Peter BurnhillDirector, EDINA(Edinburgh University Data Library)

http://edina.ac.uk

The Virtual Library: What does it mean?

Fiesole Collection Development Retreat Series

Oxford 2000

(Auto-)Biographical perspective

Full-time worker in the ‘Knowledge Industry’Research Council then University

BA (Econ), MSc (Stat) Research Fellow, Snr. Lecturer, Consultant

schooling & survey methodologystatistics & information methodology

University Support Services: Manager/DirectorEdinburgh University Data Library (1984 - )

• computing support to libraries (1987 - 1992)EDINA, a JISC National Datacentre (1995 - )

President, IASSIST (1997 - )international assoc. for data librarians, etc

• ‘putting data in the digital library’

Organisational perspective - University Data Library, then JISC National Datacentre

Edinburgh University Data Library set up in 1984 as ‘library of large-scale research data’

designated by JISC as UK National Datacentre in 1995 Joint Information Systems Committee

of UK higher education (& now further education) funding councils http://www.jisc.ac.uk

to co-operate/compete with BIDS and MIDAS/COPAC eLib (electronic libraries) Programme (1995/99)

MODELS workshops - http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/services/elib/

EDINA national services launched on 25 January 1996 100th Centenary Burns Night

EDINA’s Mission as JISC National Datacentre

to enhance the productivity of research, learning & teaching in UK higher & further education through provision of specialist data services

Aims to provide staff and students with access to key

information resources, as part of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER).

to ensure EDINA is a well-regarded and cost-effective University-based UK datacentre appropriate resources for support, collaborative inter-working &

required technical inter-operability with other service providers.

key Abstract & Indexing (A&I) Databaseskey Geographic ‘mapping’ Databasesavailable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

9 - 5 weekday Helpdesk

Active outreach programme listening, learning & promoting

used by staff & students from 130 UK universitiespreparing to serve further education

life-long learning, vocational needs more information at http://edina.ed.ac.uk

... key online services

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Art Abstracts, Art Index Retrospective EconLit, MLA, PAIS, Palmer’s Index Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts Social Services Abstracts, Sociological

Abstracts

Agriculture, Environment & Life Sciences AGDEX, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, ESPMD

Engineering…& Physical Sciences Ei Compendex/Page One, INSPEC

General Reference SALSER, Ulrich’s International

Geographic information

Digimap

digital map data

Ordnance Survey

aerial photography

historic mapping

UKBORDERS

digital boundary data

Census

historical record

Geo-Reference

Gazetteers

‘Geo-cross-walk’ data

Bibliographic information

Digimap

JISC service for Ordnance Survey Map Data Launched in January 2000

Data covered: Land-Line.Plus® – large-scale, showing manmade and natural

features

MeridianTM – medium-scale, with boundaries and transport features

Strategi® – small-scale, depicting land-use and settlement

Land-Form PANORAMATM – contours and terrain model data 1:50,000

1:50,000 place name gazetteer – 258,000 names and grid references

Two access options: simple and advanced (Carto) Catering for novice and sophisticated users

Digimap generated maps

Strategi Meridian Land-Line.Plus®

JISC is promoting own version of the Virtual Library ‘Distributed National Electronic Resource’ (DNER) JISC Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI)

a national system of JISC-funded facilities National Datacentres and related

BIDS, EDINA & MIMAS Arts & Humanities Data Service (Oxford Text Archive, History Data

Service, etc), Data Archive Resource Discovery Network (RDN)

a set of ‘faculty-based hubs’ with subject portals/ gateways to the DNER and ‘beyond’

• eg BIOME, EEVL, SOSIG

… ‘bricks in the wall of the UK Virtual Library’

Policy & Practice for the DNER ‘Virtual Library’

Service DeliveryCollection DevelopmentInfrastructure

Role of national datacentres?

Role in what? - in the JISC DNER Strategy - in the (UK/global) digital/virtual library - in services that university libraries offer - in the ‘information landscape’ - in the (global?) information economy

3 approaches to this exam question ..1. Semantic

what are the meanings of the two words, thence phrase?

2. Empirical how is the phrase used?

3. Analytical what are the key questions/issues?

with quasi-historical-cum-autobiographical asides on a recurrent, periodic question a recurrent issue, with title changes, the new ‘seriality’

‘Virtual Library: What does it mean?’

<ALTERNATIVE TITLE(S) for exam>

Virtual Libraries aren’t real: discuss

What’s the Meta ( ) for? role of Metadata, role of Metaphor

Library, A Collective Verb not Noun: discuss information as object; now debate the subject

Not Surfing, but Diving! outline a SCUBA guide to the Internet

Where would you really be - Norway’s fijords

Virtual Library: What does it mean?

I was asked a related question during a job interview in 1984 ..

Q: How would I define a data library?A: ‘A bit like inter-galactic library loan’

having been reading Phillip K.Dick

They laughed & I got the job!Next day, off to Brewers’ to look up ‘data’ &

‘library’

‘data’ & ‘library’

The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by E. Cobham Brewer (The new and enlarged edition) 1894

data was not there (too modern?) but as a statistician, I thought I knew something

about ‘data as evidence’‘data’ as collective noun for electronic stuffdata not being information

library was there ..

library

One of the most approved materials for writing on, before invention of paper, was thin rind between the solid wood and the outside bark of certain trees. This substance is in Latin called liber, which came in time also to signify a “book.” Hence our library, the place for books.

NB media not message created an enduring institution; no reference to data-, nor virtual- library, but

A circulating library. A library from which the books may be borrowed and taken by readers to their homes under certain restrictions. A living or walking library. Longinus, the philosopher and rhetorician, was so called. (213-273.) Public Libraries. The first public library known was founded at Athens (B.C. 540) by Pisistratos. That of Alexandria, founded (B.C. 47) by the Ptolemies, contained 400,000 books. It was burnt by order of the Calif Omar, A.D. 641.

(The First Hypertext Edition of The Dictionary of Phrase and

Fable) http://www.bibliomania.com)

virtual

Virgins The eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, according to the

legend, were born at Baoza in Spain, which contained only 12,000

families.

Virginal An instrument used in convents to lead the virginals or

hymns to the Virgin.

<…>

Virtuoso A man fond of virtu or skilled therein; a dilettantë.

Vis Inertiae That property of matter which makes it resist any

change. Thus it is hard to set in motion what is still, or to stop what is

in motion.

Vishnu [Indian ]. The Preserver, who forms with Brahma and Siva the

divine triad of the system of Hinduism.

empirical approach

Google.com yielded 504,992 references first 150 mostly WWW virtual library facilities that were

themselves annotated indexes of web-accessible resources on a particular subject or theme.

EEVL (the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library) UK-based guide to engineering information on the Internet.

Webhoo ‘a well organized virtual library (yahoo-style)..hundreds

of links to web design/building/maintaing related sites.’

www.vl.org is ‘the oldest catalog of the Web’ started by Tim Berners-Lee.

a more ‘modern’ online sourcehttp://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html

Virtual. Via virtual memory, probably from "virtual image" in optics)

1. Common alternative to logical; often used to refer to artificial objects (like addressable virtual memory larger than physical memory) created by a computer system to help the system control access to shared resources.

2. Simulated; performing the functions of something that isn't really there, eg an imaginative child's doll may be a virtual playmate.

Opposite of real or physical.

Library <programming, library> A collection of subroutines and functions stored in one or more files, usually in compiled form, for linking with other programs. One of the earliest forms of organised code reuse. ... The linking may be static linking or, in some systems,

dynamic linking.

Attempt at analytic approach

What have others been saying?

What’s different about digital?

What’s special about the scholarly?

Cutting the keys to the virtual library

Virtual Library‘a network of connections to information resources worldwide, unlimited by distance, or opening hours, or well-intentioned gatekeepers’ … much ‘due to activities of Coalition of Networked Information (CNI) .. Representing professional interests of university computing centres, libraries and administrations’

Peter Stone (Deputy Librarian, Sussex Univ.) IUSC Workshop on Specialist & Bibliographic Datasets,

Manchester, 7-8 July, 1992

associated with early move to ‘access, rather than holdings’

he put focus on services in the ‘virtual library’

‘Information Science’

Michael Buckland, Presidential Address, American Society for Information Science, on JASIS’s 50th (1998):

2 traditions or mentalities co-exist in Information Science document, signifying records various uses of formal techniques, mechanical & mathematical

admixture of these complementary, non-convergent mentalities in the ambiguous ‘digital library’(i) modernisation of library services

(ii) infrastructure to access complex databases

want to identify a 3rd tradition data as evidence, library as facility for re-use (IASSIST now in it 26th year; data librarians been worrying about

this)

What’s different about digital?

Digital objects can be manipulated in v.wide variety of ways copied, reformated, modified, combined with another, etc

Use, per se, does not diminish the object

Focus on ‘availability for re-use’

Digital telecom, means disregard to distance remote ‘non-territorial’ access, (WWW/Internet), etc

and yet, we really do need to have international gatherings such as this in nice places!

What’s special about Scholarly? (Our Business)

Nothing sacred, it’s an industry and we have to be business-like

that industry is ‘Knowledge manufacture & dissemination’

peer communication + client enlightenment teaching as form of client enlightenment

it has an internal and and external economy

universities: businesses which co-operate &

compete invisible college but visible career-paths

research, library & publication

peer communication is driven by search for recognition and revenue to support future research activity

library & publication are part of research production process

digital/virtual library & electronic publication as part of search for productivity gains

put ‘data’ and other ‘scholarly resources’ in digital library

publications are not science, they are information objects that contain the results of such

there is an economy for (digital) information objects

issues

what will endure in the knowledge industry role of universities & other enduring institutions

?? Separate the economics & business needed to support ‘peer communication’ from that of ‘client enlightenment’

how to deal with externalities infrastructure must be funded somehow

timeframe/perspective SF & History no time like the present

Searching for analytic framework

the information-for-academics economy within higher education within the global economy

the economy of information objects of desire

researcher’s search for evidence & for recognition

should end here, but ..

DNER

Desk top

Local Inst.

SubjectRDN

OtherPortal

A&I Database

Discover

Datacentre

Union ListOPAC

Datacentre Datacentre

Libraries Aggregators Publishers

Other Information Organisations

Printed Volume:Local/Remote

Electronic Versions

Document Delivery

Locate

Access

Request

A&I Database

A&I Database

A&I Database

The Joined-Up View of Discover - Locate - Request - Access

Portals:

Proposals:

Rights:

Medium:

Geography:

Text Sources:

Desk top

Local Inst.

Subject

RDN

Other

ETOC X-Grain ZBLSA DOCUSEND

Subscriber Non-Subscriber

Print PrintElectronic Electronic

Local LocalRemote Remote

OPACAggregator/Publisher

Union List Document Delivery Service

Discover

CASA ‘Cooperative Action on Serials & Articles’

Funded by the European Union 4th Framework Telematics for Libraries Programme 2nd phase began January 1998 led by University of Bologna, with ISSN-IC (Paris), NOSP, EDINA

(SALSER), ICCU

how to exploit the telematic opportunity to enhance ISSN world serials database to provide network access to ISSN database (Z39.50, HTTP) to link union catalogues through Serials Services Directory

regard serial as well-described, complex information object

role of ISSN-based identifiers (eg SICI, DOI) combines ‘user-view’ with ‘electronic commerce’

four useful ‘user’ verbs

discover information object of interest– eg an article found in bibliographic citation or Abstract &

Index databases (eg BIOSIS, WoS, etc)

locate organisation offering service – eg serial via library catalogues - union catalogues

request use of service– via payment or privilege from membership (of university,

etc)

access object of interest– consult article via personal visit, document delivery, online

access

based on MODELS workshops (UKOLN/JISC eLib)

+ ‘provider’ or ‘supply-side’ verbs

discover

locate

request

access

article of interest

article of interest

use of servicee.g. visit, I.L.L., eDoc

article service

make

offer

agree

deliver

right(s)

Serial Services Directory

d

Service

Offer Location (URI)

Terms and ConditionsParty Item

Serial Volume Issue Article

Loan Subscription Full-Text Delivery...

Publisher Supplier Union CatalogLibrary...

can digital libraries & electronic commerce co-exist in this information economy?

size of serials economy is very large and costly publishers are becoming online vendors, seeking

direct sales from end users (our staff & students)

universities are content creators - via researcher/authors and also customers - via libraries

authors make bad publishers authors may write, but ... publishers package and find market & that’s a commercial

business value of the serial as an arena of discourse

whose virtual library; a virtual library for whom?