Digital libraries and the new ecology of information

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Digital libraries and the new ecology of
information

• Francisco Javier García Marco
• Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
• LIDA 2009

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Purpose

• The problem of the impact and evolution of
  digital libraries is addressed using the concept
  of informational ecologies
• Digital libraries are explored from their
  functional logic inside the social subsystem that
  deals with transferring knowledgein the form of
  informationamong people and generations.
• Thereafter, some trends affecting the modern
  information ecology in which digital libraries
  evolvesuccessfully indeedare studied.

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Contents

• Libraries in the middle of the digital revolution
• Why and how an ecology of information?
• Systems and ecosystems
• From an Ecology of Information to information
  ecologies
• The context of libraries culture and the social
  transfer of knowledge
• The concept of culture
• The social system of knowledge transfer social
  information
• Understanding the library ecosystem and its role
  in the knowledge transfer process
• A radical transformation of the knowledge
  transfer environment
• Information management is becoming ubiquitous
• Digital convergence and the growing problem of
  preservation
• Technological standardization and leverage
• Globalization the surging of a worldwide space
  of collaboration and competition
• Swift advances in the international division of
  informational work
• The transformation of the physical information
  units toward the provision of proximity services
• The entry of new agents in the field
• From documents to data

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Libraries in the middle of the digital revolution

• A complicate information world
• In transition from a paper (and film)
  infrastructure toward a digital and
  Internet-based one, that means
• Automation from production and transport to
  processing of symbols/data (again occurring in
  the web 1.0 to SW evolution)
• Library and Information Science professionals and
  academia are just in the middle of this shift
• Which will be the role of libraries in this new
  world?
• How will librarians be affected by an ever more
  automated environment?
• How is this role going to evolve in an
  increasingly globalized information landscape?
• Which will be the role of paper collections in a
  more and more digital world?

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Why and how an ecology of information

• Systems and ecosystems

• Conceptual tools for reducing complexity
• A system can be defined as a set of elements
  interacting dynamically in pursue of an aim
  (Rosnay, 1975).
• This concept makes room for complexity and
  interaction, mainly throughout the notion of
  feedback.
• But it is very related with artificial systems
  and systems intervention, probably because it was
  born in connection with the design of complex
  machines, the servomechanisms
• Ecosystems
• are the application of the concept of system to
  the study of systems that are not designed, but
  that grow naturally.
• are also very intricate, with many populations of
  microorganisms, animals and plants coexisting and
  competing in multiple relations in a shared
  environment.

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Why and how an ecology of information

• From an Ecology of information to information
  ecologies

• The science that studies ecosystems is called
  Ecology,
• Its pluralecologiesis used, perhaps in an
  hyperbolic way, as a term to denote the maximum
  level of complexity in Ecology
• the relation among a set of ecosystems, or,
  expressed in other ways, a ecosystem of
  ecosystems, a second-order ecosystem or a
  macro-ecosystem.

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Why and how an ecology of information

• From an Ecology of information to information
  ecologiesA brief and partial history of the
  term in Information Science (1)

• Information mapping in organizations
• 1989 Information Ecology / Horton
• Hasenyager, 1996 Davenport, 1997
• Classifications as switchers in interdisciplinary
  groups
• 1998 Albrechtsen
• Impact of IT in societies knowledge and
  communication
• 1990 Capurro
• Applications
• Evolution of the World Wide Web (Hubermann, 2001
  Shim, 2006)
• Digital libraries (Hawkins, 2001),
• Social communities in the Internet (Finin, 2008)
• Electronic government (Grafton, 2006).

The Ecology of information approach puts an
emphasis in the cultural, social and psychosocial
processes beyond the technological ones, and
tries to think information and documentation
systems in their whole complexity.
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Why and how an ecology of information

• From an Ecology of information to information
  ecologiesA brief and partial history of the
  term in Information Science (2)

• These previous studies use the term ecology in
  singular, but what about the term ecologies?
• In the last years, the concept of information
  ecologies has been used to represent the problem
  of the colliding media converging in a new
  multimedia landscape.
• This is now much more needed because of the logic
  that the technological evolution is imposing
  towards convergence and globalization.

What the term information ecologies implies is
that, to get a truly understanding of the
information world, this has to be studied as a
system, as a totality in its whole complexity and
with all its apparent contradictions.
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Culture and the social transfer of knowledge

• In the middle of the digital technological storm
  we need some kind of dock where we may anchor our
  reflections for sure.
• This anchor could be the function that
  librariesdigital or notperform
• helping in the transfer of culture among and
  inside generations.
• Of course, transferring it requires preservation
  but preservation is a secondary function to
  transference, and culture is transferred because
  it is perceived as useful.

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But, what is culture?

• Obviously, culture-based behaviour departs from
  the animal one and it is learned with
  effortcultivated, not inherited
• The concept has been expanded folk culture,
  contra-culture
• Culture can be defined as a set of
  non-genetically-determined restrictions that
  apply to the cognitive, expressive and motor
  behaviour of humans that are integrated in a
  group in order to ensure their successful
  evolution in their environment and the
  reproduction of their societies and of them as
  individuals.
• These rulesand all the representations of the
  environment that accompany them and make them
  possibleare called knowledge.
• When a established group accepts individual
  knowledgeor built it in a process of
  communicationas of common interest, this
  knowledge becomes part of the culture.
• The cultural restrictions govern how their world
  is perceived, how their members apprehend their
  world, how they produce and reproduce, how they
  communicate and relate among them 

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The social system of knowledge transfer social
information

• It is clear that culture is critical for a
  societys survival
• The new members, groups and institutions inside a
  culture must be previously encultured, at least
  up to a functional point
• Knowledge transfer
• is realized through communication, a process in
  which knowledge is transformed into symbolic
  information,
• and served through documentation, the process of
  storing messages in external memories to ensure
  their preservation.
• From an informational point of
  viewunderstanding by informational that it is
  related to the preservation and retrieval of
  knowledge records, knowledge is only interesting
  as far as it conveys new information.

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The role of libraries

• Libraries are one of the main available bridges
  between available knowledge and knowledge gaps.
• However, they are only a part of a huge group of
  industries (figure 2) that cooperate and compete
  in permanently pumping information to users and,
  more generally speaking, in developing a series
  of activities to connect the information demand
  with the information offer (figure 3).
• In fact, there is a social subsystem specifically
  devoted to supporting information transfer, which
  is especially complex and which constitutes the
  immediate context of libraries.

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The libraries ecosystem

• The wide and wild arena of knowledge transfer

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Libraries in the eccology of knowledge
presevation
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Information channels as ecological niches

• Those channels can be seen as specific
  ecological niches with specific properties or
  evolutive advantages and disadvantages.
• They differ in formality, extensiveness,
  intensity, regulation, permanency, costs and are
  particularly suitable for an audience, purpose or
  content.
• So, libraries and archives are in a secondary
  step in relation with the primary communication
  channels.
• They are systems for document storage and
  related-services, and, in a wide sense, social
  information memories.
• Historically, libraries in particular appeared in
  relation with the commercial document
  distribution channel, and because of this are
  inherently challenged by the emergence of the new
  omni-channel the Internet.
• On the other side, Internet publishing does not
  have an established permanent storage system, and
  this certainly constitutes a huge opportunity
  that is being partially addressed by some willing
  players.

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The libraries niche

• As a secondary or reverberative channel,
  libraries are an interface between publishing
  houses and the users, and perform a series of
  added-value processes on behalf of both parts.
  This cycle occurs into a more general one, where
  both poles are knowledge creation and knowledge
  gaps (figure 4).
• From a functional perspective, we can divide
  library processes in two big groups one related
  to storing and retrieval, and the other to
  assisting the user in accessing information. But,
  we must remember that libraries are not alone in
  this work, they depend on and work with the
  products and services provided by other
  industries (figure 2), that are also developing
  models to contact with the user without
  mediation.
• In fact libraries aggregate information retrieval
  systems, books, journals, reference databases,
  electronic collections that are not produced by
  them. As a result, they are becoming more and
  more service providers and less and less
  collection-keepers.

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Library functions

• Modern libraries as aggregators of services

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A radical transformation of the knowledge
transfer environment

• Digital computing and networks have transformed
  the knowledge transfer landscape and they are
  altering the information ecology of the past.
• As a result, information and documentation units
  and networks are experiencing a rapid
  transformation of their ecological niche.
• As a consequence of the Internet space expansion
  fed back by the parallel globalization process,
  the information preservation and reference
  functions are migrating to the new digital
  medium and the organization and the traditional
  functions of the long-established information and
  documentation systems are put into question.
• A questioning that is also affecting, in a
  subsequent stage, to the very structure of both
  public and market-oriented information services.
• Lets see some trends (8).

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Information management is exploding, becoming
ubiquitous

• Very positive trend for libraries and information
  professionals and academics

• Growing freedom,
• the ever-increasing specialization of work,
• the development of a services economy ,
• ever cheaper information storage,
• the fact that Internet information is public
  information
• are making the information world explode, and
  this ever-growing universe of information
  requires proper management.
• It is no more a problem of organizations, but of
  individuals.
• Many services sell information management as a
  value added service, for example iTunes

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Digital convergence and the growing problem of
preservation

• A big opportunity

• The Internet is all about digital convergence.
• Its history is that of the progressive digital
  codification of alphabets, formal languages,
  images, drawings, sounds, films ever in an
  environment of greater automation and improving
  human-machine interaction.
• digitalization has been only the first step in
  the transposition of the several information
  channels that modern societies use to the
  Internet environment
• newspapers, music, video, radio, tv, scientific
  journals, books, exhibitions, education
• These transpositions are in different stages of
  development and user acceptance, but they are
  very advanced, indeed.
• Its permanent storage is a big opportunity
• In fact, digital libraries business is certainly
  and mainly about digital preservation (for
  access).

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Technological standardization and leverage

• The pendulum of IT will finally swing toward
  usability

• Digital publication and management technologies
  are becoming increasingly leveraged. They are
  becoming more standard, usable and accessible.
  More and more people have the knowledge to use
  them and, of course, they do.
• V. g. Blogsphere
• With semantic technologies processing information
  is becoming cheaper and easier and new
  opportunities open for further automation.
• They can be affected in the future by a similar
  process.
• The process of technological leverage is finally
  set to affect prices and modify the current
  ecological relation between paper and digital
  for-profit edition,
• which is one of the main channels that still
  stands up to the digital change

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Globalization
The surging of a worldwide space of collaboration
and competition

• There will be winners a losers and a lot of work
  for adapting

• Such important services in traditional
  information and documentation units as vigilance,
  acquisition, cataloguing and reference are more
  and more subjected to outsourcing, off-shoring
  and market concentration (v. g. Thompson,
  Elsevier).
• In our century, we are witnessing the birth of
  the first global digital information
  multinational Google.
• And others actors are trying to catch up.

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Swift advances in the international division of
informational work

• Many things are put in question and many more
  will follow

• Forty years ago, in-house cataloguing was a key
  function for libraries. Now, most of them take
  their metadata from big cataloguing databases.
  Also, more and more libraries buy their materials
  together with the cataloguing records from their
  providers.
• The same has happened with other services like
  information systems development and maintenance,
  journals control and many other functions.
• This is even happening with reference, which is
  increasingly being served from cooperative
  networks of reference librarians over the
  Internet, a solution that is certainly the only
  way to achieve a much necessary division of work
  in this complex task.
• Something similar could happen with a great part
  of the storing and circulation function in the
  next future.
• If great world-wide digital information
  distributors are able to give users a cheap
  access to the digital production of publishers of
  many countries, will the lending function of
  libraries keeps its sense, especially when
  growing pressure is being put on them regarding
  licenses for document lending?

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The transformation of the physical information
units toward the provision of proximity services

• And their inclusion in new digital niches

• If most of the library functions are being
  outsourced in a digital environment, which future
  rests for the libraries of today? The answer
  depends very much on the type of library.
• Big libraries digital editors, curators and
  providers, cultural temples
• Small and medium public and educational
  libraries terribly challenged, but a
  well-branded communication channel with citizens
  and information retail centres in their
  communities, information access points
• Globalization requires a compensatory
  specialization process explosion of niches that
  benefit from the big-tail effect
• Museum libraries will be an important, but very
  specialized, niche.

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The entry of new agents in the field

• New comers will have to be welcome

• Finally, the inherently multimodal character of
  the information phenomenon is provoking the
  surging of uncountable switchers between
  different media and communities on the whole
  information network, and in relation with the
  growing multimedia nature of our society.
• Vannevar Bushs vision of a profession of
  information pathfinders comes inevitably to our
  mind.
• Most of the work that bloggersand in general
  websitesdo in the Internet is, in fact,
  connecting people with other resources and
  people. This is finally a reference function.
• Wisely, libraries are trying to integrate and
  assimilate this social networking world in the
  same way that newspapers have tried the last
  years.
• Anyway, this brand-new boiling-over reference
  world is going to produce big surprises and a
  permanent flow of innovation and new information
  agents outside the current network of information
  professionals, which is also a very promising and
  enriching trend.

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From documents to data

• New information structures are a big challenge

• More and more information is being produced
  outside the frame of documents.
• GIS, statistical databases
• Documents are becoming structured
• This information must be properly addressed.
• This requires a big change in focus and methods.

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Conclusions (1/2)

• The information market in growing rapidly,
  promoting the advent of new agents and taking
  profit of all the manpower liberated by
  automation in other industries and services.
• Future seems promising, as the worldwide
  information space can be contemplated through the
  metaphor of a growing brain, where a great number
  of new units and connections appear, whilst a
  great number of them also disappear in an
  environment of great competition and adjustments.
  
• Digital libraries can be examined under this
  light, because they are also altering radically
  the ecologies of information preservation.
• Projects like Google Books, Amazons, the big
  electronic journals dissemination platforms,
  etc., are changing a world dominated by national
  and local players, making many tasks and projects
  obsolete, but opening also new opportunities for
  specialization and localization.

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Conclusions (2/2)

• Anyway, information is only the visible part of
  communication processes. Though objective,
  objectivizable and automatable, communication
  processes are inherently human-centred and
  therefore, information will be always a
  privileged human working space even while
  machines and automatisms substitute humans in
  many tasks.
• Modern information ecologies reflect exactly both
  sides of the coin growing automation versus the
  recognition of communication as a human space by
  excellence, both in work and spare time. And this
  is a lesson that can be found in the literature
  written by most of the experts in digital
  libraries.

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Hvala lijepaThank you