Digital Libraries and the Information Society

Saracevic and Dalbello (2002) “…are trying to examine the complex relations and connections between research and practice in the are of digital libraries solely on the basis of surface evidence, i.e. through records that can be gathered and observed from what the digital library projects in both research and practice generated on their Web sites, and from literature reporting on digital libraries” (p.1). Marchionini et al. (2000) justifiably suggest that the treatment of such complex problem as digital libraries “…is particularly challenging because human information behavior is a complex and highly context dependent, and the digital library concept and technologies are rapidly changing” (Marchionini et al., p.1). Yet, it is even more challenging to attempt a conclusion on whether digital library research and practice mutually inform each other based solely on surface evidence by means of bibliography included and research mentioned, and the topics of interest covered by publications and conferences regarding research and practice. However, given the relatively young age of digital libraries a potential study such as the one Saracevic et al. have embarked on, despite its limitations, might be one of the very limited ways that can result in some insights.

Having defined ‘digital library research’ within the scope of Digital Library Initiative (DLI) 1 and 2 and digital library research as reported in the literature (Saracevic et al., p.1), and the scope of ‘digital library practice’ to include “any working digital library … and /or demos or test-beds reflecting any practical, operational library-oriented achievements” (p. 1), the article consider research to inform practice when visible connection based on evidence “in the sites of research projects and in the literature that point to any consideration of or link to an operational digital library project, or to demos, and testbeds” (p.1) and considers practice to inform research when visible connection based on evidence “in digital library practice any consideration of or link to research projects in DLI, or any other research” (p.1). Based on the surface evidence Saracevic et al. conclude that “By and large, digital library research and digital library practice presently are conducted mostly independently of each other, minimally information each other, and having slight, or no connection” (p. 11). The problem with such surface analysis is that practical implementations (projects, test-beds, and prototypes) do not necessarily and clearly explain how a particular research was utilized. Also, it is quiet possible that the web pages are out of date, the authors saw no reason to elaborate on public pages about a research utilized, operationalised, experimented with, etc. One can argue however that research is informed to some extend by practice, especially in the attempt to resolve practical issues related to enabling technologies, as Borgman (1999) rightfully argues that “research and practice have symbiotic relationship. Interesting research problems often arise from practice” (p.228). In this sense research on databases, remote access technologies, multimedia technologies, communication protocols, etc., could indirectly be considered as enabling technologies for digital libraries. However, it is less obvious that practice has informed research regarding issues related to the social dimensions of digital libraries and their interplay as institutions and organizations suspended in the web of socio-economic and political landscape.

Borgman’s article (1999) is exploratory in nature attempting to explicate the meaning and interpretation of the phrase ‘digital library’ through the ‘discourse’ analysis of various definitions regarding ‘digital libraries’ coined by various research and practice communities claming to be somehow related to digital libraries, and to asses and identify possible influence of those definitions in the community or research and practice. In her quest, Borgman identifies two main and distinct senses in which ‘digital library’ has been used (p.227). On one side is the technical oriented definition stating that “digital libraries are a set of electronic recourses and associated technical capabilities for creating, searching and using information” (p.234), to be contrasted by the social view stating that “digital libraries are constructed, collected and organized, by (and for) a community of users, and their functional capabilities support the information needs and uses of that community” (p.234).

Traditionally, the research community regarding digital libraries has been composed of computer scientist usually interested in research related to enabling technologies; therefore, it is not surprising those definitions stemming from research “are intended to highlight significant research problems and relationship between them…and to attract other scholars” (Borgman, p.229). Similarly “practice-oriented definitions are intended to highlight current and anticipate practical challenges” (p.229) within the situated context and scope as institutions and services (p.227). Even here we see that based on these findings, research and practice in digital libraries appear to be apart from each other and developing almost independently. However, the following quote from Borgman’s article is rather interesting: “in general, researchers view digital libraries as content collected on behalf of user communities, while practicing librarians view digital libraries as institutions or services” (p.227). The cross pollination between research and practice communities, albeit not so strong, is rather obvious: researchers indirectly influence user communities (including here practitioners as a user community), and practitioners influence research agendas by their attempt to provide various services which in turn lead to challenging research issues for researcher. This suggests that as the research community expands beyond the core of computer scientists to include researchers involved with the treatment of the interplay between information and information technology with social structures, the research and practice will increasingly start informing each other, as Borgman has concluded: “We find that research community’s definitions have evolved from a narrower view emphasizing enabling technologies to one that encompasses the social, behavioral, and economic contexts in which digital libraries are used. That view has also expanded from a primary emphasis on information retrieval to include the full life cycle of creating, seeking, using, preserving and disposing of information resources” (p.240), where “digital libraries as institutions or services stand to benefit from research on almost all aspects of digital libraries as content, collections and communities” (p.239).

Marchionini’s (2002) article rightfully and squarely concentrates on the users as a very important and critical factor in the design and implementation of digital libraries. In the quest of the analysis and exploration of the three experiments, Marchionini emphasizes that “people and their information needs are central to all libraries, digital or otherwise” (p.1). In this assessment, Marchionini is almost fully congruent, as far as conceptual understanding is considered, with Ranganathan’s enunciation of the File Laws of Library Science (1957) identifying the user (the reader) as a key factor in the traditional library as growing organism, with Marchionini making the obvious link in stating that “digital libraries are the logical extension and augmentation of physical libraries in the electronic information society” (p.1). Is this indeed so? Then, there must be some synergy between Ranganathan’s enunciations and Marchionini’s conclusions. Perhaps Marchionini’s conclusions show that the conceptual framework upon which Ranganathan based his Five Laws of Library Science apply to digital libraries as well, albeit with difference in format, form, medium, accessibility, context, scope, etc.

Ranganathan lays down the fundamental concepts, albeit seemingly obvious in today's socio-economic and political landscape, of librarianship through the Five Laws of Library Science. These laws demonstrate the practical and crucial importance of books—and all artifacts that contain recorder knowledge—in our society and the role they have played in various political and technological revolutions throughout history. Ranganathan went to a great length to explain the reasons behind why he believes that his five enunciations ought to be considered laws of Library Science and that actually there is an intellectual landscape to be considered and called Library Science.

The First Law: Books are for use
(Ranganathan, p. 26)

The Second Law: Every readers his or her book (or Books are for all)
(Ranganathan, p. 81).

The Third Law: Every book its reader
(Ranganathan, p. 258)

The Fourth Law: Save the time of the reader.
(Ranganathan, p. 287)

The Fifth Law: Library is a growing organism
(Ranganathan, p. 326)

A ‘book’ is the basic element of Ranganathan’s laws: it contains representation of subjective knowledge. This calls for defining the comparative basic element for digital libraries. Given the wide scope and range of what can digitally be stored, the basic element of a digital library is perhaps a digital information object, a document, in digitized form (image, text, audio, vide, etc.) independent of the format, genre and the means by which can be delivered.

The First Law "BOOKS ARE FOR USE" (p. 26) is the basic one, the most obvious in our society, without which the applicability of the other four laws appear to be meaningless. A comparable enunciation for the digital library would be: DIGITAL INFORMATION OBJECTS ARE FOR USE. If so, to be used they must be accessible and available for use within the potentials of the digital technology, ultimately potentially making available all digital information objects globally. For this to be achieved, various technologies need to be in place to enable the users to use the digital collections. In contrast with the traditional libraries, “DL must serve people with a wide range of characteristics and needs” (Marchionini et al., p.23), potentially on a scale and size much wider than traditional libraries. With respect to the second law, "EVERY PERSON HIS OR HER BOOK” (OR BOOKS ARE FOR ALL), a comparable enunciation would be EVERY PERSON/USER HIS OR HER DIGITAL INFORMATION OBJECT (OR DIGITAL INFORMATION OBJECTS ARE FOR ALL). Obviously, in the context of the digital library, this enunciation has far reaching consequences and implications in terms of legal issue such as copyrights, ownerships, freedom of speech, information democracy, etc. However, an interesting implication is related to the aspect of information literacy or even better said digital information literacy. Given the multitude of digital information objects, even if it is possible and feasible to make available all digital information objects to all users (the obvious hard issue of relevance both research and practice related), it is hard to say whether the users will be able to ‘read’ and ‘understand’ the various digital information objects. We are all familiar how to read text as narrative. However, does every user know how to contextually read a chart, a bar graph, or a video presentation of unknown phenomena? It appears that the information and medial literacy issues are lacking in the study of digital libraries. Marchionini indirectly raised the issue of technology vs. user in context: “The experience of this case [The Baltimore Learning Company] demonstrated that advanced technical solutions and high-quality content are not sufficient to initiate or sustain community in settings where day-to-day practice is strongly determined by personal, social and political constrains” (p.23). Technology alone can’t fix problems.

In enunciating the third law (“EVERY BOOKS ITS READER”) Ranganathan states that this law: “would urge that an appropriate reader should be found for every book” (p.258). The implication would be to build a digital open access system where users can remotely browse and access all digital information objects in a digital library. From another point of view EVERY DIGITAL INFORMATION OBJECT ITS READER/USER could mean that there must be a purpose behind digital library’s acquisition (or buying licenses) of a particular digital content. If a user/reader for a particular digital content is not always in sight, what is the point in a digital library to ‘carry’ it? But then, here is the challenge: who determines and knows what digital collections a digital library should ‘carry’ when its scope and user base is potentially more versatile due to the global nature?

From the technical perspective, the 2nd, 3rd and the 4th law (SAVE THE TIME OF THE READER/USER) bring forth multitude of challenges for digital libraries related to enabling technologies such as IR, databases, user interfaces, networks, access technologies, classification and organization, presentation, management technologies, etc. In order to save the time of the user, digital libraries among others need to effectively and efficiently design systems that will enable the users to find quickly and accurately what they are ‘looking’ for, as well as present users with means to explore the vast amount of digital collections available through the digital library that could potentionally be of some utility to the user.

The Fifth Law (stated as A DIGITAL LIBRARY IS A GROWING ORGANISM) poses a serious challenge when transported in the realm of the digital libraries. What does it mean for a digital library to grow? Certainly, growth in storage space is meaningless since the size of the digital information object is not related to the ‘relevance’, ‘importance’, or ‘pertinence’. Growth in number is also meaningless, as it cannot be maintained over time due to the nature of the subscription process in accessing electronic publications. Certainly this is a challenging issue for digital libraries especially when viewed as institutions and organizations. Is it even appropriate to attach organizational and institutional meaning to digital libraries? In what context and situation can a digital library claim to be an organization or an institution like a traditional library?

Recognizing Ranganathan’s five laws of Library Science and their underlying concepts pertain to the realm of digital libraries as powerful inspirations for social change, the user is rightly places at the center of attention: “It is only through understanding user characteristics and needs that DL designers can build tools to help users map information needs onto DL tasks and evaluators can develop a good set of questions to guide research” (Marchionini et al., p.23)

Conclusion

It is rather apparent from the above that it is imperative for the digital research and practice communities and their efforts to synch up and start meaningfully informing each other if there is to be expected for digital libraries to offer to the fullest of their potentials. The enabling technologies of digital libraries for most part are different and distinct from the ‘enabling technologies’ of the traditional libraries. This is more so evident with technologies directly related to digitization of the content and access of digital content. Given that the context, the format and form, and the scope and the size of the content matters, as well as the more divers and dispersed user communities, the needs of digital libraries and their users will probably induce new research as well as augment existing research practices such as information presentation and information retrieval.

As we have seen Borgman clearly elaborates that definitions are evolutionary besides the fact that they are very dynamic and diverse and serve a purpose, leading to various and ever changing issues and problems facing the research and practice communities. Therefore, reduction in ambiguities is beneficial: “the present ambiguity of terminology is hindering the advance of research and practice in digital libraries and in our ability to communicate the scope and significance of our work” (p.227). Marchionini on the other side shows the central role and the critical importance of the user and user communities in the design and implementation of digital libraries via meta-experimental analysis: “All efforts to design, implement, and evaluate digital libraries must be rooted in the information needs, characteristics, and contexts of the people who will or may use those libraries” (p.1).

All in all, digital library research and practice need to conduct themselves in multifaceted and multidimensional conceptual spaces not forgetting that they matter to each other, that users matter, that contexts matter. While the core research community might see enabling technologies as ends in themselves (we can do this and that), the practice community cares about how such technologies fit in the bigger pictures of various actors connected to each other via social and technologies links and suspended in the social web of life where isolation does not seem to be an option. [194:610]

References:

Borgman, C. L. (1999). What are digital libraries? Competing vision. Information Processing & Management, 35 (3), 227-243.

Marchionini, G., Plaisant, C., & Komlodi, A. (in press) The people in digital libraries: Multifaceted approaches to assessing needs and impact. Chapter in Bishop, A. Buttenfield, B. & VanHouse, N. (Eds.) Digital library use: Social practice in design and evaluation. Retrieved October 26th, 2002 from: http://ils.unc.edu/~march/revision.pdf

Ranganathan, S. R. (1957). The five laws of library science. London: Blunt and Sons, Ltd. pp. 11-31, 80-87, 258-263, 287-291, 326-329

Saracevic, T. & Dalbello, M. (2002). Digital Library Research and Digital Library Practice: Do they Inform Each other? (Unpublished Study)