librarians still have no general service model beyond individualised, largely episodic, point-of-information need encounters centred on information retrieval. Contrary to the real and the new virtual socialness of intellectual work, librarians adopt a condescending and crude approach that regards even serial repeat customers as perpetual information neophytes and asocial information isolates.[lxxxv] Further, this status quo, so popular opinion holds, directly and neatly segues into the new networked information environment variously labeled the hybrid, virtual or digital library. Virtual librarianship '...will not be very different from that in the traditional print-based library.'[lxxxvi] Electronic information can be managed with '...skills...adapted from established practices. '[lxxxvii] At its base, this tendentious claim derives from what McLuhan calls 'encyclopedism' or a manuscriptal fixation with collection, organisation and preservation. It has led librarians to develop largely de facto service models that place strict limits on their scope of work[lxxxviii], limits that have rendered their customer service inadequate even in legacy, largely print-based environments.[lxxxix] Rather, online information environments demand from libraries fundamentally new, expansive service models based on a series of cognate and contiguous activities that consecutively generate greater customer value. This is Michael Porter's famous 'value chain' or '...[the] activities...performed to design, produce, market, deliver, and support [a firm's] product [and how they interact]'.[xc] Porter subsequently extended value chain analysis, devising an 'information value chain' including the successive stages of create, store, update, query, distribute, analyse, act and learn. 'Encyclopaedist' library service models and their legacy systems provide only fragmentary support for Porter's 'information value chain'. The supporting activities of store, update, query and distribute have coverage, albeit incomplete and ineffectual. The higher value-adding primary activities of create, analyse, act and learn remain unsupported. This may be illustrated as follows:
[Insert Value Chain.jpg]
Figure 1: Old and New Information Value Chains [xci]
Porter makes the point that information flows (and, perforce, information systems) are vital to leveraging sustainable competitive advantage from linkages between the constituent and interdependent 'value activities' of the value chain.[xcii] Across industry and government, innovations in predominately Internet information technology are creating new value chain linkages and increasing the ability to exploit old ones. In libraries, 'datafication' and 'infologic' so circumscribe librarians' scope of work that they are precluded from fully exploiting these transformational technologies to provide integrated, higher value information services. They have delivered service failure.
Finally, there is platform failure. More than 10 years ago, Collins and Straub highlighted the '...problems [created] for [library customers] faced with integrating information across the spectrum of the information delivery system in order to do their work.'[xciii] Progress since has been sporadic at best. Libraries are still beset by fractionalised information systems (e.g., ILMS, disparate commercial online databases and largely static Web sites). For more than 30 years, libraries have focused their automation efforts on inventory management of physical library materials and indexing.[xciv] Technological developments in libraries have involved '...using technology to do what they were already doing...'[xcv] ILMS provide limited access to surrogate metadata that is '...already synthesized, prepackaged, and dated.'[xcvi] Typical ILMS migrations involve the serial replacement of '...conventional housekeeping systems...'[xcvii] Most direct of all, Lowry argues librarians '...have 'crammed' automation down the throats of library patrons as a by-product of technical activities...'[xcviii] Concurrently, they have ignored other more effective, socialised means of information creation, discovery and use. The customer outcomes are truly lamentable.[xcix] For investment and annual maintenance costs totaling hundreds of millions of dollars[c], it is '...almost impossible to see anything more than marginal productivity improvements for users of [these] systems...'[ci] Why has customer 'information capability' not greatly improved? Because '...the traditional library [automates] existing operations instead of using [technology] to reengineer processes.'[cii] Hobohm sums up the situation claiming 30 years of library systems development has resulted in 'mere [warehouse] automation.'[ciii]
'Little Startling Innovation'[civ]
Current developments in library automation include the 'cybrary', portals and 'library portals'. Cybraries extend the traditional library to include locally held and Internet accessible information resources and desktop personal productivity applications. They are an implementation of the 'scholar's workstation' concept that first appeared in the literature in the mid-1980s.[cv] In library usage, the term 'portal' has been stretched and strained. It includes 'thin portals' comprising '...[Web pages] with a minimal graphics and single click access to individual content sites on similar/relevant/associated topics' and 'thick portals', 'vertical portals' (or 'vortals') that '...provide deeper linkages by making use of searching, harvesting and alerting mechanisms...' supplemented with desktop messaging capabilities. [cvi] The phrase 'library portal' is different yet again and relates to '...enhancements or add-ons to familiar library management systems' that support content integration, metadata, cross-database searching and site security.[cvii] As otherwise welcome as these developments are, they clearly display elements of McLuhan's 'rear view mirror' thinking. Cybraries are taken as evidence that libraries have moved on from the book to the information business though, at core, they're still a repository - still an information stock.[cviii] Internet technology that natively focuses on connectedness, information flow and interaction here is used to transfer print content from a low-tech to a higher-tech storehouse. Beyond the cybrary's desktop messaging capabilities, there is little support for collaboration and workflow-mediated intellectual work.[cix] Library development of portals exhibits the same trademark professional inertia evident in earlier library automation. Having already reduced information management to list making, it's hardly surprising that librarians have largely reduced the meaning of 'virtual library' to predictable, repetitive, indistinguishable and generally undistinguished 'lists-of-links'.[cx] Such orthodox efforts ultimately deliver not much more than a handier way to produce printed texts of printed texts. Elsewhere, portals have even been described as '...the 'reference librarian of the [I]nternet, directing [W]eb surfers to desired destinations.'[cxi] Those who recall Bundy and Wasserman's and especially Wilson's complex, devastating and unanswered criticism of reference service will find this particular prospect distinctly alarming.[cxii]
The immature 'library portal' solutions described by Cox and Yeates have problems both similar and unique to the above. Based on marginalised 30 year old technology and with information retrieval again the design dominant, in only minor respects do they move libraries forward from their current focus on 'knowledge subjects' and inventory management.[cxiii] They deny that portals are applications designed to closer integrate business processes and people, that they are tools for actually doing work - in the present, context information-intensive collaboration. Not the circumspect, controlled reference 'collaboration' repeatedly described in the literature but computer-mediated collaboration that involves much more than a few Web/Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts. They also make the risky assumption that libraries can and should continue to have a separate and inviolate network presence qua libraries. Rather, as Agre suggests, libraries can and should start afresh with an 'assumption of diversity' - that Internet technologies will 'blur or collapse' the current artificial boundaries '...between libraries and neighboring institutions such as publishing, ...records management, [archives]...'[cxiv] Finally, with their implementation and particularly through-life maintenance and support costs unknown and currently unknowable, these offerings may only achieve their modest goals at what quite quickly turn out to be unsupportable additional costs.[cxv] That some vendors label these offerings a 'knowledge portal' and that this is accepted in the library marketplace is evidence of a commercial dialectic that defies understanding. These solutions will continue to separate information from work, librarians from their 'knowledge worker' customers and, more importantly, those workers from each other. They impose significant limitations on their roles, productivity and directly contradict their personal intellectual and cultural preferences that demand flexibility and native collaborative capability in information systems.[cxvi] Continuing down this technology track will, Heseltine argues, only persist in '...separat[ing] information spaces from work spaces [just when information technology] has the capacity to unite information and work spaces to create rich working and learning environments which are given substance by being embedded in practical, non-abstract contexts.'[cxvii]
A provocative explanation for the historical origin of these failures requires taking a long-sighted view of the problem. It is found in Elias' famous argument that, since at least the time of Descartes, the central leitmotif of modern Western epistemology rests on a misconceived notion of the individual as an independent thinker and observer. Descartes' reflections expressed a emerging view of himself as '...as a[n independent] thinker and observer...reliant only on himself in his thinking...'[cxviii] Elias claimed this heroic, individuated view of knowledge is false and that socialised view of intellectual work is correct. He argued that the '...general [human] potential for...connecting events, [the] specific connections they establish and the corresponding concepts used...in their communications and reflections are the result of learning and experience, not simply of each individual...but of a very long line of human generations handing on knowledge and learning from one [generation] to the other...'[cxix] More specifically, '...the great thinkers of the West...were...interpreters and spokesmen of a social chorus... [T]hey were not on their own the originators of the type of thought prevalent in their society.'[cxx] Collins' agrees, arguing in his recent, magisterial world history of intellectual change that '...abstract ideas...exist only where there is a network of intellectuals focused on their own arguments and accumulating their own conceptual baggage train. It is the inner structure of these intellectual networks which shapes ideas, by their patterns of vertical chains across generations and their horizontal alliances and oppositions.'[cxxi] McLuhan directly attributes this individualist, private and fragmented mode of intellectualising to the invention of the printing press. Printing fundamentally changed information (or, 'knowledge'). Typography's most significant gift is that of '...detachment and noninvolvement...The fragmenting...power of the printed word...gave us...dissociation of [human] sensibility.'.[cxxii] McLuhan's argument supports and extends those of Elias and Collins; the print-oriented individual thinks of himself as '...a fragmented entity.'[cxxiii] Descartes' ruminations led to intellectualising being '...parceled out into [a] wide[ning] range of uncommunicating sciences and specialities.'[cxxiv] Dewey and Cutter's noble ambition to build a pathway to humankind's social knowledge was thwarted because, as David Reisman correctly concluded, '...print is the isolating mechanism par excellence.'[cxxv]
As the most prominent avatar and advocate of this debilitating Cartesian legacy, the same indictment applies to libraries. For much more than 20 years, librarians have known have known that information seeking is a social or collaborative activity. Synthesising much previous research, Stoan concluded that '...researchers [obtain] professional guidance from other experts, who [place] citations within a [disciplinary] framework that reveals their relative value and interrelates the parts to [the] whole.'[cxxvi] Academic studies (in computing not librarianship) have continued to expose an active practice of peer collaboration in surmounting problems with library information retrieval systems.[cxxvii] Latterly, Prusak and McGee find this is certainly true of so-called 'knowledge workers' who '...create their own networks of information providers...and use that network for all information needs not 'at hand'. While they make varying use of corporate libraries and information systems, few knowledge workers feel these groups can be relied on for more than a modest amount of their information needs. These individual or group networks are primarily based on other individuals...who...'digest' and evaluate written information before forwarding it.'[cxxviii] The major problem librarians confront is clear; Internet technologies have re-socialised intellectual work.[cxxix] Key allied change drivers including hardware and (Internet) software developments all supporting connectedness, use of cross-hierarchical/functional teams, accelerated decision-making cycles that necessitate interdisciplinary knowledge and social changes in the workforce, notably the decline of the 'boomers' and the rise of Tapscott's 'network-generation' compound this key trend.[cxxx]
Dot Lib or...?
In this environment, it is clear that librarians have reached what Boulding called a 'break boundary.'[cxxxi] Their existing business and service matrices must either successfully renew themselves or else continue on with the current drift into irrelevance and obsolescence. At the core of this break must be a more expansive, re-socialised, contextual understanding of intellectual work. Cook and Brown describe it thus '...Cartesian epistemology needs to be broadened into an 'epistemology of possession' [incorporating an] understanding of knowledge possessed tacitly and knowledge possessed by groups.'[cxxxii] The basis of this demand is a growing volume of research that '...treat[s] groups and organisations in their own right [through] such concepts as 'communities of practice'...'[cxxxiii] It involves recognising that '...individuals and groups each do epistemic work that the other cannot.'[cxxxiv] Work that encompasses both its 'real' and what McLuhan calls its 'articulation' (contextualising or framing) aspects. Previously called 'knowledge management', it's apparently now more correctly (and modestly) called 'knowledge sharing.'[cxxxv]
A library turning to 'knowledge sharing' inevitably involves implementing an information portal. Portal technology alone has successfully resuscitated failing interest in 'knowledge sharing' initiatives across both the government and the private sectors worldwide. Well before implementation, however, librarians must make major, overarching changes to their existing, largely de facto, business and service models. Why? An information portal is not a business model incarnate; it is a service delivery platform. [cxxxvi] Following Lyman, the business model should include a sustainable revenue model, service delivery channels and a distinctive customer value proposition.[cxxxvii] In this context, it may be hoped but not expected that libraries will forgo their trademark insularity and look externally to de facto standard electronic business (e-business) models including those of Rappa and Timmers.[cxxxviii] In the present context and consistent with either framework, the library model may be a hybrid selection, for example, 'collaboration platform' and 'value chain integrator'.[cxxxix] The subordinate service model describes the structure and nature of the services to be provided. This should involve what Levitt calls a 'total product concept'; a tiered service array ranging from core through expected (or minimal), augmented to potential products that defines and, hopefully, redefines its marketspace.[cxl] It should have a unifying, motivational theme, for example, what Kesner calls 'knowledge mediation'.[cxli] This should make it clear that the focus has moved on from managing largely print-based information that is '...local, textual, passive and linear' to developing and sharing customer working knowledge and inter-networking as shared corporate information resources.[cxlii] Specifically, it involves using enterprise portals to combine meaningful business with peer networking, to seed and shape professional intellectual affiliations and alliances and, in the process, to break down disciplinary boundaries and build overall organisational capability.[cxliii] The goal is to supplant the 'anorexic knowledge' characteristic of a print-dominant culture with Weinberger's 'rich, messy, fat knowledge'.[cxliv] In the present context, the less ambitious 'information mediation' is preferred for reasons described by Pukszta: '...[w]e can't manage anyone's ability or willingness to know...[U]ntil we [have] a technology that will extract, analyze and synthesize information and then recommend to a...manager what to do...we're still trying to manage information...'[cxlv] That said, the task is still so much more than librarian's customary role of collecting, organising and preserving information. For Luce, it's now all about '...wir[ing] people's brains together so that sharing, reasoning, and collaboration [again] become part of everyday work.'[cxlvi]
Communal, Casual and Participant: Towards 'Cool' Systems
From a technological perspective, transiting the 'break boundary' requires moving from the library's legacy information-processing, data-centric systems to issue-based, dialogue-centric computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems.[cxlvii] The former clearly represent the breakdown of what Sherry Turkle calls the 'modernist computational aesthetic' that falsely promised to '...[analyse] complicated things by breaking them down into simpler parts... [It] promised to explain and unpack, to reduce and clarify.'[cxlviii] Turkle argues that the use of computers has now changed from 'a modernist culture of calculation' to a focus on simulation, navigation, and interaction.[cxlix] In part evidence, computing research indicates even intellectually regimenting applications such as OPACs are used not in the single-user mode their designers intended but rather as props in collaborative exchanges between users co-operatively seeking to clarify a enquiry and select answer-providing resources.[cl] Thought leaders such as Lynch recognised early on that the new information dynamic demanded innovative new '...highly 'personalised' information systems...[built] around the...information seeking process...[R]ather than...new search tools..[new systems] that...support...the social aspects of the information seeking process...'[cli] Systems that would '...help participants in [communities of practice]...shape and structure a personal [and group] view of the [community] over time, thus providing a filter on information [available to] the community.' [clii] Lyman agrees, arguing that, as social institutions, libraries must support communality within disciplines and professions by '...linking information management technology directly to the communities within which information is created and used...'[cliii] Lynch's 'new system' has finally emerged as the enterprise information portal. Not the fragmented, shape-shifting 'portal' in the disparate meanings found in the library literature and practice, but in the meaning applied in the 'knowledge sharing' community of an application providing integrated access to all corporate information resources and services.[cliv] CSCW-based portals now provide the functionality optimal to supporting, enriching and focusing the emerging amalgam of intellectual work, learning and innovation.[clv] In the DLS Portal, Lotus Domino's integrated collaborative features - virtual document storage, virtual teamrooms and classrooms, online awareness, messaging, calendaring and scheduling and custom business workflow - can be and are repeatedly untied from their architecture and iteratively re-used within an expanded research support environment. Robust, native connectivity to backend relational database bibliographic systems of record is fully supported. New customer 'information capability' is created on a real-time basis.
The systems boundary can be envisaged using one of McLuhan's most confronting analogies, that of 'hot' and 'cool' media.[clvi] Sadly, resurgent interest in McLuhan's work in cultural and media studies is being largely ignored in contemporary librarianship.[clvii] Part of the problem may lie in McLuhan's hyperkinetic prose style, one alternately praised as exhibiting an '...anecdotal facility and a passion for vivid detail that are enchanting and rare...prose that is trenchant and...compact...'[clviii] or damned as a '...cocksure wisecracking manner, [with] extravagant generalizations, and [a] maddeningly repetitive style tend to repel fastidious readers'[clix], as one that '...blithely ignor[es] all the conventions of critical-historical exposition.'[clx] This shouldn't blindside librarians to the importance of his thought, particularly his great work Understanding Media published in 1964. Boulding wrote of the book that it has '...a crackling quality of...ideas and...style...[T]here is a new idea on almost every page, and the sheer density of new ideas is so great that at the end one has a distinct feeling of having been hit over the head.'[clxi] There, McLuhan wrote '...[the] basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium...from a cool one [is] that a hot medium...extends one single sense in 'high definition.' High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, 'high definition.'...Telephone [and, ipso facto, speech] is a cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a meager amount of information [and so much has to be filled in by the listener]. On the other hand, hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience...The hot form excludes, and the cool one includes.'[clxii] Print is a hot medium.[clxiii] The book form is 'a private voice' requiring passive reading and allowing no interactivity. In contrast, cool 'electric technology' favours '...the inclusive and participational spoken word over the specialist written word' allowing the recovery of an 'integral and organic' understanding and use of 'knowledge'.[clxiv] McLuhan held computerisation should promote information and 'knowledge' flow especially through the interrelating of people.[clxv] Updating McLuhan for the network age, Levinson argues that the composite use of Internet communication and collaboration technologies and hypermedia offers the user '...a myriad of possible hidden knowledge connections [that] is constantly being rearranged, added to, linked to new links ad infinitum... The Web and its hyperlinks thus comprise a quintessential case of a cool system...'[clxvi] McLuhan perceptively noted that in the new information environment '...the consumer [will insist] on a larger role, creatively, and want...to become more and more a producer, at all levels.'[clxvii] This contrasts with the '...non-interactivity of taking books out of a library.'[clxviii] It stands in severe, dispiriting contrast with the current brace of legacy, fragmented, non-interactive library systems.[clxix]
Librarians will, however, find the transition to information portals very difficult. They are not now nor have they ever been in the information business.[clxx] They have no overall concept of the whole communications environment. Contrary to hyped up claims, specialisation in the collection, organising and preservation of largely print-based materials does not extend to managing community and work group netspaces containing essentially open-ended, unstructured, volatile and, yes ephemeral, digital content. Their 'datalogic' legacy strongly suggests that the scope of their acceptable solutions will be much too information processing centric to redefine and revitalise their waning service profiles. Further, information portals involve a hitherto unprecedented level of disintermediation with both individual customers and customer groups given much fuller access rights to the application space than for any conventional library technology. This is very problematic for librarians given that the mere possibility of customer peer collaboration within the library environment is barely acknowledged in the literature, much less supported in practice. Certainly, persistent, if episodic, talk of direct customer contribution to library systems is generally regarded as disruptive and counter-productive, as almost antithetical to the library's self-styled civilising role. This stands in stark contrast with current customer experience and expectations. The former '...goes way beyond the passivity of [reading]. They have...control over content, access to a wider range of opinions, and...expect...to contribute opinions themselves. [They] have become their own editors and writers, without the intervention of any central authority.'[clxxi] This directly results from increased personal control through the interactivity provided by the Internet.[clxxii] For Sterne, this interactivity creates ever higher customer expectations. Successively, customers demand direct access to product information, problem resolutions, people and, finally, core service processes.[clxxiii] He labels this upward spiral 'customer integration'.[clxxiv] As on Internet, enterprise portal netspaces are where ideas can first exposed, then vigorously argued back and forth, possibly excoriated but inexorably sharpened through each team or community's unique dialectic. In this context, static library content is less prominent and important than before - not the source of ideas but a source, among other, now recovered, crucial cyber-social means, for the elaboration, confirmation or refutation of existing ideas. The paired implications of this are clear enough; clients' social info-tasking is the content of an information portal[clxxv] and, more broadly, that Butler is correct; self-service is the true 'killer portal application'.[clxxvi]
Also, portals may not extend and probably will contract the scope of librarians' work within the time-worn boundaries of the trade. Librarians have much preferred the passive act of collecting, organising and preserving information and assiduously avoided the dynamic, frequently vociferous exchanges in 'argument subjects' generated in the process of creating new information and doing real intellectual work. Their new work is to get involved in these contextualising and agenda-setting discussions, in disputation and professional polemic and work-in-progress collaboration that previously they've seen as inherently second rank, transitory and threatening.[clxxvii] In these exchanges, 'knowledge' lacks its print-culture politesse; it's argumentative, insubordinate, tendentious, funny, perhaps in equal measure both dangerous and banal but assuredly it's immediate, intuitive and unsanctioned.[clxxviii] Failing that challenge, information portals may not involve librarians much at all. Technology is steadily reducing the need for pre-validation and sorting of information. Within a portal environment, process and project teams and professional communities may easily choose to self-manage their own-shared netspaces. If they require a gatekeeper, these communities may readily select someone other than a librarian. Contrary to librarians' overstated claims, this is a rational approach. Bundy and Wasserman correctly observe that '...the inadequacy of the librarian's educational preparation in [specific disciplines] reaffirms...the client's view...that the level of sophistication to be expected as an aid in problem-solving from library personnel is minimal.'[clxxix] Research also suggests it is a productive approach. Nogur and Allen found that '...[effective] gatekeeping cannot be accomplished just by assigning people to fill the role. Communication networks are formed over a period of time as formal and informal contacts are developed and cultivated...[It]...would [be] better [to select] individuals who are already known to be gatekeepers to positions where their technical and communication strengths can be used to maximum advantage.'[clxxx] The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in the United Kingdom came to the same conclusion. It found librarians in the gatekeeping role lacking the requisite intellectual, cultural and social 'strengths', initiative and responsiveness and replaced them with professional scientists.[clxxxi] Finally, and most threateningly of all, is the sheer speed of innovation in portal technology. Driven, in part, by the invigorating anarchic inventiveness of the 'open source' software movement, such development can only be practically measured in Internet 'years', equivalent to a period of three months. Combined with a superfluity (rather than a lack of) baseline standards, this technological renaissance strongly suggests there won't be another 25 year long period of indulgence for librarians to tinker and bloat 'library portals'.[clxxxii] Corporate (and academic) librarianship won't survive on the basis of what it largely self-assesses as 'quality service'.[clxxxiii] A way forward lies in Marshall's oft-quoted phrase '...support for communication and collaboration is as important as support for information-seeking activities, and that, indeed, support for the former is needed to support the latter.'[clxxxiv] The alternative is that libraries will be left only with the museological elements of their current role and their waning, traditionalist cultural imagery as a defence against downsizing and outsourcing. This effectively equates to the 'know-nothingism' that Davenport and Prusak warn about at the end of their Working Knowledge (1998).[clxxxv] At that point, librarians will have paid in full for captivity to their self-proclaimed professional virtues.
There is a pressing need for libraries to finally cross Boulding's breakpoint and, in the process, support what the always insightful Soshanna Zuboff calls '...the textualisation of sociality...in the service of learning and innovation'.[clxxxvi] To deploy new information systems, superceding the embedded industrial age logic of their legacy applications. Systems that textualise or, in Zuboff's signature term, that 'informate' the projects, processes and events that constitute their organisation's work and that thereby create new possibilities for the production and distribution of 'knowledge'.[clxxxvii] Systems that are document-centric, 'open' and workflow-enabled by design and communal by default, capable of spreading collaboration across business lines and thereby enhancing customer and staff productivity. Systems that facilitate 'informating' the emerging new model of work, one where individuals and teams work with each other in the deep context of their business processes. Contingent upon supportive political, economic and cultural workplace changes, such systems may help reverse the current debilitating, transaction-era fragmentation and over-specialisation of professional work. This heightened, more active and valuable involvement in their customers' professional intellectual work will not save libraries in their current form. It will fundamentally change them from being information storehouses to true catalysts for 'knowledge sharing'.[clxxxviii] Alternately, though McLuhan's 'electric technology' is within the gates, librarians will continue to stand, most precariously among all the information trades, as '...numb, deaf, blind, and mute' before its mercurial, refractory and transfigurative power.[clxxxix]
Origins of the DLS Portal
The Defence Library Service (DLS) is an indirect result of the 1996-1997 Defence Efficiency Review (DER). In response to a DER recommendation that the then Defence Information Services (DIS) be rationalised and market tested, an internal Library Review Working Group (LRWG) was established to review the service. The subsequent report, entitled Rationalisation of Library Services in Defence: Report of the Library Review Working Group, proposed a re-structured organisation that, at the strategic level, would make a more effective contribution to Defence capability by explicitly targeting its services to 'high value adding' clients and client groups.[cxc] The changes proposed in the Report may be summarised as follows.
| Old | New |
| 68 physical libraries | Defence intranet self-service backed by 20 physical libraries |
| emphasis on warehouse function | strong emphasis on research support, desktop-delivery of content and services |
| large 'just-in-case', print-based collections | licence or build electronic content; small print collections |
| function driven | client access driven |
| deskbound ('sit and wait') service model | pro-active ('case work') service model |
| public library approach (including a middle-class 'information welfare' element[cxci]) | special library approach |
Figure 2: DIS and DLS Business Strategies Contrasted
The Review was formally agreed and the Defence Library Service (DLS) came into being on 1 July, 1998.
The scope of the changes required by the Review were significant but not overwhelming, particularly given the additional transition funding made available under the Defence Reform Program (DRP), successor to the DER. Yet, nearly eighteen months after the re-structured organisation was stood up, it was effectively stalled conducting an elaborate, resource-intensive national Client Information Needs Analysis (CINA) study and in resolving difficult problems associated with re-structuring, recruiting and implementing its new client services arm called ClientLink. There was little, if any, progress on delivering the agreed strategic goals of the Review. By November, 1999, the lack of progress and its dispiriting effect on morale was palpable, certainly among the staff of ElectronicLink, the DLS' new information systems unit. In that circumstance, two ElectronicLink staff, Sonia Gherdevich and Iain Brown, began lobbying their then Director, Dorothy Harris, for approval to develop an electronic services delivery capability consistent with the primary directive of the Review. After a series of long meetings over several weeks that involved typically open and frank discussions and vigorous questioning, the Director finally agreed the initiative.
With the Director's approval in hand, from December, 1999 through January 2000 the current author drafted a project definition report (PDR) for the proposed system. The PDR called for '...a 'corporate portal' site consolidating and integrating access to commercial and locally-developed 'open source' (or unclassified) information resources and interactive access to DLS services (e.g., research support).'[cxcii] Portal was defined in the PDR as follows:
'...a Web...solution [for] distributing business information and consolidating business intelligence objects (reports, documents, spreadsheets, databases, etc.) generated [internally or externally] by making them easily accessible to non-technical users via standard browser technology...[Portals] also provide...access to...[business process] applications...'[cxciii]
Selected agreed objectives for the Portal were as follows:
In February, 2000 the Director approved the draft PDR document. At her subsequent instruction, the author drafted a new business case for additional DRP transition funding. In late March, 2000, the DLS received official notice that the funding submission was successful. On that basis, a Request for Tender (RFT) was then issued on limited release to local (i.e. Canberra-based) information technology companies. Due to the burdensome technical constraints associated with the then Canberra Region Information Systems Project (CRISP) and software compliance testing and certification delays associated with the new Defence Standard Operating Environment (SOE), the RFT release was limited to established applications developers working with the SOE-certified Lotus Domino environment. Three responses were received. Of these, subsequent discussions with two firms indicated that either the concept of the proposed solution was not compatible with their business plan or the prospect of a long term, active partnership with the DLS to build a new application was not a compelling business proposition. The single positive outcome came from lengthy discussions with Wizard Software Solutions (WSS), a subsidiary of Wizard Computer Training (WCT), then Canberra's only Lotus-certified Platinum business partner. Initially wrong-sided by the first extensively footnoted tender WSS had ever encountered, they positively responded to the overall scope of the proposed application and, crucially, to the requirement for a development partnership. A partnership approach was compatible with their overall corporate philosophy, staff recruitment, training and mentoring practices. In pre-contract discussions, WSS representatives cited previous examples of similar engagements in the completion of which they had developed parts of the proposed DLS solution, specifically the full-text search engine component. Their proposal was that participation in the DLS Portal project would allow WSS to consolidate and extend this earlier work with significant cost and time savings accruing to the DLS. Negotiation of contract terms and conditions went smoothly, including the usually protracted resolution of intellectual property (IP) issues. For the Portal I development, the Commonwealth retained the background IP and WSS the foreground IP.
Given the then problematic circumstances of the DLS, the governance structure for the Project was significantly pared down from the Leintz and Rea-derived model generally used for technology projects.[cxciv] The structure comprised of the following roles: Project Sponsor; Project Manager; Project Team (and specialist Task Groups) and the Contractor (WSS). ElectronicLink staff took a clear leadership role. The Project Manager and almost members of the Project Team were appointed from its ranks. The sole determinants for membership of the Team were technical and business process expertise. This was considered mandatory as both the nature of the application and its development cycle required the ability to quickly make informed collective decisions on possible scope changes and capability tradeoffs. ElectronicLink staff directed almost every element of the application development from strategic issues, through business requirements analysis, information solutions design, systems and technical architecture, human computer interface (HCI) issues to testing ad implementation. They also made crucial contributions to startup content development, training, marketing and promotional materials. Regular fortnightly and on-demand exceptional meetings were held with the WSS contract manager and specialist technical staff, with the outcomes forming the basis of regular reports to the Director of the Library Service in her role as Project Sponsor. The development agreement included a flexible and powerful dispute resolution mechanism though, during the entire life of the Project, it has never been invoked.
WSS staff commenced substantive work on the first version of the DLS Portal (hereafter 'Portal I') in May, 2000. Following an initial re-scoping exercise by ElectronicLink and WSS staff combined, the outlines of a development plan emerged. In summary form, the stages were as follows:
Given the then innovative nature of the software development involved, it was agreed between the parties to use the faster, evolutionary or iterative systems prototyping method.[cxcv]
The actual development process involved an open, honest and pro-active exchange of knowledge, skills and perspectives between ElectronicLink and WSS staff. Both parties began what has since proved to be a long (and continuing) course of instruction in each other's core business processes, corporate culture and, of course, professional jargon. From the DLS side, the Project would have been totally unsustainable without the high-order information systems and library skills within the ElectronicLink unit. As described by Rob Tucker at ALIA 2000, that skill set includes systems analysis, systems programming and scripting, systems administration, information systems design, information architecture and technology project management. The residuals from librarianship include an understanding of metadata, information needs analysis and database search and retrieval technology and techniques.[cxcvi] These skills were amplified in many different ways by the extraordinary degree of cohesion and collegiality among ElectronicLink staff. From the WSS side, the development process was aided by a remarkable willingness to share valuable knowledge and experience accumulated through years of bespoke software development experience both direct with the Lotus Domino base platform and in integrating both vendor and third-party applications. That several WSS staff working on the Portal held the Lotus Certified Instructors (CLI) vendor qualification made significant, recurrent contributions to the Project.
Notwithstanding several months of very productive work, in the period April-May, 2001, the Project suffered two significant but very different setbacks, both nearly fatal, though in entirely different respects. First, in April, came the departure from the DLS of ElectronicLink's Director, Dorothy Harris, on medical grounds. As she had convincingly demonstrated two years earlier with her creative and unwavering support for the prize-winning RIM-r research management system[cxcvii], Dorothy, alone at her level, understood that only calculated risk-taking would differentiate an exceptional library from a time-serving one. Her departure involved a major loss of professional energy, incisive thinking, political skills and, in particular, executive-level technological awareness, from which the DLS has never recovered. Soon thereafter, in late-May, came the second blow with a decision by the WCT principals to close down the WSS business unit and withdraw altogether from the software development business in order to concentrate on their core business of commercial applications software training. Following an understandable period of confusion and doubt, it was finally established through industry contacts that the WSS staff most heavily involved in development of Portal I had subsequently joined a new Canberra Lotus software development firm called Synergy Innovations. The inevitable contract re-negotiations followed over the next several weeks. Again, IP issues were resolved early on. In this instance, the parties agreed that all the background IP and almost all the foreground IP was to reside with the Commonwealth.
By late June, 2001, it was clear that to keep to the Project timeline it would be necessary to temporarily forgo several of the most keenly sought-after native (or embedded) Domino-based Portal I applications. These included the content management system (CMS), a server-side citation management application and an online survey (or Webpoll) capability. Rather than launch a cut-down application, a decision was quickly made to integrate selected 'open source' applications available under the terms of the General Public Licence (GPL). The principal advantage of this selective use of 'open source' code was that it delivered on 2 key technical goals of the Project, to minimise the use of static Web content and make all content full-text searchable. What might very reasonably be considered significant dangers inherent in using GPL applications in general and early release versions of certain research-oriented applications in particular, were clearly understood and acknowledged. The principal mitigating factors included strong in-house skills with the application development environments including relational databases (MySQL, Postgres), programming and scripting languages (C/C++, Java, Javascript, Perl and PHP), sound systems management, a thoroughly documented and tested systems backup regime and agreed business continuity plans. Of these applications, by far the most complex and powerful was a Servlet/Java Server Pages (JSP) citation management application called Open Reference.[cxcviii] Unlike comparable personal desktop solutions, Open Reference included workgroup support, unlimited length records, extensive provision for subject analysis and, most importantly, a customisable record template that prompted for critical analysis and review of content. Other Portal capability was recovered by integrating a number of MySQL/PHP applications including the highly regarded, powerful bulletin board phpBB and ssFAQ (a database of frequently asked questions). The defining Yahoo!-style 'list-of-links' capability was initially implemented using phpHoo2. This was subsequently augmented with the more powerful and robust phpLinks application. Unlike some other projects, ElectronicLink understood from the outset that our commitment to use 'open source' in the production Portal environment was always a transitional strategy. Our subsequently successful exposure identified the same benefits (customisability, direct developer support and, overall, quite modest cost overheads for key capability improvements) and encountered the same problems (minor instability, poor version control and poor to non-existent documentation) as reported elsewhere in the literature.[cxcix]
Approximately two months out from the projected Portal I launch date, the DLS' administrative support unit (BusinessLink) became heavily involved in devising, developing, funding and managing Portal marketing and promotional strategies and materials. BusinessLink staff brought a mix of research and marketing skills, personal commitment and enthusiasm to the task that was admirable in every way. Their contribution encompassed everything from Senior Executive Service (SES) briefings through event planning and co-ordination and a stream of Defence newspaper and newsmagazine articles to promotional giveaways (bookmarks, pens and posters). BusinessLink staff quite willingly stepped outside their official scope of operations to support ClientLink by making key, credible contributions to pre-launch Portal I content development. In what subsequently proved to be an insight of crucial political importance, BusinessLink's then Assistant Director, Teresa Guica, proposed that the then Minister of Defence, Peter Reith, launch the service at HMAS Cerberus at Westernport, Victoria in the Minister's own electoral district. A key element in favour of this proposal was its close accord with the high priority assigned by the Commonwealth to the sustaining role of Defence establishments in regional Australia. The proposal was accepted and the Minister, in the presence of senior officers from all three armed services and senior executives from DLS' parent Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group (CSIG), officially launched the Portal at HMAS Cerberus on 13 August, 2001.
Measures of Success
The impact of the Portal I launch was both immediate and sustained. Successful page requests increased 145 percent over the pre-launch monthly total, average monthly pages served increased 76 percent and average daily pages served rose above a quarter million. More significantly still, total monthly data transfer volumes rose to a level placing the DLS Portal in the top three Defence systems by this measure (the other two being the corporate finance and human resources systems known as ROMAN and PMKeyS respectively). Overall application availability well exceeds the 98.5 percent mandated in the DLS' current Service Level Agreement with the Defence Computing Bureau (DCB), its principal information and communications technology provider. In the first year of its operation, the Portal's most popular resource was the specialist geo-political and military information resource known as Jane's Information Services. Then, in decreasing order of popularity, Australian Standards in full-text, online news sources, the Portal's full-text site (or 'Domain') search engine, databased forms (e.g., customer registration, inter-library loans), the Library Directory, electronic journals and the online library catalogue. Anticipated and quite minor problems with the over-stretched Defence Restricted Network (DRN) and aging SOE desktop environments aside, the reaction to Portal I was strongly positive. Quite early on the Portal was recognised by the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) and the then Defence Knowledge [Management] Staff (DKS) as among the most innovative uses of Lotus Domino within the portfolio. The latter subsequently cited the application to the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) as an example of Departmental 'best practice' in information management. The Portal has been demonstrated to many other Commonwealth agencies, regional academic institutions and commercial firms to uniformly positive reviews. Subsequently, senior American and Australian IBM/Lotus executives gave the application very favourable reviews. This directly led to the Portal being showcased at the Lotus Global Government Forum (LGGF) held in London in April, 2002. At the time of writing, the Portal is nominated in the 'Best Portal' category for this year's international IBM Beacon Awards. Results of the judging are expected to be announced in mid-February, 2003.
With a capable through incomplete Portal I application stable in production use, substantive work commenced in November, 2001 on a second round development specification. Selectively and in summary form, the main goals for Portal II include the following:
Key drivers for the strong focus on customer collaboration in Portal II were theoretical works and innovative practical implementations of socio-technical information systems. Prominent among the former are 'collaboratories', defined by one of its leading advocate as '...[centres] without walls, in which...researchers can [work] without regard to geographical location - interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, and accessing information in digital libraries...'[cc] Originally funded by the US National Science Foundation and operating in scientific laboratories under the control of the US Departments of Defence and Energy, collaboratories provide the infrastructure, middleware and 'collaboatory experience' needed to support distributed, collective research. Research opportunities can be supported in near real-time with team members '[sharing] their instruments, data, software, publications, and expertise in an electronic space that is as accessible and usable as laboratories and offices down the hall.'[cci] Subsequently, the label has been loosely applied to prominent Internet services such as the Open Directory, Web encyclopaedias, library 'Ask-A' services and, most famously of all, the now defunct Napster. The other more direct influence is Marchionini's concept of the 'sharium' or '...[a] virtual workspace with rich content and powerful tools where people can work independently or collaborate with each other to learn and solve information problems.'[ccii] Moving forward from quite robust criticism of ILMS vendors and their current offerings, Marchionini proposes use of cognate Internet collaboration technologies to directly support communities of practice, thereby aggregating and making accessible their knowledge, skills and insights as a shared intellectual resource. The benefits are both direct and indirect; '[i]nteracting with other people...personalises and customises...knowledge and makes it much more accessible and useful. Additionally, the interaction itself provides metacognitive benefits and aids in finding the needed information in our own heads as we act to articulate, reflect, and examine feedback.'[cciii] Their repeated warnings about the 'limits of virtuality' aside, even Cohen and Prusak provided inspiration with a case study where '...a mix of successful communications techniques' had been 'key' to sustaining a virtual community in physics.[cciv] To this, we can definitely add superannuating the usual library transaction-centric solutions and adopting Zuboff's approach of 'informating' core business activities, that is, embedding these technologies directly in work-centred contexts, or, in other words, avoiding both 'datafication' and 'infologic'.
Co-development with Synergy Innovations resumed in April, 2002 using the self-same business and software development models as agreed at the very inception of the Project. The scope of the second-round development was subsequently and by joint agreement widened to include re-development of the core Portal engines, the metadata framework and extensive information design re-working. For the first time, this round also included a significant data migration as the 'list-of-links' and full-text data accumulated in the disparate 'open source' applications used in Portal I was migrated to Portal II. That Domino handled this new requirement with the expected ease is confirmation yet again of its strong and robust information integration capabilities. The strong rapport that progressively developed between ElectronicLink staff and the staff of WSS and, subsequently, Synergy Innovations, continues through to the present and is one of the signature elements of the overall Portal initiative. What began 3 years ago as an exploratory journey with major, unidentifiable risks has subsequently become one of the more successful government-commercial sector partnerships in the recent history of Defence.
'Controversial, definitely. Terrifying, possibly. A good thing? Almost certainly.'[ccv]
Consistent with the preceding argument and directly contrary to the marketing spin of some portal vendors, it is the DLS' experience with Portals I and II that they are inherently 'disruptive technology', in both the specific commercial and commonsensical understandings of that phrase. Portals exhibit a majority of the distinguishing features identified by Christensen for 'disruptive technologies', viz., greater ease of use, support for '...a very different value proposition than had been available [in the marketplace] previously' and, possibly, '...worse product performance at least in the near-term.'[ccvi] The key attribute here is support for a new value proposition, one that certainly does not readily fit within existing and conservative library business models. A simpatico model in this context is one that encourages calculated risk taking, which looks forward, rather than obsessively and calculatingly backward into McLuhan's 'rear-view mirror'. Portals are equally or even more so disruptive in the second, more usual sense in that they constitute an intrusion of 'Internet culture' into what some commentators see as a hierocratic public sector with a workplace culture that is introverted, reputation-fearing and risk-averse. At an operational level, they may, very quickly and publicly, expose a conspicuous ignorance of and gaps in nominally agreed and understood business processes, policies and procedures. They may accentuate existing levels of technological shock and spotlight previously disguised deep levels of 'professional' myopia. Their introduction may occasion both mission drift and/or 'professional' role confusion. Once started however, there is no easy exit point from the implementation (and business renewal) process. These and other workforce issues must be confronted head-on in a direct, robust and relentless manner. For, as Hulser forcefully reminds librarians, they no longer have the luxury of managing even their traditional subset of the total information environment at the previously steady pace of their own choosing. Either they will remake their business and services now or else they '...will be forced to comply with what others [determine to be] the standards of information provision...'[ccvii]
The DLS Portal II technical architecture comprises several engines.[ccviii] They may be described as both Lotus Domino Services shipped with the base Domino product as well as custom-built application engines designed and developed specifically for Portal II. The latter are designed to provide a Notes document-based configuration for functionality that would otherwise require custom software programming.
The Domino Services include the following elements:
The custom-built application engines are as follows:
The Portal II application is both highly scalable and may be readily replicated in full on any appropriately sized and supported computing infrastructure.
The main elements of the base Portal platform are its databased Directory, integrated metadata, site searching and the Web content management system (CMS). The Directory is implemented on a separate but interlinked Domino database. Full-text Directory searching, integrated binary content (photos, maps, sound and video files) storage, 'live' URLs and 'mailtos' are all supported. Its detailed personal and site descriptions include staff subject specialisations, soon to be integrated with the Portal's research management system and used to support skills-based research request 'incident ticket' assignment and routing. Multiple, standard Directory reports (in Domino, called 'Views') generated dynamically include Location By State and Staff (Name) and Location By Acronym, Staff and Subject Specialisation. Directory and all other Portal content presentation is under Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) control. Backend maintenance is fully graphical, with 100 percent equivalent functionality using either a Notes client or Web browser. No HyperText Markup Language (HTML) skills are required to maintain either the Directory's structure or any of its content.
The Portal includes a fully integrated, standards-based metadata framework. Creation of metadata is mandatory for all new and revised content. The metadata implemented on the Portal is the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata standard developed by the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).[ccix] A superset of the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) standard, as implemented, it incorporates several custom, information-sharing extensions to represent non-bibliographic entities (organisations, people and projects) as information resources. The authoring of metadata is fully graphical and template-based using a Domino client, Web browser (again with 100 percent equivalent functionality across both clients) or via import from a plain text file. A combination of controlled term and free-text fields are used. Content is mandatory in the initial 14 fields displayed on the default template and signified as such through the use of special field markers. Any number of user-defined, partially pre-completed template overlays may be defined to expedite and promote the standardised description of the different kinds of information resources and services. The framework supports two strands of subject analysis; a high-level 'Theme Classification' (limited to 16 subject descriptors) and a more detailed 'Theme Keyword', the latter currently using 6200 Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) terms. The 'Theme Keyword' field supports multiple, concurrent values. Full-text searching and browsing is available across all subject terms. Automatic record completeness and consistency checking is done on saving and exiting from the metadata screen. Mandatory fields lacking data are automatically displayed in default template order to facilitate correction by the author. The metadata also incorporates a content or resource release (or embargo) control and automatic aged content expiry capability. Batch import and export of metadata records formatted to other common standards (AGLS, Dublin Core, EdNA) is also supported.
Full-text and fielded metadata site searching in Portal II is supported using a new custom designed JSP engine that provides a single, customisable full site and designated external domain search and retrieval capability. Over and above its Portal I functionality, the new search engine includes the ability to specify 1-nth areas or Domino applications to be excluded from search result sets and to 'spider' other specified Defence intranet sites. Search result sets are returned in a uniform manner, loosely based on the very popular and familiar Google format. Multiple types of full-text, abstract and citation source files may be defined to the search engine. Similarly, multiple output options in addition to the default Google-esque listing are supported. Integrated Z39.50 support is identified in the specification but does not currently have an assigned development priority.
Portal II includes a custom-built, multi-stage Web content management system (CMS).[ccx] The DLS' decision to incorporate full CMS capability within the site was not a straightforward one. What Cox and Yeadon rightly argue is the essentially static, simple character of most library site content and low overall data volumes do not adequately justify the development costs involved.[ccxi] Nor does their populist argument that '...processes that increase participation in the...site' provide the necessary additional grounds for proceeding with CMS development.[ccxii] A more robust justification lies in building a new conduit for people with something interesting to say - librarians making use of their subject specialist skills as trend analysts, interpreters and synthesisers of information. Using CMS as a controlled environment that promotes the development of new online communication skills and focusing on quality, performance, visibility of and accountability for intellectual effort - not quantity. The DLS' decision to use Domino workflow for its custom CMS is, based on recent Forrester Group research, consistent with dominant industry practice both in respect of the choice of Domino and in the decision to implement a custom solution.[ccxiii] As site volume and content types build and mature and as broader organisational changes may dictate, the business rules and editorial processes of the Portal II CMS will scale to meet those demands. Other IBM/Lotus solutions that may be considered include Domino.Doc and, prospectively, IBM Content Manager.
The Portal II CMS implements a high-level, 4-stage publication model covering creation and approval through publication, modification and review to archiving and deletion. It supports multiple discrete roles across each of these stages, each of which with progressively greater system rights and responsibilities. A multi-stage content release model covers the actual process of creating and releasing site content. This includes all stages from the initial proposal for new content, through development and positioning to its release. If required, iterative rounds of content authoring, editing and re-working are maintained all under CMS workflow control. Only Sun StarOffice or the Notes R5 client is required to author content. The CMS uses a custom Domino workflow engine to hold all the sequence and status information required for content to transit between CMS stages in a single Notes document. As and when required, workflow engine processes are called through Domino scripts. The engine can validate fields, determine user rights and permissions, prompt the user for mandatory information, automatically update fields on the document, log the process to an audit trail and maintain the integrity of documents. The act of publishing simply involves attaching the resulting file to its metadata record, in the same way that attachments are created when using either the all-too familiar Lotus Mail or Microsoft Outlook messaging clients. Domino dynamically generates all HTML displayed on the site. Publication control, including automatic content embargo and expiry, are supported through integration with the Portal metadata. CMS also issues alerts of its users' current actions via e-mail (to either Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook clients), Lotus Domino 'views' or periodic newsletter summaries). The frequency of issue of the newsletter is configurable by the Site Manager. The task of updating the CMS to accommodate required workflow changes is straightforward. The engine is readily configurable by those with basic Domino developer skills.
Both Portal I and II support a fully graphical administration module. The module houses all the components that link its information resources and applications together. This includes full control over site structure and content, all database variables (including all controlled metadata values), site security, access logs, error logging and more. A key feature of the module is server-side 'point-and-click' site management including content positioning. Content ranging from individual items up to and including whole sections of the site can be repeatedly copied or moved with only several mouse clicks. Of course, this capability is only available with the highest level of site security. Batch import and updating of all controlled site variables is supported. Key additional functionality available with the first release of Portal II is the clear separation of structure (presentation) and content management, making the module faster and more reliable in everyday use. Projected further development includes integrating access to lower-level application and system management functions through Domino server extensions written to address the Notes C/C++ API libraries.
'Don't Just Transact - Collaborate!'[ccxiv]
Consistent with the dominant theme of this paper, the following discussion focuses on the Portal's collaborative capabilities. These capabilities are being progressively delivered across a range of embedded Domino applications.[ccxv] Among these, the most capable and prominent of is Lotus Quickplace, a Web-based virtual teamroom environment.[ccxvi] Quickplace provides a secure, server-side capability for sharing ideas and threaded discussion, resolving project or business issues, collaborative authoring of documents, files, newsletters and more. An integrated and robust, albeit basic, project management toolkit supports the coordination of people, tasks, plans and resources. It also acts as a repository for related documents including but not limited to project plans and presentations, progress reports, investigative report findings and 'lessons learned' guidance. Rich content authoring only requires Sun's StarOffice, any other desktop productivity suite or it may be created directly within the Quickplace environment. QuickPlace automatically converts native file format presentations into a sequential series of Web pages. No HTML skills are required. Document version control is fully supported.
Selected key features of Quickplace include on-demand availability; new teamrooms can be created on-request and are immediately available to users, regardless of their location. Multiple, concurrent Quickplace instances are easily administered from a central virtual console. Second is exceptional ease-of-use. A developmental design control was that the software requires only a minimal investment of the user's time.[ccxvii] Accordingly, Quickplaces comprise only three discrete objects: Web pages, folders and one or more 'rooms' (the last being more highly secured areas providing strictly controlled access to discussions and/or static content of a higher security classification). Given appropriate rights, business and non-technical professionals can readily customise a Quickplace to suit the specific needs of the current project, process or other initiative. Such rights, however, extend well beyond simple interface re-design. QuickPlaces are truly self-service applications. End-users may take full responsibility for managing access to and content within their netspace. Librarians need not necessarily apply. Third and new in Quickplace 3.0 is the 'My Places' personalisation capability that provides customers with a single, integrated listing of all the Quickplaces of which they are a member and all other instances in the current Domino domain that allow anonymous access. Fourth, is cross Quickplace searching. Finally, there is the option for direct integration with Lotus' instant messaging solution called Sametime.[ccxviii] This provides Quickplace users with real-time, peer online availability and chat plus the ability to schedule online meetings in the QuickPlace workgroup calendar.[ccxix]
At the time of writing, Quickplaces are used in DLS Portal II to support corporate (i.e., national) information systems projects, communities of practice centred on information management and 'knowledge issues' and to co-develop and manage the DLS' information systems infrastructure together with its major business partner, the DCB. Yet, even in aggregate, these instances comprise only a small part of the new, 'informated' environment projected for a mature Portal II release. A solution focused not on information retrieval but on immediate, central and perhaps animated information exchange, on identifying and clarifying 'knowledge' issues, co-authoring documents, brainstorming presentation concepts and content, working on time-critical project deliverables and more. That is, to 'informate' the kind of demanding, highly focused and productive team environment recounted so clearly and tellingly by Tracy Kidder in his landmark study, The Soul of the New Machine.[ccxx] Clearly, there are unresolved issues here around librarians being involved as equal partners in cross-disciplinary project and process teams (virtual and otherwise). The Special Library Association's Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century muses Zen-like on librarians learning 'the wisdom of teams' and then, almost grudgingly, concedes they may be 'willing' to take employment in project work.[ccxxi] It describes the librarian's contribution as including creating databases and searchable full-text document files, online publishing and, predictably enough, creating more 'lists-of-URL-links'.[ccxxii] What librarians could contribute in virtual teamrooms where most of these tasks are handled by the application and where the gap between the creators and user of intellectual work is closed shut, appears as an unresolved question. [ccxxiii] That they will be expected to make a new, more expansive and personal contribution, to help build team connectedness and trust based largely on their expert-level subject knowledge, seems to have conveniently slipped from librarians' and their lobbyists' line-of-sight. Lippincott correctly identifies the significant teamwork training required to get librarians to the point were they may successfully contribute to such cross-disciplinary project teams.[ccxxiv] Such training can only help. For when it is even possible to claim that the ideal library user is '...a 60-year-old, female, friendless, intellectual, technologically sufficient deaf-mute', it is quite safe to acknowledge that only a long and very difficult journey is ahead.[ccxxv]
The second collaborative application, known as Domino Reference, is a server-side citation management application. It uses the Domino object store to hold its information, which consists of a set of links to reference sites together with extensive metadata information about those links. Select features of Reference include multi-tier categorisation of Web resources (author, post time or subject category), access control on listed resources (for both groups and individuals), full-text searching, CMS integration for content development and publication, personalisation capability and integrated, agent-controlled link checking. The application navigation model follows the now very familiar Yahoo!-like structure. The information stored is categorised by a set of customisable keys. Multiple levels of categorisation are available, supporting a 'drill down' style menu system. In addition to these attributes, the navigation system shows a list of categories as well as a list of content (i.e., categories may exist at the same level as content) together with options to list content by different keys (i.e., by author, date or subject). Further to the information displayed on the navigation screen, each item is displayed together with its related metadata. Augmenting the capability found in Open Reference[ccxxvi] and moving well beyond the standard functionality provided by personal citation management applications, Domino Reference supports the extended critical evaluation and analysis of content. Authors citing sources may describe, at length, the research problem, the methodological and/or technical approach used, its strengths and weaknesses compared and contrasted to other studies and an overall assessment of its contribution to public knowledge of the topic or discipline. Again demonstrating the development features and flexibility of the Domino environment, a 'lite' version of Reference, called Domino Links, is used to provide the ubiquitous Yahoo!-style 'list-of-links' feature found on almost all library Web sites. The same database and data structure is used for both applications. The key difference between them is that the Links record template simply suppresses display of the analytical, value-adding fields found in its peer Reference application.
Consistent with the interpretative argument above, both Reference and Links support the addition of user-contributed information. Registered users may augment any Reference bibliography or Links list by adding the standard citation information and associated metadata in their areas of professional specialisation and/or topical interest. All such contributions are immediately put under CMS control, supporting the application of a workflow-enabled editorial review and enhancement process prior to publication on the site. When released, these valuable contributions are displayed in the threaded format familiar to Notes discussion database or mailing list users. This functionality implements a key design objective that, as far as practicable, Portal II be 'author agnostic'. That is, the application should not prejudice content created by librarians over that offered up by customers of the Portal. Further, as both these applications are object-enabled by default, user contributions, in both this context and generally across the Portal II environment, are certainly not limited to plain text or HTML. Over and above this user capability, is the now usual personalisation option that allows users to view and manage their own citations as well as bookmark those contributed by their professional colleagues and others.
Together with other Portal II applications, Reference and Links represent significant progress towards realising a long-lived call in the literature for librarians to recognise their customers' knowledge and skill and to provide systems that encourage them to provide topical, specialist information that is seamlessly integrated into the library's services profile.
Nearly 40 years ago, Swanson described what was and unsurprisingly still remains an innovative and truly inspirational philosophy of information systems design of the catalogue as '...a kind of 'dialogue' that could take place at a console.'[ccxxvii] The systematic historical records able to be kept by the 'mechanised library' could readily be used '...to discover groups of people with similar literature interests, or...discover groups of books which share a high incidence of similiar use and which grouping...ought to be reflected in the catalog.'[ccxxviii] Swanson called for '...a 'user-indexed' library [that in] addition to...recording automatically discovered [these] associations between users and books...could more directly design a system that would...record user annotations on cataloging entries.'[ccxxix] Twenty-six years on, Koenig keenly observed that '...[l]ibrarians have spent the last third of a century attempting to devise systems that enable their patrons to more effectively judge the relevance or likely utility of materials - with embarrassingly little success.' [ccxxx] Reference and Links draw inspiration from Koenig's decade plus old proposal to '...[link] bibliographic and text retrieval systems to...electronic bulletin boards - in other words, [meshing] library catalogues and full-text databases into hypertext systems in which [user supplied information] comprises a major component of entries.'[ccxxxi] The emergent capabilities of both these applications are also clearly consistent with more recent proposals such as Jacobsen and Lynne's concept of a 'SuperPAC'. [ccxxxii] More generally, they are also congruent with Wall's demand that librarians must '...move on to knowledge systems, which will help us apply basic 'laws', relationships, perspectives, and values to information'.[ccxxxiii] However, as Koenig rightly acknowledges, even still immature capability such as this won't even begin to its 'knowledge sharing' potential unless librarians discard their shop-worn practices requiring monopoly control of the supply of even bibliographic information and specifically their hidebound prejudices against user-supplied information.[ccxxxiv]
The third application, an enhanced version of the GPL Open Conference application called Domino Conference, allows the DLS to manage most aspects of hosting internal and trades conferences. Specifically, it supports event and program scheduling, registration of delegates and the capturing, organising and full-text indexing of conference presentations. Initially, a new conference document is created with appropriate general details (e.g., date, time, venue, purpose, scope, etc.). A program of events is created, in either detailed or skeletal form. Individual event items may be added immediately or subsequently upon confirmation of the program. Once both the conference and event program exists, presentation documents created specifically for the conference may be added to the database. Presentation documents typically include both an abstract and a slide presentation created using standard presentation software such as Sun Presentation or Lotus Freelance Graphics. Further, Conference provides a single, integrated view of all conference program and presenter details. Satisfied that the conference is suitable to their either their work-related needs or for broader professional development purposes, intending delegates are able to register to attend one or more conferences from within the application. Automatic confirmation of registrations is supported. The details and full content of presentations at all past and currently scheduled conferences for which content release authority has been granted are readily accessible either through the application structure or using the Portal II full-text search engine.
A standout Conference collaborative feature allows users to post evaluative comments against a full conference and/or against individual constituent presentations.
Of course, this capability is restricted to registered conference delegates only. Opening a conference site within Portal II shows both the presentations and the accumulated comments on the same screen, the latter again in the familiar, structured or threaded format for overall ease of use.
The fourth application is the Portal's integrated research management application. The reasons that libraries should use such software are now well established. It greatly improves what is usually an inefficient manual work-sharing system, provides process transparency for end-users and clearly establishes personal accountability for work. As or more important however is that, when integrated with business intelligence (BI) and online survey software, research management applications support building detailed user and user group profiles. This aggregated data facilitates libraries using market segmentation, targeting and retention strategies, a much more sophisticated and realistic service delivery approach than the vapid bibliographical Benthamism found in the literature.[ccxxxv] Using what Kotler and Armstrong call 'behavioural segmentation' (or segmentation based on customer professional knowledge and skills), librarians' direct involvement with individual users, formal teams and communities-of-practice working at the cutting edge of their disciplines can inspire service delivery initiatives that benefit all users.[ccxxxvi] Elsewhere, Brown and Williams provide a detailed description of the development and functionality of the DLS' original, prize-winning, custom research management solution.[ccxxxvii] Following extensive further research and planning, that application was replaced with a lightly customised instance of the c.Service customer support solution from GWI Software (Portland, Oregon). As modified, c.Service is a composite of 2 databases: a fully-featured product support and contact management application that provides full support for all aspects of the research management process and c.Knowledge, a 'knowledgebase' or a repository of completed, peer-reviewed and rated research case-histories. Latterly, however, change drivers including some instability in the Australasian distribution and support channel, a decision by GWI to withdraw support for the solution and concentrate on its help desk core business, difficulties in overcoming entrenched resistance by library staff to changing reference work practices[ccxxxviii] and another DLS restructure have culminated in a decision to replace c.Service with its much more developed stablemate known as c.Support.
c.Support is a research manager's portal within a portal. It offers integrated access to its customer profile, incident management and correspondence databases plus a knowledgebase, equivalent to that in the superceded c.Service application. Staff user (or 'technician') desktop presentation may be individually and iteratively customised using framesets. Overall, c.Support provides 360 degree coverage of the (research) support process from the user's logging of their own enquiry through managing the 'ticket' and recording the related work history, consulting the knowledgebase and messaging the customer for points of clarification and in-process direction to, finally, mailing the completed response and generating a follow-up customer survey. c.Support also delivers 100 percent equivalent functionality to both the Notes client or Web browser. End-user collaboration options include self-registration, creating and submitting their own information requests (currently via e-mail and, soon, through the application), participating in online discussion groups, self-help through browsing the content of integrated online frequently-asked-questions and knowledgebase to viewing the status of their open 'tickets' in real-time. Multiple knowledgebases and customer content ratings are both supported.
Ease-of-use and customer information searching is enhanced through a new case-based reasoning engine. Ease-of-use may be still further enhanced through access to the application source code that enables the application manager to re-design the information request form and also to establish automatic call alert notifications on behalf of users. As foreshadowed above, integration with the staff subject specialisations listed in the Portal Directory will finally support skills-based routing of research calls to DLS researchers. Finally, c.Support also offers close integration with Sametime via an applet that may be installed either during or at any time subsequent to product installation. Using Sametime, customers may choose to 'Find-An-Expert' in any one of multiple, topic-based chat rooms with DLS staff. The application is straightforward in actual use. A Sametime window opens in the c.Support Portal, the customer enters a topic to discuss and submits the query; the topic displays in a dialogue to all available staff currently logged into Sametime. At the time of writing, this option is acquired for a limited release trial. Subsequently, it is expected that extended application of Sametime across the Portal II environment will follow in the second and third quarters of 2003.
The fifth application is the Portal's powerful, custom-built virtual polling booth (or Domino Webpoll). This provides the capability to create and manage multiple, concurrent, multi-sectioned, online polls. A Webpoll is comprised of one or more 'Poll Items' in a pre-described order as defined by its author. A Webpoll may either be created from scratch or their author(s) may readily copy individual questions or complete sections from an existing poll. Webpoll 'Items' comprise a question, associated free text (used for a variety of purposes including a welcome page, instructions for poll respondents, a Thank You Page and more). A Webpoll Item Group is a group of questions appearing on a single page. Formatting options can be set for an entire poll all the way down to individual questions. Questions, their explanatory notes and answer elements can be placed in various formations on the page.
The presentation of all Webpoll content is under CSS control. The application enforces author-defined rules on each Webpoll Item that determines the next Item to show. Conditional branching on questions is supported. Through both Notes Mail and Outlook messaging integration, polls can targeted at specific user groups and even individual users. Supported answer formats include multiple choice (taking the form of radio buttons, check boxes, combo or list boxes) or full-text answers that are written into standard Web text area boxes. Combined with intelligent poll design, Webpoll's capabilities allow a DLS marketing researcher or service quality investigator to quickly establish what Comcowich calls the 'buzz' about the organisation, that is, '...[user] opinions, and...insights, providing key competitive intelligence on product strengths and deficiencies,...customer service problems, rumours,...reputation issues, and distribution channel concerns.'[ccxxxix] That said, in designing the application, care was taken to include a highly useful feature that allows a poll manager to shut down voting on one or more, perhaps unpopular, Item Groups. Users start a Webpoll from a list that shows the polls they are eligible to complete. (A Webpoll can be linked to from any of the menu items on the Portal.) Access may be range from unrestricted (that is, available to anonymous users) through authenticated users to for use only by named individual users. Registered users may suspend work on any poll they currently have opened. Subsequently, they can view a list of and resume responding to any poll they have only partially completed. As for most Portal II content, polls can be set with automatic embargo (release) and expiry controls. Near real-time results are available to poll managers as either a full list of every response from every user completing the poll or as a compiled (bar chart) report for each question showing numbers and percentage responses for each answer. Full-text responses are included by default. Webpoll results may readily be exported in native Microsoft Excel format for further manipulation and analysis.
The chart below is intended as a summary of the features and functionality of the DLS Portal compared and contrasted to several other portals reported in the library literature. The comparison sites are, respectively, the University of Melbourne's 'Buddy' portal, the United States Department of the Navy's Next Generation Library (NGL) Portal and the University of Washington's 'My Gateway'.
Buddy is described as '...a [W]eb-based, subject oriented gateway for locating journal articles, statistics, company reports, exam papers and other databases.'[ccxl] Each faculty has its own customised listing of local and Internet resources organised in broad subject categories. Keyword searching is supported, as is browsing of resource titles. In addition to locally mounted, licenced Web databases and open access Internet resources, Buddy also provides integrated online tutorials for some databases or data sets. Leigh argues that customers '...do not know nor should be expected to know which title has been acquired from which vendor' and, on that basis, rates content agnostic information retrieval systems such 'Buddy' favourably.[ccxli] The NGL Portal is a 'research and reference library portal' to provide integrated, single-point access to networked content in strategic planning, business, and management information.[ccxlii] The objectives of the NGL system and a twin, concurrent implementation at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), are to re-direct their libraries away from low-value adding information 'access' towards the 'seamless, shareable, interactive discovery, creation and use of disparate information resources' or knowledge sharing.'[ccxliii] Consistent with the history of library automation described above, the 'computer people' again took a leadership position proposing that the librarians' virtual library concept be driven to a 'higher level' by implementing technologies such as adaptive searching, search visualisation, intelligent agents and concept mapping. Autonomy's 'Portal-in-a-Box', the preferred solution for both the NGL and NPS systems and an unconventional choice for convention-bound libraries, may be taken as reflecting their active involvement. Notable features of Autonomy include the Visualizer, a Java applet that allows users to graphically query, navigate and display portal content and the Active KnowledgeTM plug-in that performs real-time, contextual analysis of a user's task and automatic generates URL links to related information sources.[ccxliv] Among the 3 sites, the University of Washington's 'My Gateway appears closest to the 'library portal' solutions described by Cox and Yeates.[ccxlv] It is described as '...the personalised component of the [Library's] Information Gateway [that] provides a way for users to maintain categorised lists of URLs they select.'[ccxlvi] Both the URLs and their associated metadata are maintained in the Library's Innovative Interfaces ILMS. Both bibliographic and user data is exported (in MARC format) to the 'Digital Registry', a Microsoft SQL Server database running on an Windows NT/Internet Information Server (IIS) platform using Active Server Pages (ASP) and, where necessary, Java to support the key database (re)create/update/read/display (CRUD) activities.[ccxlvii] Users may either create and maintain their own list-of-links or subscribe to public lists created by Library staff. The application is used '...more as a roving bookmark service than as a general personalised service delivery mechanism.'[ccxlviii] Transfer of individual customer data appears limited and peer customer awareness, information sharing and broader research-related collaboration options non-existent.
Strict limitations apply to this material. First, the features and functionality as indicated on the chart are based on open source (or unclassified) published accounts only. Due to time constraints, no additional or supplementary correspondence has been entered into. Second, where the public literature leaves room for doubt, the functionality has been assumed to exist. This is consistent with the view above that the rate of innovation in portal technology almost invariably means that it is either in development or has been developed, tested and subsequently been released to a production solution. Third, the range of the product comparison is limited by space constraints. A deeper and more wide-ranging comparison would be welcome. Finally, notice of errors or omissions is requested. Corrections will be made on the basis of information supplied and respondents acknowledged.
| Module | Feature/Function | DLS Portal II | UMelb.Buddy | NPS KPortal | UW MyGwy |
| Infrastructure | CSCW Platform | Y | N | N | N |
| Integrated Object Data Store > Hierarchical > Relational |
Y Y |
Y Y |
Y Y |
Y Y |
|
| Integrated Workflow | Y | Y | Y | N | |
| Software Agents | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Software Applications Market (Vendor-Certified) | Y | N | ? | N | |
| XML Support | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Communication | Integrated Messaging | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Integrated Instant Messaging | Y | N | ? | N | |
| 'Push' Capability | Y | Y | Y | ? | |
| Rich Site Summary Support | Y | N | Y | ? | |
| Information Access | Directory | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Content Management System | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Content Visualisation | N | N | Y | N | |
| Customisation | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Document Management | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Forms Management | Y | N | ? | N | |
| Integrated Metadata | Y | ? | Y | Y | |
| Full-Text Searching | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Personalisation | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Collaboration Tools | Bulletin Boards | Y | ? | Y | N |
| Discussion Groups/Mailing Lists | Y | ? | Y | ? | |
| Virtual Teamrooms | Y | N | Y | N | |
| Webpolls | Y | N | ? | N | |
| Applications Integration | Book Reviews | Y | N | ? | N |
| Citation Management | Y | N | ? | N | |
| Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Integration | Y | Y | Y | N | |
| Frequently-Asked-Questions | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Datasets (Citation, Citation/Abstract and Full-Text) | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| ILMS | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| IS Helpdesk | Y | N | N | N | |
| Project Management | Y | N | N | N | |
| Research Management | Y | N | ? | N | |
| Virtual Learning Environment | Y | Y | ? | N | |
| Security | Applications Security | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Single Sign-On | Y | Y | Y | ? | |
| Secure G2E (Staff) Area | Y | Y | ? | N | |
| Secure Sockets Layer Support | Y | Y | Y | ? | |
| Administration | Administration Toolkit | Y | ? | Y | ? |
| Business Intelligence (BI) Applications Integration | Y | N | ? | N |
Figure 8: Library Portal Capability Chart
Beginning with Infrastructure, continuing through Information Access and notable in the areas of Collaboration Tools and certainly Applications Integration are the capability similarities of the DLS and NGL information-sharing portals contrasted with the more orthodox library portals. The difference between these 2 groupings flows from their respective use of portals as either an application framework, value chaining the online information environment or else as an information 'gateway-to-the-world' (effectively, in Heseltine's phrase, as 'a giant resource-sharing mechanism').[ccxlix] This is not at all to understate the differences between the DLS and NPS portals. Autonomy, a 'pure play' vendor, has a build an impressive reputation focusing on content categorisation and personalisation that has strong appeal to major corporate and public sector organisations. In contrast, Lotus, an 'application portal' player, heavily promotes collaboration, interactivity and applications integration. Given the general argument above on the revolutionary social changes in the rise of group work, the clear preference here is that portals be deployed focused on building and sustaining project and process teams and communities-of-practice. This does not necessarily involve trading off 'information capability' against the strengths of Autonomy and the other 'pure play' vendors. For 'application portal' vendors including Lotus are now aggressively competing with them in their brand-building areas of strength such as automatic categorisation.[ccl] Yet, the larger issue is with libraries' conservative approach to portals. For Heseltine, it involves a '...failure to envisage any change in the environment within which information is being used, or in the purposes for which it is required. It is an approach rooted in the problems of today, not one which engages with the dramatically different [information] landscape which will have to be negotiated in the future.'[ccli] Portals are not only or even primarily information resource aggregators. They are full service delivery platforms that connect 'knowledge workers' to rich content, business applications, to subject-specialist support and, crucially and most valuably of all, 'knowledge workers' to each other. Libraries, corporate and government libraries in particular, need to move fast and far away from the current orthodoxies that portals and gateways are synonymous and that disintermediation is only to denigrated and resisted. Such a possible future path is outlined in the following pages.
'On the Intranet, does it matter if you're a bot?'
Anatole France once observed that to stake one's all for an idea was to put a very high price on conjecture. Yet, the major changes in the communications environment clearly requires some speculation on the future of portals including collaboration-centric portals such as the DLS Portal II. Ojala holds that the transition from her third, 'Dynamic Era' online generation into a succeeding 'Intuitive Era' has already begun. The latter will be '...marked by software that learns from our searching behaviour, by blend technologies, by collaborative techniques, and by knowledge creation.'[cclii] Clearly, this will stimulate demands for new, more powerful and much smarter 'information sharing' service platform and capabilities, extending well beyond what enterprise information portals currently deliver. Dynamic new solutions that involve so much more than running very basic CRUD information processing activities as background automated tasks. The rising spiral of professional intellectual work, corporate innovation and productivity and, specifically, the strategic business imperative to capture and augment human expertise will require new systems that co-construct, monitor, intervene and even co-create new 'working knowledge'. To date, enterprise portals have successfully resuscitated and assimilated 'knowledge management' with major corporate capability and return-on-invetsment (ROI) and personal productivity benefits. Hopefully, they will now go forward converging with crucial, naturally allied but hitherto non-mainstream technologies including but not limited to artificial intelligence (AI), text mining and simulation and, in the process, begin the transition to that new strategic information system - the knowledge portal (KP).
If anything, the mention of AI among librarians only recalls the qualified successes of early reference applications of expert systems in the 'hard' sciences using programming languages and knowledge-based expert systems 'shells'.[ccliii] Certainly, the dominant tradition within the AI community has involved developing discipline-specific solutions in fields as diverse as computer design, financial planning, medical diagnosis, military intelligence and speech and image recognition.[ccliv] However, in the context of a knowledge portal, these point solutions should be replaced by the immanent application of AI within each of its keystone technologies (e.g., messaging, local and virtual object data stores, document-centric business process workflow, collaboration environments, virtual learning, etc.). This softer, suffuse application of AI will enable knowledge portals to better function as integrated, 'informated' and self-learning research and business decision support environments. If this seems rather unrealistic, it is well to recall that the application of AI in Web-based information systems is already apparent in three applications (here presented in increasingly order of complexity). Simultaneously, the most basic and prominent of these is HTML, the current but not too future lingua franca of the Web. HTML and expert systems are not such different technologies as appearances may first suggest. They share defining characteristics including support for structured knowledge bases (e.g., Yahoo! and the Open Directory), an inferential reasoning capability (the former being explicit and open, the latter being implicit and closed) and a flexible user interface.[cclv] The second AI technology is natural language processing (NLP). NLP has transferred to the Web (and, latterly, corporate and government intranets), most notably in the form of the Ask Jeeves search engine.[cclvi] The general benefits to be expected from deploying even more advanced NLP engines in knowledge portals are already seen among their early adopters including leading financial services firms. They seek to maximise customer self-service 'information capability' through support for asking simple or compound natural language questions across the total portal object store, largely obviating the use of what, even on medium-sized Webs, quite quickly become overly complex menu navigation systems.[cclvii] Among the more specific and important benefits that could accrue from the use of advanced NLP technology is the final obsolescing of reference work. Mess makes the point that, when compared with unobtrusive studies of the accuracy of traditional library reference service, even the current generation of NLP technology provides a near-equivalent answering-providing capability. [cclviii] Further, its rapid development may reasonably be expected to exceed that of any traditional 'library technology' and librarians' capability to build up their subject-specialist credentials.[cclix] Finally, there is what Ojala calls 'agent software' or 'knowbots'.[cclx] Hitherto, the industry focus has been on either developing task-specific agents or so-called 'autonomous agents' that support what Maes calls the 'indirect management' of information systems, that is, performing 'low level' personal scheduling or information retrieval tasks including messaging, personal scheduling and/or simple Web searching.[cclxi] Again, however, knowledge portals will require the use of modularised agents that may be iteratively combined to create complex structures able to create, co-manage and to direct the evolution of the business, personal, project and social clusters that constitute its technical architectural core. Recombinant agents that, increasingly, can direct complex research, 'knowledge-in-use' resource evaluation, integration and authoring tasks and support related decision-making. Most intriguingly and enticingly of all, the interface through which the customer may task such agents (and, in turn, transparently issue sub-tasks allied agents) may be a 'virtual human', an avatar or a 'bot'.[cclxii] Hermans cites research indicating that, although avatars are certainly only programming code, '...people...deal with them as if they were dealing with other people...'[cclxiii] Perforce of its integration of what Bell calls 'intellectual technologies', library reference service surely cannot continue to exist in a knowledge portal environment. If, however, by some Alice in Wonderland illogic it lingers on, its representation may involve a startlingly new take on information support.
The second technology of interest is text mining. Realising Zuboff's 'textualisation' of business processes will clearly require a new capability that superannuates the current myopic focus on querying more-or-less accurate and complete structured tabular bibliographic data held in conventional databases. Text mining involves determining the key structural elements and implicit meanings within richer, unstructured sources including messaging texts, minutes, presentations, project reports, technical manuals and similar materials.[cclxiv] Advanced text mining solutions such as IBM's Intelligent Miner for Text (IMT) can identify key attributes of documents (language, names, abbreviations and multiword technical terms), cluster and categorise documents (the latter into preexisting, user-defined topics), full-text search object stores, summarise and visualise the search results.[cclxv] IMT's capability is now augmented with the newer Text Knowledge Miner (TKM) offering that fully integrates custom Web crawler searches into its already powerful competitive intelligence support. That said, IBM's Tkach overstates the case by claiming that text mining '...[provides] a context that enables the creation of tacit knowledge or insights.'[cclxvi] That lofty goal is well beyond the scope of any search technology or other single existing 'knowledge-sharing' application, however sophisticated. Indeed, at least initially, a knowledge portal may only effect minor changes in the key role of the 'knowledge worker' in critically appraising, interpreting and applying information. Still, it may be expected that both an aggregate application of 'intellectual technologies' and a consistent long-term trajectory will combine to progressively realise what McLuhan called a 'technological extension of consciousness.'[cclxvii] In contrast, that any computer could or should, as he elsewhere claimed, bring about '...a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity' is, given the banalities, natural and orchestrated burlesques of bureaucratic experience, an absurd and hopeless expectation.[cclxviii]
The final technology in this brief overview is simulation here understood as '...the process of designing a model of a real or imagined system and conducting experiments...to understand [its] behaviour or to evaluate strategies for its operation.'[cclxix]. The purpose of simulation is to '...[analyse] a system's capabilities, capacities and behaviours without requiring the construction of or experimentation with the real system.'[cclxx] Computer simulation is still generally understood to involve using software to test and design equipment for engineering projects including communications and computer networks, factories, flight and fluid dynamics, transport systems and more. In the context of a knowledge portal however, a much broader application is required and, as for artificial intelligence, NLP and agents, again embedded in the various component applications of the site. Usefully, Axelrod identifies 6 research uses of simulation in the social sciences. His primary uses are prediction of the interrelationships between model variables, proof that modeled processes produce consistent behaviours and discovery of unanticipated behaviours of simple processes. The secondary uses involve the explanation of the behaviour and consequences of underlying processes, the critique of current theoretical explanations for phenomena and prescription or suggesting a better mode of operation or method of organizing processes.[cclxxi] In addition, there is a wealth of opportunities for simulation in the areas of corporate strategy, financial and human resource management, logistics, project and services management. That there is ample scope for the development of business simulations is evident in the rapid growth of virtual learning environments in the form of the new corporate universities.
Back to the Future?
Nearly 15 years ago, Molholt wrote that AI and related technologies were '...lay[ing] the groundwork for...a library...without the functions and services associated with print collections.'[cclxxii] Writing in 1990, Davidson and Schneider observed that '...if [knowledge-based] applications are not developed by librarians they will be imposed by outside developers.'[cclxxiii] Beginning in the mid-1990s, the library literature is replete with forewarning and insistent calls for librarians become part of the new, convergent information and communications environment and, more specifically, to get involved in 'knowledge management'. However, as the writings of Chase,[cclxxiv] Church,[cclxxv] Corcoran and Jones,[cclxxvi] Grey,[cclxxvii] Heseltine,[cclxxviii] Lettis,[cclxxix] Marcum,[cclxxx] Perez[cclxxxi] and others attest, that hasn't happened. The almost visceral response of librarians has been to largely ignore this guidance and to dismiss 'knowledge sharing' as simply a sideshow to inventory management. Instead of listening to its advocates, being energised by their change agendas, planning, designing, implementing, assessing and deploying new 'information capabilities', there has been the rearward-looking 'access' bromide and the banal, sugary blandishments by, of and for librarians as 'the ultimate search engines.'[cclxxxii] In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that many 'knowledge workers' see libraries as marginal, irrelevant and even archaic.[cclxxxiii] Heseltine sums up the situation well: '[l]ibrarians seem to be disappearing rapidly from [the] information chain, and...[there is] no way...in which their traditional roles can be maintained...[I]n the short to medium term there may well be a role for the librarian as navigator, helping to guide users around complex networks to...information resources, but this role should diminish as...networks become easier to use...The locus of both information provision and information use is shifting out of the library, and librarians, or their successors, will need to follow.'[cclxxxiv] For those keen to follow on, keen to participate in developing the new intellective or 'informated', work-centred information systems now required, the question now is where to look for inspiration - and insights, plans, processes and, perhaps, tools? Clearly, both history and current practice suggest they are beyond the capabilities of libraries alone. Nor will they be found in the small library automation marketplace. The contrary suggestion here involves returning to the very origin of library automation among Allied national security agencies and military forces and studying the new information sharing initiatives directly resulting from the appalling events in New York City on 11 September, 2001.[cclxxxv]
Total Information Awareness?
Whatever else '9/11' may have been, for Ruth David, former Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the Central Intelligence Agency, the prior intelligence breakdown was a knowledge management failure - '...a reflection of the government's inability to construct and maintain collective memory from technology and [business] process standpoints.'[cclxxxvi] This assessment was subsequently confirmed in testimony before the US Senate and House Inquiry Into 11 September 2001.[cclxxxvii] The recently released unclassified version of the Committees' report indicates persistent problems with inter-agency collaboration and technology. The latter includes the key problems, all too familiar in libraries, of 'reliance on outdated and insufficient technical systems' and 'a reluctance to develop and implement new technical capabilities aggressively.'[cclxxxviii] Though the large number of intelligence information systems held valuable information that, in aggregate, was 'clearly relevant' to the attacks, information remained unused because there was no cross agency visibility and therefore no 'informated', 'textualised' synthesis of and hence action on the material.[cclxxxix] As in any discussion on 'knowledge-sharing' and particularly in government with its signature zeal for information feudalism, workplace culture was also identified as a key issue. A recent Gartner survey finding that knowledge management in the US government rated by far the worst compared to the private sector indicates the dimension of the problem and clearly indicates the scale and intensity of the cultural change management project required going forward.[ccxc] The upshot of these information sharing failures have been calls for the 'knowledge management' equivalent of the most highly classified World War 2 Manhattan Project that led to the production of the first atomic bomb.[ccxci]
In response to '9/11', the legendary US Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), co-developers of the Internet, has established a new Information Awareness Office (IAO). Its mission is to '...imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies [into] closed-loop, information systems that...counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption; national security warning; and national security decision making.'[ccxcii] In March 2002 the IAO released a request for proposal for a revolutionary 'total information awareness' (TIA) system designed to '...aid in the detection, classification, identification, and tracking of potential foreign terrorists, wherever they may be, to understand their intentions, and to develop options to prevent their terrorist acts.'[ccxciii] To deliver near real-time 'knowledge discovery', the TIA will require integrated use of technologies including transactional data systems, virtual data repositories, data mining, document and Web content management systems, expertise locators, intelligent agents, speech recognition, text mining, word and phrase translation, virtual team rooms, visualisation, biometric security measures and more. However, as the IAO itself acknowledges, even that formidable technological arsenal won't deliver 'knowledge-sharing', specifically in this context, terrorist recognition. Instead, the system is being designed to detect and aggregate suspect records of communications and commercial transactions and then to pass this information to human analysts working in the appropriate agencies who would collaborate using TIA to determine plausible terrorist suspects, recommend and track pre-emptive action.[ccxciv] Consistent with this requirement for information flow, the TIA service platform may take the form of a knowledge portal, focusing on dialogue and document-centric information sharing at the front end with intelligent data, visualisation and transactional analytic engines at the back end.[ccxcv]
Undoubtedly, there will be claims that such technologies and systems involve working at a level neither warranted nor required by libraries. Such a leaden, parochial and self-defeating perspective need not be of concern. For in the TIA's capability focus on near real-time information discovery, inter-linking, awareness and collaboration and its syncretistic systems architecture based 'best-of-breed' applications, open architecture and real interoperability can clearly be seen a way forward. The rapid, innovative and disruptive changes in the new information order and specifically in information sharing and collaboration amply justify calls for similar, but more broadly based 'knowledge-sharing' initiatives. Targeted research and development projects involving ethnologists, information technologists, linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, librarians and others to discover revolutionary new 'information capability'. For the current insular dependence of libraries on their familiar corporate partners to identify and provide access to bespoke 'library technology' certainly should not continue. That practice and those point solutions are past their shelf life, having been rendered pass&eactue; by the new realities of business integration, customer responsiveness, organisational learning and cultural change.
In contrast, outside libraries there is a 'renaissance' of collaboration-centric, information-sharing technologies that, industry analysts and commentators alike agree, is recovering and restoring hitherto suppressed human, dialoguing elements of 'intellective' work and learning.[ccxcvi] However, participating in this generational change is certainly no profession's 'birthright'. As the speed of transition from the 'Dynamic Era' to the 'Intuitive Era' accelerates, the onus is firmly and increasingly on librarians to make a new contribution. The first, second and third demands of this reinvention process are to be different. How different? Robert Berring once wrote '...[h]ow far could and should librarians go? In some ways the librarian's legacy as guardian data gatherer and...information organiser made it hard to think about these issues creatively. Straying too far...might led one right out of the profession of librarianship.' [ccxcvii] The road to re-socialising information inquiry and exchange, to redefining and renewing professional intellectual work, to fostering innovation and helping create new measures of personal meaning in work, the road to the 'knowledge portal', quickly leads beyond that invisible boundary - and for all the right reasons.
Surveying the copious barrenness of Byzantium, Gibbon found nil but courtiery - a millennial obsession with ceremony, clothing, conspiracy, an interminable, trivialising, vitiating Christological disputation - and a chronic want of imagination, of even 'some faint...rays of historic light.' Both then and certainly now, such crushing negative creativity signifies the living as only a species of the dead. Political, economic and technical pressures now confront most occupations, librarians certainly included, with incessant demands for reinvention; new products and services, a new sociability in practice and a new broader outlook, clearly something utterly different from the bathetic homilies and rearward looking romanticising of librarians' near past. In the present context, this change involves providing radical new 'information capability' that facilitates 'knowledge-sharing' through customer peer networking and organisational learning in this post-modern information age. At hand to help in this and effect that general business transformation is technology, for some, the new Promethean fire. (To be sure, achieving its potential impact requires a new d&eactue;tente in the perpetual cold peace between technology and the host culture of organisational politics.) Such innovation is, by turn, absorbing, demanding, disappointing, impolitic, inspiring, provocative and even tedious. In environments that stifle experiment and innovation, opportunities must be created and engaged. If they are of any merit, they will be able to protect themselves. The far greater danger is 'know-nothingism'; the passive rigidities of the sinecurist. For, while there certainly is no iron law of occupational evolution that requires innovation, librarians would do well to recall that there never was a real law of the immutability of species and there certainly is not now any special evolutionary dispensation stipulating their survival.
[i] The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Defence Library Service or the Department of Defence. I gratefully acknowledge the technical assistance of Nadaav Thivy (Synergy Innovations) and comments Susan Emson and Rob Tucker (DLS Information Systems) in the preparation of this paper.
[ii] John Rheinfrank and Donald A. Norman, 'A Conversation With Don Norman' interactions II.2 [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.acm.org/....
[iii] David Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002), 23.
[iv] Francis Cairncross, The Company of the Future: Meeting the Management Needs of the Communication Revolution (London: Profile Books, 2002), 34-41.
[v] A recent example is the decision to participate in development of the Lockheed Martin F-35 multi-role stealth fighter. The decision preempts Project Air 6000, established in June 2000, to investigate replacement air combat and strike capability for Australia's aging F-A/18 and F-111 fleets. See Department of Defence, 'Australia to Join Joint Strike Fighter Program' [online] ['Min 311/02'] ['27 Jun 2002'] [last accessed 8 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/..., 'Air Combat Capability for the 21st Century and a Boost to Australian Industry' [online] ['MIN 270602/02'] ['27 Jun 2002'] [last accessed 8 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/... and 'Transcript of Australia to Join Joint Strike Fighter Program' [online] [MIN 27062002/02'] ['27 Jun 2002'] [last accessed 8 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/.... Also see Carlo Kopp, 'Hedging the Bet - JSF for the RAAF? Australian Aviation 186 (August, 2002): 27-28, 30-32.
[vi] TH Davenport and L. Prusak, 'Blow Up the Corporate Library' International Journal of Information Management, 13 (1993): 405-412.
[vii] Marydee Ojala, 'The End of Online As We Know It' Strategies for the Next Millennium - Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Online and On Disc Conference and Exhibition Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney Australia 19-21 January 1999 [online] ['19 January 1999'] [last accessed 14 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csu.edu.au/....
[viii] Marylaine Block, 'The Defect in Realism' Ex Libris #86 [online] ['February 2, 2001'] [last accessed 4 September 2002]. Available on the World Wide Web: http://marylaine.com/..
[ix] '[An EIP provides] a secure, single point of interaction with diverse information, business process, and people, personalised to a user's needs and responsibilities.' WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 15 November 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www-3.ibm.com/....
[x] Marshall Lee, 'The World According to Eco' Wired 5.03 [online] ['March, 1997'] [last accessed 22 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.wired.com/....
[xi] William H Melody, 'The Context of Change in the Information Professions' Aslib Proceedings 38 (August, 1986): 223.
[xii] School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa 'Welcome to SLIS' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 2 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.uiowa.edu/.... Emphasis added.
[xiii] 'SLA's 91st Annual Conference: Special Librarians Reinforce Role as Leaders of the Information Revolution' Information Outlook 4 (August, 2000): 18-20, 22-31.
[xiv] Rich Gazan, 'Today's Information Professional' [online] ['Last Updated: 03/16/2001 16:53:21'] [last accessed 4 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.hawaii.edu/....
[xv] Patricia Milne, 'Information Professionals and the Knowledge-Aware, Intelligent Organisation: Skills for the Future' Australian Library Journal 49 (May, 2000): 149.
[xvi] Judith Albert, 'Is Knowledge Management Really the Future for Information Professionals?' in Knowledge Management for the Information Professional, ed. by T. Kanti Srikantaiah and Michael E. D. Koenig (Medford, N.J.: Published for the American Society for Information Science by Information Today, c2000), 75.
[xvii] Bruce A. Shuman, Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001), 80-87.
[xviii] Anthony Smith, Books to Bytes: Knowledge and Information in the Postmodern Era (London: British Film Institute, 1993), 129, 136.
[xix] See Edward W. Ploman, 'The Communications Revolution' Aslib Proceedings 33 (October, 1981): 373; Ruth K. Seidman, 'Information Rich, Knowledge-Poor: The Challenge of the Information Society' Special Libraries 82 (Winter, 1991): 64-65, Sylvia Piggott , 'Why Corporate Librarians Must Reengineer the Library for the New Information Age' Special Libraries 86 (Winter, 1995): 12, 18 and Patricia S. Foy, 'Coming to Grips With the 'R' Words' SpeciaList 19 (December, 1996): 1. For Mercer and Bennett, the real knowledge economy is '...domestic considerations [and] the international transformation of economic and power relations...' See Colin Mercer and Tony Bennett, Navigating the Economy of Knowledge : A National Survey of Users and Non-Users of State and Public Libraries : Final Report (Brisbane: Institute for Policy Studies, Griffith University, 1995), 10. For CAUL, '...the basic premise of a knowledge economy is that knowledge (information) has value. Of course this has always been the case.' See Council of Australian University Librarians, Submission to the Inquiry Into the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment [online] ['16 August 2002'] [last accessed 14 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.caul.edu.au/.... Otherwise, the 'knowledge economy' '...where the nation's wealth [depends] on the abilities and intellect of its citizens and the skills with which organisations harness and develop those abilities.' See Alan Bundy, 'Enabling the Knowledge Nation: What Australia Needs in the 21st Century' Australian Library Journal 51 (May, 2002): 103-104. Elsewhere the same author describes it as '...a century which will be characterised by information...' See Alan Bundy, Submission to the Inquiry Into the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Reference Committee [online] '22 July 2002'] [last accessed 14 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.aph.gov.au/.... For Bryson, the 'digital world' is a future 'challenge' involving an admixture of quantitative and very idealistic qualitative attributes. See Jo Bryson, 'Building a Knowledge-Based Economy and Society' Capitalising on Knowledge: The Information Profession in the 21st Century - Proceedings of the ALIA 2000 Conference, Canberra, 24-26 October 2000 [online] ['Last modified: 2000-11-06'] [last accessed 14 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://conferences.alia.org.au/.... It is relevant to note that only 2 of the 17 submissions to the current Senate inquiry that available on the Internet even mention these concepts. Otherwise, see John Fletcher, The Information Society: A Study of Continuity and Change 2nd Edition (London: Library Association Publishing, c1998), 5-14 et seq., and William J. Martin, 'The Information Society - Idea or Identity?' Aslib Proceedings 40 (November/December, 1988): 306.
[xx] Randall Collins, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York: Academic Press, c1979), 7.
[xxi] Ibid., 27. Cohen's supportive research clearly leads to doubts that members of 'the knowledge classes' are capable of '...the degree of power, initiative or control...that the post-industrial thesis requires of them.' See Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), 162 et seq.
[xxii] Ibid., 54. Emphasis in original. For a summary of Collins' findings, see Brian Martin, Tied Knowledge: Power in Higher Education [online] ['1998'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.uow.edu.au/....
[xxiii] Collins, Credential Society, 54.
[xxiv] Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 112. The critical literatures on the concepts of the 'information society' and 'knowledge management' are extensive. On the former, see Christopher May, The Information Society: A Sceptical View (Cambridge: Polity Press, c2002), 12 et. seq.; Frank Webster, Theories of the Information Society 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2002), 1-23, Paschal Preston, Reshaping Communications: Technology, Information and Social Change (London: Sage Publications, c2001), 14 et seq.,; Eva Etzioni-Halevy, The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy (London: George Allen and Unwin, c1985), Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artifical Intelligence and the True Art of Thinking 2nd edition (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, c1994) and Soshanna Zuboff, 'The Emperor's New Information Economy' in Information Technology and Changes in Organisational Work: Proceedings of the IFIP WG8.2 Working Conference on Information Technology and Changes in Organisational Work, December 1995, ed. by Wanda J. Orlikowski, Geoff Walsham, Matthew R. Jones and Janice I. DeGross (London: Chapman Hall, c1996), 13-18. On the latter, see Krishan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society (London: Allen Lane, 1978), David Collins, Management Fads and Buzzwords: Critical-Practical Perspectives (London: Routledge, c2000), 314-343; Michael Schrage, 'Why No One Wants Knowledge Management' Computerworld [online] ['12/07/98'] [last accessed December 21, 1998, no longer available] Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.computerworld.com/..., pointed comments from Robert Buckman, one of the founders of 'knowledge management', reported in Anna Teo, 'It's KS, not KM' Business Times Singapore. [online] ['18 July 2002'] [last accessed 5 August 2002, no longer available] Available on the World-Wide Web: http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/... and T. D. Wilson, 'The Nonsense of Knowledge Management' Information Research: An International Electronic Journal 8 ['October 2002'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://informationr.net/....
[xxv] Colette Ormonde, 'Libraries in the Political Landscape' inCite [online] ['November, 2001'] [last accessed 5 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://incite.alia.org.au/....
[xxvi] Blaise Cronin, 'The Information Society' Aslib Proceedings 38 (April, 1986): 121. Also see Forest W. Horton, Extending the Librarian's Domain : A Survey of Emerging Occupation Opportunities for Librarians and Information Professionals (Washington, D. C.: Special Libraries Association, 1994), 2.
[xxvii] See Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), Soshanna Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (New York: Basic Books, c1988), Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books, c1991), Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Minneapolis, Mn.: University of Minnesota Press, c1994), 17 et. seq., Robert Howard, Brave New Workplace: America's Corporate Utopias--How They Create New Inequalities and Social Conflict in Our Working Lives (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985) and Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work : The Decline of the Global Work-Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, c1995), 166, 170. Also see W. J. Orlikowski, 'Integrated Information Environment or Matrix of Control? The Contradictory Implications of Information Technology' Accounting Management and Information 1 (1991): 9-42. For a more recent, journalistic accounts of the distinctly Taylorist organisation of a 'new economy' work, see Mike Mazaar, 'The New Workplace is Dead, Right?' TrendScope.net Issue 2 [online] ['September 2001'] [last accessed 3 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.trendscope.net/... and 'Hi-tech Workplace No Better Than Factories' BBC News - Technology [online] ['Wednesday, 27 November, 2002, 09:45 GMT'] [last accessed 28 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://news.bbc.co.uk/....
[xxviii] Alexander Zinoviev, The Yawning Heights Translated from the Russian by Gordon Clough (London: Bodley Head, c1978), 739-740.
[xxix] Roszak, Cult of Information, 91. Emphasis in original.
[xxx] Judith Shulevitz, 'You Read Your Book and Ill Read Mine' The New York Times [online] ['May 19, 2002'] [last accessed 13 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.nytimes.com/....
[xxxi] See Australia's Information Future: Innovation and Knowledge Management for the 21st Century, Proceedings of a Workshop Held 3-4 March 1999 at the Australian National University, Canberra [online] ['1999'] [last accessed 19 October 2002] Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.detya.gov.au/.... Also see,'SPARC FAQ' Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [online] ['Last Modified: June 1, 2002'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.arl.org/.... On trade publishing, see Gary Ink and Andrew Grabois, 'Book Title Output and Average Prices: 1999 Final and 2000 Preliminary Figures' in The Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade Almanac 46th Edition Dave Bogart, Editor (New York: R. R. Bowker, c2001), 485-486, Bernard Lane, 'Buyers Abandon Books As GST Battles Budgets' The Australian Wednesday September 18 2002, 3c-d and Timothy M. Laseter, Patrick W. Houston, Joshua L. Wright and Juliana Y. Park, 'Amazon Your Industry: Extracting Value From the Value Chain' strategy+business [online] ['First Quarter, 2000'] [last accessed 5 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.strategy-business.com/.
[xxxii] Linda Butler, 'A List of Published Papers Is No Measure of Value' Nature 419 (31 October, 2002): 877. 'We are reading a Harvard law professor, a Middle East scholar, a CNN analyst educated at Oxford, and a PBS documentarian. These [books] come to us from Simon and Schuster, W.W. Norton and Co., and Yale University Press... The...overarching theme: Terrorists are bad.' See Lorraine Adams, 'Terrorism and the English Language' The Washington Monthly [online] ['September 2002'] [last accessed 4 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/.... Also see Richard Monastersky, 'The Emperor's New Science' Chronicle of Higher Education [online] ['From the issue dated November 15, 2002'] [last accessed 15 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://chronicle.com/....
[xxxiii] Bill Martin and Patrick Spain, 'Interview with Patrick Spain, Co-Founder of Hoover's' eFinance Insider [online] ['August 15, 2002'] [last accessed 22 September 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.efinanceinsider.com/....
[xxxiv] See Association of Research Libraries, 'Service Trends in ARL Libraries, 1999-2001' ARL Statistics [online] ['Last updated: Saturday 12 October, 2002.'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.arl.org/... and Claire Creaser and Alison Murphy, LISU Annual Library Statistics 1999 (Library and Information Commission Research Report 21) [online] ['These pages were last updated on 1st November 1999.'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lic.gov.uk/.... Also see M. Lesk, Practical Digital Libraries: Books, Bytes, and Bucks, (San Francisco, Calif.: Morgan Kaufman, 1997), 202.
[xxxv] Dearstyne, Bruce W. 'Greeting and Shaping the Future: Information Professionals as Strategists and Leaders' Information Outlook 4 (August, 2000): 33-34.
[xxxvi] See The Status, Reputation and Image of the Library and Information Profession: proceedings of the IFLA Pre-Session Seminar, Delhi, 24-28 Aug. 1992 Edited by Russell Bowden and Donald Wijasuriya (München: K G Saur, 1994).
[xxxvii] See the findings of the 2001 Outsell Super I-AIM survey of 6,300 US knowledge workers across 20 industries that found '...more than two-thirds (68 per cent) [of respondents] prefer to seek out external information for themselves. [Only] a small minority of respondents rely...on using the corporate library to get their external content, even though 50 per cent of [their] organisations have libraries.' See Outsell, Inc., 'Super I-AIM Segment Report' [online] ['2001'] [last accessed 10 November 2002, no longer available]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.outsellinc.com/docs/collateral/OSI-AIMSample.pdf. Also see Mary Corcoran, 'But Enough About Me, What About the Users?' Online 25 (November/December, 2001): 90-92, Kath Dempsey, 'Does Your Manager Know?' Computers in Libraries 21 ['September 2001'] [last accessed 14 February 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.infotoday.com/... and Andrew Odlyzko, 'Silicon Dreams and Silicon Bricks: The Continuing Evolution of Libraries' Library Trends 46 (Summer, 1997): 161.
[xxxviii] 'Practitioners, Educators Seek Library's Place in Professional Education, April 30-May 1, in Washington' American Libraries Online [online] ['Sat, 29 Jun 2002 16:37:35 GMT'] [last accessed 28 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ala.org/.... Also see Laura Ortega Carrasco and Egbert Sanchez Vanderkast, 'The Information Professional in a Networked Society' Aslib Proceedings 50 (May, 1998): 97.
[xxxix] Sarah E. Thomas, 'The Catalog as Portal to the Internet' Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web [online] ['Final version December 2000'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.loc.gov/.... Also see Brian E C Schottlaender, ''The Catalog As Portal To the Internet' by Sarah E Thomas' in Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium ['December 19, 2000'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://lcweb.loc.gov/.... Also see Barbara Quint, 'On Myths: A Letter to Non-Subscribers' Searcher 9 [online] ['March 2001'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.infotoday.com/....
[xl] The library literature is characterised by a high percentage of research papers without citations, is inward looking and exhibits a high degree of 'self-citedness' (indicative of isolation from other disciplines). Significantly, it ignores key issues such as information seeking and use. It is heavily survey-driven and exhibits an increasingly shallow historical focus. Overall, it is less scholarly than those in other fields of the social sciences. See Bluma C. Peritz, 'The Methods of Library Science Research: Some Results from a Bibliometric Survey' Library Research 2 (Fall, 1980): 251-268; Bluma C. Peritz, 'Citation Characteristics in Library Science: Some Further Results From a Bibliometric Survey' Library Research 3 (Spring, 1981): 47-65; Kalervo Jørvelin and Pertti Vakkari, 'Content Analysis of Research Articles in Library and Information Science' Library and Information Science Research 12 (1990): 395-421; Kathleen Garland, 'The Nature of Publications Authored by Library and Information Science Faculty' Library and Information Science Research 13 (January-March, 1991), 58
[xli] Klaus Mussman, Technological Innovation in Libraries, 1860-1960 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, c1993), 25 et seq. Shera is an early advocate. Probably the most infamous example is Ellsworth Mason, 'The Gas Bubble Prick't; or, Computers Revealed -by a Gentleman of Quality', College and Research Libraries, 32 (May, 1971): 183-96. The tradition is continued by William H. Wisner, 'Back Toward People: A Symposium' Journal of Academic Librarianship 20 (July, 1994), 131-133 and Dennis B. Quinn, 'The Information Age: Another Giant Step Backward' Journal of Academic Librarianship 20 (July, 1994), 134-135 and William H. Wisner, Whither the Postmodern Library?: Libraries, Technology, and Education in the Information Age (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland and Co., c2000)
[xlii] For example, see American Library Association, 'Get information smart @ your library' @your library [online] ['2000'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: https://cs.ala.org/..., Peter Brophy, The Library in the Twenty-First Century: New Services for the Information Age (London: Library Association Publishing, c2001) and Richard M. Dougherty, 'Needed: User-Responsive Research Libraries' Library Journal 116 (January, 1991): 60.
[xliii] Walt Crawford, 'Finding Stability in Changing Times' Online 24 (March/April, 2000): 49.
[xliv] Robert V. Williams, 'The Documentation and Special Libraries Movements in the United States, 1910-1960' Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48 (September, 1997): 775, 779.
[xlv] LaVahn Overmyer, Library Automation: A Critical Review (December, 1969) [ED 034 107] [Grant Number OEG-1-7-071268-5079], 20. Emphasis added.
[xlvi] Stephen R. Salmon, 'Library Automation' in Encyclopaedia of Library and Information Science Volume 14 Executive editors, Allen Kent, Harold Lancour and Jay E. Daily (New York: Marcel Dekker, c1975), 339.
[xlvii] Mussman comically adds that '...even greater misgivings were expressed by antitechnology librarians when...confronted by external technological developments over which they had absolutely no control [including] the automobile, the motion picture, and radio broadcasting and television.' See Mussman, Technological Innovations in Libraries, 19. On balance, Mussman agrees with Voigt that '...librarians have been opportunists, not inventors.' See Melvin J. Voigt, 'The Trend Toward Mechanization in Libraries' Library Trends 5 (October, 1956): 195.
[xlviii] Mary Jo Lynch, 'Information' in The Service Imperative for Libraries: Essays in Honour of Margaret E. Monroe, ed. by Gail A. Schlachter (Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1982), 31. On librarians' reluctance to use the typewriter and the telephone, see Joseph Janes, 'Defining What We Do - All Over Again' American Libraries [online] ['September 2002'] [last accessed 10 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ala.org/....
[xlix] Christine L. Borgman, 'From Acting Locally to Thinking Globally: A Brief History of Library Automation' Library Quarterly 67 (July, 1997): 216.
[l] Jesse Shera, Introduction to Library Science: Basic Elements of Library Science (Littelton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1976), 94.
[li] Janet L. Balas, 'Can You Build It? Yes, You Can' Computers in Libraries 22 [online] ['February 2002'] [last accessed 6 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.infotoday.com/....
[lii] Richard DeGennaro, 'Integrated Online Library Systems: Perspectives, Perceptions and Practicalities' Library Journal 108 (December 15, 1985): 39.
[liii] Brian Alley, 'Never Before in the History of Libraries...' in Library Technology 1970-1990: Shaping the Library of the Future - Research Contributions from the 1990 Computers in Libraries Conference, ed. by Nancy Melin Nelson (Westport, Conn.: Meckler, c1991), 79.
[liv] Shelagh Fisher, 'On the Quality and Usefulness of the Specification in Determining a Customer's Requirements: A Survey of UK Library Systems Suppliers' OCLC Systems and Services 16 (2000): 172.
[lv] Andrew Cox and Robin Yeates, Library Oriented Portals Solutions [online] ['2002'] [last accessed 31 October 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/....
[lvi] David M. Levy and Catherine C. Marshall, 'Washington's White Horse?: A Look at Assumptions Underlying Digital Libraries' in Digital Libraries '94: Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries June 19-21, 1994 - College Station, Texas, USA [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 20 May, 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/....
[lvii] Clifford Lynch, 'Today and Tomorrow: What the Digital Library Really Means for Collections and Services' in Virtually Yours: Models for Managing Electronic Resources and Services - Proceedings of the Joint Reference and User Services Association and Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Institute, Chicago, Illnois, October 23-25, 1997, ed. by Peggy Johnson and Bonnie MacEwan (Chicago: American Library Association, 1999), 86. Emphasis added. Also see Carla J. Stoffle, Robert Renaud and Jerilyn R. Veldof, 'Choosing Our Futures' College and Research Libraries 57 (May, 1996): 220.
[lviii] John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), 12. Brown and Duguid augment the criticism made more than a decade previously by the distinguished American historian Oscar Handlin that librarians' preoccupation with retrieval of 'bits of information' comes at the cost of contextual understanding. See Oscar Handlin, 'Libraries and Learning' American Scholar 56 (Spring, 1987): 214.
[lix] Shera, Introduction to Library Science, 96.
[lx] L. Hunter Kevil, 'The Paper Library: Beyond the Automated Card Catalogue' CRISTAL-ED LISTSERV Discussion [online] [n.d.] ['last accessed 4 May 2002']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.si.umich.edu/.... Also see Karen Coyle, 'Is MARC Dead?' Karen Coyle's Home Page [online] ['July 2000'] [last accessed May 17, 2002']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.kcoyle.net/....
[lxi] Jerry Campbell, 'Metadata: Libraries and the Web - Retooling AACR and MARC21 for Cataloging in the Twenty-First Century' [online] ['July 6-7, 2000']['Last update: 8/10/00'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.und.nodak.edu/....
[lxii] See Marylaine Block, 'Beat Out by Amazon' Ex Libris #85 [online] ['January 26, 2001'] [last accessed 9 July 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://marylaine.com/....
[lxiii] Allen B. Veaner, 'What Hath Technology Wrought?' in Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, Proceedings, 1979: The Role of the Library in an Electronic Society, ed. by F. Wilfred Lancaster (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1980), 3.
[lxiv] 'The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.' Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Random House, [1967]), 74-75. Also see Eric Norden and Marshall McLuhan, 'The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan - A Candid Conversation With the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media' Playboy [online] ['March 1969'] [last accessed 5 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ifi.uio.no/....
[lxv] Syracuse University, School of Information Studies, 'Libraries and the Internet' [online [n.d.] [last accessed 19 January 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://istweb.syr.edu/.... Also see Deanna B. Marcum, 'Access: Does It Matter?' Information Impacts Magazine [online] ['Released: December 22, 1999'] [last accessed 23 September 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cisp.org/imp/december_99/12_99marcum-insight.htm.
[lxvi] Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 19. The authors also use the terms 'infoprefixation' and 'infocentricity'. Ibid., 21, 27.
[lxvii] Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Kirsti Nilsen, 'Has the Internet Changed Anything in Reference?: The Library Study Visit, Phase 2' Reference and User Services Quarterly 40 (Winter, 2000): 151. Also see Ann Huthwaite, '13th National Cataloguing Conference Opening Address' Cataloguing Australia 25 [online] ['December, 1999'] [last accessed 22 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://archive.alia.org.au/....
[lxviii] Bonnie Wai-yi Cheuk, 'Modelling the Information Seeking and Use Process in the Workplace: Employing Sense-Making Approach' Information Research 4 (October, 1998) [online] ['Last updated: 9th September 1998'] [last accessed 9 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://informationr.net/....
[lxix] K. Alix Hayden, 'Information Seeking Models' [online] ['last revised June 7, 1999'] [last accessed 11 March 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/....
[lxx] Janet R. Cottrell and Michael B. Eisenberg, 'Applying an Information Problem-Solving Model to Academic Reference Work: Findings and Implications' College and Research Libraries 62 (2001): 334-347.
[lxxi] Ibid.
[lxxii] Rob Procter, Andy McKinlay, Ana Goldernberg, Elisabeth Davenport, Peter Burnhill and Sheila Cannell, 'Enhancing Community and Collaboration in the Virtual Library' in ECDL'97 - Proceedings of the First European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, Pisa, Italy, September 1-3, 1997, ed. by Carol Peters and Costantio Thanos (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, c1997), 25-40.
[lxxiii] '[C]ommon uses of the [I]nternet tend to be non-linear, recursive, and, taking a leaf out of McLuhan's book, 'simultaneous'...[P]roblems and tasks encountered by [I]nternet users tend to be defined and redefined in dynamic, reflexive practices that, quite literally, second guess and critique each decision as it is being made.' See Allan Luke and Cushla Kapitzka, 'Literacies and Libraries: Archives and Cybraries' Curriculum Studies 7 [online] ['1999'] [last accessed 4 November 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.triangle.co.uk/....
[lxxiv] Cottrell and Eisenberg, Applying an Information Problem-Solving Model, 347.
[lxxv] R. J. Anderson, J. A. Hughes and Wes. W. Sharrock, The Sociology Game: An Introduction to Sociological Reasoning (London: Longman, c1985), 50 et. seq.
[lxxvi] Ibid.
[lxxvii] Ojala, End of Online As We Know It.
[lxxviii] Jesse Shera, Sociological Foundations of Librarianship (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1970), 34.
[lxxix] Archie Zariski, 'Virtual Textuality and the Library' Law Librarian 26 (March, 1995): 279.
[lxxx] Agada cites numerous studies that consistently show librarians as inner-directed, conventional, 'disinclined towards initiative, decision-making, and assertiveness', lacking strong leadership qualities and people-oriented tendencies (i.e., empathy and interpersonal skills) and techno-phobic. See John Agada, 'Studies of the Personalities of Librarians' Drexel Library Quarterly 20 (Spring, 1984): 25-45.
[lxxxi] Dick R. Miller, 'XML: Libraries' Strategic Opportunity' netConnect [online] ['Summer, 2000'] [6 July 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://xmlmarc.stanford.edu/....
[lxxxii] Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: How the Shift From Ownership to Access is Transforming Capitalism (London: Penguin Books, c2000), 206, 207.
[lxxxiii] David Dorman, 'E-book conference Illuminates Issues' American Libraries [online] ['November, 1999'] [last accessed 29 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ala.org/....
[lxxxiv] Robert C. Berring, 'Future Librarians' in Future Libraries, ed. by R. Howard Bloch and Carla Hesse (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, c1993), 103. Also see Nancy A. Van House and Stuart A. Sutton, 'The Panda Syndrome: An Ecology of LIS Education' [online] ['March 11, 1996'] [last accessed 3 May 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://sims.berkeley.edu/....
[lxxxv] Anne P. Bishop, 'This Little User Went to Market, This Little User Stayed Home: What Users, Potential Users, and Nonusers Can Tell Us' Journal of Library Administration 26 (1998): 219.
[lxxxvi] Liz Burke, 'The Future Role of Librarians in the Virtual Library Environment' Australian Library Journal 51 (February, 2002): 40. Also see Michael Gorman, 'Cataloguing, Chaos, and Cataloguing the Chaos' ILA/ACRL Newsletter 6 [online] ['November 1996'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.iren.net/....
[lxxxvii] Kate Sharp, 'Internet Librarianship: Traditional Roles in a New Environment' 66th IFLA Council and General Conference, Jerusalem, 13th-18th August 2000 [online] ['Latest Revision: May 7, 2000'] [last accessed 25 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ifla.org/.... Also see Susan M. Tarr, 'Board Talk' FLICC Newsletter 190 [online] ['Summer 1990'] [last accessed 28 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.loc.gov/....
[lxxxviii] The 2001 Phase-5 survey of special librarians in Canada found special librarians '...spending close to three-quarters of their time on non-strategic activities.' See Doug Church, 'Managing on Internet Time' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 10 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.phase-5.com/....
[lxxxix] California Library Association. Task Force on the Future of Librarianship, 'The Future of Librarianship' CLA Online [online] ['Last Modified: 1/25/2002'] [3 May 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cla-net.org/pubs/future.html.
[xc] Michael E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (New York: Free Press, c1985), 33, 36.
[xci] See United States General Services Administration Seat Management, 'Key Note Address e-Marketplaces Today, Tomorrow, and in the Future' eGov Strategies [online] ['9/10/01'] [last accessed 22 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://egov.gov/....
[xcii] Porter, Competitive Advantage, 50.
[xciii] Rosann Collins and Detmar Straub, 'The Changing Information Environment' Journal of the American Society for Information Science 42 (March, 1991): 120.
[xciv]See Geoffrey Payne, 'Future Library Systems: Beyond the Electronic Card Catalogue' [online] 10th VALA Biennial Conference and Exhibition, Melbourne, February 2000 [n.d] [last accessed 9 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http:/www.vala.org.au/....
[xcv] See Clifford Lynch, 'Information Technology and Evolving Library Futures' [online] (Transcribed Remarks of Clifford Lynch Presentation to OCLC Users Council) ['05 October 1998'] [last accessed 9 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://http://www.oclc.org/....
[xcvi] Lawrence J. McCrank, 'Information Literacy: A Bogus Bandwagon' Library Journal 116 (May 1, 1991): 41.
[xcvii] See Lyndon Pugh, Change Management in Information Services (Aldershot, UK: Gower Publishing, 2000), 1.
[xcviii] Charles B. Lowry, 'Putting the Pieces Together - Essential Technologies for the Virtual Library' Journal of Academic Librarianship 21 (July, 1995): 299.
[xcix] For an illuminating survey of the results of online catalogue usage studies, see Bernard J. Jansen and Udo Pooch, 'A Review of Web Searching Studies and a Framework for Future Research' Journal of the American Society for Information Science 52 (2001): 235-246.
[c] 'Amazon spends around [$US]12.5 million per year to develop and operate its catalogue, Web site and transaction system -- but that is only a small percentage of the [$US]465 million per year Library Journal estimates [US] libraries are currently spending on automation systems alone.' See Steve Coffman, 'Building Earth's Largest Library: Driving Towards the Future' D-Lib Magazine 5 [online] ['May, 1999'] [last accessed 13 June 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.dlib.org/....
[ci] Richard T. Sweeny. 'The Post Hierarchical Library' Library Trends 43 (Summer, 1994), 80.
[cii] Ibid.
[ciii] See Hans-Christoph Hobohm, 'The Impact of New Technology on Libraries: An Introductory Note' [online] 62nd IFLA Council and General Conference Beijing, China - August 25-31, 1996 ['Latest Revision: August 19, 1996'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.fh-potsdam.de/.... This lacklustre tradition continued in 2002, a year of '... little startling innovation.' See Michael Rogers, 'Library Technology Market Holds Steady Throughout 2002' Library Journal [online] ['12/15/2002'] [last accessed 24 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/....
[civ] Michael Rogers, 'Library Technology Market Holds Steady Throughout 2002' Library Journal [online] ['12/15/2002'] [last accessed 6 January 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/....
[cv] See Victor Rosenberg, 'The Scholar's Workstation' College and Research Libraries News; 46 (November, 1985): 546-549 and Barbara B Moran, Thomas T Surprenant and E. Merrily, 'The Electronic Campus: The Impact of the Scholar's Workstation Project on the Libraries at Brown' College and Research Libraries 48 (January, 1987): 5-16.
[cvi] Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts, 'Online Action Plan: Accessing Department Information' Online Action Plan [online] ['Last Updated: 25 Oct 2000 02:41PM'] [last accessed 27 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.dcita.gov.au/.... The British Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) Technical Architecture identifies seven different types of library portals, respectively, the central, subject-oriented, local, media-specific, data centre, curatorial and 'enriched interface' portals. See Joint Information Systems Committee, 'The DNER' [online] ['Last updated: 16 March 2001'] [last accessed 20 October 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_desc.html.
[cvii] Cox and Yeates, Library Oriented Portals Solutions. Commercial library portals including http://www.libraryhq.com and LibrarySpot are beyond the scope of the present discussion.
[cviii] For 'knowledge', no less. See University of Queensland Library, Profile and Operational Plan [online] {'June 2000'] [last accessed 29 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://.library.uq.edu.au/.... Also see Mary Gooderham, 'The Librarian is Now Cybrarian' Globe and Mail [online] ['Friday, October 29, 1999'] [last accessed 15 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.globetechnology.com/....
[cix] In cybraries, computer-supported group work is outside the scope of systems operation. See Margie Wells, 'Cybraries at the University of Buffalo' UGLi Newsletter Issue 72 [online] ['June 1999'] [last accessed 20 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/....
[cx] 'In librarianship...organisation of knowledge consists of list-making.' See David C. Batty and Toni Carbo Bearman, 'Knowledge and Practice in Library and Information Science' in The Study of Information Interdisciplinary Messages ed. by Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfield (New York: John Wiley and Sons, c1983), 365. Also see Tula Giannini, 'Web Information Communities Gatekeepers, Gurus, and Users, Defining New Relationships' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 29 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://rand.pratt.edu/....
[cxi] P. Meehan, 'Internet Portals! The Door or the Store?' Gartner Group Research [KA-04-09103] quoted in Sarah Warner, 'Internet Portals, What Are They and How to Build a Niche Internet Portal to Enhance the Delivery of Information Services' STRAIT to the Future: Proceedings of the 8th Asia-Pacific Specials, Health and Law Librarians Conference, Hobart, Tasmania, 23-26 August, 1999 [online] ['25th August, 1999'] [last accessed 24 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://conferences.alia.org.au/....
[cxii] See Mary Lee Bundy and Paul Wasserman, 'Professionalism Reconsidered' College and Research Libraries 29 (January, 1968): 7-14 et. seq. and Patrick Wilson, Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance: Toward a Library and Information Policy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, c1977), 104 et. seq.
[cxiii] Cox and Yeates, Library Oriented Portal Solutions.
[cxiv] Phil Agre, 'Digital libraries and the nature of texts' [online] ['29 December 2001'] [last accessed 21 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://commons.somewhere.com/....
[cxv] Cox and Yeates argue that '...in the long-term [library portals] are likely only provide services relevant to information management, leaving others to deliver added institutional, pedagogical or commercial value.' Cox and Yeates, Library Oriented Portal Solutions.
[cxvi] Richard Heseltine, 'The Future of the Subject Resource Gateways' Proceedings of the Library Strategy Workshop 30 April - 1 May 1998 (Bristol: JISC, 1998), 39.
[cxvii] Richard Heseltine, 'Opening Keynote Address - Alice Through the Looking Glass: Information Spaces for a New Learning Generation' in Information Landscapes for a Learning Society: Networking and the Future of Libraries 3 - An International Conference Held at the University of Bath, 29 June - 1 July 1998, ed. by Sally Criddle, Lorcan Dempsey and Richard Heseltine (London: Library Association Publishing in association with the UK Office for Library and Information Networking, University of Bath, c1999), xviii.
[cxviii] Norbert Elias, Excerpt from The Society of Individuals in On Civilisation, Power and Knowledge: Selected Writings, ed. with an introduction by Stephen Mennell and Johan Goudsblom Translated by Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 279. Elias attributes this transition to a then '...new form of self-consciousness...linked to the growing commericalisation and the formation of states, to the rise of rich court and urban classes and...the noticeably increasing power of human beings over non-human natural events.' Ibid., 274. Also see Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1994), 249.
[cxix] Elias, On Civilisation, Power and Knowledge, 254.
[cxx] Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process Volume 1: The History of Manners Translated by Edmund Jephcott with some notes and revision by the author (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), 291.
[cxxi] Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 2.
[cxxii] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge, 1964), 173.
[cxxiii] Marshall McLuhan to Jacques Maritain, May 6, 1969 in Marshall McLuhan, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, ed. By Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan and William Toye (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 370.
[cxxiv] McLuhan, Understanding Media, 247.
[cxxv] Francis L. Miksa and Philip Doty, 'Intellectual Realities and the Digital Library' Paper presented at Digital Libraries '94: Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries June 19-21, 1994 - College Station, Texas, USA [online] [n.d.] [10 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/... and Gerald Emanuel Stearn, 'why have the effects of media, whether speech, writing, photography or radio, been overlooked the past 3500 years of the western world' in McLuhan Hot and Cool: A Primer for the Understanding of McLuhan and a Critical Symposium With a Rebuttal, ed. by Gerald Emanuel Stearn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, c1968), 128.
[cxxvi] Stephen K. Stoan, 'Research and Library Skills: An Analysis and Interpretation' College and Research Libraries 45 (March, 1984): 99-109.
[cxxvii] See Kate Erlich and Debra Cash, 'Turning Information Into Knowledge: Information Finding As a Collaborative Activity' Digital Libraries '94: Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries June 19-21, 1994 - College Station, Texas, USA [online] [n.d.] [10 July 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/..., D M Levy and Catherine C. Marshall, 'Going Digital: A Look at Assumptions Underlying Digital Libraries' Communications of the ACM 38 [online] ['April 1995'] [last accessed 2 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/..., Michael B. Twidale, David M. Nichols, Gareth Smith and Jonathan Trevor, 'Supporting Collaborative Learning During Information Searching' Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL'95), October 17-20, 1995,Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 10 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/... and Rob Procter, Ana Goldenberg, Elisabeth Davenport and Andy McKinlay, 'Genres in Support of Collaborative Information Retrieval in the Virtual Library' [online] ['1997'] [last accessed 10 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/....
[cxxviii] James McGee and Laurence Prusak, Managing Information Strategically (New York: Wiley, c1993), 111.
[cxxix] Pew Research Center, 'College Students' Use of the Internet: Background' Pew Internet and American Life Project [online] ['15 September, 2002'] [last accessed 20 October 2002']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.pewinternet.org/....
[cxxx] See Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997).
[cxxxi] Rita Lauria, 'Virtual Reality: An Empirical-Metaphysical Testbed' Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3 [online] ['September, 1997'] [last accessed 5 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/....
[cxxxii] S. D. N. Cook and J. S. Brown, 'Bridging Epistemologies: The Generative Dance Between Organisational Knowledge and Organisational Knowing' in Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader, ed. by Stephen Little, Paul Quintas and Tim Ray (London: Open University in association with Sage Publications, 2002), 72.
[cxxxiii] Ibid., 75.
[cxxxiv] Ibid.
[cxxxv] Anna Teo and Robert Buckman, 'It's KS, not KM' Business Times Singapore [online] ['July 18, 2002'] [last accessed 5 August 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/....
[cxxxvi] An e-business model is '...[a] description of the roles and relationships among [an organisation's] consumers, customers, allies, and suppliers that identifies the major flow of product, information, and money, and the major benefits to participants.' See Peter Weill and Michael R. Vitale, Place to Space: Migrating to eBusiness Models (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, c2001), 34.
[cxxxvii] Peter Lyman, 'Business Models: IT and Business Infrastructure' [online] ['January 23, 2001'] [last accessed 11 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/....
[cxxxviii] See Michael Rappa, 'Managing the Digital Enterprise: Module 5 - Business Models on the Web' [online] ['©2002'] [last accessed 4 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://digitalenterprise.org/... and Paul Timmers, 'Business Models for Electronic Markets' [online] ['Originally published in April 1998'] [last accessed 4 March 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://brie.berkeley.edu/~briewww/courses/jz/Timmers%20Article.pdf.
[cxxxix] Timmers, Business Models for Electronic Markets.
[cxl] Theodore Levitt, 'Marketing Success Through Differentiation - of Anything' Harvard Business Review 58 (January-February, 1980):
[cxli] Richard M. Kesner, 'The Library as Information Center: A 'Utility' Model for Information Resource Management and Support' Library Trends 42 (Winter, 1994): 385.
[cxlii] Joseph. J. Branin, 'Fighting Back Once Again: From Collection Management to Knowledge Management' in Collection Management and Development: Issues in an Electronic Era, ed. by P. Johnson and B. MacEwan (Chicago: American Library Association, 1994), xvi.
[cxliii] In this context, socialisation of intellectual work clearly does not equate to further democratisation of library use. In other aareas, that may be a significant benefit. Overall, however, Day is correct to warn against the delusion, popular among librarians, that everyone is capable of benefiting from library use. See Alan Day, 'Beware the New Shibboleths' New Library World 76 (November, 1975): 225.
[cxliv] David Weinberger, 'What About the Body?' JOHO - The Blog [online] ['Thursday, March 14, 2002'] [last accessed 3 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.hyperorg.com/....
[cxlv] Helen Pukszta 'Forget Knowledge Management: Back to Information' Computerworld 33 (May 3, 1999): 32.
[cxlvi] Rick Luce, 'Vision of the Library' [online] ['Last Modified: 10 07/17/02, 2002'] [last accessed 11 November 2002]. [Available on the World-Wide Web: http://lib-www.lanl.gov/....
[cxlvii] CSCW is here defined as '...an endeavour to understand the nature and
characteristics of cooperative work with the objective of designing adequate computer-based technologies.' See L. Bannon and K. Schmidt, 'K. CSCW: Four Characteristics in Search of a Context' in Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory, Practice and Design, ed. by J. Bowers and S. Benford (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1991), 3-5.
[cxlviii] Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 3. Also see Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, c1995), 19.
[cxlix] Sherry Turkle, 'Who Am We?' Wired 4.01 [online] ['Jan 1996'] [last accessed 24 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.wired.com/....
[cl] Andy Crabtree, Michael B. Twidale, Jon O'Brien and David M. Nichols, 'Talking in the Library: Implications for the Design of Digital Libraries' Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries (DL'97) [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 10 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/....
[cli] See Clifford Lynch, 'Opportunities and Challenges in Searching: Prepared for Social Aspects of Digital Libraries Workshop, UCLA, February 16-17, 1996' [online]
[last accessed 11 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/....
[clii] Ibid.
[cliii] Peter Lyman, 'The Social Functions of Digital Libraries: Designing Information Resources for Virtual Communities' Information Online and On Disc 99: The Ninth Australasian Conference and Exhibition, Darling Harbour, Sydney, 19-21 January 1999 [online] ['21 January 1999'] [last accessed 1 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csu.edu.au/....
[cliv] Brian McKenna, 'Content for European Portals' Information World Review 158 (May, 2000), 6.
[clv] John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, 'Organisational Learning and Communities of Practice' Organisational Science 2 [online] ['1991'] [last accessed 13 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www2.parc.com/....
[clvi] McLuhan borrowed the terms from jazz music. '[Starting in 1917] the music later identified as 'genuine' jazz was...called...'hot music,' or just plain 'hot,'' See Richard M. Sudhalter, 'Hot Music in the 1920s: The 'Jazz Age', Appearances and Realities' in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, ed. by Bill Kirchner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, c2000), 149. Hot solos '...were generally performed at considerable speed and were characterized by a frenetic quality, an urgent sense of rhythm, agitated syncopation, eager anticipations of the beat, and an earthy or 'dirty' tone. Such solos were played in some instances over...choruses...' See Eric Thacker, 'Hot Jazz' in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz Volume One, ed. by Barry Kernfeld (London: Macmillian Press, c1988), 540 [emphasis added]. In contrast, 'cool jazz' was '...perceived as subdued, understated, or emotionally cool.' Mark C. Gridley, 'Cool Jazz' in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz Volume One, ed. by Barry Kernfeld (London: Macmillian Press, c1988), 244. In a 'subdued adaptation' of the bebop of Charlie 'Bird' Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, players most notably including Miles Davis '...suppressed highly emotional elements in favor of medium volume, gentle tone colors, legato phrasing, dense harmonies, moderate tempos, and middle registers of instruments.' See B.K., 'Cool Jazz' in The New Harvard History of Jazz, ed. by Don Michael Randel (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c1986), 201. Cool jazz '...offered a music of unity, a holistic sound...The model...was not [an]...orchestra or...jazz big band, rather a choir...' See Ted Gioia, 'Cool Jazz and West Coast Jazz' in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, ed. by Bill Kirchner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, c2000), 335-336. Emphasis added.
[clvii] McKenzie Wark, 'Whatcha Doin', Marshall McLuhan?' Media International Australian Incorporating Culture and Policy 94 (February, 2000): 89
[clviii] Paul West, 'Never Lose Your Cool' in The McLuhan Explosion: A Casebook on Marshall McLuhan and Understanding Media, ed. by Harry H. Crosby and George R. Bond (New York: American Book Company, c1968), 45.
[clix] Neil Compton, 'The Cool Revolution' in The McLuhan Explosion, 65.
[clx] Richard Schickel, 'Marshall McLuhan: Canada's Intellectual Comet' in The McLuhan Explosion, 87.
[clxi] Kenneth Boulding, 'The Medium and the Message' in Collected Papers Volume 4: Towards a General Social Science (Boulder, Colo.: Associated University Press, 1971-1985), 310.
[clxii] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 23. Emphasis added. It is important to note that McLuhan regarded these admittedly quicksilver measures '...not classifications but processes, not concepts but percepts...' See Marshall McLuhan, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 435. For Levinson, they are '...more than relative measurements of one medium to another: they are properties of a medium's usage by humans...' Levinson, Digital McLuhan, 108.
[clxiii] McLuhan, Understanding Media, 318. Also see W. Terrence Gordon, Marshall McLuhan: Escape to Understanding - A Biography (New York: Basic Books, c1997), 204.
[clxiv] McLuhan, Understanding Media, 168, 138.
[clxv] Ibid., 263, 279 and 283.
[clxvi] Levinson, Digital McLuhan, 116-117.
[clxvii][clxvii] McLuhan, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 255.
[clxviii] Levinson, Digital McLuhan, 115-116.
[clxix] Lest it be objected that the use of the word 'media' to cover information systems is an illegitimate extension of McLuhan's meaning, it can be pointed out his use of the term was very broad indeed. In Understanding Media, '...he devotes twenty-six separate chapters not only to such obvious media as paper, print, telegraph, and radio, but also to wheels, weapons, clocks, money, and houses.' Compton, Cool Revolution, 146.
[clxx] Robert K. Kieft, 'The Death of the Librarian in the (Post) Modern Electronic Information Age' in Information for a New Age: Redefining the Librarian, comp. by Fifteenth Anniversary Task Force, Library Instruction Round Table, American Library Association (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, c1995), 19. Recent, long overdue moves in the US to '...reorganise [library] schools in the broader discipline of 'information' under which information technology, computing, library science, and even media and communications would be subsumed' support this argument. See ''I' School Chiefs Propose New Council of Deans' Library Journal [online] ['12/9/2002'] [last accessed 24 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web;<http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/....
[clxxi] Jeff Warren, 'Point and Click' [online] The Globe and Mail ['March 2, 2002'] [last accessed 12 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.globeandmail.com/....
[clxxii] Charles L. Martin, The Digital Estate: Strategies for Competing, Surviving and Thriving in an Internetworked World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 127.
[clxxiii] Lyman acknowledges that this will involve what most librarians fear most - a loss of control. See Lyman, Social Functions of Digital Libraries.
[clxxiv] Jim Sterne, Customer Service on the Internet (New York: Wiley, c1996), 186-209.
[clxxv] Paul Levinson, Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (London: Routledge, 1999), 39. The possible synergies from integrating customer supplied information and 'objective, third-party information from reputable, published sources' are 'revolutionary.' See ee Mary Ellen Bates, 'We Are the Content' EContent 24 (May, 2001): 72. Also see Cliff Figallo and Nancy Rhine, 'Tapping the Grapevine: User-Generated Content' EContent 24 (May, 2001): 38-40, 42-43.
[clxxvi] Martin Butler, 'Self-Service - The Killer Portal Application' Serverworld Magazine [online] ['June 2002'] [last accessed 22 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.serverworldmagazine.com/....
[clxxvii] Gregory T. Anderson, 'Dimensions, Context, Freedom: The Library in the Social Construction of Knowledge' in Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge, ed. By Edward Barrett (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, c1994), 110.
[clxxviii] David Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, 139.
[clxxix] Bundy and Wasserman, Professionalism Reconsidered, 10 et. seq.
[clxxx] Kumar S. Nochur and Thomas J Allen, 'Do Nominated Boundary Spanners Become Effective Technological Gatekeepers?' IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 39 (August, 1992), 268.
[clxxxi] The same trend in is reported in the chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and, more recently, the food industries. See Bill Davidson, 'The Food Industry's Point of View' International Internet Congress, 29-30th September 1997, Frankfurt/M, Germany [International Food Information Service] [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 5 September 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ifis.org/....
[clxxxii] Cox and Yeates, Library Oriented Portal Solutions.
[clxxxiii] Nancy Lemon, 'Climbing the Value Chain: A Case Study in Rethinking the Corporate Library Function' Online 20 (November/December, 1996): 50-56.
[clxxxiv] Levy and Marshall, Washington's White Horse?: A Look at Assumptions Underlying Digital Libraries. Emphasis added.
[clxxxv] Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, Working Knowledge : How Organisations Manage What They Know (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, c1998), 174.
[clxxxvi] Soshanna Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (New York: Basic Books, c1988), 362-363.
[clxxxvii] Ibid., 9-10, 319.
[clxxxviii] Ronald G. Havelock, 'Information Professional As Change Agents' Drexel Library Quarterly 13 (April, 1977): 49 et seq.
[clxxxix] McLuhan, Understanding Media, 17-18.
[cxc] Steiner and others establish that the needs and standards of the fully literate are clearly not applicable to the majority in society or any large organisation. See George Steiner, 'After the Book 1972' Journal of Information Science 9 (October, 1983): 125.
[cxci] John C Swan, 'Information and Madness' Library Journal 113 (February 1, 1988): 26.
[cxcii] Defence Library Service, Intranet Infrastructure Project, 1999 [Unpublished report.]
[cxciii] John Schroder, 'Enterprise Portals: Business Information Goes Self-Service' Enterprise Systems Journal 14 (September, 1999): 30-31.
[cxciv] See Bennet P. Lientz and Kathryn P Rea, Project Management for the 21st Century 3rd ed. (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, c2002) and Bennet P Lientz and Kathryn P. Rea, Breakthrough Technology Project Management 2nd. ed. (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, c2001).
[cxcv] Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Software Engineering: Theory and Practice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1998).
[cxcvi] Rob Tucker, 'Skills for Systems Support' ALIA 2000: Capitalising on Knowledge - The Information Profession in the 21st Century [online] [24-26 October 2000] [last accessed 18 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: [cxcvii] Iain Brown and Lee Williams, 'Delivering 'Information Capability': The Application of Knowledge Management in the Defence Library Service' Information Online and On Disc 99: Strategies for the Next Millennium - Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Online and On Disc Conference and Exhibition Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney Australia 19-21 January 1999 [online] ['20 january 1999'] [last accessed 21 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.csu.edu.au/....
[cxcviii] Juantao Yuan, Welcome to OpenReference! [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 18 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://openreference.sourceforge.net/.
[cxcix] Don Gourley, 'Opening Doors With Open Source' Computers in Libraries 20 (October 2000): 40-43.
[cc] R. Kouzes, J. Myers and W Wulf, 'Collaboratories: Doing Science on the Internet' IEEE Computer 29 (August, 1996): 40-46. Also see Department of Energy, Office of Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences, 'National Collaboratories' [online] ['Last Updated: November 3, 2000'] [last accessed 3 March 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://doecollaboratory.pnl.gov/....
[cci] United States Department of Energy, 'National Collaboratories - Vision' [online] ['Last Updated: May 21, 2002'] [last accessed 18 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://doecollaboratory.pnl.gov/....
[ccii] Gary Marchionini, 'The Sharium: A Distributed Learning Space' Paper Presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Conference, February 18, 2000 [online] [last accessed 20 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ils.unc.edu/....
[cciii] Gary Marchionini, 'Augmenting Library Services: Towards the Sharium' Paper delivered at the International Symposium on Digital Libraries 1999: ISDL'99, September 28-29, 1999, University of Library and Information Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan [online] [28-29 September 1999] [last accessed 18 June 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://.ils.unc.edu/....
[cciv] Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak, In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organisations Work (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2001), 175-178.
[ccv] Ian Dolphin, Paul Miller and Robert Sherratt, 'Portals, PORTALs, Everywhere' Ariadne 33 [online] ['File last modified: Wednesday, 09-Oct-2002 17:00:18 BST'] [last accessed 16 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/....
[ccvi] Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), xv.
[ccvii] Rebecca Jones, 'New Technologies Demand New Roles: 'Resistance is Futile' Computers in Libraries 17 (July-August, 1997): 32 et. seq.
[ccviii] The following refers only to Portal II.
[ccix] United States Federal Geographic Data Committee, 'Content Standard for Geospatial Metadata' [CSDGM Version 2 - FGDC-STD-001-1998] [online] ['Updated: Tuesday, 13-Aug-2002 15:13:57 EDT'] [last accessed 18 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.fgdc.gov/....
[ccx] Content management is '...the process of collecting, managing, and publishing content to any outlet...' See Bob Boiko, Content Management Bible (New York: Hungry Minds, c2002), 66. A content management system is '...essentially a collection of...business rules and editorial processes around content [plus] other critical functions including templating, separation of content and presentation, Web publishing, and syndication.' See Tom Byrne, 'CM vs DM vs KM vs DAM vs SCM vs DRM -- Which One is Right for You?' CMSWatch.com [online] ['2001-11-17'] [last accessed 16 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cmswatch.com/....
[ccxi] Andrew Cox and Jane Yeadon, 'Practical Content Management on the Web: An Overview''in Online Information 2001: Proceedings, 4-6 December 2001, Olympia Grand Hall, London, Conference Editor, Catherine Graham, Production Editor, jane Kerr (Oxford: Learned Information Europe, c2001), 31-32.
[ccxii] Ibid.
[ccxiii] A Forrester Research study in mid-2002 reported 54 percent of respondent firms managed their Web content using a 'homegrown/developed internally' solution and 22 percent were using Lotus Domino in this role. See Forrester Research [online] ['9 July, 2002-08-27'] [last accessed 20 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.analystviews.com/....
[ccxiv] Peter Fingar, 'Don't Just Transact - Collaborate' CIO Magazine [online] ['Jun. 1, 2001'] [last accessed 22 October 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cio.com/....
[ccxv] The discussion here is limited to 5 applications. Occasional reference is made to additional capabilities currently in development including synchronous messaging using Lotus Sametime.
[ccxvi] IBM/Lotus, 'Quickplace' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 19 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lotus.com/.
[ccxvii] Betsy Kosheff, Mussie Shore, Julio Estrada, Miguel Estrada, Tony Estrada and David Block, 'Quickplace: Brave New Workplace' Lotus Developer Domain [online] ['Updated: 01/03/99'] [last accessed 25 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www-10.lotus.com/.
[ccxviii] IBM/Lotus, 'IBM Lotus Sametime 3' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 25 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lotus.com/.... Also see 'IBM Lotus Sametime Leads Business Instant Messaging Market' [online] ['May 7, 2002'] [last accessed 25 November, 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www-916.ibm.com/....
[ccxix] Dick McCarrick, 'New Features in Quickplace 3.0' Lotus Developer Domain [online] ['Updated: 03/09/2002'] [last accessed 25 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www-10.lotus.com/....
[ccxx] Tracy Kidder, The Soul of the New Machine (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, c1981).
[ccxxi] Special Library Association, 'Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century'. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.sla.org/....
[ccxxii] Ibid.
[ccxxiii] Paul Evan Peters, 'From Serial Publication to Document Delivery to Knowledge Management: Our Fascinating Journey, Just Begun' Serials Librarian 28 (1996): 46.
[ccxxiv] Joan Lippincott, 'Librarians and Cross-Sector Teamwork' ARL Bimonthly Report 208/209 [online] ['February/April 2000'] [last accessed 26 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.arl.org/....
[ccxxv] 'Practitioners, Educators Seek Library's Place in Professional Education, April 30-May 1, in Washington' American Libraries [online] ['May 10, 1999'] [last accessed 19 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ala.org/....
[ccxxvi] Michael Yuan, 'Implelemting a Research Knowledge Base' Linux Journal 91 (November, 2001): 34, 36-38.
[ccxxvii] Don R. Swanson, 'Dialogues With a Catalog' Library Quarterly XXXIV (January, 1964): 115.
[ccxxviii] Ibid., 120.
[ccxxix] Ibid., 122.
[ccxxx] Michael E. D. Koenig, 'Linking library users: a culture change in librarianship' American Libraries 21 (October 1990): 844-845, 847, 849.
[ccxxxi] Ibid., 845.
[ccxxxii] Trudi E. Jacobson and Lynne M. Martin, 'Merging critical thinking and the electronic library: a visionary perspective of SuperPAC, an enhanced OPAC' Research Strategies 11 (Summer, 1993): 138-149.
[ccxxxiii] C. Edward Wall, 'Editorial: Technology, Memory, and Knowledge' Library Hi Tech 10 (1992): 5.
[ccxxxiv] Ibid., 849.
[ccxxxv] Levitt sums up the issue thus: '[i]f you're not thinking [customer] segmentation, you're not thinking.' See Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination (New York: Free Press, 1983).
[ccxxxvi] See Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, Principles of Marketing 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, c1991), 216 passim.
[ccxxxvii] Brown and Williams, 'Delivering 'Information Capability'...'
[ccxxxviii] In this respect, the DLS is hardly unique. For a description of the implementation of RIM-r at the State Library of Victoria, see Liz Jesty, 'Receiving, Responding to and Recording Research and Reference Enquiries Electronically - the new 3Rs in Enquiry Services' VALA 2002 E-volving Information Futures - 11th Biennial Conference and Exhibition [online] ['6 February 2002'] [last accessed 25 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.vala.org.au/....
[ccxxxix] William J. Comcowich, 'Do You Know What You're Customers Are Saying' MarketingProfs.com [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 16 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.marketingprofs.com/....
[ccxl] University of Melbourne Library, 'Business Applications of Economics - Locating Company Information' [online] ['Last modified: 26 July 1999'] [last accessed 4 December 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/....
[ccxli] Sally-Anne Leigh, 'Resource Discovery Within the Networked 'Hybrid' Library' ALIA 2000 Capitalising on Knowledge: The Information Profession in the 21st Century Canberra 24-26 October 2000 [online] ['Tursday 26 october 2000'] [last accessed 4 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.alia.org.au/.... Such claims require further study. Anecdotal evidence suggests customers may actually prefer to benefit from the purpose-built search engines and specialist subject thesauri in individual database applications.
[ccxlii] Joan Buntzen, 'Developing Enterprise Portals for Naval Personnel' Military Librarians Workshop, Monterey, CA [online] ['2 November 2000'] [last accessed 3 November 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://library.nps.navy.mil/.... Emphasis added. For general background on Department of the Navy libraries and the preceding Navy Virtual Library Project (1996-1998), see the author's 'Developing Electronic Library Services in the Department of the Navy' Southwest Regional Conference II, Special Libraries Association, San Diego, CA [online] ['7 April 2000'] [last accessed 6 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.sla.org/... and Maxine H. Reneker, 'Steer by the Stars, Not by the Wake: New Directions in Library Missions and Services' 44th Military Librarians Workshop 2000 [online] ['31 October to 3 November 2000']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://library.nps.navy.mil/....
[ccxliii] Maxine H. Reneker and Joan L. Buntzen, 'Enterprise Knowledge Portals: Two Projects in the United States Department of the Navy' Electronic Library 18 (2000): 392.
[ccxliv] For further information on PIB, see 'Portal-in-a-BoxTM' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 3 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.autonomy.com/....
[ccxlv] Cox and Yeates, Library Oriented Portal Solutions.
[ccxlvi] William Jordan, 'My Gateway at the University of Washington Libraries' Information Technology and Libraries 19 (December, 2000): 180.
[ccxlvii] Both Jordan's paper and, more directly, comments elsewhere by Kibby indicate that the My Gateway technology is 'a pain to maintain.' See Tri-College Libraries Web Redesign Committee, 'University of Washington 'My Gateway' Project' [online] ['1/26/00'] [last accessed 6 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www2.haverford.edu/....
[ccxlviii] Jordan, My Gateway at the University of Washington Libraries, 185.
[ccxlix] Richard Heseltine, 'Projects and Their Place in Digital Libraries' [n.d.] [last accessed 19 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.uky.edu/....
[ccl] IBM/Lotus is doing so with its Discovery Server product that indexes an organisation's enterprise-wide information resources, identifies and facilitates real-time collaboration with subject experts associated that information (using Sametime). See IBM/Lotus, 'Lotus Discovery Server' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 16 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lotus.com/....
[ccli] Heseltine, Projects and Their Place in Digital Libraries.
[cclii] Ojala, The End of Online As We Know It.
[ccliii] Robert Caranade, Automation in Library Reference Services: A Handbook (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992). Expert systems are '...computer program[s] that contains a knowledgebase and a set of algorithms or rules that infer new facts from knowledge and from incoming data. [They are] are artificial intelligence application[s] that use... a knowledge base of human expertise to aid in solving problems. The degree of problem solving is based on the quality of the data and rules obtained from the human expert. Expert systems are designed to perform at a human expert level.' See 'Expert Systems' Free Online Dictionary of Computing [online] ['1996-05-29'] [last accessed 14 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/....
[ccliv] F. Hayes-Roth, 'Expert Systems' in Encyclopaedia of Artificial Intelligence Editor-in-Chief, Stuart C. Shapiro, Managing Editor, David Eckroth Managing Editor (New York: John Wiley and Sons, c1987), 288.
[cclv] For background, see John Robertson, 'Information Management, Expert Systems and Hypertext' in Libraries and Expert Systems: Proceedings of a Conference and Workshop Held at Charles Sturt University - Riverina, Australia, July 1990 ed. By Craig McDonald and John Weckert (London: Taylor Graham, c1991), 137 et. seq.
[cclvi] Natural language processing is defined by Liddy as follows: '...a range of computational techniques for analysing and representing naturally occurring texts at one or more levels of linguistic analysis for the purpose of achieving human-like language processing for a range of particular tasks or applications.' See Elizabeth D. Liddy, 'Enhanced Text Retrieval Using Natural Language Processing' ASIS Bulletin [online] ['April 1998'] [last accessed 7 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.asis.org/.... On Ask Jeeves, see Phil Bradley, 'Ask Jeeves: A Humanised Online Experience?' Ariadne 28 [online] ['Publication Date: 22-June-2001'] [last accessed 10 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/....
[cclvii] Lucas Mearian, 'Schwab taps natural-language search engine' Computerworld [online] ['July 16, 2001'] [last accessed 3 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.computerworld.com/....
[cclviii] John A. Mess, ''I Want an Expert, Not a Librarian': Expert Advisory Services, Library Reference, and Knowledge Economics on the Internet' Internet Reference Services Quarterly 6 (2001): 56. Mess cites Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo, 'Aska and You May Receive: Commercial Reference Services on the Web' Searcher 8 [online] ['May 2001'] [last accessed 7 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.findarticles.com/....
[cclix] For example, see Jennifer Disabatino, 'Ask Jeeves To Add Transaction Technology to Search Engine' Computerworld [online] ['January 14, 2002'] [last accessed 9 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.computerworld.com/....
[cclx] Maes defines a software agent as '... a computational system that is long-lived, has goals, sensors and effectors and decides autonomously which actions to take in the current situation to maximise progress towards its (time-varying goals).' See Pattie Maes, 'Long Tutorial Notes on Software Agents' CHI 97: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 22-27 March 1997, Atlanta, Georgia [online] ['4 February 1997'] [last accessed 1 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://pattie.www.media.mit.edu/....
[cclxi] Pattie Maes, 'Agents that Reduce Work and Information Overload' Communications of the ACM 37 [online] ['July 1994'] [last accessed 10 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://pattie.www.media.mit.edu/....
[cclxii] Here understood as '...graphical icon that represents a real person in a cyberspace system.' See 'Avatar' Weblopedia [online] ['2002'] [last accessed 10 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://inews.webopedia.com/....
[cclxiii] Bjorn Hermans, 'Intelligent Software Agents on the Internet: An Inventory of Currently Offered Functionality in the Information Society and a Prediction of (Near) Future Developments' First Monday 2 [online] ['3 March 1997'] [last accessed 2 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.firstmonday.dk/....
[cclxiv] Patricia Soto, 'Text Mining: Beyond Search Technology' DB2 Magazine [online] ['Fall 1998'] [last accessed 10 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.db2mag.com/....
[cclxv] Willi Gotthard, Alan Marwick and Roland Seiffert, 'Mining Text Data' DB2 Magazine [online] ['Winter 1997'] [last accessed 10 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.db2mag.com/....
[cclxvi] Daniel Tkach, 'Knowledge Portals' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 12 December 2002, no longer found]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www-3.ibm.com/.... Grushkin rightly argues that '...text itself is not knowledge; it's a residual of knowledge.' See Barry Grushkin, 'Context Dependency' Intelligent Enterprise Magazine 3 [online] ['29 September 2000'] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.intelligententerprise.com/....
[cclxvii] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 57 et. seq.
[cclxviii] Ibid., 80.
[cclxix] Roger D Smith, 'Simulation' in Encyclopaedia of Computer Science 4th ed. Ed. By Anthony Ralston, Edwin D Reilly and David Hemmendinger (London: Nature Publishing Group, c2000), 1578.
[cclxx] Ibid.
[cclxxi] Robert Axelrod, 'Advancing the Art of Simulation in the Social Sciences' in Simulating Social Phenomena Ed. by Rosaria Conte, Rainer Hegselmann and Pietro Terna (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1987),
[cclxxii] Pat Molholt, 'Libraries and the New Technologies: Courting the Cheshire Cat' Library Journal 113 (15 November 1988): 39.
[cclxxiii] Lloyd Davidson and Peter Schneider, 'Expert Systems for Library Applications' Database 13 (February 1990): 80-83.
[cclxxiv] Rory L Chase, 'Knowledge Navigators' Information Outlook 2 (September 1998): 19-20.
[cclxxv] Doug Church, 'Managing on Internet Time' Phase-5.com [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 14 June 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.phase-5.com/....
[cclxxvi] Mary Corcoran and Rebecca Jones, 'Chief Knowledge Officers?: Perceptions, Pitfalls and Potential' Information Outlook 1 (June 1997): 36.
[cclxxvii] Denham Grey, 'Librarians and Knowledge Management' lisnews.com [online] ['1:36am Sunday 9 July'] [last accessed 4 September 2000]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.lisnews.com/....
[cclxxix] Lucy Lettis, 'The Future of Information Professionals - Seize the Day' Information Outlook 4 (May 2000): 27-28.
[cclxxx] Deanna B Marcum, 'Dr Deanna Marcum's Presentation Notes' [Notes from the presentation by Dr. Deanna Marcum, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources, given under the collective title 'Virtual Place, Virtuous Space': College Libraries in the 21st Century at the American Library Association Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, 2001.] [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 25 August 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.ala.org/....
[cclxxxi] Ernest Perez, 'Knowledge Management in the Library - Not' Database 22 (April/May 1999): 75.
[cclxxxii] On the former, see Jane E Hughes, 'Access, Access, Access: The New OPAC Mantra' Library Journal 32 (May, 2001): 63. On the latter, see John Berry quoted in 'Libraries in Need of Librarians' [online] ['18 June 2002'] [last accessed 17 July 2002']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cbsnews.com/... and Maurice J Freedman, 'Librarians Can't Live On Love Alone' Times Online [online] [''Posted on Thursday 5 September 2002'] [last accessed 9 September 2002']. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.thetimesonline.com/....
[cclxxxiii] Rory L. Chase, Ibid., 19-20. 'Overall end users readily seek and find simple information requirements without the need to resort to information centres (though it can be important to assess the length of time wasted on such quests by the occasional or inexperience web-surfer). In a recent IRN survey of information professionals, 40 per cent of respondents in the UK worked in organisations where end users look for and purchase business information independently and 30 per cent stated that they themselves had reduced their use of fee-based services as a result of using free services.' See Fred Hitchins, 'Should Information Centres Be Outsourced? When, Why and How' IRN Research Brief 4 [online] ['June 2002'] [last accessed 23 September 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.irn-research.com/....
[cclxxxiv] Richard Heseltine, 'The New Information Providers' in Libraries and Publishers: Proceedings of the IATUL Seminar, Sheffield, United Kingdom, 4-8 July 1994, ed. by Michael Hannon and Peter Stubley (Helsinki?: Published for IATUL by Helsinki University of Technology Library, 1995?), 34.
[cclxxxv] Hopefully, this time around, the fact that livelihoods are at issue will discourage any egregious displays of technophobia or, worse, sanctimonious moralising occasioned by involvement in anything even remotely connected with the military.
[cclxxxvi] Justin Kestelyn, 'Knowledge Can Be a Weapon' Intelligent Enterprise Magazine [online] ['12 November 2001'] [last accessed 3 July 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.intelligententerprise.com/....
[cclxxxvii] US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, Final Report Part 1 The Context Part 1: Findings and Conclusions [online] ['10 December 2002'] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://intelligence.senate.gov/....
[cclxxxviii] Ibid.
[cclxxxix] For an unclassified listing of these databases, see Center for Defence Information Terrorism Project, 'Multitude of Databases Complicates Information Sharing' [online] ['Oct. 29, 2002'] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.cdi.org/....
[ccxc] More directly, it 'sucks'. See William Matthews, 'Knowledge Management's 'Worst'' Federal Computer Week [online] [25 April 2002] [last accessed 11 June 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.fcw.com/....
[ccxci] Ibid.
[ccxcii] Information Awareness Office, 'IAO Mission' [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.darpa.mil/....
[ccxciii] Information Awareness [Office], BAA 02-08 Proposer Information Pamphlet [online] [n.d.] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.darpa.mil/.... Emphasis added.
[ccxciv] Shane Harris, 'Total Information Awareness' GovExec.com [online] ['20 November 2002'] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web;<http://www.govexec.com/.... Harris correctly scotches the Orwellian fantasies held close by critics of the TIA program. 'Quite simply, the government doesn't have a large cache of information on every man, woman and child in the country. Furthermore, what personal information different agencies do collect is stored in different databases, and access to it is frequently restricted by law. And today, the government isn't advanced enough to create an all-powerful computer such as the one critics of the TIA...envision.'
[ccxcv] Cathleen Moore, 'Knowledge Management Offers Hope for Homeland Security' InfoWorld [online] ['18 June 2002 5:33 am PT'] [last accessed 6 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://www.infoworld.com/....
[ccxcvi] David Marshak, 'The Rebirth of Collaboration' Patricia Seybold Group ['28 February 2002'] [last accessed 24 December 2002]. Available on the World-Wide Web: http://.intel.com/... and Drew Robb, 'Collaboration Gets It Together' Computerworld [online] ['9 December 2002'] [last accessed 12 December 2002]. Available on the World Wide Web: http://www.computerworld.com/....
[ccxcvii] Robert C. Berring, 'Future Librarians', 103.