Pergamon Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 363-365, 1996

Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All fights rescued

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1995 CHARLESTON CONFERENCE

FROM DINOSAURS TO BIRDS

J A M E S W A L S H

Head, Bibliographic Control

BIOSIS

2100 Arch Street

Philadelphia, PA ! 9103

Intemet: j awalsh @ mail.biosis.org

Barbara assigned each of us on the panel the task of choosing a particular dinosaur that we felt represented our segment of the information industry. Making allowances for the questionable bio- logical accuracy, I chose the Archaeopteryx, since it was of the same period and also typified the concept I wanted to present. I picture this large creature as having rudimentary flying ability, but really not being able to get too far in-flight. Like the secondaries, it was able to view the landscape above all the rest of the players, but for only brief moments, then descend to the ground to join its fellow dinosaurs. When Barbara asked me to be on the panel, I said, "Fine, this audience probably doesn't get to hear from my area, the secondaries, too often." Then she said, " . . . and I thought an interesting theme would be 'dinosaurs,' and how we in the publishing arena might be in danger of becoming extinct, just like them!

Well, this was an intriguing idea. We in the secondary publishing arena are certainly not unaware of the monumental changes afoot, and we certainly are aware that these changes have the potential to render us obsolete. But to think of ourselves so unequivocally in those terms, somehow had a "sobering" effect on me. So, then, what could I say to this audience that presented the role of the secondary sector in the context of the tremendous changes taking place in the communication of information? (And I think we have to begin to talk, and think, in terms of information communica- tion, not just publishing.) I will take just a few minutes to present my thoughts in this area. Since I am involved primarily in scientific scholarly publishing (and communication), my comments are directed with this area of publishing in mind. It is also probably worthwhile, when speaking of sec- ondaries, to make the distinction between organizations like BIOSIS that have as their major focus the collection and indexing of published material (the traditional "abstracting & indexing" services, if you will) and those whose primary focus is the identification and delivery of full text documents.

Are we in danger of becoming extinct like our dinosaur "forbearers" of the Mesozoic era? Or will we be able to adapt and evolve to our changing environment? A publication that offers a great

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deal of "food for thought" and presents a good backdrop for my comments is the recently released Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: a Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing - - An Internet Discussion about Scientific and Scholarly Journals and Their Future edited by Ann Okerson of ARL and James O'Donnell of the University of Pennsylvania. (Some of you may be familiar with it.) Although this was a discussion prompted primarily by Stevan Harnad and his views on the viability of electronic publishing versus "dinosaur" print publishing mechanisms, the discus- sions expanded in some cases to theories of scholarly communication in the networked environment. Harnad is very adamant about his view of networked scholarly communication and its potential for reestablishing the information dissemination model, particularly in science. He feels that this new technology coupled with the basic "raison d'etre" of scientific communication will render print pub- lishing in its current form obsolete.

Another contributor to the discussion, Andrew Odlyzko, offers a model for scientific communica- tion wherein he claims that the change to electronic journals and electronic communication will be drastic, not gradual, with traditional scholarly journals disappearing in 10-20 years. He feels that the future system of communication will be much better and more effective than that of traditional jour- nals. Publication delays will disappear and reliability of the literature will increase with opporttmities to add comments to papers and attach references to later works that cited them. His is quite a dynam- ic, anthor-centered model including proficient use of addenda, commentary and reference attach- ments. The obvious result of this and other similar models could well be a considerable number of transmissions, with "layers" of related works building and linking to previous ones. No matter what model you subscribe to, or exactly what turn you feel the area will follow, I think it is fairly certain to assume that there are going to be major alterations in the "infrastructure" of scholarly communication.

How do secondaries fit into this new, greatly expanded and "re-worked" communication enter- prise? I feel they already possess the basic capabilities, or skills, to perform a meaningful role. For example, ISI has a good foundation in citing and cited references, as well as linking subject-relat- ed articles. BIOSIS, on the other hand, has developed an extensive indexing vocabulary that can enable it to expand, or focus, the retrieval of information.

There are, then, capabilities which secondaries possess that should serve them well in this evolv- ing communication environment.

Capacity

• Secondaries have the capability to assemble and manage very large data collections. • This is a major advantage for manipulating high volumes of disparate pieces of information. • They have the potential to bring together in one place a "critical mass" of information.

Conceptual Structure

• Abstracting and indexing services, particularly, provide a consistent conceptual framework that makes it possible to subset the information in a meaningful way.

• From their judgement process - - selection, if you will - - they form a "logical aggregation" of the information, making sense of a multitude of words and terms.

• Together with the indexing schemes they are able to form significant "knowledge bases".

Access Tools

• Abstracting and indexing services possess indexing schemes that can adapt to and function through a variety of retrieval software; they also do this in concert with the data distributors (in whatever form: online, CD-ROM, etc.)

From Dinosaurs to Birds 365

• BIOSIS, for example, is currently developing a new indexing scheme that will be hierarchical but based on free language association; it will provide end-users, as well as intermediaries, considerably more "depth" in identifying associative relationships; it is being designed gener- ically to function with retrieval interfaces.

Contacts

• Secondaries have a history of reaching out to diverse sources: by geography, by language, by format, by publisher.

Continuity

• Abstracting and indexing services in particular, have a continuity and a consistency that pro- ceeds from a history of exercising the above capabilities - - they might be characterized as "here yesterday, here tomorrow".

• Of course, there is also risk for organizations that have built up such a continuity - - that they won't move past their traditional operations.

New Roles

Entirely new possibilities might exist for secondary organizations who are experienced in the above operations:

• Effectively utilizing their "knowledge base" and acting as facilitators for disseminating great quantities of information pieces that are the result of the new models (perhaps through closer alliances with publishers, societies or universities).

• Assembling large quantities of disparate types of literature or partitioning the meaningful pieces of information.

• Repositioning in the communication chain to enable effective researcher-to-researcher links.

So, then, what is to become of the secondaries? Are they going to disappear following some cataclysmic "cyber event"? Or are they going to take the useful pieces of their anatomy and devel- op new ones, fashioning organisms suitable for a new environment? In other words, carrying Barbara's metaphor to a more optimistic conclusion, will these dinosaurs evolve into birds?