Common challenges, common issues Lorcan Dempsey School for scanning The Hague, 16 October 2002

Overview Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 I do not know an awful lot about archival institutions …. … or museums …

Part one “The words of things entangle and confuse …”

Goals which encourage shared activity To release the value of Europe's scientific, industrial and cultural heritage in creative use by its citizens. To engage with the cultural identities and aspirations of Europe and its peoples. To develop practices appropriate to upholding the values and purposes of the library, archival and museum traditions in a digital environment. To explore what it means to develop virtual civic presence. To explore sustainable economic models which support both development and continued equitable access to the cultural heritage. “.. ”

It challenges libraries to assert their public service role, to make the links with education, with cultural institutions, with public service broadcasting, and to demonstrate their real value as physical and virtual assembly places. A life-long learning agenda cannot be realised without public institutions that support equitable access to the ‘stuff’ of learning. This case needs to be made and supported by visible services, print and digital. Library values make them such institutions; they need to ensure that their practices do also. “.. ”

Finally, and critically, people spend large parts of their lives in the converging network spaces of broadcasting and the Internet. Are we really saying that such spaces should lack the civilising presence of libraries, archives, museums? That libraries should not try to enrich such spaces with learning opportunity, should not disclose the history of communities there, should not support reading and access to cultural resources? “.. ”

Part 2 “… the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”

Grid highlow high stewardship uniqueness Books Journals Newspapers Albums Maps Scores Special collections Rare books Local/Historical newspapers Local history materials Archives & manuscripts Theses & dissertations Institutional repositories ePrints Learning objects/materials Research data Freely-accessible web resources Open source software Newsgroup archives

highlow high stewardship unique “Special collections” Disclosure, Licensing Scholarly communication

highlow high stewardship unique Libraries becoming like …. Selective exposure –Exhibition –Narrative –Pedagogy Unique –Processing model –Routine for discovery and request Content management Woods and trees –Provenance and context –Evidential and informational –Descriptive practices Preservation and archiving Repurposing content High acronymic density

Part 3 “It must give pleasure”

The recombinant library user environments lab books exhibitions PDAs learning management systems campus portal course material text book new scholarly resources resource environment library shared cataloging, ILL licensed collections archiving virtual reference Content aggregation Resolution Harvest

The ‘recombinant’ library –Distributed –Heterogeneous –Recombinant –Interoperability becomes very real –New organizational patterns Resource environment –Distributed –Heterogeneous –Recombinant –Interoperability becomes very real –New organizational patterns User environment Resource environment

Interoperability as recombinant potential Disaggregating scholarly publishing –Linking, Identifiers ‘Play’ learning objects –Packaged Federated searching –Fusing metadata Processing content Ingesting content ‘Plugging in’ services Collectible? Examples –Can I add a document to a repository? –Can I add a repository to a distributed query? –Can I fuse metadata from one repository with another? –Can I aggregate these resources into a learning package?

Libraries, archives and museums …. User environment –A distributed approach Z, OAI –An aggregated approach SCRAN, ArtStor, Amico, Cultural Materials Initiative, OCLC, … Proquest, Gale, … Resource environment –No economies of scale –The expense of learning –E.g. object management; preservation services; disclosure; … Cannot achieve the big picture on a one by one basis

And … Need to move from single initiative –Nsdl –JISC Information environment –NOF –IMLS –COLIS –Memory of the Netherlands Recombinant organization Fragmented by –Initiative –Domain –Country –Funding regime E.g UK higher education

So …

Thank you …

Discovery Archiving Query HarvesterResolution Auth&Auth Collection description Terminology Interoperability