Transcript EDINA NATIONAL SERVICES
Fiesole Collection Development Retreat Series Oxford 2000
The Virtual Library: What does it mean?
Peter Burnhill Director, EDINA (Edinburgh University Data Library)
http://edina.ac.uk
(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 methodology statistics & information methodology University Support Services: Manager/Director Edinburgh 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 online services
key Abstract & Indexing (A&I) Databases key Geographic ‘mapping’ Databases available 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 universities preparing to serve further education life-long learning, vocational needs
more information at http://edina.ed.ac.uk
Bibliographic information 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
Digimap
JISC service for Ordnance Survey Map Data
Launched in January 2000
Data covered:
Land-Line.Plus
® – large-scale, showing manmade and natural features Meridian TM Strategi ® – medium-scale, with boundaries and transport features – small-scale, depicting land-use and settlement Land-Form PANORAMA TM – 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
®
… ‘bricks in the wall of the UK Virtual Library’
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
Policy & Practice for the DNER ‘Virtual Library’
Service Delivery Collection Development Infrastructure
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
‘Virtual Library: What does it mean?’
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 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 stuff data 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 time also to signify a “book.” Hence our library, liber, which came in the place for books. NB media not message created an enduring institution; no reference to data-, nor virtual- library, but A circulating library.
taken by readers to their homes under certain restrictions. A living or A library from which the books may be borrowed and walking library.
so called. (213-273.) Longinus, the philosopher and rhetorician, was Public Libraries.
Omar, A.D. 641.
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
(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 source
http://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 other programs. One of the earliest forms of organised and functions stored in one or more files, usually in compiled form, for linking with 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
Discover Locate Request Access
Desk top Local Inst.
Subject RDN Other Portal A&I Database Datacentre A&I Database Datacentre A&I Database A&I Database Datacentre OPAC Union List Libraries Aggregators Other Information Organisations Publishers Printed Volume: Local/Remote Electronic Versions Document Delivery
The Joined-Up View of Discover - Locate - Request - Access
Portals: Desk top Local Inst.
Discover
Subject RDN Other Proposals: ETOC X-Grain ZBLSA DOCUSEND Rights: Medium: Geography:
Text Sources:
Local Print
OPAC
Subscriber Electronic Remote Local
Union List
Remote
Aggregator/ Publisher
Print Non-Subscriber Electronic
Document Delivery Service
CASA
‘
Cooperative Action on Serials & Articles’
Funded by the European Union 4th Framework for Libraries Programme Telematics 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 request access organisation offering service – eg serial via library catalogues - union catalogues use of service – via payment or privilege from membership (of university, etc) object of interest – consult article access via personal visit, document delivery, online based on MODELS workshops (UKOLN/JISC eLib)
+ ‘provider’ or ‘supply-side’ verbs
discover article of interest locate article service make offer right(s) request access use of service e.g. visit, I.L.L., eDoc article of interest agree deliver
Serial Services Directory
Part y Of f er Serv ice It em Locat ion ( URI) Terms and Condit ions Serial V olume Issue Art icle Loan Subscript ion Full-Text Delivery ...
Publisher Supplier Union Cat alogLibr ary ...
d
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