Open Archives and Open Libraries

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Open Archives and Open Libraries

• Thomas Krichel
• 2003-06-22

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who am I?

• I was an economist.
• I was a leisure digital librarian.
• NetEc 1993
• RePEc 1997
• I am a geek.
• I am a visionary.
• but not St. John the Baptist

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Who is he?
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St. IGNUicus

• A humoristic creation of Richard M. Stallman
  (RMS)
• RMS is the father of the free software movement
• a geek
• a visionary
• St. IGNUicus shows an emphasis on the moral case
  for free software.

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moral case and business case

• Other folks in the free software movement stress
  the need to demonstrate the business case for
  free software.
• They tend to avoid the word free, because free
  can mean cheap and cheap can mean bad.
• They use the term "open source software".

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RMS and us

• Some of us are already developing and using free
  software.
• I say we librarians need to learn more from the
  free software movement.
• We need to make the concepts coming of free
  software more a part of our business.
• Let us look at a key concept free software.

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free software according to RMS

• Free software comes with four freedoms
• The freedom to run the software, for any purpose
• The freedom to study how the program works, and
  adapt it to your needs
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can
  help your neighbor
• The freedom to improve the program, and release
  your improvements to the public, so that the
  whole community benefits

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free speech and free beer

• Free software does not mean 0
• The term "free" in free software should be
  interpreted as "freedom to do things with it".

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what has this to do with us?

• Just replace free software with free information.
• Libraries are about free information.
• But the analogy is not quite as simple.
• When we talk about free information, we usually
  mean things that we can freely read (download).
  free as in 0
• We do not usually mean free information as
  information we are free to do things with. Free
  as in freedom.

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moral and business

• There is a moral case for free information.
• We rely on it.
• There is a business case for free information.
• We need to make our own.

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we rely on the moral case

• The citizen should be informed
• Individuals in the organization should have free
  access
• This is how we justify resources given to us.
• Often, members of the community who pay get
  privileged access.

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from moral case to business case

• To form the business case for free information,
  think of "free information" as "freedom to do
  things" rather than 0.
• Thus libraries can make a crucial business case
  for them as agents who transform information.
• Recall that there are whole industries out there
  that produces free information.

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was this seminar not about open archives?

• Open archives are crucial tools for the
  development of libraries that transform freely
  available information.
• By analogy to the term "open archives" I will say
  that the "libraries that transform freely
  available information" are "open libraries".
  These are usually digital libraries.

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what are open archives

• They are machines that may or may not store
  items.
• Data or metadata records about these items is
  being made available through a machine interface.
• One possible interface is defined OAI protocol
  for metadata harvesting. In the following I will
  be assuming that any open archive runs that
  protocol.

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why do open archives matter

• Open archives are specifically set up to allow
  machine readable access to information.
• Thus presumably there is a permission to further
  process the information. "cogito, ergo sum"
  logic.
• You may think about the act to establish an open
  archive as an early 3rd millennium digital ritual.

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open archives and open libraries

• In the early history of open archives, their main
  use is as metadata repositories.
• We can build a simple open library by aggregating
  contents from many open archives.
• But we can do more.

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what do open libraries do?

• Identify records found in open archives.
• Relate identified records in open archives with
  each other.
• These actions require human control.

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example from RePEc

• There are 300 archives that contribute to RePEc
  data about publications.
• That data has author name strings.
• A special open archive furnishes access control
  records. These records lists author names and
  paper record identifiers of the papers the author
  wrote.
• This is classic access control, but done by the
  authors.
• An open archive exports the author data

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why do authors register?

• Authors perceive the registration as a way to
  achieve common advertising for their papers.
• Author records are used to aggregate usage logs
  across RePEc user services for all papers of an
  author.
• Open archives at the RePEc user services export
  usage data.

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open library idea serials data

• Serial level information is a crucial component
  of academic library data.
• Idea build and maintain free serial records.
• Two ways to build
• Use volunteers and collect in a decentralized
  way.
• Make an expensive central collection, disseminate
  well, charge for record changes later.

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another open library idea law

• Much of the legal texts are de jure free.
• De facto there are two companies who have
  comprehensive collections and charge a lot of
  money for the free information bundled with
  proprietary information.
• Our moral case calls for a replacement!
• (it will also create jobs for us)

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free legal open library

• Have all laws and cases
• online (open archives)
• as text (open archives)
• identified (open library)
• Have citation metadata, so that legal citations
  can verified be while composing case data.
• Registration procedure to verify the integrity of
  data.

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open library idea II drugs

• Collect data on the composition of all drugs
• drugs composition reported by drug companies,
  using open archives
• drug components documented by the governments,
  using an open archive
• Open library brings the two together!

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Am I crazy?

• Money does not make the world go round. Ideas do.
• When RMS proposed a free replacement for UNIX in
  the early 80s, most people dismissed the idea.
• Today it is reality!
• Similarly, when I started to work on RePEc a
  totally free and improved AI dataset in 1993,
  nobody gave it a high probability to succeed.
• It will be a reality!

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obstacles to open archives open libraries

• lack of imagination
• lack of entrepreneurship
• inability to form alliances
• user-centered thinking
• document-centered thinking
• technical competence required
• OAI PMH
• XML and XML Schema
• Unicode
• the "C" word

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what I do for open libraries

• Create an open library for library science the
  rclis (reckless) dataset.
• Create a supporting organization
• the open library society.
• co-workers welcome!

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conclusion

• The open library is a business idea to move free
  information powered by libraries from the paper
  to the digital world.
• Open archives are a sine qua non component of the
  business idea.
• Open archives furnish information that we are
  free to further process (as opposed to consume).

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http//openlib.org/home/krichel

• Thank you for your attention!